_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Fearless into the Deep
Unison Benediction
Return to the most human,
nothing less will nourish the torn spirit,
the bewildered heart,
the angry mind:
and from the ultimate duress,
pierced with the breath of anguish,
speak of love.
Return, return to the deep sources,
nothing less will teach the stiff hands a new way to serve,
to carve into our lives the forms of tenderness
and still that ancient necessary pain preserve.
Return to the most human,
nothing less will teach the angry spirit,
the bewildered heart;
the torn mind,
to accept the whole of its duress,
and pierced with anguish…
at last, act for love.
~ May Sarton
Greetings from the time inside the thinning of the veil between ‘this’ world and the mysterious Other world. We have recently passed what is considered the most important cross quarter day of the year, Samhain (pronounced Sow-win), midway between Fall Equinox and Winter Solstice. In pagan tradition, this day is calendared at November 1, but respected astrologer Steven Forrest recently pointed out that the actual midpoint between 0° Libra (Fall Equinox, September 23) and 0° Capricorn (Winter Solstice, December 22) falls on November 7, at 15° Scorpio. How did this happen?
Back in the day, the Roman Christians, determined to stomp out scary earth and sky worshippers, took charge of the calendar. In so doing, they divorced it from the actual seasons and cycles of the earth, arbitrarily assigning “New Year’s Day” to January 1, when in truth the Samhain cross quarter was considered the start of the new year by pagans and Druids. Samhain also marked the start of winter. The Chinese calendar, which I’m familiar with through my Qi Gong classes, agrees precisely! In this system too, this very same day, November 7 heralds “The beginning of winter,” and is celebrated as a Chinese festival.
So we’ve got the Chinese and the Celtic pagans on our side if we want to consider that this window of Scorpio time—initiated by Hallowe’en and characterized by darkening days, colored leaves flying through the sky (in northern climes), and goblins and ghosts—is indeed a precarious entryway into winter and the New Year.
The Turn Within
In keeping with the theme, Water sign Scorpio’s season is indeed a time of going within, taking stock, and doing the hard work of facing our grievances and our grief. And it wants us to do so not in a rational way, as prior Air sign Libra would do, but with feeling. If this is hard for us to do, we mustn’t be surprised if life throws us a fireball or two to get us in the mood.
I, for instance, as I write here on November 7 itself, have today found myself being tossed one such fireball. While in it, my knickers were in a wrangled twist, steam issuing from my orifices, not unlike Kali (a Hindu significator goddess of Scorpio). Being well-endowed with Scorpio energy myself, one could say it’s not too hard for me to get into this mode (somewhere I even perversely like being ‘mobilized’ for drama), but truthfully, my temper has been amazingly ‘equanimous’ in recent weeks and months. So this was indeed a surprise.
The incident involved what I perhaps slightly exaggeratedly described to my utility representative as the unnecessary rape of a prominent, street-side mulberry tree, whose fresh leaves the deer love to forage in spring, and whose now golden leaves I had been blessedly enjoying the view of from my dining room window. I had called the utility because in the wake of their line safety tree trimming last week, a branch had fallen on a wire running through my side yard, and the wire is now hanging at chin level through my garden.
The utility representative this morning told me they would come out and “take care of it,” but alas their execution was lifted from the Scorpio manual. Later I returned home to discover they had butchered the tree (and a good chunk of the one next to it), cutting down one entire side of it and leaving a tangle of uncleared remains in a violent mess beneath. My window view now includes a snarl of power and communications lines attaching to the power pole, all of which had been hidden by the tree. And the low-hanging wire wasn’t even fixed, as, when I called backed to discuss, they said this was ‘not their wire.’
