Sophie-David
As tonight we celebrate the full moon in Libra, and look to the promise of the Land's rebirth in the coming Spring, it seemed at excellant time to look at the Connolly Empress. The Tarot image of astrological Venus ruling in Libra, Peter Connolly's Empress has a most expressively rendered face. Her green eyes set in her regal countenance speak of intelligence, insight, self-realization, calm, and gentle authority. Her face is framed by passionate red hair and a subtle pink halo, evocative of sustained by controlled passion. Above her brow a leavy green crown with twelve gold stars speaks of her regenerative power, a power at work in even the most subdued of the twelve signs and months of the yearly cycle.
She wears a long salmon coloured dress, trimmed with a green stripe with violets interspersed. In the middle of her chest there is a golden heart shaped medallion, and upon the heart the feminine Venus symbol, an outward image of the womanly heart of gold that beats within. As she crosses her arms over her lower body, it is left for us to us to imagine whether she is pregnant with child, depending on the context in which we may read the card. In her right hand she holds a golden sceptre of power, the golden orb a reminder of the natural cycles of the world over which she holds dominion.
To her left, the LWB notes that Peter has displayed "the fountain of life; we see this through the symbol of the butterfly." The flowing water connects to the Empress to the emotive and intuitive, and the butterflies denote the capacity of the Empress to support growth and transformation.
Below her, the earth has burst into a riot of natural colour, images of the creative, the nurturing and the beautiful. To her right, the wheat symbolizes her power to sustain and nourish life, and the flowers around her - roses, tulips, violets and daffodils - remind us of how the Empress brings forth beauty and artistic expression. Trees in the background evoke her stability and balance, and the yellow and pink solar radiance of the sky reveals an undercurrent of energy and passion.
As she sits on a vivid pink chair, she is so closely circled by the wheat and flowers that this Empress seems herself a creature drawn up from the earth, surrounded by all that delights in the sunlit skies.
She wears a long salmon coloured dress, trimmed with a green stripe with violets interspersed. In the middle of her chest there is a golden heart shaped medallion, and upon the heart the feminine Venus symbol, an outward image of the womanly heart of gold that beats within. As she crosses her arms over her lower body, it is left for us to us to imagine whether she is pregnant with child, depending on the context in which we may read the card. In her right hand she holds a golden sceptre of power, the golden orb a reminder of the natural cycles of the world over which she holds dominion.
To her left, the LWB notes that Peter has displayed "the fountain of life; we see this through the symbol of the butterfly." The flowing water connects to the Empress to the emotive and intuitive, and the butterflies denote the capacity of the Empress to support growth and transformation.
Below her, the earth has burst into a riot of natural colour, images of the creative, the nurturing and the beautiful. To her right, the wheat symbolizes her power to sustain and nourish life, and the flowers around her - roses, tulips, violets and daffodils - remind us of how the Empress brings forth beauty and artistic expression. Trees in the background evoke her stability and balance, and the yellow and pink solar radiance of the sky reveals an undercurrent of energy and passion.
As she sits on a vivid pink chair, she is so closely circled by the wheat and flowers that this Empress seems herself a creature drawn up from the earth, surrounded by all that delights in the sunlit skies.
