Insights for Scorpio

Photo by Hannah Troupe on Unsplash

These insights, are meant as contemplations: Each one fashioned using the astrological aspects of the moment. Astrology invites the muse. No two perceptions are exactly the same and any of us can find insight through the images if we but look. These are mine, happily offered for you to reshape and fashion into something of your own. Follow the links, where you find them for further musings on the planetary aspects.

October 23
Sun enters Scorpio: 06:35 AM EDT

Scorpio is the cooking pot, the shredder, the compost bin. It’s where we meet everything that is not true. For many this is untenable so Scorpio becomes the shadowy realm which contains our greatest fears. It’s a fixed sign and therefore dedicated to storing, holding and containing power. It is a water sign and therefore dedicated to feelings. It is not emotional, which is to say it is not reactive to the slights and discomforts of the moment. Rather it is deep and profoundly aware of the inner landscape, the nuance, the felt sense. It can be profound and yet it can be controlling, manipulative and grossly insensitive to social cues. It suffers terribly (and creates suffering for others as well) when it lacks empathy. In a world that does not leave or make much time for honest processing of feelings, a world of instant revelation and stolen focus Scorpio has a hard time achieving its best self.
As it journeys through Scorpio this year the Sun will encounter two eclipses (Solar and Lunar): A stirring of powerful energies. We might think of these energies being released at the solar eclipse on the 25th and hitting their peak between the 5th of November and the 11th. During this time the Sun, Moon, Venus Mercury Uranus and Saturn will engage with one another. Many eyes will be on the mid-term elections in the USA but there are many other areas of transformation on this planet that will resonate with these energies. It’s so important as the year (in the northern hemisphere) descends into the darker period of shorter days and longer nights to remind ourselves that endings and beginnings are the front and back of all change. The pregnant woman becomes a mother, the old person dies and the baby gets born, we leave home and find a new one. All this change takes time and has moments of deep grief as well as empowered success. This is what Scorpio teaches us, or reminds us that we already knew.

October 25 
New Moon: 02 degrees Scorpio: 6:48 AM EDT
Something small and mighty begins. Something that will reveal itself over the next two weeks as we approach the Full Moon. On one hand, an invitation to chaos and power grabs. On the other a serious invitation for change and transformation. Either path is strenuous: One leads to misery and the other to greater wisdom and mastery. We fear letting go (change) even as we know without having to be told that change is inevitable. This too shall pass and new realities come into being.  

October 26 & 27
Mercury trine Mars and square Pluto
There are some amazingly life affirming ideas flying and floating through the air of this wildly fluctuating world; ideas that could ease suffering and make life livable for the many not just the few. There are forces that would manipulate and destroy these notions for reasons of greed and ill will. Change will come just as truth will out. Transformation of culture generally starts with a good idea. Something like “Liberty and justice for all.”

October 28
Jupiter retrogrades back into Pisces  
What makes (us) humans unique may be that we stand on two legs and can look up. What arises from that is our capacity for awe and wonder, the ability to appreciate the beauty of that which we do not understand.  Some say and I agree, that this capacity is fed by our ability to look up, to see the stars at night, to marvel at the Sun and how it wakes us up and travels across the heavens each and every day. This awe and wonder is also present when we look down: When a new life is born or a seed sprouts into a flower. It is not enough to have faith in some higher power, we must combine it with reverence for our lives lived beneath the sky. Above and below there is wonder and awe. Therefore let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth and reverence within you.

October 29
Mercury enters Scorpio 
Given that our attention has become a commodity, bought and sold by forces we cannot quite believe are real, now would be a good time to take it back. Own your focus, pay your attention toward the things that empower you to live your life from the inside out, not the other way around.

October 30
Mars stationery retrograde
Look back to the beginning of September. Was there something that called to you: Some idea or project that pulled you toward it? This was Mars in the shadow, a time to hear the call and take it on (Mars represents action and actualization). Now we enter the period of grappling (until December 8th): No turning back. We learn all we can about where our intention might have taken us. We may be frightened but we do it anyway. We muster courage. We proceed with care, deliberation, perhaps a profound commitment to learn and grasp information that can support our worthy intentions. Many people on this planet are too anxious, scattered, frightened or greedy to truly hear a call in the first place. But not all. Not you. (If you are interested in our workshop on this topic you can find the information here

November 2
We enter, collectively a zone, a patch of thin ice, a fire swamp, lasting until November 11th. (Details below). Take a deep breath, feel your feet on the (sacred) ground of Earth. You are here and now. There is no Planet B. All these truths are useful. A good time to consider why you use astrology as a guide anyway.

November 5
Venus opposite Uranus
Why does any of it matter? Why do you want what you want so much? What if life is art and you don’t create it with your will alone? What if it’s always a co-creation with mysterious forces we feel and sense but cannot fully control? If you feel overpowered, let go into the feeling (even just for a few minutes). Allow yourself to be fully engaged in the feeling. Like the poet said, It’s life and life only.   

