Sun Enters Scorpio
‘What goes too long unchanged, destroys itself. The forest is forever because it dies and dies and so lives.’ — Ursula K. Le Guin
As the sun begins to rise in Scorpio, Autumn is in full swing. The leaves have changed, my wardrobe with them, and the endless days of Summer have become a memory.
While astrological Spring (Aries, Taurus, Gemini) has no Water Sign, and wastes no time looking back, Scorpio’s fixed watery nature pools in the very heart of Autumn, and brings a somber melancholy to the whole season. Part of what makes Autumn my favourite season is its inherent reflectiveness; like a morbid mirror to the life and beauty of Spring.
While outward activity dwindles, our energies are turned inward. All the emotions and experiences that were lived out in the first half of the year must now be metabolised in the Scorpionic underworld.
The ambitions which emerged, so boldly and naïvely during Aries (Mars’ other domicile), are now forced to slow, withdraw, and decay, relinquishing their place upon the Earth so they might rejoin with their source.
It is this question of source — the root of an issue, the ancestry, the underlying meaning — that concerns Scorpio. It wants the truth, and it can and will handle the truth. We must reap what has been sewn, and whatever the harvest — bountiful or meagre — it will now have to last us through the dark days ahead. There’s no point in glamourising it when it’s a matter of life and death… so why not say it like it is!?
Libra season (which initiated Autumn) asked that we notice the need for change where there was unaddressed conflict or unfairness in our lives, and give voice to how we were not living in alignment with our values in our relationships. In the wake of this conflict, satisfyingly resolved or not, Scorpio picks up the loose ends and broken pieces to investigate the cause.
Why did this happen? What motivated these actions? And what can be done to ensure that this is under control next time? Both Mercury and Venus have spent time in these watery depths already in the past month, slowly turning our focus to what is lurking underneath the disturbance, but the arrival of the Sun here will really see us living out our inner sleuth. To Scorpio, the details matter.
In the struggle for emotional control of a situation, like a poker game, every microtransaction and tell can have immense significance. Scorpio is a sign that not only understands the power dynamics in a relationship, as Libra does, but more determinedly and consciously tests and anticipates the reactions of those around it. Scorpio needs to know who it can rely on as the cold creeps in and the window of daylight narrows.
Emotional entanglement (or disentanglement) is not undertaken lightly, especially when we may feel we have so much to lose in our vulnerable state. But above all else, Scorpio wants for us to learn to trust. While the trees make letting go look so easy, trusting that from the mulch and compost of the old forms new life will emerge, for human beings the process is often a painful and terrifying ordeal.
And thus it is pain and fear that are so often the core findings of Scorpio’s investigations. We realise that conflicts emerge from hurts deeper than most people care to look, and in this time we have the opportunity to develop a heightened awareness of each of our vulnerabilities.
Although this can so easily be weaponised to bring about further harm, Scorpio can teach us that our need to merge, and our fear of the necessary dying and relinquishing that it entails, is a shared experience. That we must all undergo loss and go on living. It doesn’t make our conflicts right, it doesn’t make our pain less painful, or loosening our grip on the past any less terrifying, but it gives it meaning and begins to imagine a way back to the present moment… which makes moving on easier to bear.
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If you enjoyed this, I’ve recently started sending out these reflections to my mailing list, plus a planetary forecast and breakdown of the transits to help you navigate the month ahead. I’ll be sending these out as the Sun ingresses into each new sign (around the 22nd of each month). While I’ll share my main thought pieces here on the site, I want to keep something aside just for those who want to be part of the closer community I’m trying to grow around my practice. Thank you for taking the time to read!
