SCORPIO SEASON
Happy Scorpio season, friends! Even if you live somewhere without stark seasonal changes, the sun entering the sign of fixed water always brings a shift, a subtle sense of sloughing off skin and settling in for processes of growth and decay. This rawness requires both acknowledgment and protection.
Whether you’re in the northern or southern hemisphere, entering fall or spring, Scorpio season asks us to get close to the bone. To lick our lips and ready our teeth. As Mars’ nocturnal home, it asks us what we’re willing to negate or destroy in the pursuit of visceral knowledge and intimacy. Connection – and life – cannot thrive without visceral processes, excretion, separation.
This year, the Sun and Venus enter Scorpio almost at the same time, still in a cazimi configuration (an almost-exact conjunction). In the heart of the Sun, Venus is both consumed and renewed, giving it a charge of energy that is helpful for navigating the deep waters ahead.
A few days later, on October 25th, we get the opener of this eclipse season – a solar (new moon) eclipse in Scorpio, with Venus right in the middle of it. This lunation is picking up the narrative from the eclipse period we had six months ago, when the sun was in Taurus with the North Node. What came up for you around late April-May? What felt alive or painful then? This time around, the Sun is with the South Node, which is a point of release and surrender. We’re having to think about and sort through what we don’t want, and why.
Scorpio season can feel intense because it brings up our relationship to fear, uncertainty, and survival in a material – and not always pleasant – world. But these feelings also come up when we’re closest to connection and emotional truth. So how do we investigate with precision and perspective? When we are repulsed by something, can we make accurate evaluations and make the best decision for ourselves? The Sun co-existing with the South Node is poison medicine, helping us release what festers and walk the edge of the blade carefully enough to look inwards and confront our shit. It’s being in relationship with necessary discomfort, and sometimes pain. It’s knowing that it is better for a deep wound to heal slowly rather than superficially. If Taurus season was about a deeply embodied desire and movement, this time is about letting that desire crystallize through surrender, release, and grief.
October 30th marks one of the big astrological events of the year – Mars stationing retrograde in Gemini until January 12th 2023. Since Mars rules over Scorpio, this will significantly shift the tone of the following few weeks, and months. Wherever Gemini falls in our birth charts, along with our Aries and Scorpio houses, will be activated by this transit.
Mars is the planet of energy and focus, breaking through and initiating, and also of separation and conflict. Mars pursues and goes for the kill – whether quickly (Aries) or patiently (Scorpio). When it moves ‘backwards,’ then, we get a very different expression of its energy. Mars retrograde asks us to pause, to slow down and consider before acting. It teaches us to revisit our desires, re-evaluate our goals, and think deeply about how we (re)act to circumstances. In Gemini, specifically, this relates to communication, mental patterns, and how we engage with information.
Mars retrogrades can be frustrating because they change the usual ways we move and direct our energy. They make us figure out alternatives to our habits, and sometimes take the long, winding way round. This is important work, as tiring and difficult as it can be. Learning to take mental breaks, to be discerning around how we engage with information, and to slow down in order to better direct our energy, is crucial. Retrograde planets are planets doing excavation work, digging through archives, journeying into the underworld. They require our respect.
Do what you need to do to find quiet, whether that’s being intentional about what you want to focus on and grow, or what you need to take a step back from. For Aries and Scorpio rising folks, take extra care of yourself – your body, your sense of grounding, your energy. If you need to sleep a lot, do it. If you need to do something physical, embrace it. If you need to cry, give yourself permission. Take the space you need to rest, whatever that looks like for you. Throughout this Scorpio season Mars retrograde will also be squaring Neptune, adding an element of fogginess to the situation. Remember to take your time with things – it’s better to accept the tides than try and fight them.
On November 8th, we have another eclipse with the full moon in Taurus. Full moons tend to bring a particular kind of sensitivity because of their visibility. They offer us the moon, luminous and huge with all of its scars and beauty, suspended in tension between Earth and Sun. They are high points in a cycle – the crest of a wave, water about to boil, a nocturnal bloom. This one involves most of the visible planets and speaks to shifts for all of us, whether obvious or not. With Saturn (now moving forward) and Uranus involved – forming their final square in the arc that started in February 2021 –, we’re being asked what we’ve learned in the past year and a half.
As I’ve mentioned before, eclipses teach us about the circumstances of our lives through expansion and contraction. Like tectonic movements, they can show through at the surface, or move imperceptibly until our personal landscape is reshaped. With the nodes in Taurus and Scorpio, and particularly during this Scorpio season, it is essential for us to be willing to stay with our many forms of grief. To confront what feels scary, ugly and raw. To engage in processes of composting and integration even when we don’t know where they’ll lead us. To be open to going below the surface and staying with our discomfort as much as we can. These eclipses tell us there are consequences to our choices, and there are also consequences to what is beyond our control. We have to learn to survive and hold ourselves through both.
When scuba divers descend to the depths they want to reach, they have to release air from their gear and wear weights in order to sink. It is an exercise in precision, control and adaptability. It is also an exercise in surrender. In the face of whatever unknown, all you can do is know your tools, be informed about your environment (and the laws of physics), and hold onto what supports you. This full moon feels like that moment. It lets us know there is work we can’t avoid. It asks us what structures, rituals and knowledge we’ve gathered to support us. We can’t be sure of the mysteries that await in the darkness. But what we can trust is our own desire for change, because this eclipse season won’t be satisfied with a fresh layer of paint. Wherever the Taurus-Scorpio axis falls in our personal charts, there will be shifts, and it’s important to be fierce about our boundaries and what we can’t engage with.
Alongside the eclipses, Jupiter’s retrograde movement back into Pisces (starting on October 28th) will shift the tone of the month towards slowness and introspection. We’ve had several months of Jupiter in Aries motivating us to move fast and just go for it, so this final phase of Jupiter in its watery home sign should offer some reminders of the dreams and bigger visions we had at the beginning of the year.
If you want to do some exploration and get deeper into what this eclipse season might bring, here’s a tarot spread for you!
Card 1 (Skin): What is here to support me in maintaining the boundaries I need?
Card 2 (Lungs): How can I approach my mental processes and communication with care at this time?
Card 3 (Jaw): Where is my hunger ready to create change? What am I ready to get my teeth into?
Card 4 (Gut): What am I digesting and letting die during this time?
Card 5 (Blood): What is here to nourish and support me?
Card 6 (Bones): What deeper knowledge is ready to be excavated?
I hope it can offer some support and information as we move through this month. Take care of yourselves, focus on the essentials you need to feel in balance, and may this time bring you closer to yourselves!
