Bobbing for apples looks innocent enough, kids dunking their heads in a tub, everyone laughing, but trace it back far enough and it starts to look less like a game and more like divine gambling.
Back during Samhain, apples, nuts, and even bones weren’t just snacks or decorations, they were tools for divination, ways to peek behind the curtain between the living and the dead. Because remember: this was the one night a year when the Celts believed the veil was at its thinnest, when the future could slip through if you knew how to look.
Was Samhain the Only Time for Divination?
Not entirely, but it was the time when everyone did it. The Celts practiced folk magic year round, but during Samhain the results were thought to be stronger, because the barrier between worlds was weak.
It was like having a spiritual Wi-Fi signal that only hit full bars once a year.
People believed ancestors and spirits could cross over more easily, whispering truths or warnings through the flames, the food, or the tools used for fortune telling. Some even left offerings or said names aloud to ask for luck or love.
Offerings for the Dead
During Samhain, folks left food outside their doors, on hearths, or along roadsides to appease wandering spirits or welcome beloved ancestors. Offerings often included:
- Fresh baked cakes and bread, sometimes shaped into faces or animals
- Milk, ale, or mead
- Fruit and nuts, especially apples and hazelnuts
- Meat, rarely, as a grand gesture
The goal wasn’t to feed the dead, it was to honor them, keeping misfortune and sickness away from the living.
Apples, Nuts, and Bones — How the Divinations Worked
Each item had its own method, and all were tied to love and death, because, let’s face it, those have always been humanity’s favorite mysteries.
Apples
Apples were sacred in Celtic tradition, symbols of the Otherworld and immortality. During Samhain, young people peeled an apple in one long strip and tossed it over their shoulder; the peel was said to form the initial of their future spouse.
Others floated apples in water, the origin of bobbing, and whoever caught one without using their hands was said to be the next to marry. Symbolically, they were testing fate.
Nuts
Nuts, especially hazelnuts, were burned in pairs named after lovers. If they burned quietly together, the match would last. If they popped apart, so would the couple.
Sometimes the flames were read for personal omens: a calm burn meant peace, a flare warned of quarrels or hardship.
Bones
Animal bones were tools for the serious stuff, death, illness, or war. Druids would toss them into fires and read the cracks, or scatter them onto furs to interpret their fall. That’s where we get the phrase “casting the bones.”
It wasn’t a party trick. It was sacred work, risky, powerful, and not for the untrained.
Who Could Do the Divining?
While anyone might play lighthearted games with apples or nuts, true divination was the realm of druids and wise women, those trained to read omens and interpret the will of spirits.
Their role wasn’t to predict the future for fun, it was to deliver messages from the Otherworld and decide what the gods were saying. Even so, regular villagers still dabbled in “love games” during Samhain, hoping for a glimpse of fate.
It was half holy day, half harvest fair, where superstition met celebration.
Closing Thoughts
So next time you see a kid bobbing for apples at a Halloween party, remember: they’re playing the gentlest version of an ancient ritual about life, death, and the thin line between both.
We’ve traded sacred water for a plastic punch bowl, but the instinct’s the same, humans trying to trick the dark into revealing a secret.
Maybe that’s what Halloween’s always been about: asking questions we’re not supposed to know the answers to.