Spirit of the Harvest Hares Greetings Card

Spirit of the Harvest Greetings Card by Karen Cater

£2.25

Running hares represent the spirit of life escaping as the last sheaf of the harvest is cut.

The text printed on the back of this card reads:

When fields of grain were cut by men with scythes, often out of the last patch to be cut would race the Hares that were hiding there. Eventually the running Hare came to be associated with the harvest as the life spirit escaping with the last sheaf to be cut.

In some places customs grew up, conferring good luck onto the man who cut the last sheaf, or by calling the last sheaf "The Hare" and carrying it with great ceremony to the barn or farmhouse, where it would be kept in a place of honour until the following season, when it was ploughed back into the field to return fertility to the land.

Karen Cater is fascinated by the esoteric or mystical qualities of her subject matter, incorporating layers and levels of meaning into her compositions by her use of correspondences of imagery or colour, breathing life and identity into old song titles or figures from mythology or history.

This card comes cellophane wrapped and is 170mm x 120mm (6 and 3/4 inches x 4 and 3/4 inches). It has a kraft paper envelope.

It's blank inside for you to write your own message

Categories: All Cards by Karen Cater, All Cards with Hares, All Cards, All Hare Items.

People have for many centuries been fascinated by the hare because of its perceived attributes of solitude and remoteness. Active at night, symbolic of the intuitive, and the fickleness of the Moon, the hare was an emblem of unpredictability. Like the Moon, which always changes places in the sky, hares were full of mystery and contradictions. The moon was perhaps the most powerful symbol of birth, growth, reproduction, death and rebirth.

The Celts believed that the goddess Eostre's favourite animal and attendant spirit was the hare. It represented love, fertility and growth and was associated with the Moon, dawn and Easter - death, redemption and resurrection. Eostre changed into a hare at the full Moon. The hare was sacred to the White Goddess - the Earth Mother - and as such was considered to be a magical animal.