Coles Phillips for LIFE Magazine

It is now the season of Scorpio, and time to honor this alluring and many-sided sign. Those born with the Sun in Scorpio have a soul contract with complexity; with the taboo; and with their own humanity. For Scorpio natives, experiences of sexuality, mortality, and all of the mileposts of life are initiations into the mysteries; thresholds of transformation. Under the rulership of Pluto and Mars, pain and passion are the greatest teachers. They are the blacksmith’s furnace—melting, shaping and forging daggers and an iron will.

As a fixed water sign, Scorpio is the well; the cistern; the pipes that run below ground; the blood that runs in our veins. The still outer surface conceals secret worlds and underworlds. The controlled exterior belies the dramatic depths of the mind and soul. 

Scorpio is attributed many animal symbols. Foremost and self-evident is the scorpion, armed with scales, pincers and venomous tail; a survivor on this planet for eons. The gifts of the scorpion are a penetrating mind, a stinging wit, strong defenses, and staying power. Learning how to control the striking temper, and how to let down the defenses every once in a while, are the lessons to be learned. 

Scorpio is also identified with the eagle. Acumen, tenacity, sharp senses, and an imperious demeanor are the gifts of the majestic predator. Learning how to manage and wield their power is the lesson. 

Scorpio has associations with the serpent, ancient symbol of creation, regeneration and the Divine Feminine. The snake values her privacy and leads a solitary life. While she is capable of attacking when provoked, she is not the monster that myth makes her out to be. To the thin-skinned and sensitive creature, the horror with which people recoil when they see her is, she feels, hurtful and undeserved. Wisdom, healing abilities, and insight into human nature are the gifts of the serpent. Being the recipient of others’ fear-based projections is the lesson to be navigated. 

When you combine these potent, primordial beasts in the alchemical bath, you end up with the final Scorpionic emblem: the phoenix. The mythical creature that periodically burns itself to ashes only to rise up anew, the phoenix represents the Scorpio native’s shamanic ability to touch death, probe the underworld, penetrate the unconscious, shoulder others’ pain, and still come back to life. Thus, as evoked in the iconic poem of Maya Angelou, who had Scorpio on the IC (roots, lineage, homeland), a motto for those born under the sign of the phoenix are three powerful words: “Still I rise.”