Scorpio's One More Big 'Sting'

10.18.14


On Thursday (Oct 23), we welcome the latest solar eclipse… a super-powered New Moon (i.e., a conjunction of the Sun and the Moon, adjacent to the Moon's nodes) which serves as a potent intention-setting occasion for flipping ourselves to the next chapter in our life's-story.

This solar eclipse occurs in the very first degree of Scorpio, once again highlighting the scorpion-sign which has been a primary headline-maker over these past many months.

Because the first degree of any zodiac-sign is considered to be a power-spot, a zone which bestows a concentrated dose of that sign's archetypal qualities upon any point that passes through, I interpret this particular eclipse as carrying an especially Scorpionic charge… as if to give us one more ideal chance to undertake and/or readdress any Scorpio-related actions or efforts we haven't sufficiently handled up until now.

Scorpio is the sign of that which lurks beneath the surface: submerged feelings, deep secrets, forbidden passions, impolite truths, those primitive or primal psychological drives which we all possess, and which we often attempt to disavow in our efforts to be 'civilized' or 'mature' until they become triggered, and suddenly we're behaving like crazed, lustful, jealous, bloodthirsty, paranoid, blindly romantic and/or powerfully manipulative messes of extreme emotion.

Scorpio-type experiences are not for the faint-at-heart. Yet, we need them if we wish to live an emotionally honest, psychologically integrated life. The other de facto choice? Denying whatever inside ourselves is too uncomfortable, upsetting, or 'irrational' to claim as our own. But that only works insofar as we resign ourselves to a superficial, flattened-out existence, divorced from our latent desire-state—and even then, likelier than not, we'll just attract Scorpio energies from the outside world, forcing us to deal with the unintegrated dark-material in others as a projected surrogate for what we aren't dealing with in ourselves.

Nothing about this type of understanding should come as a novel shock, as we've all been directly contending with these closer-up confrontations with our complication-addled psyches since Saturn first landed in Scorpio back in October 2012… and their urgency was only intensified during Mars's recent transit through Scorpio, which included a conjunction with Saturn back in August. Our Saturn work over these two years has demanded we dig deep into the dirt, to face head-on what had previously seemed too threatening to our 'enlightened' or 'evolved' self-conceptions—or, otherwise, to endure increasingly intense or painful consequences for refusing to acknowledge our real feelings with brutal honesty. For those of us who had instead been living too totally by passion or desire alone, Saturn in Scorpio has sought to moderate our extremes of experience… revealing the disruptive or destructive ramifications of not properly considering the value of practical goals, fairness for other parties, and/or a reasonable level of stability alongside the compelling emotional draws.

This work is starting to approach its conclusion as Saturn finishes his time in Scorpio. Saturn will enter Sagittarius in late December (with a brief retreat back into Scorpio between June and September 2015), where his lessons will entail (among other things) an encounter with the unfortunate repercussions of moving too quickly ahead toward 'the heart of the excitement' without diligently managing the less-'exciting' details that might slow us down or rain on the proverbial parade. During these final months of Saturn in Scorpio, then, it behooves us to delve and purge, confess and come clean… if only to more thoroughly free us up to take positive advantage of Saturn's joining with Jupiter in Leo and Uranus in Aries in a lineup of increasingly synergistic, action-oriented fire-sign planets.

This is also the last in a series of Scorpio eclipses which began at roughly the same time Saturn entered Scorpio, inaugurated by a total solar eclipse in Scorpio back in November 2012. We won't see another Scorpio-flavored eclipse event until May 2022, further emphasizing the 'last-chance' character of this present eclipse period. Because solar eclipses are such a powerful moment for planting seeds and initiating endeavors, this final Scorpio one invites us to carry out one more big 'sting'… to put a finishing cap on all we've processed and pushed through over these past couple years, and/or to root out those stubborn clumps of unprocessed psychological matter from their hiding-places once and for all, taking total ownership over everything in our emotional makeup, the good, the bad and, yes, the ugly, too.

One lovely feature to this eclipse we mustn't leave out: Just a mere hour before the eclipse is exact, Venus will move into Scorpio, creating a very tight conjunction with the Sun and Moon and adding her benefic influence to the whole production. True, Venus isn't traditionally considered to be at her best in Scorpio (i.e., a sign where she's in her detriment), but that's mainly because she can't help but create relational complications, forsaking the innocent idealism of an easy association for her more eyes-wide-open awareness of the inescapable tradeoffs which all interpersonal dealings require.

In the interpretation I'm spinning, Venus-in-Scorpio's presence at that same critical first-degree of Scorpio alongside the eclipsed Sun is a signal for us to express our gratitude for these complicating relationship circumstances: Though they may rankle our nerves, get under our skin, and inhibit our independent capacity to behave however we wish without our facing fallout, they also expose us to emotional undercurrents we otherwise might neglect to notice, promoting self-knowledge while building interpersonal intimacy. We trade an 'easier' (if not boring and lifeless) autonomy for a fuller and more rewarding (albeit bumpier, more intense and attention-consuming) life of authentic connectedness. Not a bad tradeoff, actually, if we're purposefully—and gratefully—signing on for it. Bear that in mind if your eclipse intentions will involve relational responses, releases, or reorientations.

Shortly following the solar eclipse, Mercury in Libra will return to direct motion after a three-week retrograde on Saturday (Oct 25), making it back into Scorpio on Nov 8 and clearing the retrograde's shadow a couple days later. Then Mars will enter Capricorn on Sunday (Oct 26), a shift that enhances his strength by situating him in the sign of his exaltation. This shift also means that Mars and Saturn will be in mutual reception, or each placed in a sign the other rules (according to the traditional rulership schema, which posits Mars as the ruler of Scorpio), enabling them to augment one another's effectiveness. Mars in Capricorn is a master at calculating longer-range successes, based on conscientiously acting in ways which mete out its assertions of desire over time, aiming to win the whole race rather than expelling all its assertive energies too prematurely. Functioning as a team, this Mars will be the perfect tool for carrying out Saturn's last-chance Scorpio work prior to its passage into Sagittarius.

Mars will be in Capricorn through December 4. Venus will be in Scorpio through November 16.