A Full Snow Moon comes our way, reaching it’s peak around 3 am on Saturday, February 27th EST, so look to the sky on Friday evening.
Falling in the detail-loving sign of Virgo, lets zoom in close to the phenomenon of snow.
Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley captured more than 5000 snow crystals on film. He was born in 1865 on a farm in Jericho, VT. His mother took note of his curiosity for nature and managed to pull enough money together to buy him a microscope. Just before his twentieth birthday, Wilson took his first photograph of a snowflake. He called these snow crystals “miracles of beauty”.
Snowflakes are (for the most part) hexagons, with each one being completely unique. Hexagons have 6 sides, and can be created with the interlacing of an upward and a downward triangle. Virgo is the 6th and most humble sign of the zodiac. Humility to look closer at common things (like young Bentley did) is a doorway to the miraculous.
This Full Snow Moon in Virgo is an invitation to, in the words of my favorite astrologer, Alice O. Howell,
“be humble enough to study the obvious“.
In her book, “The Web and the Sea”, O. Howell draws attention to the fact that a triangle is the first way that space can be enclosed. She goes on to muse about how angles of triangles always add up to 180 degrees, so if two triangles were to get together, as they do in a hexagram, we would have the full 360 degrees of a circle.
The triangle, as the first possible enclosed space, opens up the whole concept of inhabited space, something that Philosopher Gaston Bachelard delights in writing about. He says,
“Inhabited space transcends geometrical space”
Inhabited space can be intensified. When a snow storm rages outside, the intensity of inhabiting your own house is likely increased. Add a cup of hot cocoa and a good book and it increases ever the more!
Bringing more awareness to how space is inhabited does wonders to soothe the soul. Gaston writes:
“Our soul is an abode. And by remembering ‘houses’ and ‘rooms,’ we learn to ‘abide’ within ourselves.”
The sight of a Full Moon can evoke the satisfaction of well-inhabited space; a feeling that there’s no place we’d rather be.
Maybe it is the inhabited space of a Full Moon, or someone you love, or a blooming flower that serve as that that second triangle. In hexagonal bliss, the full totality of the circle is experienced. Virgo’s humility to look closer and deeper into her everyday world unlocks the wellspring of wholeness from her opposite sign, Pisces.
Happy soul-abiding!
And as always, Happy astro pondering!
Astro art by Johnnie Day Durand
Nature's Zodiac 
Leave a Reply