The mystery of the Mistletoe

Many people are familiar with the fact that the old Druids harvested mistletoe from the Oak with a golden sickle. The humorous comic strip books about the two Gallic heroes Asterix and Obelix has also popularised this custom. Their Druid, aptly named Getafix, made a magic potion from the mistletoe.
However, not many people realise, that there is an equally powerful Apple-Mistletoe connection.

Mistletoe is a part-parasite plant, which utilises the period when the tree is bare to do its own growing and photo-synthesising. In summer it would be much too shady for the plant to expand, so it grows leaves and sets berries in the cold season when the tree itself is dormant. For this reason, it was thought to be invested with an immortal treespirit.
In herbal medicine it was employed for nervous disorders (e.g. epilepsy), internal bleeding, as a heart tonic and as an aphrodisiac.
Mistletoe does not normally grow on the Oak at all, although it can use the tree as a host. (There is also a similar plant to Mistletoe, called Loranthus, which does grow on Oaks in Eastern Europe).
So although the Mistletoe is hardly ever found on an oak in this country, it is fairly common on the Apple, for example in the orchards of Herefordshire and Worcestershire.
It has been suggested that before Druids could harvest it from Oak trees, it was therefore likely to be grafted onto the Oak in the first place from some other tree such as the Apple.
Robert Graves notes this in his influental book "The White Goddess", but does not pursue the meaning of this practice. Considering the importance of both the Apple and the Oak in our culture, it is reasonable to suppose that this grafting process had deep symbolic meaning for our ancestors, who practised it.
The transference of the magic Mistletoe from the Apple, sacred to the Goddess, to the Oak, sacred to the God, could represent some important transfusion of power.
The ceremony of the Golden Bough (the Mistletoe) from the Silver Bough (the Apple) unto the ‘Shining One’ (the Oak may also have represented a sort of sacred marriage through the spirit. The curious practice of marrying trees was also known in India till fairly recently. People would go sometimes to great expense and effort to organise a wedding ceremony.

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Wassailing

The apple customs and traditions of Europe are extremely numerous and most often took place in the period from Halloween to Midwinter Solstice and the Christmas period.
The country custom of Wassailing was once widespread and interesting as a remnant of ancient practices. The name is derived from the Anglo-Saxon blessing “Be Whole!” (was hail). In Britain wassailing took place on Christmas Eve or the Eve of Epiphany. Epiphany is on the 6th of January. It is also called 12th night , being the 12th day after the birth of Christ, or ‘Three King’s Day’, as this is the day we remember the arrival of the three Kings who were led by a star to Bethlehem and brought baby Jesus gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. In the older Pagan traditions, this ritual marked the end of the Midwinter Solstice celebrations, which like all the big festivals tended the carry on for about a fortnight or ‘a half moon’.

“The ceremony consisted in the farmer, with his family and labourers, going out into the orchard after supper, bearing with them a jug of cider and hot cakes. The latter were placed in the boughs of the oldest or best bearing trees in the orchard, while the cider was flung over the trees after the farmer had drunk their health in some fashion as the following:

“Here’s to thee, old apple tree!
When thou may’st bud,
And whence thou may ‘st blow.
Hats full! Caps full!
Bushel – bushel-bags full!
And my pockets full too! Huzza!”

The toast was repeated trice, the men and the boys often firing off guns and pistols, and the women and children shouting loudly. Roasted apples were usually placed in the pitcher of cider, and were thrown at the trees with the liquid.” (Grieves)
This whole performance may sound rather rough to us, so it is good to remember that the gunshots and the noise were meant to scare the spirits of disease and evil away.
Similarly, fire-works were used in all parts of the world to mark the passing of the Old Year. This custom is still practised in countries as wide apart as China and the Netherlands. In the British Isles Scotland is famous for its noisy new years celebration.
We also still mark the Celtic Old year with fireworks on bonfire night. Many people think this event commemorate Guy Fawkes’ attempt to blow up parliament, but the custom is far older than that. When the Puritans no longer allowed the old Pagan ceremonies, the people changed it name to Guy Fawkes Day and carried on the old tradition.

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The story of Johnny Appleseed

There is a lovely story from the early 1800’s of an American, known affectionately as ‘Johnny Appleseed.
This amazing man walked for nearly 50 years through the American wilderness planting apple-seeds. He mostly lived a simple rugged outdoor life, often sleeping under the open skies. He fed himself on the fruits of the earth, carried no gun or fighting-knife, killed no animals and did not chop down trees.
Whilst he went about his dream of growing a land full of apple trees, he walked thousands of miles on his bare feet. It is said that he made his drinking water in winter by melting snow with his feet. He was a practical man in many respects. His one cooking pot also served as his hat and he has been known to wear potato sacks as clothing. He wore his long black hair parted down the middle, tied back behind his ears.

