When you think of summertime fruit, what varieties spring to mind?
There may be berries aplenty, lush and juicy watermelon, perhaps citrus or tropical fruits, and, I’d venture to guess, at least a couple of stone fruits.
From the alluring dark blush of cherries to the nearly criminally delicious taste of a perfectly sun-ripened peach, summertime is awash with stone fruits in many parts of the world.
Those areas where stone fruits do not grow locally often import them in during the summer months – if not year-round. And many of us have access to various types of stone fruits in either fresh, frozen, juice, syrup, tinned, canned or otherwise preserved form regardless of the season.
During the sizzling hot days of summer, stone fruits are one of nature’s most delectably appealing culinary treasures.
Not only are they highly nutritious, relatively low in calories, and bursting with various vitamins and minerals (such as vitamins A and C), they’re magickal powerhouses as well!
I’ve spent what collectively amounts to a large chunk of my life living in different parts of British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley.
This arid, lake-filled corner of Western Canada is famous the world over for its fruit growing climate, which orchardists, farmers, and vintners have been availing of for well over a century now.
A wide array of fresh produce – and some truly spectacular wines – are grown and produced in this part of the world, with few being more beloved or abundant than the area’s stone fruits.
My childhood summers weren’t just chock-a-block with eating stone fruits, I also picked my fair share, helped my mom and paternal grandma can enough peaches and assorted stone fruit jams to feed a small army, and learned to appreciate both the culinary – and as I grew older – magickal properties of these wonderful fruits.
Depending on where you live in the world stone fruit season can start as early as May. In other spots, the growing season kicks off in June, July or even August, just depending on the particular type(s) of fruit at hand and the local climate.
In our area, June tends to start the season, which can run as far into the year as September.
It’s currently mid-July and multiple varieties of locally grown stone fruit are now readily available. Thus, today seemed like a great time to shine the witchy spotlight on these summertime staple fruits.
We’re going to be doing so by taking a look at 25 magickal ways to use summertime stone fruits in your witchcraft.
But first…
What are stone fruits?
No fruit produces an actual stone in the sense of a rock or pebble. In this instance, the word “stone” refers to the pit that grows inside of a piece of fruit.
Some of the most common stone fruits – and the ones that this post is going to focus on – are cherries, peaches, nectarines, apricots, plums, and stone fruit hybrids such as plumcots, apriums, peacharines, and peacotums (each of which is created by successfully crossing two or more different stone fruits together).
These are not the only stone fruits out there, however. Others such as dates, mangos, lychees, and green almonds all fall under this header.
However, for the sake of this post, we’re going to focus on the stone fruits that are most associated with summer in North America and various other parts of the world.
And while not at the heart of this post either (seasonally applicable as they are), you might be fascinated to know that raspberries, blackberries, and mulberries are technically stone fruits, too.
They are classified as such because they are comprised of clusters of jewel-like drupelets, each of which has a tiny stone (seed/pit) inside of it. Pretty cool, no? 😃
How to use stone fruits in witchcraft
As with a lot of different types of foods, the clear blue summer sky is the limit when it comes to ways to use stone fruits in your witchcraft.
Whether you intend to eat or work with the food magickally (or both), remember to properly wash and dry your stone fruit before using it.
You may wish to utilize a charged water when cleaning your stone fruit – just make sure it’s safe for human consumption if you plan to eat the fruit yourself or serve it others.
Look through your fruit and remove any that are clearly rotten, have been chomped on by wee critters, or which are oozing juices.
If stone fruits require ripening, do so in a warm, but not excessively hot, location, such as a kitchen table or counter. If they are already ripe and you wish to prolong their life a little bit, store them in the fridge or a very cool spot, such as a cold cellar.
When working with stone fruits – or food of any kind – try to be thankful for the edible blessing that is in your hands. You may wish to give thanks aloud or in your heart or mind, perhaps even saying a prayer of thanksgiving for this summertime bounty.
Stone fruits can be used magickally on their own or combined to create all manner of delicious dishes and magickal spells and workings.
