Broken Snowshoe Moon / Egg Moon
March 29th 05:57 CDT / 10:57 GMT
Hello All,
Another new moon is upon us. This one will reach its full phase in mid-April. Similarly to last month’s moon, its names are all about ushering in Spring. This one is often known as the Pink Moon, but other designations include the Breaking Ice Moon, the Sprouting Grass Moon, or the Fish Moon. If you have one of my 2025 lunations calendars, you will find it there as the Broken Snowshoe Moon in the Americas, and the Egg Moon in Europe.
American History
This month has one of my favorite lunar month names from the Anishinaabeg people of The Great Lakes Region in the US and Canada. The Broken Snowshoe Moon shows (I think) a bit of a sense of humor about the hardships of the long winter season in that part of the world.
The Anishinaabeg make their snowshoes with hardwood frames that support a woven rawhide lattice on which to suspend the wearer’s weight and disperse it over a larger area. Traditionally, the women wore “bear paw” snowshoes that are small and oval and best suited for walking around the village. The men wore long ones (up to 5 feet) that are good for tracking over long distances, especially on the flat land that makes up much of the area they call home. While such snowshoes are made to support a heavy load, it only takes a rock or log hidden beneath the snow to land your weight the wrong way, straining the frame and snapping it.
I myself merely have to look at the large hole in the bottom of my left boot to understand this one. We’ve been wearing our winter footwear out all season with water damage and harsh temperatures and the turning weather couldn’t have come at a better time because they won’t last us much longer.
British History
If you ask the old British Almanacs, this month’s moon is the Egg Moon. The lengthening days signal to the birds that it’s time to build their nests and lay their eggs.
The literal egg of spring is, of course, also a symbolic egg of fertility, life, new growth, and beginnings - and we can see the manifestations of these things everywhere we look at this time of year. We can also easily follow this symbolism back through time as far as history will allow.
In Alchemy, the egg is a symbol of transformation. It represents the Alchemist’s vessel in which he transmutes materials. Like an egg, this vessel is hermetically sealed and incubates its contents like a womb incubates an embryo. While some have pursued this process in a literal quest to fabricate gold, the true Alchemist knows that the vessel is really his body, and the material that he works to transform is his soul. Self-realization, and a re-birth as something greater, is the hatchling of the Alchemist’s egg.
Before even the early Alchemists we have the seemingly ubiquitous “cosmic egg” from which hatched all life, or, in some versions, a being which then created all life. The ancient Greeks had the Orphic egg from which hatched Protogonus, who then created the gods. The Ancient Chinese had Pangu who hatched from an egg that simultaneously gave rise to the universe, the yolk becoming the world and the albumen the sky, the shattered bits of shell the stars, sun, and moon. Hindu Vedic mythology has an egg arising from the primordial ocean from which the cosmos hatches. In West Africa, the creator god takes on the form of an egg and divides itself into four parts to make the four elements and the four cardinal directions, and then seeds itself to create the world. The ancient Egyptians had four frog-headed gods and four serpent-headed goddesses who lived in a primordial ocean. Together they gave rise to a cosmic egg from which the creator god, as well as the land, was hatched.
Lunar Science
More often than not, eclipses come in pairs. This new moon will be accompanied by a partial solar eclipse, hot on the heels of last month’s partial lunar eclipse.
The event will be visible in the early morning hours in northeastern North America and late-morning in northwestern Europe. Early risers in America and Canada will be able to see the somewhat rare “double sunrise”. The moon’s path in front of the sun will transform it into an upward pointing crescent whose two “horns” will appear on the horizon giving the illusion of two suns rising. Don’t forget your eye protection!
Lunar Astrology
While we think of a solar eclipse as being about the sun, and a lunar eclipse as being about the moon, they are both about the relationship between the sun and moon. A solar eclipse is a conjunction. The two celestial bodies are, from our perspective, in the same place in the sky. A lunar eclipse is an opposition of the two celestial bodies, they sit in opposing ends of our firmament. While the former is about big endings, the latter is about big beginnings; so the two events quite naturally work well together: every ending is a beginning.
The late-March new moon occurs in Aries. Sticklers will be sure to tell you that Aries is the ram, very much not to be confused with Ares, the god of war - they are not one and the same. But this particular ram just so happens to be ruled by Mars (aka Ares) who is, of course, the god of war. What’s more, March is the month named for Mars. Linguists may try to convince us this is a coincidence: Aries and Ares come from different root words; but if there is anything astrology tells us it is that there is no such thing as coincidences.
While any new moon is a good time to start something up, a new moon in a solar eclipse is a particularly strong beginning. So what does an Aries new moon portend for us mortals? Well, it means a fresh start, in particular with all things Martian. Think expression of the individual; strength, courage, and confidence; personal growth (remember the Alchemical egg of the self); and confrontation. If you have a project that fits this theme, this new moon in particular is a great time to start incubating it in hopes that it will hatch in the full phase.
In mid-April, the moon reaches its full phase in Libra. Aries and Libra are “opposites”, but in astrology that means they are complementaries bound by both their similar concerns and their different ways of approaching them. Aries/Libra are about relationships, though with Aries it is the relationship with the self, the “I” vs, the “you and me” that so preoccupies Libra. At the full phase, things Libran may come to a head. Think partners, relationships, your “better half”, equilibrium, justice, and diplomacy. Any feathers you ruffled standing your ground around the new moon may be more easily smoothed over now.
It looks like this new moon in Aries will be setting the mood for the long-haul, as it comes just two days before Neptune moves into the same sign for a long stay. Whenever slow-moving Neptune (which always brings a spiritual cast to things) changes signs, we collectively get a fresh spirit with which to experience our world. Neptune will remain in Aries until 2039, and was last seen there from 1861-1875. 1861 was the start of the American civil war, which kicked off just one day before Neptune slid into the sign of war (among other things). While Aries demands fast-paced change, rest assured that war is not the only way to achieve that.
All my best, and until the next lunar month,
Claire
