Appreciating Abundance
The Empress is a Major Arcana card in the Tarot deck that epitomises Generosity, Abundance and Fecundity and is the daily reflection card I pulled for this blog on the last day of my holiday in Umbria. (I was rather hoping for a card that would allow me to write about my time, the Empress gave me full permission).
My friend glorifying in the landscape!
Umbria whose fields of yellow sunflowers and pale gold wheat that has just been harvested, where giant round bales line up across the landscape, bordered by towering dark poplars that instantly describe the romantic skyline of Umbria and Tuscany. Above the bluest cornflower blue sky today where fluffy white clouds float in tiers. Below tiers of olive trees grow on sloping fields, part of a giant patchwork of fields, all different sizes, colours, dark green , sienna and blonde and small clusters of villages with tall church spires. And the light ! Impossible to describe so I won’t.
Driving in Umbria…..
The Empress perfectly expresses the abundance of beauty in nature in all her glory. Butterflies, the cabbage white, maroon and purple flit, giant bees sip the nectar of bright pick petunias, and banks of lavender, to be fair insects abound, and yes mosquitos at night.
Not to mention the thunderous noise of the crickets. If anything announces, hot dry days under olive trees, swims in the sea, this is it. The sound hits you instantly on arrival, it is magnificent. I imagine unseen crickets (I am told rather than ciccados) desperately rubbing their legs together to cool themselves as the cacophony of sound peaks into high pitched screams at midday only to fall silent when the sun is truly down. A wonderful blanket of noise and heat that dulls the senses from the hustle and bustle of the world and lulls to a relaxed laziness taken over by the sights and sounds around. It almost drowns out human conversation, as if saying ‘hush, be quiet, listen, be still’. I love how that sound makes me feel.
a small olive grove in the middle of the valley..
We’re in July now and so everything is flowering, or has flowered and produced their yield, the harvest is begun. Nature has given birth to abundance and generosity. The most gloriously sweet tomatoes drenched in olive oil adorn colourful platters from Venice, the olive oil is young and green, last year’s harvest of trees from the garden, basil freshly picked, and delicious white creamy mounds of buffalo mozzarella. Freshly baked sough dough from the bakery in the next village, procuitto and olives make up our lunches. Delicious zucchini frittatas, and wild asparagus and sausage lasagne made by Julia, who has lived in the village all her life is our fare. Carafes of crisp white wine and chianti, in ice sleaves are on the table where we gather to eat drink laugh overlooking the terraced garden and pool across to more olive groves and fields of dark green vetch on the opposite valley where we plan to walk early evening when its cooler.
a view down the valley
Appreciating abundance and I am full up, replete, nourished, rested, and very very grateful for the generosity of my hosts and the beauty of Umbria.
the magnificent empress
And as ever glad and somewhat amazed as the perfection of card the Tarot chose for me today (out of 78 cards) has given me the opportunity to reflect and write and thereby hold images described in the process to bind these feelings and memory of such an experience of Nature’s abundance.
And on a second theme, I realise how appreciation creates abundance. If I hadn’t sat down and thought about how to express the Empress in context of my time in Italy, If I hadn’t spent a lovely hour or more going over what was so lovely I don’t think I would have appreciated it so much nor gathered the abundance experienced into my heart and memory.
Do come and have a tarot reading with me in Battersea or online. I would like to think my tarot readings focus on your potential rather than any lack, in order to grow that. Recently, unasked, a clairvoyant told me of a certain date (almost forgotten, deliberately) as a. I don’t want to worry ahead and b. thereby draw her prediction of ‘danger’ any closer thank you! We are all scared enough, well I certainly am, not to need others warning me to be careful!
Good luck my friends.