Select fruits with harmonious or complementary properties or whose energies resonate with you and your intended purposes.
When preparing your stone fruit, mindfully think about the purpose it will be used for, the desired outcome you’re seeking to manifest, and what spiritual allies or forces, if applicable, you will be calling upon to aid you in your magickal workings.
I find stone fruit magick to be especially effective when carried out in direct summer sunlight (though have also found, that cherries have a fondness for the night and apricots delight in the early morning hours).
This is certainly not essential though. Just an additional way to imbue your workings with summertime energy and correspondence, if and when such is possible.
While this is also not mandatory, you may wish to have a designated cutting board and knife, and possibly a vegetable peeler, too, that you use specifically for food that you’ll be using in a witchy capacity.
By only using these kitchen tools for magickal workings, you will direct and concentrate your own personal energy, as well as that of the foods that come in contact with them, into these items.
Think of this concept a bit like the way a cast-iron skillet that has been expertly seasoned and maintained is able to perform at its best each time, so long as the person using it knows what they’re doing and takes care to maintain the integrity of that skillet.
Magickal properties of summer stone fruits
The following is a list of some of the magickal properties and correspondences that are ascribed to the most common types of summertime stone fruits.
They will apply regardless of if a given fruit is eaten/used in its fresh, frozen, canned, etc form. That said, if you’re able to procure fresh stone fruit when it is in season, all the better and more charged with the energy of the present growing season it will be.
–Apricots: Warmth, soothing anxiety, hopefulness, peace, sunshine, healing, positive health, well-being, longevity, beauty, elegance, love, positivity, carefreeness, beauty, travel, relaxation, wisdom, learning, morning and afternoon, and sunshine.
–Cherries: Divination, love, sex, fertility, youth, sweetness, femininity, emotions, water, air, spirituality, blood, friendship, dreams, beauty, healing, relationships,
In addition, black cherries are particularly tied to repelling negativity, banishing, protection, strength, masculinity, dark moon magick, death and the afterlife.
And sour cherries are beneficial when you wish to focus on riding negativity or gossip, hexes, ending relationships, and aligning order or fairness (balancing sweet and sour).
–Nectarines: Stability, strength, love, warmth, sweetness, hope, moving and new homes, heightening psychic abilities, sunshine, positivity, memories, dreams, and nurturing.
–Peaches: Joy, sweetness, fun, creativity, wisdom, femininity, fertility, longevity, protection, warding, banishing, finding missing or lost items, banishing, motivation, personal expression, ancestry, summer, afternoon and early evening.
(New World Witchery has a wonderfully informative post packed with peach folklore, which you may also enjoy.)
–Plums: Dreams, sleep, love, lust, prosperity, transition, resilience, beauty, writing, art, regality, grace, sophistication, dusk and evening.
–Hybrids, such as pluouts/plumcots and apriums, will generally embody the magickal properties of each fruit that contributed to their genetic makeup. The higher the percentage of a given fruit in the hybrid, the more it stands to channel the properties and correspondences of that fruit.
25 magickal uses for stone fruits
Stone fruits are one of summer’s greatest and most versatile offerings.
They’re an excellent way to inject kitchen and cottage witchery into your sunny weather workings, but are equally open to a wide array of magickal purposes.
Without further ado, here are twenty-five wonderful ways to use stone fruits in your witchcraft.
1. Create a jam spell by making homemade jam (canned, fresh, or freezer) with the stone fruit or fruits of your choice. Mindfully stir your intentions into the jam, set them with the gelling action of the jam, and use the end product for sweetness, abundance, positivity, and a wide range of other magickal purposes.
2. Whip up a magickal fruit salad, sunny sangria, or another dish that includes two or more stone fruits. Enjoy it in the summer sun, indoors or out, eating mindfully and allowing each bite to deliver both physical and spiritual nourishment to your body this season.
3. Use dried flowers, leaves, stems, pits, and (ethically sourced) bark from trees in spells, spell and mojo bags, spell bottles, potpourri mixes, elixirs, offerings, altar decorations, and so forth.
