Snow, or the Fertilizing Rays of the Sky

It's snowing like crazy, something that hasn't happened here in London since the 1990s. It's beautiful just to sit at the window and hear the flakes falling. It may look like chaos, but in reality I know that each flake has its pre-established role in the order of things, their own path to follow. They dance their way through the music of the spheres, which dictate each flake the chord they play.

Back in Late Antiquity, the poet Lucretius depicted the universe as a snow-like fall of atoms, each of which follow a parallel trajectory. I always found this image compelling - the relentless fall of atom-flakes.

Did you notice how, when it snows, the earth and the sky become alike, white, united by the falling snow? It's hard not to think that the sky itself is coming to earth in bite-size pieces. This is what 16th century alchemists thought. They imagined that, through snow flakes, the sky was sending its fertilizing rays to feed the earth and bring forth plants. There were occult virtues in those little flakes, encapsulated grains of divinity that would renew the earth.

It may sound like poetry, not science, but back in the day, there was no real difference betwen the two. Science, knowledge, philosophy were born out of a poetic fascination with nature and the world. That is why poets like Goethe and Shelley saw themselves as scientists as well. Today, it has all come apart. The poets have moved to the sky, and the scientists have burrowed into earth, and there is no snow in between to unite the two worlds.