“You’ve got to go out on a limb sometimes, because that’s where the fruit is.” -Will Rogers
For someone who loves dream interpretation this dream is ripe with symbols (no pun intended, well maybe a little). Dreams about fruit suggest something of both one’s personality and possible relationships that you have formed (with self or with other).
Fruit at its ripest represents vitality, youth, abundance, sensuality, and fertility. When the fruit is in decay, it is a symbol that something is either dying to us (as an idea, belief, or relationship), or perhaps needs to be reformulated, replanted, or nurtured for a more fulfilling cycle towards personal growth. In dreams they can symbolize stages of health, wealth, and well-being depending on the fruit and state they are in.
With the fruits shown to this dreamer, I sense they represent directives for her to consider or explore within herself. These fruits have many different connotations, so it will be up to the dreamer to choose what makes the most sense in her personal quest. She is obviously well versed in symbolism given her own assessment at the end of the dream. But a broader interpretation of these fruits, may assist with her ability to dig deeper.
Fruit also takes on significance in art and in the myths and allegories we have heard or studied. Different fruits are aligned with different gods and goddesses; different cultures and cultural beliefs or rituals; used as emblems that hold arcane meaning. Similar to the deeper meaning of specific flowers gifted among individuals, lovers, or friends in Victorian times, fruit has significant and purposeful meaning throughout Egyptian, Roman, Greek, and Chinese cultures, even the Bible, to name just a few.
The DREAM:
I was in an outdoor setting with a couple of other nameless, faceless folks, eating fruit off the surrounding trees. This is noteworthy only because I almost never eat fruit (I know I know), so I’m not entirely sure how it crept into my dreamscape to begin with as it’s not a staple of my diet. At any rate, here I was picking and eating grapes off of a tree. I know grapes don’t technically grow on trees, but these ones apparently did. There were purple grapes and green grapes, and both varieties were ripe and delicious.
The next fruit I picked was an apple, but it was kind of mealy and after one bite, I intuitively jammed it into the dirt at the base of its tree. I knew I was trying to plant the seeds still in the apple and fertilize the soil at the same time.
I woke up feeling a deep calm (then I went back to sleep and the next anxiety dream cropped up). The pomegranate obviously has some esoteric significance, and I suppose the grapes could relate to Pan (an energy I work with almost exclusively, but as the “all” or “trickster”, not in the sense of bacchanalian debauchery). Apple I’m not too sure about. (The apple was some regular red apple, a small variety, nothing like Eris’ apple of discord). This was very clearly a love dream, but I’m not a dream interpreter. I found it worth a share, being laid out in stages with specific symbolism to ponder over.
The DECODING:
I was in an outdoor setting with a couple of other nameless, faceless folks, eating fruit off the surrounding trees. This is noteworthy only because I almost never eat fruit (I know I know), so I’m not entirely sure how it crept into my dreamscape to begin with as it’s not a staple of my diet.
Here the dreamer makes a couple of statements that need to be kept in the forefront as you continue through the dream. She is outdoors, which represents a larger palette, she is not confined; she is open. The people are nameless and faceless, not because they are meant to be ignored, but because this dream sequence is a teaching specifically for her waking self. Therefore, she does not get distracted by them in the dream. Another way to look at this though, is that if everything in the dream represents a part of oneself, then some of these “parts” of herself as perceptions or awareness have yet to be identified within herself.
Trees, in and of themselves, are about community, suggesting this dreamer may feel isolated from community. They are rooted into Mother Earth and their branches reach for the Heavens, suggesting that this dreamer looks to bridge her 3D self while reaching for higher levels of consciousness. For any of us, this can often feel isolating or at the very least a singular quest even when in a broader community practicing the same.
She states “it is noteworthy” that she doesn’t eat fruit and doesn’t realize why fruits became a symbolic reference in her dreamstate. On an unconscious level I might suggest it was her inner self’s way of directing her to find the means to open to a more abundant, vital life, and one to be shared with others. That longing then becomes a self-teaching with the overall meaning of the fruits that show up in her dream as paths.
At any rate, here I was picking and eating grapes off of a tree. I know grapes don’t technically grow on trees, but these ones apparently did. There were purple grapes and green grapes, and both varieties were ripe and delicious.
Grapes have a history that goes back at least 6500 years. Grapes grow in clusters, community if you will. In the dream, they don’t grow on trees, but these did, signifying her way to community might be found in an alternative means from other things she has tried. In other words, the trees are there, community is there, now how to find it is her quest.
Throughout history grapes also have signified, abundance, sweetness, fecundity, fertility, wealth, and in some culture’s holiness. Grapes are closely linked to wine-pleasure on the one hand, debauchery on the other. She stated at the end that she works with the energy of Pan as ‘all’ and ‘trickster’, but not as Bacchus. Trickster energy shows us where we are separated from the oneness of our self, similar to our shadow side which merely is the part of our self where we have not brought our light.
Although grapes and wine are often associated with male deities—the Greek Dionysus, the Roman Bacchus, the Celtic Green Man and the Aztec Tezcatzontecatl, there are female goddesses to be considered. Hathor in ancient Egyptian paintings and hieroglyphs and the most ancient, a Sumerian goddess named Nin-Kasi, were both associated with vineyards, grapes, and wine as symbols of joy, fertility, magic, and pleasure.