November 6
Standard time. Turn back the clock. The world a little darker, a little earlier. What is time? How do you measure it?

November 7
Venus square Saturn
We are not only one with nature, both denizens and expressions of the natural world. We are also part of culture. Culture isn’t just about art: It’s inflation and farming practices, banks and oil prices as well as how we educate our children: It’s what we do with the elderly and how we care for the sick. Lately it’s become a lot easier to talk to your local tree then to get the bank to answer the phone when you have a problem or to see a doctor who might know something about you: A glass-half-empty moment. Evaluate it from both the perspective of nature and culture and you might find you understand something about your place in it. We live here. In fact we are living the myth we have created. 

(PS: Today is the actual midpoint between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice which is the moment of decent into the waning of the year that Halloween derives from.)

November 8 & 9
Full Moon: 16 degrees Taurus: 06:02 AM EST
Mercury conjunct the Sun and square Uranus
Sun conjunct Uranus
Hot button days, upending the way-things-have-always-been. The ever-present is in free fall. Maybe it’s politics (especially in the USA). Maybe it’s what we used to call weather but now refer to as climate. Maybe it’s an inner sense of not being in control of the part of your world that you could count on. Somewhere, deep inside, we know the difference between surrender and capitulation. One requires that we relax and be fully present. The other is permission to quit, a tightening of the body and a shuttering of the mind. Empowerment is in surrendering to what is, without giving up.

November 10
Mercury square Saturn
Venus trine Neptune
Move at the pace of guidance is good advice. We cannot be commanded to still the mind. We can only still the body and allow what is to be. As if this stillness isn’t already a fact, a reality within. Stillness is the teacher, awareness is the lesson.

November 11
Sun square Saturn
These days, astrologers like to say that the Sun and Saturn are enemies. But consider that without shadow we cannot see what light reveals. Without resistance we can’t build muscle. And how the even a tiny candle flame can dispel the dark.

November 12
Mercury trine Neptune
In the depths of each one of us is a wisdom so great as to heal our wounds and soothe our fears, a kind of gut level knowledge, deeper than fright, fight, freeze: Knowledge that speaks the language of the soul rather than the amygdala.   

November 13
Venus sextile Pluto     
There is a quality of inevitability when actions take us to consequences. We often rush to judgment in these situations, quickly followed by guilt. It’s definitely ‘all my fault’. Might it be more honest to simply accept the consequences as the fulfillment of a previous action? Assuming, of course that this is not a matter for the Law of the Land. That’s a completely different set of symbolic messages.

November 14
Mercury sextile Pluto
Sun trine Neptune
When planets in Scorpio (Mercury and the Sun) make favorable aspects to the powers of trans-personal planets (Pluto and Neptune, invisible to the naked eye) the best idea is to live into the circumstances of the realities of your life even as you are fed and watered by a deeper river of the kind of truth that knows what it knows and is guided by this knowledge. In this way we might access the sacred happiness which is sorrowless.  

November 15
Venus trine Jupiter
No one believes that money isn’t important or that the economy is fair. Permission to ignore these issues for the moment and take a look at your greatest resource, the thing no one can take from you that is uniquely your own. Feel how this connects you to an underground river of rich resource in others. Not just humans either.

November 16
Venus enters Sagittarius
Mercury trines Jupiter
Astrology suggests (keep in mind I am writing this before the date in question) that we have recently passed through a raw and wild time. The effects are not to be ignored. Still we are inclined to aim for the best possible outcomes. To envision a better way. Might as well.

November 17
Mercury enters Sagittarius
Think about big things but don’t forget the smaller details that help us navigate the big picture. Dot your ‘i’s and cross your ‘t’s. Check your grammar. We think we are writing well when we spill the passionate contents of the mind but it can sound incoherent and ignorant when others read or listen to what landed on the page wrote. Writing and reading are the front and back of each other. To do one well, it helps to do the other.   

November 18
Sun sextile Pluto
Investigate the layers. Unearth a mystery or two. Mull it over. Muse upon it. Feel into it. It’s always true that we live only in this real and present moment.  We can’t actually move forward into the future because we are always here and now (except maybe in dream states, but most of us don’t change the world in dreams states). From the vantage point of presence, our investigations of Great Mysteries offer opportunity for the process of Great Change that is upon us. (What this might boil down to could incline us to simply feel the sensations in the body, or allow for the behavior of another person. It’s already happening anyway.)

November 19
Mars square Neptune
This aspect has been lurking since mid-October. If you’ve been feeling disoriented and out of focus give some attention to soothing, resting and nourishing your nervous system. It’s as though the nervous system of Gaia Herself is stressed. Of course if you’re in a storm you have to deal with it but the best way to do that is from a strong center in the body. We all benefit from sinking our chi (qi).

November 20
Sun trine Jupiter
Maybe at your core is some kind of faith. Surely it is possible to have faith, to believe something, and allow others to do the same.

November 21
Mercury conjunct Venus
A day for storytellers. The rest of us can sit back and enjoy the telling. We are made of stories.