4. Place leaves (or the fruits themselves, though they may attract unwanted insect and animal visitors) around your property for protection, calling on the spirits of the trees they came from to help guard your home.
5. (Carefully!) carve sigils, runes signs, planetary or astrological signs, or other magickal symbols into pits and stones. This is generally best (and more easily) done when the pit or stone has been allowed to dry out first.
6. Work with a wand made from the wood of one of these trees (handmade or made by a source that you trust).
7. Essential oils in the flavours and scents of these fruits can be utilized in a plethora of different ways. Use them as is, as part of spell jars or pillows, to anoint candles, to draw signs and sigils on suitable materials, to aid in sleep and relaxation, as part of ritual baths and showers, and worn on the body, to name but a few possible uses.
8. Use cherry juice in place of blood (and cheery flesh instead of meat or animal flesh) in rituals, spells, offerings and other magickal workings where blood (or meat) may be called for or needed.
This is an ideal substation for those who follow vegetarian, vegan and plant-based diets or who may otherwise prefer not to work with animal products in their witchcraft.
9. Make besoms or other types/sizes of brooms with small branches from stone fruit trees. Bless and concrete your besom or broom with juice from the type of fruit that the tree(s) you sourced your branches from produces.
If you can gather the branches and fruit on a sabbat, such as Beltane, Litha or Lammas, or under the light of a full moon, it may be all the more magickally charged, but this is by no means essential to create a highly effective besom or broom.
You can also extend this DIY witchy tool making method to other types of fruits, nuts, olives, and some very woody herbs that grow on trees or bushes with suitable branches.
It is wise to ask for and receive permission (your own inner voice will usually let you know what the answer is) from the tree before taking anything from a plant/tree/flower/similar, give direct thanks to the plant, and leave an offering or say a blessing aloud for its health and longevity.
10. Cast worries away by focusing one concern per stone or pit and flinging it away from your body into a running body of water (ensure that doing so will not hurt the natural ecosystem of the river or creek you’re working with).
11. Research if the deity(ies) you currently work with have any known connections to stone fruits or the months when they’re most commonly in season. If so, consider leaving an offering of this fruit or otherwise including it in some of the workings you do with this deity.
Cherries, for example, are linked to such gods and goddesses as Artemis, Mars, Herne, (the) Morrigan, Thor, Vertumnus, and Pan. Whereas peaches are connected to such deities as Hathor, Freya, Venus, and Aphrodite, to name but a few.
12. Peach sticks have a longstanding tradition, particularly in traditional American folk magick, of being used as dowsing rods. If dowsing appeals to you and you have access to a peach tree from which a suitable branch can safely be removed, why not give it a go and see where a bit of peach wood dowsing leads you?
13. Split a suitable sized stone fruit partially open, carefully remove the pit, and place a written spell or intention inside of it. Close the fruit over the paper and bury the fruit, thus allow the mighty earth below to help bring your desired outcome into being. This type of stone fruit working lends itself especially nicely to spells pertaining to success, prosperity and the desire to have something blossom abundantly in your life.
14. Gather stone fruit by hand yourself. Research local stone fruit growers in your area and see if any of them allow the public to come and pick their own fruit.
Alternatively, harvest fruit from your own garden, or with permission, from a neighbour, friend, or relative’s yard. Or, if you’re extra lucky and have edible varieties of stone fruit growing wild in your area, forge some when it is in season.
By directly picking, handling, and bringing home the fruit yourself, you are preserving even more of the source-to-working (or simply eating) energy and magick that is inherent in the fruit tree itself.
15. Work with cherries in your spells or other magickal purposes on Fridays. The last day before the weekend is connected with Venus, as are cherries, so you get double the energy and connection one of earth’s nearest planetary neighbours.
16. Dried peach pits can be carved and/or drilled to create a hole and then strung on a cord, chain, or suitable jump ring and used a protective amulet if you’re in need of some extra safety when it comes to your well being, health, or state of mind.
