🍎Quest

Seize the red apple

Red Apple (n)

The Red Apple of the Byzantine and Ottomans emphasised the desire for world domination. The Red Apple, is a mythopoetic archetype that symbolises political ambitions for the conquest of Constantinople and the establishment of a world empire. This was seen as the most extreme frontier, a near-mythical quest filled with mystique, legend, and prophecy.

In folk tales — the concept of an exterior soul is prevalent. Such a mystical idea refers to a person’s life force being trapped within an object — perhaps a stone, an egg, a ring, or a living creature like a bird or animal. Should the object be destroyed? The person to whom the soul belongs would die. Yes, as long as this object remains intact, the person linked to it enjoys a semblance of immortality, or at least a form of invincibility. This intriguing concept can be likened to money in the modern world.

Humans crafted money as an external vessel for their very essence, allowing them to place their souls within a secure object like a bank or a vault. The material manifestation of their souls in the form of money grants them an almost magical sense of power and invulnerability, bestowing upon them wealth, health, joy, and dominance over adversaries — even the ability to influence fate itself.

Such exterior souls — unlike hidden treasures — do not need to be concealed. They have the unique property of being divisible almost without limit — allowing them to circulate freely — traded to fulfil desires, inherited like an unending legacy, or even likened to an inanimate object that mysteriously holds death and begets itself endlessly through compounding interest.

When the exterior soul is represented into the context of money, this external soul fragments, as if shattered into pieces. Fragments can be circulated, but also stolen and hoarded, with the latter symbolised by dragons guarding their treasure. The reptilian elites amass these fragments of soul, hoarding them from ancestors or even victims, storing them in metaphorical ghoulish caves or "banks." Others may find themselves stripped of their soul, left bereft and luckless in a world that values these pieces above all else.

Over a span of 6000 years, money has woven itself so integrally into the fabric of human life that it appears almost as a natural force. Such a phenomenon may well be considered humanity's most successful endeavour in the realm of the magical. So entrenched is this belief in the power and reality of money that no one questions its authenticity.

In folk tales, characters possessing external souls are portrayed as villains — but even the beloved may possess one. The exterior soul fallen into the hands of an evil sorcerer/the Dragon and requires rescuing. Such a scenario symbolises the alienation of desire represented by a tangible object that has been objectified and fetishised. The true essence of this desire, the desire of desire, which can be seen as love — must then be reclaimed from those who have usurped it, wresting it back from the grasp of the wicked elite — the dragon.

The responsibility to retrieve this stolen essence often falls upon a character known as "Jack." Often depicted as the third and youngest in a series, Jack might be an orphan or disinherited individual — perhaps even perceived as a fool. A seemingly unassuming peasant warrior possesses qualities of heart, generosity, and courage that surpass those of nobility.