Partridge's working title for the album, "A History of the Middle Ages", was vetoed by his bandmates. He settled on "Apple Venus" after finding an illustration of a peacock feather that resembled an uvula, which evoked to him something "very vulvic and female". Written underneath the track listing on the back of the album cover is the Wiccan Rede "do what you will but harm none." Partridge thought it was a "fantastic" message, and when responding to a question about Wiccan topics, he explained: "I have a smattering of knowledge of that sort of thing, but I['m] also ... interested in the pre-Christian appreciation of the land and the spirit of things, spirits in animate things and inanimate things."