Insights for Scorpio
A Mercury Retrograde Month: Learn more, get aligned.
October 22:
Neptune re-enters Pisces: 12:38 PM EST
(As the Sun finishes its time in Libra for the year – before it takes on Scorpio – Neptune will re-enter Pisces where it will stay until January 26, 2026, for the last time in our lives. Neptune has a 148 year cycle through the zodiac. It has been in Pisces for the last 15 years. Here are some reflections on that time. I invite you to take a moment and conjure some of your own.)
Pisces and Neptune are symbols of dissolution – the misty realms where hallucination and delusion dance with the possibility of transcendence and the awareness of Oneness. Like the sea itself, Neptune is a great leveler, abhorring mono-culture while containing multitudes.
During Neptune’s stay in Pisces we’ve witnessed this duality manifest in striking ways. The growth of psychedelics as soul medicine stands alongside the opioid disaster. Tsunamis, floods, hurricanes and landslides like never before, mirror our collective emotional overwhelm. The paradoxical nature of Neptune and Pisces can even be seen in the way we throw garbage into the sea, trusting in its ultimate capacity to dissolve everything even as it creates an ugly and life-threatening danger for the inhabitants. We crave something sacred even as we desecrate our only habitat.
The Neptune-Pisces influence reveals itself in human nature. We’re as drawn to deception as we are to devotion. In our strange belief in things that are too good to be true we too easily place our trust in scam artists of all sorts. Spiritual hunger creates some strange and dangerous conditions.
Pisces contains a hidden cruelty alongside its famous tendency for compassion. As we prepare to leave the Age of Pisces we might reflect on the last 2000 years (not just the last 15). The overarching symbol for the Age of Pisces has been the fish, the fisher of men. There are miracles of loaves and fishes as well as baptism as a rite of belonging. Along with these very Piscean images has also been the image of torture and impossible suffering as part of worship. It is true that life inevitably includes loss and suffering but torture and cruelty is a choice we make.
Considering these qualities of the Age of Pisces can help us think about how we choose to enter the New Age of Aquarius as it struggles to be born.
Pisces is where all things merge – where we can lose ourselves in artificial highs or open ourselves to genuine cosmic consciousness. Neither state can last in the manifest world. Like shifting sands beneath our feet we must always return to empty the trash, pay the bills, and figure out what’s for lunch. Like it or not, here in the manifest world there are always consequences.
Sun enters Scorpio: 11:50 PM EDT
Mostly we do not remember the messy miracle of our birth: the blood and guts of it, the triumph and tragedies we risk to be here. And yet, they say, and it seems true, that the body remembers everything that ever happened to us, starting with birth (maybe even a bit before). Dying, at the other end of the journey, is also messy, challenging and miraculous in its own way, as the body releases a lifetime of memories.
This is Scorpio’s realm: fascination with the power of human existence, the mysterious way it happens to everyone and yet no two the same. The initiations and transformations of life are frightening, fascinating and powerful. Scorpio is about all these things. It marks this for us by containing the festival we know of as Halloween, also known as Samhain. One of the four most powerful days of the year which fall at the me midpoints between equinox and solstice (the actual day being different than the conventionally determined date of October 31st.) Halloween or Samhain is a time to remember our ancestors and consider what kind of ancestor we might be one day in the unthinkable future. The dead are everywhere as are the living. Such a Scorpio consideration.
As the Sun wends its way through Scorpio it will square Pluto, trine Neptune and Saturn, oppose Uranus, and trine Jupiter. Engagement with all three outer planets asks us to remain awake to the future we are creating. This year the Sun in Scorpio will conjunct Mercury retrograde, always a reminder to reflect deeply.
You can follow along below.
October 23
Jupiter square Chiron
It’s ok not to be happy all the time. To allow the discomfort and even the pain of knowing that how we live isn’t really ‘fair’ or ‘just’. Caring starts with feeling.
October 24
Sun square Pluto
Mercury trine Jupiter
To some extent how fearful we are is a choice. For those living ‘business as usual’ lives this is quite true today. Denial feeds fear, while we aren’t looking. Engagement with the people and situations we fear allows us to think with our guts. If decisions must be made today, knowing how we feel means everything. Ignorance is not bliss.
October 25
Mercury trine Saturn
Continuing the theme of thinking as we stay connected to our feelings; a little like patting the head while rubbing the stomach, for those who aren’t in the habit.
October 28
Mars trine Jupiter
Thinking with our feelings doesn’t give permission to act recklessly. Others have feelings too! The most powerful actions come when we know how we feel and consider consequences, including how it might affect the feelings of others. Empathy strengthens our ability to see and hold truth.
October 29
Mercury trine Neptune
Mercury enters Sagittarius
Mars trine Saturn
Mercury opposite Uranus
As Mercury and Mars come to the late degrees of Scorpio and then the early degrees of Sagittarius (October 25 – November 5) they pluck the strings of the intense collective transition we are in. The chaos which intense change brings isn’t going away any time soon. So what’s a person to do? This is not a case of one size fits all. How we perceive the conditions of our world depends on our stage of life as well as our resources, responsibilities, abilities and disabilities. Parents of young children see things differently than elders. Teens and young adults can see things quite differently than mid-lifers. Dive in! Listen to others with different ideas. Be the change, embrace the chaos which doesn’t require you, personally to fall apart.
October 30
Mercury sextile Pluto
Visionary ideas may seem delusional at the moment. Not so. We need to shoot our arrows into the Sun from time to time, especially when circumstances seem impossible.