You could also create several such peach pits and make a belt or sash, a pair of anklets, earrings, hair accessories (glue them to a barrette or place one pit on the each end of a pair or hair sticks, for example), or embellishments for a hand drum.
17. Stone fruits have long been associated with love, lust, passion, and sex, and therefore are considered to have aphrodisiacal properties. One has only to look at the sloping curves and mounds of a ripe peach, nectarine or plum to see why this is the case!
If you’re in need of some extra oomph or wish to spice things up in this area of your life, work with stone fruit spells and enjoy a hearty helping of them with your special someone to help get your own juices flowing all the more. (Always bearing in mind the importance of not interfering with another person’s free will.)
18. Use stone fruit juice – darker varieties such as cherries tend to work best, though peaches and other paler hued fruits can be used as well – to dye fabric for use in magickal applications, such as spell and amulet bags, spell pillows and sachets, altar clothes (how fabulous would a stone fruit dyed altar cloth be for Litha or Lammas?), to line forging or gardening baskets, to make tarot or oracle deck bags, for sabbat table linens, or any other suitable purpose you think of.
You’ll most likely want to ensure the colourfastness of your hand dyed fabric by setting it with a natural fixative, such as a vinegar or salt fixative.
Once dried, and colourfastness has been established, use your naturally dyed fabric for the purposes mentioned above or scores of others, from poppet making to sewing magick.
19. Utilize stone fruit tree wood or leaves in summertime bonfires, particularly those held on sabbats and esbats. If you can’t obtain suitably dry stone fruit tree wood or branches, use leaves instead. If leaves aren’t possible, consider adding a few pieces of the actual fruit or fruit peels to your summertime blaze.
20. Use stone fruit to help you connect with the Elements during the summer months. While many stone fruits are primarily associated with water and earth, they are also directly linked to the air (in which they grow, that blows through their leaves, etc) and fire via the roasty-toasty summer sunshine that facilitates their growth and ripening.
21. Cherry wood is said to have many wonderful properties and magickal uses. These include such things as helping one to focus and stabilize, deepening intuition, helping with (or being used in) divination, working with the animal kingdom, unifying couples or groups, for protection and shielding, and when working with the planet Venus.
As well, cherry wood magickal tools such as wands (or can be handmade), altar tables and tarot card boxes are available for sale from various online and offline sources.
22. Obtain enough of one or more types of stone fruits to use some fresh as part of a spell and then to make homemade fruit leather with the remaining fruit.
Charge the fruit leather with the intention and desired outcome of the spell and eat it a piece of it on a regular (e.g., daily or weekly) basis to help strengthen and manifest your working.
23. Utilize summertime stone fruits in colour magick. The beautiful hues of peaches, cherries, apricots, plums, nectarines and stone fruit hybrids makes them ideal food sources to use in color magick workings. The leaves, bark, branches, and blossoms (both fresh and dried) of stone fruit trees can be used in colour magick as well.
24. On Litha or Lammas, make pancakes to represent the glowing, life-giving and harvest facilitating sunshine of summer. Top them with the stone fruit, jam, preserved or fresh stone fruit of your choice.
Pancakes are also excellent representations for the full moon at esbats and can be used in the same way for these special, highly spiritually charged days as well.
25. Use cherry juice to write magickal spells. Cherry juice use can be used instead of dragon’s blood ink, actual blood (as discussed above), and most dark inks.
Cherry juice starts off paler than many actual red and black inks, fades to an even lighter shade over time, and may not be as archivally long-lasting as some other inks.
However, it is a wonderful material to utilize in written spells, incantations, journal entries, and when writing love letters where a red or brown ink, or an ink derived straight from nature, is the order of the day.
Turn to cherry juice ink for love, sex, fertility, stamina, strength, divination, grief, healing, death, and afterlife related spellwork in particular.
Stone fruits for kitchen witchery and much more!
The magickal uses for peaches, cherries, apricots, nectarines, plums and the like are abundant. I find these fruits to be wonderfully enjoyable to work with. Most tend to have a sunny disposition and energy, borne of the season that helped bring them to maturity.
