Snowman

 

 

 

“Snowmen fall from heaven unassembled, just like us” - unknown

The first illustrated Snowman that we know of was printed in 1380.  In 1494, Michelangelo, aged 9, was commissioned by the leader of Florence, Italy, to sculpt a snowman.  This snowman began showing up on postcards, showed up in silent movies, in the 1800s.   In Switzerland, they have had a yearly celebration to sign the beginning of Spring by blowing up a snowman. after it had been paraded through the city.  This snowman, prior to his boom, threw out sausages and bread to the crowd.  Voila!  Winter is over and Spring begins.  In the 1930s, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 7, uses the Snowman to symbolize that always are not as they seem, by children beginning to make a snowman, but realize they do not have enough snow so they make it out of mud and cover the mud with snow.  It is interesting to me that there is not more made of a Being being created from snowflakes/something falling from the sky, I am thinking that, perhaps, to some people/cultures, in some age, that the snowman is suggesting something spiritual. 

Snow falling in huge lovely flakes, almost globules, is my most favorite snow.  To walk out in the cotton silence is almost spiritual. The gentle heavy energy of that kind of snowfall is almost Divine in nature, to me.  Again, it is a spiritual experience.

When we dram or visit, or have come to mind, falling/descending water, it is no wonder that we can see the symbolism of Higher Knowledge descending to us.  Snow is one of the elements that carries its own symbolism, rain another.  I love that snow covers the sins of the prior season, and so it is with us.  We need to allow yesterdays to pass, to be white as snow in our thoughts because we are no longer that person.  To me, walking out in the falling snow is like a baptism of sorts.  One becomes micro-conscious of Self amidst being hidden and almost within a small area of our Being within the snowstorm.  It is a place of spirituality and moments of extinguished ego, need, our vainness and we become compressed spirituality in a way. 

Snow is halfway between frozen Mother Earth and liquid and there is much symbolism in such.  Each snowflake that gathers into snowfall is unique, halfway between Perfection and Earthly.  Gently, we are covered with a cloak of this Higher Knowledge, or the chance of it, if we allow the metaphors and symbols to cover us as well.  The longer we stay out in the snowfall, the mover covered we become.  It is our chance, in this snowfall silence, to contemplate our place between heaven and earth.  There is such beauty there.  We are made pure within the storm.  

In standing, walking, out in the snowstorm, we are allowing spirit to speak to us in a language we get no other way.  In the far North, there are, at one point, I heard, 36 different ways to describe snow and label them.  In the end, though, I love the fact that our identity is erased by something so pure, so white, so encompassing.  The walk in the snowfall is those moments to be between being human down here on earth and being spirit in heaven.  You can see why I love walking in a storm. 

I am sure human beings, from the first snow, realized the heaven/earth, oneness, aspect of snowfall.  Perhaps the snowman was a totem made to honor that.  Have you ever walked out in such a snowstorm?  I will never see a snowman the same any more.

If you live where snow falls and you can walk in it, go, do it!  Take those sacred moments of anonymity and be one between heaven and earth.

©Carol Desjarlais 10.11.20