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Can you smell summer receding and hear winter approaching through the comforting crunch of dead leaves underfoot?
That can mean only one thing: Scorpio season hath arrived in its customary puff of theatrical smoke, psychological warfare, and leather accents.
In her poem “Elm,” famous — and famously suicidal — Scorpio Sylvia Plath writes, “I am terrified by this dark thing / That sleeps in me; / All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.”
That same dark thing beats in the tender goth hearts of all Scorpions, but the best and brightest among them learn — through a lifetime of trial, trauma, and error — to transmute that darkness into luminous survival.
First day of Scorpio season
Scorpio season begins this year on October 22nd and reigns through November 21.
There is perhaps no zodiac sign more maligned or misunderstood than Scorpio. Scorpio is a fixed sign, making those born beneath it passionate and goal-oriented at best and obsessively ruthless at worst.
As a water sign, Scorpio is associated with oceanic emotion, psychic intuition, and profound transformation.
The gift of an actualized Scorpio is being able to show others that there is a way through the dark and that what awaits you on the other side can be better than anything you may have shed to get there.
Scorpio season 2024
Getty Images/iStockphoto
Scorpio intrinsically understands that death is the currency that gives life value. It is thus no coincidence that Halloween, the ancient Celtic festival Samhain, and the Mexican holiday Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) — occasions that revere the life cycle — fall during Scorpio season.
These observances and Scorpio season at large create a collective atmosphere of grief and remembrance.
This time is, in essence, an invitation to honor our ancestors, practice uncompromising love for the living, and praise the pain we are dealt as evidence of our fugitive existence.
Planetary ruler: Mars + Pluto
In ancient astrology, Mars was the ruling planet of Scorpio.
Named for the god of war, Mars is the jock planet of sex and aggression. It gets things done and is driven by the pure desire to win, exhibited in the cool, competitive streak that lives within each Scorpio.
Pluto became the modern ruler of Scorpio when the planet was discovered in 1930. Named for the maiden-snatching, shadow-dwelling god of the underworld, the small but mighty planet Pluto is associated with destruction, subversion, depth, intensity, primal urges, the taboo, the criminal, the subterranean, subconscious forces, and the dark and dangerous that beats below the veneer of civilization and the crust of the Earth itself.
Sunny stuff, it ain’t.
In addition to having two planetary rulers, Scorpio is represented by more than one creature.
Transformation
Besides its arachnidan namesake, Scorpio is associated with the serpent, the eagle, and the ash-born glory of the rising phoenix. The snake and the eagle demonstrate the high and low manifestations of Scorpio energy, which can register as either regal or reptilian.
Together, these totems represent the cycle of subconscious discovery, shadow acceptance, and the separation of our lesser selves from our potential selves. The journey from scorpion to phoenix reminds us all that we must descend in order to soar.
Charms/strengths
Subterranean brilliance
With that trajectory, it’s unsurprising that many of our greatest and most fearless poets and painters fall under the stars of Scorpio: Pablo Picasso, Robert Mapplethorpe, Georgia O’Keeffe, Ana Mendieta, Maxine Hong Kingston, Dylan Thomas, Margaret Atwood, Frank Ocean, and the late great playwright Sam Shepard.
Shepard’s approach to life and storytelling has a decidedly Scorpionic spirit, writing in 1997, “The most authentic endings are the ones which are already revolving towards another beginning.”
For Scorpio, there is no allowance for the middle ground — only a desire to dig for and towards what lies beneath. By default, Scorpios make for excellent investigators, psychologists, and forensic accountants.
Low-key psychic, human bulls–t detectors
Scorpios see and read the matrix of the universe, the dimensions, dynamics, and the demons, as casually as others see street signs.
Scorpios are prone to psychic tendencies not only because they live close to the edge but also because they are more curious about death and the paranormal than they are frightened by it. This is the sort that looks for the dark in everything and everyone and welcomes the chance to play show and tell with the abyss.
Bonus: Scorpios have an unparalleled sense for sniffing out deception and forgery, making them aces not only at inviting psychic phenomena but also outing frauds.
The rizz
Capable of changing and charging the energy of a room, Scorpios never fail to leave an impression.
As the most powerful sign in the zodiac, they have the uncanny, unsettling, and deeply sexy ability to direct all of their attention and ambition at a single point, be it vengeance, world domination, Monopoly deal, or a potential partner.
It doesn’t blink, it smells like old sweat on new leather, and it works.
Challenges/Weaknesses
Vengeful/obsessive
As the sign of shadows and extremes, Scorpio, at its lowest vibration, is prone to obsession, vengeance, envy, and well-practiced emotional manipulation tactics. These modalities can be activated in the Scorpio psyche by friends, lovers, enemies, or adversaries.
Deciding who, however, is an unending journey for Scorpio, who feels and fears the sting of betrayal more acutely than any other sign in the zodiac.
This fixed water sign forgets nothing and forgives even less. Secretive AF and versed in waiting for the right time to strike, Scorpio plays the long game like Katy Perry who waited until she was an established pop star on stage at her alma matter to call out a dude in the crowd who slighted her in high school, heckling him with, “You never wanted to date me… you really chose well, honey. What’s up now, playa?’”
Burn, bro.
