Writer Jeanette Winterson ‘gets’ the allure of Scorpio, even if she never mentions the word in her recent piece for The Guardian about why she adores the night. I am tempted to paste her entire piece here, because it is so gorgeous in its imagery, and in its seductively simple understanding of why the long nights of late fall invite ways of understanding ourselves that the long days of summer cannot provide.
For example, she writes that there is a complicity in darkness when it provides the backdrop for late afternoon lovemaking; the “slow extended time of love and night” creating a different kind of bonding with the body of your unseen lover; a contentment that is warm and heavy.
Winterson acknowledges the alchemical contrast between the cold darkness outdoors (or cold dark of your bedroom) and the warmth and light of a fire in the hearth. Or between the limited, insulating glow of a candle illuminating only what is immediate, and leaving a vast expanse of frosty night around you — extending even to within your home.
The night opens its arms to our dreaming. Regarding the value of the dreamtime to human wellbeing, including in solving difficult problems, she writes, “The night allows this dream time, and the heavier, thicker dark of winter gives us a chance to dream a little while we are awake — a kind of reverie or meditation, the constellation of slowness, silence and darkness that sits under the winter stars.”
Winterson’s love of the darkness of this season even extends to food:
“When friends from London arrive, high on electric light, like hamsters on a 24/7 wheel, I slow them down by feeding them food with darkness sealed in it: deep red venison stewed in claret, carp from the bottom of the river, root vegetables grown in rich black earth.”
There is something in her essay that has described to me the beauty of Scorpio. This sign holds mysteries in its very vibration, as does the night. Fittingly, Scorpio is a ‘night’ sign (though there are five others around the zodiac, and six corresponding ‘day’ signs); it is the ‘night house’ of Mars, while Aries is the ‘day house’.
It should perhaps be no surprise, then, that the mysteries of sexual surrender — or of the surrender of life, which we call death — cannot be unlocked to equal effect in the brightness of the spring (Aries) equinox. Even though spring holds the magic of new life. Yes, people die and make love in all seasons, all weather, day or night. That’s not what I mean.
I mean that, as Winterson points out, the daylight orients us on our external experiences. It is the night, the darkness — Scorpio — that compels us inward: to our secrets; to the subterranean well of our emotions; to the existential fear of annihilation we all face when nothing is able to mirror us back to ourselves. Are we dead in that moment? No; but we face the abyss of the unknowable to which we all, at some point, must succumb.
That can be terrifying. Perhaps there is something about Scorpio’s intimacy with the dark that fuels this sign’s legendary sharpness, cruelty and possessiveness; a kind of reaction in less-evolved Scorpionic souls, who lack the inner stillness that imparts a sense of oneness with the abyss.
And yet… There is much comfort to be found in the dark, in the reprieve from always being “on” just like a fluorescent light bulb. The darkness gives us a space that the light cannot — a space that can be generative and womb-like. (Winterson describes that ideas come to her in the dark that would have no chance against the distractions visible with the lights on.) Scorpio does rule the generative system (the genitals), by means of which we come into the world. Why shouldn’t the seed of idea need darkness to germinate, just like the seed of any other fruit?
But how does Scorpio as a zodiac sign hold up in practice against these musings about the dark as holding as much comfort as fear, renewal alongside dangerous annihilation?
Legendary occultist Aleister Crowley writes, in The General Principles of Astrology, that the Scorpio native is “easily aroused to anger and makes a most dangerous enemy.” Yet immediately following, he remarks how tremendous contrast is possible between the evolved and the un-evolved Scorpionic soul:
“But it is doubtful if any sign in the zodiac illustrates so markedly the contrast between the spiritually awakened soul and its opposite. Crafty and cunning, with intense passions and jealousies, and with a vindictiveness which will wreak insatiable revenges, the Scorpio becomes, under higher impulses, indefatigable in his desire to help mankind, and his coldness and insensibility to the sufferings of others is transmuted into devotion and self-sacrifice. The coolness of demeanor and stern sense of justice and integrity, together with uncontrollable desire for freedom, may degenerate into harshness, selfishness and discontent, or blossom into efficiency, sympathy and true generosity.”
Similarly, Alice A. Bailey, in Esoteric Astrology, says of Scorpio, “Pride, seprativeness and cruelty. Remember that the worst kind of cruelty is not of a physical nature but is more mental in character.” Bailey also describes Scorpio’s “tests of appetite,” which seems to mean “control” — that is, that mind over emotion, or the mental regulation of emotion, is the core ‘test’ of Scorpio, as Eric Francis has explained it.
Bailey adds, “The keynote of Scorpio, however, is triumph. That is its major expression upon the physical plane.” We hear this echoed in Crowley’s description of this sign’s indefatigable nature.
Scorpio is traditionally ruled by Mars — hence the combative impulses, the competition, the doggedness in pursuing what is desired (whether that be sex, punishment, justice or something else). In our modern day culture of never-ending war and sexual chaos, it can be easy to relegate Mars to the status of pugilist or sex addict (or both).
However, Bailey also notes that it must “never be forgotten that Mars establishes relations between the opposites and is a beneficent and not a malefic factor, as is so often supposed.” She adds that Scorpio is about “the process of reorientation.” But reorientation on what?
It is worth remembering that Scorpio’s modern ruler, Pluto, is just as necessary an ingredient in our lives, despite our extreme discomfort with it (or outright fear of it). One of Pluto’s key phrases is “change or die.” Even taken at a metaphoric level — the “death” of some old way of being or behaving — this scares people enough that many try to avoid it at all costs. Our culture is rife with ways to numb yourself to any impulse to change that might be desperately trying to push though your consciousness.
Speaking of consciousness: right now, the Sun (ego, awareness) and Mercury (intellect, communication) are both in Scorpio, providing the filter through which we experience the rest of the sky, shading the tones of our consciousness. Incidentally, Mercury is the esoteric ruler of Scorpio, according to Bailey.
I have a few friends who simply adore the themes and energy of “Scorpio Season,” in the same way Winterson relishes the long nights this season hastens in. To bring this Scorpionic contemplation full circle, a couple of the astrological aspects germinating as we end the week relate directly to the images she paints with her words.
The first is a trine between Mercury in early Scorpio to Neptune in early Pisces, exact Friday. Here is your invitation to submerge yourself in the dreamtime, whether asleep or in a waking reverie, as Winterson describes. We need the dreamtime, as we need the darkness, for our wellbeing on all levels.
Mercury-Neptune trines can be inspirational, poetic and creative, and indicate psychic or mystic aptitude — note that the veil between the worlds is still thin (in fact, the Sun reaches the midpoint of Scorpio on Saturday). I make no promises about anything you try with a ouija board. But there are other ways — more internal and less performative — to explore your sensitivity to the subtler aspects of life. Your dreams and visions could be of great benefit to you; they can carry a practical idealism to them right now. As noted, Scorpio is a persevering sign.
The second aspect is Venus in Virgo (a Mercury-ruled earth sign) opposite Vesta in Aries (a Mars-ruled fire sign), exact Saturday. In her essay, Winterson juxtaposes the chilly bedroom and frosty darkness outdoors with her roaring fire and flickering candles, reveling in the sensual, invigorating frisson produced by the contrast.
Astrologically, Venus-Vesta in these signs shows us a cool, detached desire to serve confronted by the active embodiment of devotion: the hearth itself, the blazing erotic core at the center of each one of us.
Fire, water, darkness, emotion, sex, death; all of these things might ask us to surrender. Perhaps Scorpio, like Vesta, really asks that we surrender to devotion. Could that be the reorientation Bailey speaks of? Let me know if you find out.
This article appears in November 2015.