In light of the intense devastation transpiring in Palestine right now (and ongoingly in the Ukraine), of course this is spud potatoes. What’s happening there is a far more visceral and shocking example of the harshest extremes that the dark Scorpio archetype can resort to – a determination to kill and destroy even women and children, fueled by an unstoppable lust for revenge, control, and power.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Poison Flower
But of course that didn’t per se make me feel better. Laying awake last night, caught in ruminations about my tree, I surmised that the worker might have some unprocessed anger himself, and taken it out on my poor tree. Still, it translated to me as a version of violation. A related Scorpio myth is that of Pluto/Hades abducting and raping the innocent maiden Persephone while wandering in the fields of flowers, taking her down to the Underworld to make her his wife. In the end, she was allowed back to the ‘above’ world where her mother Demeter, goddess of agriculture, resided, but for only half of each year. Jungian astrologer Liz Greene suggests that somewhere, in the name of wholeness, Persephone may have known what she was doing when she selected the ‘poison flower’ planted by Pluto; that part of her wanted or at least needed the experience of the Underworld. Perhaps, for wholeness. For the darkness—our pain and suffering, the trauma we have repressed in order to function in the world—is part of life. It hits us all in one way or another, this call to suffering, this seemingly haphazard fall into the realm of whatever darkness we may be asked to face. If it does not, and we continue to suppress our pain, we live only part of our true potential. |
Scorpio New Moon
These days, we may indeed be feeling triggered by the energy of Scorpio Sun in the sky conjunct Mars. Mars is the traditional ruler of Scorpio, so when it’s placed here, it certainly can amplify and trigger Mars aggression or rage. The New Moon at 20° Scorpio on Nov. 13 features disrupter agent Uranus in Taurus opposing this potent Sun-Moon-Maries trio of Scorpio energies. So with this energy imprinting the next four-week lunar cycle, we can expect the unexpected in terms of triggers of passion, anger, shock, or violence. While this isn’t great news, as always, knowing what’s coming, as astrology helps us do, can alert us, so that we can keep the rudder on course should choppy waters hit us.
The encounter with shadow material can be intensified if the New Moon hits our own planets that fall between 17°-25° Scorpio, or those degrees in the three other Fixed signs (Taurus, Leo, and Aquarius). Or, prolonged, deep inner work could be indicated by transits of Pluto to natal personal planets, or of outer planets to natal Chiron. Both of these planets point to where we harbor woundedness, sometimes karmic. Pluto’s cuts deep, at soul-level, whereas Chiron’s hits our ego. During such cycles, astrology is a profound tool for excavation (it offers an x-ray view of what’s going on), coupled with the deep work of processing and reflection in a safe counseling container.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Letting Go and ‘Letting God’
But aggravation and violation are but part of the Scorpio archetype – its opening act or, left unfinished, its lower octave. The rest, is about regeneration, healing, and rebirth. This brings me to some wise words from Christian mystic, Father Thomas Keating, known for his offerings of Contemplative Prayer.
Powerlessness is our greatest treasure. Don’t try to get rid of it. Everything in us wants to get rid if it. Grace is sufficient for you, but not something you can understand. To be in too big a hurry to get over our difficulties is a mistake because you don’t know how valuable they are from God’s perspective, for without them you might never be transformed as deeply and as thoroughly.
This reflection offers a very different take on Scorpio medicine, pointing us to its ‘high road.’ Transformation is the deepest intent of Scorpio and its modern ruler Pluto, and this often requires that we visit, and spend time with the much-feared realms of death, loss, and powerlessness. For Scorpio’s purifying methods often bring death to the power of the ego, and to power over, in order to birth within us the abiding power of love. Love as the power that helps us accept what is and what is not, helping us take our place in the presence of God, Essence, Creator—however we might describe it.