In addition to the many possible ways to use stone fruits that we just discussed, you may wish to gather a small amount of dirt from around the base of stone fruit trees.
Use this earth in spells and other workings involving dirt for which the magickal properties of the tree(s) that grew in the soil you collected would be beneficial to your desired outcome.
Likewise – though it may take some patience – gathering dew or rainwater from the leaves of fruit trees is also a great form of charmed/magickally imbued water. A quicker approach is to place a bucket or other waterproof receptacle under the branches of a stone fruit tree and gather the water that runs through the leaves.
You can also utilize stone fruit scented products such as candles and incense – all the better if they contain at least a small amount of some portion (for example, the juice or dried fruit) of the actual fruit itself, not merely a synthetic version.
And, if you’re looking for a longer-lasting version of stone fruits to use as part of your magickal workings, consider those rendered in everything from crochet to ceramic, crystal to beadwork. These kinds of fruit shaped items can be awesome additions to altars, sabbat table décor, as a stand-in for the real deal in some types of spells and rituals, and many other uses.
If you have a chance to work some stone fruit magick this summer, I highly encourage you to give it go and hope that the results you achieve will be as sweet and wonderful as the taste of these delectable warm weather treats themselves. 🌞🍒🍑🌳
Very interesting and informative, thanks!
You’re sincerely welcome, Donna. It’s my heartfelt pleasure!
We’ll soon have scads of wild raspberries and blackberries growing in our area again, which I plan to forge for in very secluded areas around our rural neighbourhood (we’re still self-isolating). Not the biggest stone fruits out there, but what they lack in individual size, they more than make up for in swoon-worthily delicious flavour.
I hope that your summer is sweeter than a whole season’s worth of fresh fruit!
♥ Autumn
Thank you for another fascinating post. I had no idea that Blackberries were also considered stone fruits. Suddenly, a salad which includes blackberries and peaches sounds delicious!!
You’re very welcome, my dear friend. I had a blast penning this post and shinning the spotlight on many of the fruits that have been staple parts of my life for decades now.
Isn’t it cool that blackberries and raspberries are technically little clusters of individual stone fruits? I got the biggest kick out that fact when I learned it. 😃
A peach and blackberry salad would hit the spot big time today, as the temps heat up all the more and we head into the dog days of summer. If you whip one up, I hope that it’s refreshing and thoroughly delicious. 🍑
Big hugs & many thanks for your lovely comment.
♥ Autumn
Thank you so much for all of this beautiful information! My peach pit was calling to me today and now I have so much more information. Have a blessed week 🙂
It’s always informative when I visit your site. I didn’t know this about stone fruits. Some of my favorites are cherries, plums, and peaches.
You’re very kind, dear Anne. Thank you for your lovely comment. Fabulous choices for some of your most beloved stone fruits.
Peaches, cherries, and very early season plums are all in season here in our region of BC at the moment. I wish I could share some of each of them with you – especially the extraordinarily delicious peaches that have long helped to put this area on the agricultural map.
Wishing you a tail end of July that is even sweeter the ripest stone fruit!
♥ Autumn
Interesting. I’ve never heard the term “stone fruit” before. I love cherries!
Hi Ally, thank you very much for your comment. I’m touched to know that I introduced you to this term for one of summer’s most iconic and delicious groups of fruit.
Cherries are phenomenal! I’m with you there all the way. And the darker, the better in my books – though I don’t mind the paler shades one bit either. What are some of your favourite ways to put cherries to work in the kitchen?
♥ Autumn
How fascinating! I can only imagine the time it must have taken you to research and write such an in-depth, informative post! I’d no idea blackberries and raspberries were considered stone fruits! They are among my favourite fruits! But my all-time favourite must be peaches. That must go way back to my earliest childhood, as I have an old black and white photograph of my 4-year old self eating a juicy peach, a kitchen towel tucked under my chin to avoid its juices staining my dress! xxx
Hello dear Ann, you are such a wonderfully kind and supportive person. Thank you very much for your terrific comment. While it’s true that posts like this do generally take some time to research, take (or find) images for, and write, the process is one that I love immensely and derive so many positives from. (Especially the thought that hopefully others will enjoy and find what I share here useful.)
