On February 24, 1982 at about 11pm I was photographing snow crystals in my unheated garage.  I took several nice shots from the collection that had fallen onto one of my glass slides.  After wiping the slide clean I held it up to the light to make sure it was ready for more crystals.  Only one small crystal was still clinging to the slide, much too tiny to have been noticed when all the other large crystals had been surrounding it.  I almost brushed it off, then looked closer and noticed it had an interesting star-like shape so I decided to take a quick shot of it.  The center of the crystal was somewhat obscured by the focusing grid in the camera viewfinder.  My interest was only in the shape of the outline of the overall crystal anyway.

At about 11:20 I went out into the driveway to collect more crystals and happened to glance up at the sky.  There were bright, narrow beams of white, orange, red, green and blue light streaking toward the Earth.  They were part of a very bright northern lights display covering the entire sky, but most intense in the south!  I took three time exposures of this display and it faded quickly, disappearing by midnight.  (The significance of the northern lights is questionable.  I do, however, find it to be a remarkable ‘coincidence’ that I took my most interesting photograph during the most spectacular display of northern lights that I ever saw.)

The film came back and I examined the various photos.  The tiny one caught my eye because it looked unsymmetrical.  Four sides of the central design were similar to each other, but the other two were different somehow.  I rotated the picture to look at the cause of the unsymmetrical appearance and suddenly a small person was staring back at me!  This figure was apparently on a chair or throne, seated on a stage or in a room with curtains.

The actual crystal was about 1/16 of an inch across – the figure in the center was about 1/100 of an inch tall.  The smallest things visible in the photo (limited by the grain size of the film) were around 5/10,000 of an inch.  The entire crystal could have fit through the eye of a medium-sized needle and it could have hidden behind a mustard seed.

Because of the figure’s resemblance to a person of royalty or spiritual significance I named the picture “Spirit Within.”

So what does this mean?  I feel that it means exactly what each person who sees it thinks it means.  If someone sees it as just a coincidence of crystal growth and nothing more, then that is what it is for that person.  If it causes a person to think about life in a different way, then it may be a transformational experience for that person.  Each one who sees it must deal with it in the way that they deal with such mysteries.

I can give a brief description of some things this crystalline image suggests to me.  The center (within the hexagon) could symbolize the Universe.  The segments upon which the figure rests may represent the male and female aspects of the divine essence.  The four drapes or flags suggest to me the four elemental dimensions.  The figure, with its head at the center of the “Universe,” becomes the Universal Consciousness that pervades all things and is both the seventh and only dimension.

What does it mean to you?  Tell me if you wish.  If I receive enough interesting responses, I may write a booklet telling your ideas about this strange little wonder of nature.