Legend has it that Johnny Appleseed often slept in a treetop hammock, played with a bear, and even had a wolf for a pet once. It is also said that on one occasion Johnny fell asleep and a rattlesnake tried to bite him, but the fangs would not go into his foot because his skin was as tough as an elephant’s hide. His favourite book was the Bible.
His remarkable gentleness, courage and endurance won him the respect of native people and new settlers alike and he was sometimes able to mediate in disputes between the two groups. The indigenous tribal people regarded John as a medicineman.
Johnny Appleseed tale sounds like the stuff that myths are made from, so it was a wonderful discovery for me to find out that this is actually a true story!

Johnny was born as John Chapman on 26th September (the Apple month!) 1774 in Leominster, Massachusetts. His Mum died from tuberculosis when he was only two years old. She had given birth to her third child only three weeks before her death. His Dad fought in the “Revolutionary War”, which achieved American Independence from British rule in 1776.
Not much else is known about his childhood, except that he lived for about 12 years near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he established his very first apple tree nursery in 1796 in Brokenstraw Creek, Warren County.

Johnny Appleseed was not just the scatterer of seeds, as many people believe him to be. He also tended and looked after the young trees.
There was a law in those days, which required each settler to plant 50 apple trees in their first year on new land. The necessity to become self-sufficient in food was very urgent for the homesteaders. People could of course not rely on supplies from elsewhere in the early wilderness days! 
John Chapman was a formidable and practical nurseryman. He realised that there was a real need for a good supply of apple seeds and seedlings and he set about fulfilling this necessity. In his mid twenties he began his famous westward journey with the purpose of starting apple tree nurseries everywhere in the wilderness, so that settlers moving west would be able to have the lovely nutritious fruits when they arrived. Most of them would have only been good for making cider, but the settlers would go on and develop more edible strains from the stock they cheaply bought from Johnny.

For the rest of his life he roamed the wilds of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois and Indiana, spanning an estimated area of 100,000 square miles and devotedly establishing his Apple trees. It is said that he dreamed of a country full of apple blossoms, a country where no one needs to go hungry.

Many of us, who treasure a life of home comforts, wonder what moved this small, wiry man? What was the faith, which kept him moving ever onwards into the wilderness, facing danger and hardships for half a century?

We know that he was deeply influenced by the ideas of Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772, a Swedish scientist, theologian, parliamentarian and visionary) and felt inspired to become a missionary for a new Church based on his insights.
On his travels Johnny shared his excitement about the Swedenborgian philosophy and revelations with the settlers and travelling pioneers he met on his path. He also appears to have distributed religious tracts.

Because I was curious to find out more about what stirred John’s heart and head I looked up what Swedenborg was all about. Here is a very brief extract:

• Emmanuel Swedenborg was a man whose genius spanned over many scientific disciplines and was far ahead of his time. He travelled widely all across Europe and at Easter 1744 he had a visitation of the Lord Jesus, whilst staying in London. For the rest of his long life he had almost daily “waking visions” of the spiritual world, including extended conversations with angels and spirits.

• Swedenborg saw love as the fundamental energy and substance of all human beings, with wisdom as its means. Ultimately, we will believe what we want (“love”) to believe and understand what we want to understand. Our purposes, rather than our knowledge, determine our character – we are our love.

• Swedenborg distinguishes a hierarchy of loves, love of God as the Lord, love of others, love of the world, and love of self. All are necessary, and when they are in this order of priority, all are good. Love of self (or of the world) becomes harmful only when it dominates the higher loves rather then serving them.
  In practical terms, this means that Swedenborgian theology provides no warrant for asceticism or “renunciation of the world”, but rather calls us to care for our own well-being, and values all moments of genuine joy, whether physical or spiritual”.
  (From: www. swedenborg.com).

It is easy to imagine how this sort of theology may have been a ray of sunshine against the background of many more sombre repressive interpretations of Christianity, which were so common amongst the settlers. There seems to be no doubt about it that John Chapman walked his talk, lived his faith.
After nearly 50 years of walking through the wilderness and dotting it with countless orchards and apple trees, Johnny Appleseed died of pneumonia in the home of a dear friend. Some say it was the first time he had ever been really ill. It was spring and I wonder just how many of his apple trees were about to burst into blossom at the time he was buried? Living monuments to a man who fulfilled the Biblical advice “To Do Justly, To love Mercy, and to Walk Humbly With His God.”
His grave lies on a twelve-acre site a few miles north of Fort Wayne, which has been designated “The Johnny Appleseed Memorial Park. His gravestone says:

“Johnny Appleseed (John Chapman) He lived for others. 1774-1845”

It was discovered after his death, that John did not just have a rich spirituality, but that he owned and leased considerable areas of land, which were of course all planted full of apple trees! Some of these trees are still bearing fruit after 160 years.
Generations of people, wars, power-struggles, fads and fashions have come and gone, but Johnny’s Apple trees have multiplied manifold. It is impossible to say just how much one single man’s wonderful dream changed the face and the food of a whole continent. There are orchards today in all of Ohio’s 88 counties for example, and the American apple industry is worth billions of pounds. Would we be saying “As American as apple pie” without him?

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