When Father Keatings says “grace is sufficient, but not something you can understand,” he is really pointing to the path of surrender, to the need to open to trusting the grace in the ‘slings and arrows’ of life, with an understanding that these are our healers in disguise, pointing us to vital truths about ourselves.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Scorpio Walking
In keeping with how the transits of the time affect all of us, to varying degrees, I have made a few sitings of the Scorpio vibe lately. First is a series called Shrinking, on Apple TV, that I learned about from UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Magazine in an article on TV shows that can ‘help us be our best self’. Scorpio is the significator of psychological work, as it encourages ‘deep seeing’ and excavation, with the intent of healing. And Shrinking is, as you might guess, about a therapist—several actually, one of whom is played by Harrison Ford.
I have to laugh, this acclaimed actor, known for his roles in action thrillers like Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Fugitive is now, at his well-seasoned age, playing the role of chief therapist, focusing at last on the ‘intensity within,’ realizing that he himself has grief and loss he hasn’t processed. Just as do the other two therapists in his office.
One of them had lost his wife the prior year and had resisted facing his pain, which of course echoed in the stuckness he felt in his client work. He finally decides to ‘go for the jugular’ with his clients, to boldly share the Truth about what he sees going on, using unorthodox means, and to finally do his own work on himself. It’s a perfect Scorpio message, that we all have work to do examining our ‘shadows,’ that which has been repressed. This is key to liberation from stuckness and pain.
Along these lines, there was a statement by On Being host Krista Tippett that caught my attention recently. She said, “the definition of a deep truth is that its opposite is also true.” This would mean that Light is a truth only if Darkness is also embraced as a truth. They need each other to be understood. Scorpio energy beckons us to claim the riches of embracing that darkness. This work is not for the faint-hearted.
Next up, I noticed a new Metropolitan opera production of the film, Dead Man Walking, about the powerfully redemptive accompaniment offered by Sister Helen Prejan, of a condemned murderer on Death Row. The story illustrates the Scorpionic themes of courage to face taboos in the name of healing, and redemption in the face of death.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Endless Cycle
Coming ‘back to earth’ with my investigative Scorpio magnifying glass, I learned on a recent guided birding outing in our local wetlands that the Latin name for the oft-maligned Turkey vulture, Cathartes aura, means “purifying breeze.” Given that these birds do us the service of devouring and digesting dead animal remains, this red-headed raptor seems a perfect Scorpio agent—embracing the dead, using the remains as fodder, and purifying (the landscape) in the process.
Here at home, I have been audience to the persistent work of the Orb spider, always active in the Fall. This year for the first time one of these chose to cast her web on the frame of my kitchen sink window—I guess she wanted my attention! For several weeks from my dishwashing perch I got to watch her comings and goings, and adventures with her prey, until one day we had a pretty significant rain, which knocked out 2/3 of her web. I thought for sure that was curtains for Mme Orb’s window web. But, never so die to a spider! Undaunted by the elements, the very next morning the web was back up in full (if not perfect) symmetry. Go Mama!
I’ve also been graced by a magnificent display of the powers of endurance, which Scorpio has a corner on, in a begonia plant I’d been growing in a planter on my terrace. In September, a prior storm had knocked the plant over and the thick central stalk, with its many sub-branches, had capsized and broken. I chose to rescue the still-blooming branches and put them in water in various places – in my fountain, in a vase on my kitchen sink, and in a repurposed hummingbird feeder jar on my dining table. This was literally two months ago, and these truly death-defying begonia stalks are STILL putting out sweet, salmon-colored blossoms to replace the ones it regularly lets go of. This lovely girl is the ‘pretty in pink’ plant world model par excellence of death and rebirth!
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Another natural world take on this season of letting go comes from Maria Popova, in her recent article in The Marginalian on Why Leaves Change Color. She begins with a melifluous depiction of the nature of Scorpio:
Autumn is the season of ambivalence and reconciliation, soft-carpeted training ground for the dissolution that awaits us all, low-lit chamber for hearing more intimately the syncopation of grief and gladness that scores our improbable and finite lives — each yellow burst in the canopy a reminder that everything beautiful is perishable, each falling leaf at once a requiem for our own mortality and a rhapsody for the unbidden gift of having lived at all. That dual awareness, after all, betokens the luckiness of death.