October 31
Time to dress as your favorite dead person. Celebrate the ancestors. Cavort in the graveyard. Once they were as alive as we are. One day we will join them in the realm of the ancestors: Scorpio’s greatest message to us all. Reminder: Go easy on the sugar. Too much feeds the wrong ghosts.
November 2
Venus opposite Chiron
Venus square Jupiter
What if you allowed yourself to be touched by the beauty of this world at the same time as you were aware of the profound injustices which only allow some of us to sense and participate in that beauty? What might happen if you could hold the tension of the soul’s need for beauty and the body’s need for shelter, nourishment and connection at the same time? There is no telling.
November 4
Mars enters Sagittarius
Mars opposite Uranus
Today isn’t our only shot at the big idea or the great notion but it does seem a good time to aim an arrow at the sun and see what happens. There will likely be other times for this in the spring but that is then. Now is the bird in the hand… In these topsy-turvy times we try and try again. The courage which creativity requires allows new things to reveal themselves.
November 5
Full Moon: 13* Taurus: 08:19 AM EST
Given that love and loss are made from the same ingredients what can you do about it? The body is an exquisite instrument of pleasure as well as pain. You live in it. Things which appear as opposites are often two ends of the same thing. At this Full Moon celebrate the bittersweet, joyful sorrows of the world. However it falls to you to do so.
These three days (today, tomorrow and the next day) are the actual midpoint between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. The veil between worlds is thin.
November 6
Mars sextile Pluto
Venus enters Scorpio
Change is destabilizing but it also offers opportunity. Opportunity isn’t always about ‘more’ and ‘better’. Lest we forget or forego such gifts…
November 7
Uranus enters Taurus
Venus square Pluto
Just like with Neptune for the last time in Pisces, Uranus will spend its last days in Taurus (for the next 84 year). Uranus has been mostly in Taurus for about 7+ years. The Trump years, you might say. The Wrecking Ball. One of the things about traumatic events is that we don’t actually recover ourselves as if they never happened. Difficult events and experiences are ingredients which need to be incorporated into the magic cauldron of our lived lives. However you anticipate the next 6 months (till April 25th) it is bound to be somewhat of a ride.
It isn’t about a glass half full or empty. It is about living in a world that will not return to its former way of being. Uranus breaks things open as well as apart. Awareness of change is empowering. Anticipation can create anxiety. These are the times of our lives.
November 9
Mercury Stationary Retrograde: 6 degrees of Sagittarius
You can read more about this here or almost anywhere on the internet. Don’t Panic! Mercury is retrograde 3X a year, like clockwork. Definitely time to read the small print and to measure twice because you only get to cut once.
This one, specifically, asks us to consider and contemplate how, on our way to a future we hardly recognize as hospitable to humans, we can stay connected to our feelings and draw strength from the truth of them.
November 11
Jupiter stationery retrograde
When planets station it’s as though they want our attention. You could say, they always want our attention but it’s a little stronger for the week before and after a station. Jupiter in Cancer speaks of blessings, especially the ones we share with others. Everybody has something. Everybody needs something.
November 12
Mars conjunct Mercury
Usually it’s Mercury that aspects a faster moving planet, such as Mars. But due to the retrograde station Mercury is moving slower than Mars this week and so Mars is catching up to Mercury.
Consider this a suggestion to slow down your reaction time. Let your mind catch up to your actions. Separate the past from the present and marvel at the way something that happened years ago can feel as though it is happening here and now. When Mercury is cazimi (conjunct) the Sun it stands at the heart. But Mars is not about heart, it’s about passion, pure and unadulterated. How would your passion choose to act? Tell a story, make a picture. The Lord of the Dance is calling.
November 17
Sun trine Jupiter
Sun trine Saturn
Mercury (retro) sextile Pluto
Look for the blessings. It is too easy to focus on what is going wrong. Jupiter and Saturn in water signs remind us that charity can seem condescending. Generosity benefits all, including, maybe especially, the giver. What feels good about generosity isn’t that it shows you as better than the person in need. Possibly it is the feeling of acting in a way that fosters a world you would like to inhabit. Mercury and Pluto encourage a bit of philosophical musing on all subjects but particularly the ones that have to do with our sense of being at odds with a world that seems to limit or disrupt our capacity for generosity toward all that lives.
November 18
Mercury Rx re-enters Scorpio
Be honest about your feelings. Good, bad or indifferent, they hold the key to the mystery of your being.
November 19
Mercury opposite Uranus
Mercury trine Neptune
Knowing how we feel and willingness to simply feel it offers some protection amidst the fluctuations of the world. You may not always act the way you feel but it is empowering to be aware of the deep motivations in your soul.
November 20
New Moon: 28* Scorpio: 01:47 AM EST
Mercury conjunct the Sun (Cazimi)
Uranus sextile Neptune
A culmination of the practice of knowing and allowing yourself to feel what you feel (anyway) suggests that the time is right for creating intentions which are rooted deep within us. We know what we know. We don’t need to be happy or sad about it. But on account of this our intention is clear and includes a willingness to invite the Universe to come meet and mingle with it and bring it to fruition in some way.
November 21
Sun oppose Uranus and trines Neptune in the morning
Sun enters Sagittarius 8:35 PM EST
Scorpio hands the reigns to Sagittarius today (depending on your time zone). All that delving into the depths of feeling is ready to get on its horse and ride. Today is a month from winter solstice. You could think of it as Advent. Sagittarius is about hope, faith and visions for a better world as we prepare for the birth of the Sun into a New Year.