The Moon in Scorpio, the sign of its fall, grows mournful and macabre, and silently studies its environs, sizing up its surroundings. And, as it morphs from balsamic to new, becomes a black mirror, better for scrying than for seeing in the usual sense. While Mercury, coming out of a square to Pluto and heading towards Mars, takes the form of Odin leading the Wild Hunt, stampeding across the sky with the hounds of hell. He brings the prophetic messages, shocks, and insights of Uranus as Prometheus, pinioned in punishment to the rock, and sends back to him the disemboweling eagle of Zeus. Then, he shapeshifts into Charon the ferryman, and we are punting along on the River Styx, into the caves of our hearts and minds.

It’s a beautiful-dark-twisted fantasy-land, this Scorpionic inner and underworld, and the place where it is most clear that death, and life, are two sides of the same double-edged sword; or cut from the same cosmic cloth, and woven from the myriad threads of the Moirae. We are both old souls and newborns. Venom is both poison and medicine. The dead are ever present, in our memories, in our DNA, and just beyond the veil. The mortal coil is both a blessing and a curse; we are all alone and we are all together; no one gets out of here alive; and the only thing to fear is fear itself.

And as the Moon slips through undetected she pulls and swells the tides of grief, remorse, passion and pain, and delivers us onto the shores of our individual destinies, for a confrontation with Self. What shapes and shadows appear when you are alone with yourself and your thoughts? In what ways are you wicked, and in what ways wise? With skies such as this, we may feel pricked and provoked, our nerve endings on high alert. Sparks and irritants fly, threatening to detonate long-buried feelings and grievances. Our words may become weapons, as well as armor. But while we seethe, we sow seeds, for new stories of strength, survival, and personal growth to emerge throughout the upcoming eclipse season and beyond. This is not a comfortable lunation, nor month for that matter, but it will show us where our edges are, our trip wires and our triggers, all the better to know ourselves by. 

Images by Gustave Doré from Milton’s Paradise Lost