She then points to the ‘revelation after loss’ that leaf changes bring, when nature’s ‘true colors’ shine through: chlorophyll greens yielding to oranges, golds, and reds. Perhaps we too can burn brighter and more beautifully when we have shed and let go of the parts we no longer need, parts that may be sapping us of precious energy when we keep trying to hold to them.
For a right-brained, sound-visual experience that I find evocative of this process of breakdown, dissolving, and yielding to a birth of the unknown, check out There Will Be Hope, from favorite artist, Hania Rani, with Dobrawa Czocher.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Zooming Out
For a truly big picture perspective on this death/rebirth cycle, eco-philosopher David Hinton suggests in his beautiful book, Wild Mind, Wild Earth, that what’s happening now with climate collapse, aka the Sixth Great Extinction, is a “completely natural event.”
It’s the way of things, appearing and flourishing and vanishing: animals, food webs, mountain ranges, continents, stars and galaxies, and also the diversity of earth’s planetary ecosystems. Transformation always involves destruction, that vanishing of things that allows new configurations of existence to arise. It’s even there in the moment-to-moment vanishing of thoughts and perceptions within consciousness, always opening space for new thoughts and perceptions.
Looking at the crisis of the Earth’s systems in this way is a decidedly detached approach, not so Scorpionic, but more the style of the Aquarius Air sign, where culture will be heading soon, when in January 2024 Pluto heads back into Aquarius. (It will stay there for about 7 months, Rx back into Capricorn for a couple of months, and then reenter Aquarius in November 2024, where it will stay for 20 years.)
Combining both Water and Air sign impulses, ideally we dive into the grief and water the Earth, and ourselves, with the moisture of our tears, in order to then, cleansed and purified, enter that detached Aquarian ‘space for new thoughts and perceptions’ that Hinton beckons us to. Perhaps we will find there are changes we want to make in how we orient our lives, and how we frame perceptions going forward, regardless of circumstances.
I’ll close by leaving you with a very different type of Scorpio-vibe video a friend sent me recently of the Rolling Stones playing Gimme Shelter at their 2016 “Havannah Moon” concert (nice nod to astrology), before a record-breaking crowd of 500,000 in Cuba. If you don’t want to give the Stones eight minutes of your time, at least check out Sasha Allen’s entrance at 3 minutes in – both times I’ve viewed this her powerful voice has taken me to such depth of feeling that I’ve teared up!
What also struck me is that Sasha, much more than the old white men strutting on the stage (apologies to old white men readers!), really delivered the juice. And with her dark skin, to me she fully embodied “Dark Feminine” power, which Pluto rules and expresses. Looking at Keith Richards in his star-patterned shirt (second nod to astrology!), clearly he felt it too! Also Scorpionic of course is the sexy interplay between Sasha and Mick.
If you have a strong Pluto, 8th House, or passionate Scorpio signature, maybe you’ll ‘go there’ with me! Regardless, I wish you great Scorpionic powers of endurance, vulnerability, courage, and grit during this Moon cycle!
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Further Meanderings
Zodiac Goes New York City Central – https://bit.ly/474JzZL
Father Thomas Keating – https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/fr-thomas-keating
UC Berkeley Center for Greater Good’s “TV Series That Can Help You Be Your Best Self” – https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/ten_new_tv_series_that_can_help_you_be_your_bestself
Every Loss Reveals What We Are Made Of – https://www.themarginalian.org/2021/10/26/why-leaves-change-color/?mc_cid=a7404a47e9&mc_eid=547a2b05f8
Hania Rani and Dobrawa Czocher, There Will Be Hope – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASaJJyznDXE
The Rolling Stones’ 2016 Cuba Concert: Gimme Shelter – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clGX_J19_9o
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
All photos copyright Diana Badger 2023 (unless otherwise indicated)