The color of the grapes in this dreamscape is a further teaching for the dreamer. The grapes were purple and green. On the Wisdom Wheels taught by Grandmother Twylah Nitsch, that I often reference, these colors have specific meaning in finding our path towards personal truth. Green stands for using right will to deconstruct what are mainly childhood beliefs that limit the life we wish to embrace moving forward.
The color is merely a frequency that encourages us to uncover the new beliefs we have garnered or discovered as we move towards adulthood. Question: What falsities linger for the dreamer, possibly at an unconscious level, about abundance, heartfelt joy, and community based on what she may have experienced in younger years?
The other grapes are purple. On the Wheel, these represent wisdom, gratitude, awareness, elder vision, and dreams. In a dream they represent that pleasant and unexpected happiness will occur shortly in your life. Is the dreamer ready to accept these unexpected opportunities for community, self-awareness, and/or new relationships in a way that can leave the “story” of the past so as to have gratitude for the new “story” she is creating? It is not that any of our past stories haven’t affected us, but we do not need to carry them forward with us.
The next fruit I picked was an apple, but it was kind of mealy and after one bite, I intuitively jammed it into the dirt at the base of its tree. I knew I was trying to plant the seeds still in the apple and fertilize the soil at the same time.
This is the next stage her inner Self wants her to consider in her process. The apple is considered one of the most sacred trees for happiness, love, fertility, and good health. The apple has a rich symbolism through out history. In China it represents peace. In various other mythologies, apples are used as a symbol of love, beauty, and wisdom.
Eve was punished for taking a bite of the apple—recognizing sexuality, knowledge, and immortality. But, when Christ held the apple, it was representative of the second ‘Adam’ who brings life. In 3D physical bodies, life is born of sexuality and wisdom brings immortality to the soul. The apple represents not duality but oneness, although counterintuitively the path to that awareness might feel dualistic.
The apple was associated with Aphrodite as the ‘tree of love’. In Greek mythology it is said that three goddesses claimed the apple as their symbol and took the argument to Zeus. They were Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, but are these not three aspects of a women-wisdom, protector, lover. To me, they represent three stages of one’s life, and apply to this dreamer’s need to find these aspects (if she hasn’t already) within herself, not as separate identities but evolving her oneness.
In Medieval art, apples were representative of breasts and in the pagan harvest ritual of Mabon (Autumn equinox) apples when observed cut in half represented the female gentilic anatomy, for seeds to birth, fertile or harvest celebration, and tilling the land for replanting. And yes, Eris the goddess of discord who wasn’t invited to the wedding and Pomona who watched over orchards are associated with the apple as well. Is there discord within this dreamer as one who is watchful and knowledgeable but has yet to feel ‘invited in?’ Like the nameless, faceless aspects at the beginning of the dream.
Where the first fruit in this dream was the intended goal the dreaming self, wished to expose for the waking self’s consideration, to me, this part of the dream is the dreaming self pointing out where the dreamer might have inner conflict or unresolved belief systems to examine in her desire for partnership, community, or even a more aligned sense of Self. Why? Because the apple is mealy, not sweet, not edible or to her liking; this has been her experience.
She jams it into the dirt at the base of the tree. The seeds need to grow with a renewed understanding of what can bring more joy to the dreamer, and a fertile sense of what is needed to produce a juicy direction in her life. In this case, dirt represents either blockages or progressing toward a more solid foundation to grow in happiness, love (be that with self or another), and to reap inner peace.
The last tree I came to was a pomegranate tree, and I could tell just from a cursory glance that the pomegranates weren’t ripe yet, so I didn’t even bother.
This fruit is the dreaming-self’s way of directing the dreamer toward what needs addressing for her to accomplish her quest.
Pomegranates signal a time of initiation. The deep red color is associated with fertility, blood, the mysteries of the womb, and on the Wisdom Wheel with having faith. These aspects need ripening, but it is clearly a time to pause in her process for self-examination. Part of any initiation is pausing to embody what we are shown.
The fruit also represents connecting with our intuition as we search deep within our beliefs and desires for life, love, death, and rebirth; a path that allows for expansion and personal awareness in areas we have yet to fully explore. The pomegranate was contained in the myth of Persephone and Demeter—the obligation to continually go into our own underworld to learn where we potentially fail ourselves, only to find renewal and emerge back to the surface with newfound awareness.
This is a test for each of us. It was depicted on Solomon’s Temple as two pillars, each engraved with two-hundred pomegranates, symbolizing our duality and our oneness. Not as either or, but as both. The number two likewise represents the High Priestess in the major arcana of the Crowley tarot—the inner consciousness one needs to garner in its quest to balance eros, intuition, and creativity with logos, focus and right will.
The number two in the Kabbalah is about self-reflection, Chokmah. It is the divine wisdom that represents duality: the within and without; the above and below; the conscious and the unconscious. It is divine wisdom that illuminates the path we must take on earth to accomplish the tasks our individual souls came here to experience.
The dreamer says she woke in a deep calm. I believe she is aware of her end goal, is being directed to see where beliefs that no longer serve that goal may be influencing her actions/reactions to dispose or reformat the story she wishes to live, and possibly to undertake some deeper inner work, to expand fulfillment toward that end goal.
Thank you, dreamer, for sharing your dream.
Starwalker Dream Circle 