Insights for Scorpio

October 22:
Sun enters Scorpio: 6:14 PM EDT
It’s hard to look death in the eye. It just is. It’s always there but we do our best to live as if it isn’t. It’s exhausting. Consider the three phases of water: vapor, ice and the wet, flowing stuff we drink and swim in, the stuff that falls from the sky and waters the world when it isn’t flooding our basements. Water is feeling. We are always feeling. Scorpio reminds us that there are mysterious transformations of feeling within us. We can stagnate like a swamp or flow like a river. We can fall from the heights or crash upon the shore. We can solidify. But no matter what form it takes, water and our feelings are always there. We aren’t always feeling good any more than we can always think happy thoughts. But thinking and feeling are always happening.
If you live in the north, darkness is rising all around you. If you live in the south, the days are getting longer. If you live in the middle it’s not much different. But if you’re human you are feeling. And for some reason, in our product- progress-driven culture we have an aversion to feeling just what we feel. Likely this is because we assume we have do something about our feelings: We don’t. We just need to feel them. We don’t need to project or codify them, turn them into judgments or believe in them.
Feelings arise from the gut. Scorpio rules the guts. We, all of us, are capable of gut knowing. In fact our guts know at least as much as our brains. Mysterious and subjective, they inhabit the deepest, darkest part of us. This is Scorpio. The scorpion, the eagle and the phoenix. Allow it, welcome it, be witness to it. That’s all.
During this month of Scorpio the Sun will trine Saturn, oppose Uranus, trine Neptune and of course conjunct and oppose the Moon at New and Full.
You can follow along with the story below.  

October 24
Mars sextile Uranus  
Open the door to radical shift. Consider innovative ways of grappling with the effects of climate change in your life. You could get a heat pump, plant native species, even take to the streets in protest. Consider stocking the pantry with food to last through longer periods between shopping trips. Turn toward the inevitable disruptions not with fear but with actions of your own making. Trust your impulse to provide for yourself as well as others.

October 28
Mars trine Neptune
Venus square Saturn
If we put aside the expectation that we can or should have everything we think we want, we can care for all that we have. This world is not a vending machine.

October 30   
Mercury opposite Uranus
Resist the (understandable) inclination to refuse new ideas. Although it may feel that far too many possibilities are coming at you thick and fast, it is by allowing ourselves to feel into them that we perceive what is really real and immediate for us. Resistance is futile. Capitulation is not required. Surrender and acceptance of present circumstance is how we find ourselves at reasonable adaptation.

October 31
Mercury trine Neptune
The perfect aspect for dressing up like anyone’s ancestor and treating the tricksters. We are shrouded in mystery the night before a New Moon. The veil between the worlds is indeed thin tonight. Halloween…

November 1    
New Moon: 09 degrees Scorpio: 08:47 AM EDT
What you know in your gut can and should inspire your intention for this New Moon. Feelings are real. We honor them by acknowledging them, not necessarily acting upon them. They advise us. May your intention challenge your attachments and orient you toward empathy. Our willingness to see the world with courage and allow what we see to change us empowers our intention for this lunar month.

November 2
Jupiter sextile Chiron
Mercury trine Mars and sextile Pluto
Mercury enters Sagittarius
As Mercury readies to leave the intense, inward focus of Scorpio there is powerful validation for the transformations and processes which we have explored and experienced over the last while. Mars and Pluto are also readying themselves to change sign in this month of Scorpio.  Take a moment to acknowledge the truth of your feelings which cannot be denied. Imagine yourself on the threshold of action. What kind of action supports life? Thresholds always require us to listen with interest to the feelings and inner workings of others as well as ourselves with empathy in the here and now: our children, our partners, our neighbors, even squirrels and raccoons…

November 3  
Mars opposite Pluto
Venus opposite Jupiter, trine Chiron
Mars enters Leo
Power, energy, fuel and unprecedented progress are some of the drivers of the madness of our times. What is your source of power? How do you use your energy? What kind of fuel do you put in your ‘tank’? What fuels us is part of the question. The other part is: How much is enough? If we keep dancing as fast as we can we miss a lot. Mars in Leo will remind us, over and over for a while to ask ourselves what love is asking from us in all this madness.

November 4
Sun trine Saturn
Reward yourself for a job well done, a strength used well: mastery. Reward yourself with rest, with time out, unplugged and uncharted. We let our schedules rule us when they are meant to be scaffolding, bones upon which we hang the meaning and purpose of our days. Allowing them to reveal themselves (with unscheduled time) can be a profound exploration.  