For some Scorpios, getting even means leveling the playing field or ice rink, as was the case for Tonya Harding, who helped orchestrate the brutal baton beating of her rival Nancy Kerrigan in 1994. In a full circle or whole turn of the zodiac wheel, Kerrigan, who has a Scorpio moon went on to best her enemy in the Winter Olympics, securing silver medal vengeance.
Envy
Concerned with power and control, Scorpio is determined to get theirs and to make it to the top.
Ruled by planet Pluto, matters of desire always feel like matters of life and death to a scorpion. Fearful of their capacity for devotion, they actively anticipate loss and betrayal. It is almost as if they believe they can inoculate themselves against pain if they operate from a place of vigilant suspicion.
When you’re a Scorpio, it’s top bitch billing or bust .
When you think you’re fated to lose, you hold on tight, folks, like Scorpio matriarch/momager Kris Jenner, who has admitted to being jealous of her partner’s ex-wives and female pets alike.
Why? Because when you’re a Scorpio, it’s top bitch billing or bust my babies.
Paranoia
In combat, Scorpio comes armed with heightened intuition that shares a fine line with — and often veers violently into — paranoia. Rather than deny or repress these tendencies, Scorpio is charged with investigating their insecurities to discover the foundational wound that created them.
Scorpio’s dark and draconian mechanizations are an expression of fear, and uncovering the root system of that fear allows them to claim power over it.
Tarot
In the major arcana of the tarot, the sign of Scorpio is represented by the Death card. Fittingly, the operative style of Scorpio is memento mori: They exist as skulls, waning hourglasses, and rotten fruit in the paintings of yore to remind us that life is brief and death is inevitable.
The operative style of Scorpio is memento mori: They exist as skulls, waning hourglasses, and rotten fruit in the paintings of yore to remind us that life is brief and death is inevitable.
This energy is not to be understood as grim but urgent — a call to be conscious of the ephemeral nature of time and to be present in each moment of it.
The Eighth House
In astrology, Scorpio rules the eighth house, synonymous with the transference of energy: sex, literal and metaphorical death, psychic abilities, resurrection, the unseen, and other people’s money.
The negative manifestation of this house can be found in the cutthroat energy of organized crime, operating below the surface, beyond the law, and for the express purpose of gaining assets and building power through dubious means.
This nefarious but decidedly dynamic energy is epitomized by the late, convicted mafia boss John Gotti and outlaw Billy the Kid, both criminal and criminally stylish Scorpios.
At its greatest expression, eighth house energy stands boldly in the face of darkness.
An actualized Scorpio and an empowered eighth house understand that wholeness is impossible without the acknowledgment and integration of our shadow selves: the parts of us that are wounded, shameful, and difficult.
Eighth-house energy flows when the dark side of all matter and all people is acknowledged, examined, and honored. The eighth house reveals hidden truths and mines the unconscious, and its power can be positively channeled into study and investigation.
Body
In terms of the physical body, Scorpio rules the reproductive organs. While there is indubitably a powerful component of sexuality in Scorpio’s nature, this sign does nothing casually, and sex is rarely pursued for the physical act alone.
Scorpio is ultimately seeking profound intimacy, the transformative power of surrender, and the dissolution that can occur when two bodies share a heightened energetic exchange.
That said, they’re known to settle for trauma bonding or getting to third base in a graveyard.
Compatibility
The most powerful sign in the zodiac, Scorpio loves hard and holds on tight. They won’t settle for less than obsession and go to great lengths to preserve the sanctity of their relationships. Who is most compatible with the power and pinch of Scorpio?
True astrological compatibility is divined through synastry, the art of examining, comparing, and interpreting birth charts. For our more generalized purposes, it’s safe to say that the following sign combinations have a decent shot at a relationship — or, at the very least, a memorable affair.
Fellow water signs Cancer and Pisces make for an empathetic equal to Scorpio’s intense emotionality. Taurus, Scorpio’s zodiac opposite, encourages forays into lighthearted pleasure and earthly delights, while Virgo wins points for their dedication to service and practical approach to love.
Ideal match: Aries
The only thing Scorpio craves more than intimacy, insider trading, and the tears of virgins is intensity, and Aries, the fire-starting firstborn sign in the zodiac, is happy to oblige. These two are both ruled by the warrior planet Mars, a distinction that suggests they are willing to go to battle for and with each other, an all-or-nothing energy exhibited by Scorpio Travis Barker and Aries Kourtney Kardashian.
Astrology 101: Your guide to the star
Heartbreak = hell
Chemistry and compatibility aside, one thing is certain: heartbreak is hellfire for a Scorpio.
Case in point: Scorpio singer Ryan Adams who, in 2018, reacted to news of his ex-wife Mandy Moore’s new relationship by going on an ill-advised and allegedly chemically induced Twitter rage in which he called Moore the “spiritual equivalent of a soggy piece of cardboard” and revealed he was so high at their wedding that he apparently has no memory of it.
He later apologized but Moore — and the internet — apparently have not yet forgotten.
Recommended listening:
Astrologer Reda Wigle researches and irreverently reports on planetary configurations and their effect on each zodiac sign. Her horoscopes integrate history, poetry, pop culture and personal experience. To book a reading, visit her website
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