Aww! What a special, awesome connection to have with peaches. It’s beautiful that you have a childhood photo of yourself savouring a juicy peach. For an activity that was so integral to my youth, I’m surprised, come to think of it, that I can’t recall that being captured on film back in the day (though it very well may have been – my mom adored few things more than snapping pics of her kids when we were growing up).
I thoroughly enjoyed your commend and am touched that you shared that special stone fruit memory here.
Big hugs & wishes for summer days that are sweeter than even the juiciest peach!
♥ Autumn
Some of my best memories from childhood summers are picking fruit from our trees. We had a huge peach tree on one side of our house that gave fruit as big as softballs (so juicy!). My grandad also had a plum tree that gave those wonderful small yellow sweet plums. I could eat those all day. I’ve been eating cherries for about a month and thinking about the Okanagan!
Your articles are so in-depth, Autumn. I really appreciate all the work you put into them.
You’re awesomely kind and supportive, Shelia. Thank you deeply.
How fantastic that some of this year’s Okanagan cherry crop is reaching you on the Island. We’ve been delighting in them as well (big time!). I’ve been especially pleased to find some of the inky black-burgundy local cherries, as they’re my absolute favourite variety of this beloved summertime classic.
So true about the size that more peaches used to grow to. I well remember those softball-sized gems and how one was almost a whole meal unto itself (at least when we were kids). I like to think that some people, be they home gardeners or commercial orchardists, still produce fruit that hefty, though haven’t spotted any peaches quite that large in a good while now. If and when I do once more, I will think of you, my lovely friend.
Thank you again so much. I truly love writing good sized posts and am bolstered to keep doing so all the more by positive, encouraging feedback like yours.
Sunny hugs & sweet-as-peaches wishes for late July,
♥ Autumn
Very intersting post. I love picking fruits straight from the trees, they taste so much better. Enjoy your summer. Thank you so much for your visits to my little space. Really appreciate you taking the time to leave such lovely comments. x
Hi sweet Anesha, you’re wholeheartedly welcome. It’s a pleasure to visit your blog and be inspired by your vibrant, cheerful and entirely charming creations.
A huge thank you in turn for visiting + engaging with my blog as well. I appreciate it to no end.
Big time! It’s often hard to beat fruit picked straight from the tree (or bush/vine). The joy and taste bud pleasures of doing ranks right up there as one of my most beloved summertime activities.
Cherries and peaches are in full swing here now, ditto for apricots and nectaries. Plums are just starting to spring to life once more, and soon enough the incredible apples and pears of this region will be plentiful again as well. The latter two aren’t stone fruits, of course, but they are fabulously delicious all the same and really speak of the transition from summer into fall’s waiting arms.
Thank you again, my friend. May you have a sunny, fantastic rest of the season!
♥ Autumn
Very informative post here Autumn! I am a huge berry fan myself, but I can see some other of the stone fruis that would benefit for sure! As a child living in the country, we had a huge garden and orchid. We harvested cherries and I just loved it when mom made the cherry jam! Thanks for bringing back memories!
Thank you so much, lovely Vicki. You are such a wonderfully kind and supportive person.
Thank you for sharing about those aspects of your childhood. It must have been a very special experience to grow up in the country with a sizable orchard and garden right on your property. While I can’t claim to have done the same, we did have fruits in some of our yards over the years and frequently had access to others in the general area – as well as friends/relatives/neighbours/etc who were keen to offload the excess from their harvest on my family. We were very grateful for this and usually canned or made jam from the abundance of fruit that came our way during the summer months.
Cherry jam is a thing of taste bud dazzling pleasure. To this day it firmly remains amongst my very favourite jams (and syrups). Just thinking about biting into some great cherry jam now makes my head swoon with delight. Yum-yum!
Thank you again, my dear friend. May you have a sunny, safe and very sweet remainder of July.
♥ Autumn