November 09
Venus square Neptune
Sometimes we are overtaken by our longings. If we can be still and renounce the delusion of ultimate satisfaction, amazing things can happen.

November 11
Venus enters Capricorn
To think we can live sustainably as individuals in a world that drives prosperity with lies, manipulation and weapons (as if that’s reasonable) is a lot to ask. Still we must try for the sake of our sanity as well as for each other. Things are real. We use them. They are the stuff of life. Use them as if they matter because they are ‘the matter’.  

November 12 
Mercury square Saturn
Crunch the numbers. Drill down as deep as you can to make your particular project work. While you’re at it, get serious about the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ of your beliefs. Our beliefs, which often show up as assumptions – even opinions - power our ability commit to the project at hand.

November 15
Saturn stationary direct
Stations are just like they sound: Like a train that has stopped to let people off and on, a station is a temporary pause on the way to the next station. In this case, Saturn’s next stop which comes in the spring of ’25 will be in Aries. At this station we might consider our responsibility (Saturn) toward the ever widening circle of suffering (Pisces) and the potential it has to open us to compassion (Pisces). It’s not going to magically disappear and clearly it connects us to one another, not only in the mind. We feel and we have some kind of responsibility to respond to our feeling. We are connected through a great underground river of feeling.

November 16
Full Moon: 24 degrees Taurus: 04:28 PM EST, square Uranus     
The after effects of the election down south remain in the spotlight. “Enough”, we say, “Get your act together”. The desire to wreck the joint, to make demands in no uncertain terms only adds to the chaos, only fuels rage and traumatizes us all over again. Humans everywhere are anxious about the uncertain way forward. The easiest (not necessarily best) thing to do is to react with the full force of desire even if it is for something that cannot be had. A better option would be to stand your ground and look around as well as within. Ask yourself about the nature of things such as the body, the mind and the heart: yours as well as the bodies, minds and hearts of all that lives.

November 18
Mercury opposite Jupiter
Sun trine Neptune
We have so many stories. Facts and fictions intertwine and our minds are like ticker tape unspooling across the bottom of the screen of the news of the day. We are travelers in the dark wood. Stories are the lines we follow, the candle just ahead in the mist, lighting the way. Getting us from here to there. However, if we never quiet the mind, if we never dive beneath the waves we never really know where we are, which makes it hard to know where we are going.      

November 19
Mercury trine Chiron
Pluto enters Aquarius (and stays there)
What is wisdom? How is information different than knowledge? Why do you listen and what do you hope to learn?
Now and for the last time until it moves on into Pisces in 2043, Pluto enters Aquarius.
Aquarius is the sign which represents all of humanity – kin to its fellow air signs Libra and Gemini. Aquarius represents humanity in all of its possibilities. Humanitarian is an Aquarian keyword. So is technology and all that is born from our accumulated knowledge of how the world works. The irony of Aquarius is found in that although we can dissect and inspect the world in which we live, we never get to the bottom of our understanding of it. The more we know the more we have to learn.
It is the nature of Pluto to live with mystery. Aquarius wants to solve the mystery, once and for all. It wants order and loves to qualify and classify all that it sees. The Water Bearer which symbolizes Aquarius likes to pour the water but doesn’t like to get wet.
Pluto is a shadowy figure, visible in the Underworld but obscure and more felt than seen above ground. It aims to kill off what isn’t working to make room for whatever arises from that loss. At this time when the world seems to have shrunk and we understand that we are all in this together (like it or not) we are making decisions about our collective future, even as the past crumbles beneath us. Will we lean toward the humanitarian qualities of Aquarius or will we aim for efficiency and order above all and the ascension of the Algorithm God?
Is the triumph of our species kindness in all its complexity or efficiency in all its seeming simplicity? Where Pluto is concerned there can never be an either/or solution. There is no solution. We are in the composter turning and turning again into something we cannot know. This is difficult for Aquarius.
On the first day of Pluto in Aquarius, Mercury and Chiron call us to envision our collective human potential with the understanding that we are mysterious and unknowable, part of something so vast we cannot comprehend it. We may never stop trying to learn what it is. Perhaps we could be a bit more reverent toward the immensity of an endless sky which is not simply above us but also within. This is the very nature of the mind (an airy place).
Pluto in Aquarius reminds us to surrender to the mystery of awareness and consider the nature of emptiness rather than to grasp at the carrot of one more bit of knowledge.
It goes without saying that this is not about burning books. It’s not that simple. Pluto is never simple.