The Truth about Scorpios!
This is the November 2013 Starwheel Newsletter from Michael Conneely. Out every month, my start of the month Newsletter focusses on Astrology – especially the ‘Happy Birthday Sign’: This month it’s Scorpio.
But watch out, also, for my mid-month Newsletter which focuses on Earth spirituality including Shamanic Healing, Ogham and Runes. The mid-November 2013 Newsletter will include details of:
a. The launch of my new spiritual guide book: ‘The Backpacker’s Guide to the New Spirituality 2014’, written together with Maggie Pashley and Carol Michael.
b. Associated new Certificated Distance Learning Courses and Healings linked to the Backpacker’s Guide in Energy Healing, Sacred Sweat Lodge ‘Lodge Keeper’ Apprenticeship, Druid Path and Wicca. Maggie will be adding the detials of these new courses to the Earthstarweb website any day.
c. There will also be reviews of two books by Ellen Evert Hopman: ‘Priestess of the Forest’ and ‘Druid Isle’, plus: Emma Restall Orr’s ‘The Apple and the Thorn’ and Marcus Losack’s ‘Rediscovering Saint Patrick’.
But back to Scorpios: SUN IN SCORPIO : OCTOBER 23 – NOVEMBER 22
Did you know that there is a Solar Eclipse in Scorpio on Sunday November 3rd at 12.50 GMT? See my Blog posting on this: http://wp.me/p179Ad-i2
My partner Maggie Pashley even got refused a flat-share, when she was younger, when the organiser discovered she was a Scorpio! Scorpios have a terrible reputation; they are potent for good or evil, but you need to understand that there are actually three different levels of Scorpio:
Higher Scorpio
Lower Scorpio
Shadow Scorpio.
The Higher Scorpio’s glyph is the eagle. These are the Mahatmas, who have transcended selfish passions and lead a path of spiritual or psychological transformation. They have faced the Hydra (see below) within themselves, and held it up to the Light. They redeem the world and heal and bless suffering others.
The Lower Scorpio’s glyph is the scorpion, about whom most of this analysis is addressed
But the Shadow Scorpios will even sting themselves to death: ‘Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven’. It will vary to what degree the Shadow manifests.
Scorpio Key Words:
Secretive, passionate, emotional, intense, highly-sexed, possessive, jealous, spiritual, penetrating, sharp, observant, determined, dedicated, resourceful, unshakeable; generous or stringent to a fault. Smouldering. Hints of fathomless depths. Proud, Tends to keep others at a distance. Blunt, provocative and confrontational. Often react against authority. Ambitious. Shrewd and enterprising. Investigative. Coercive, into Power Issues.
Appearance:
Often has very piercing gaze, can be magnetic. Mouth can be fish-shaped or wide and straight. Often thick hair and squarish skull shape.
Defects:
Vindictiveness, power-crazed, scheming, control-freak, driving, workaholic, fails to realise that others are made differently, re-making others, paranoia.
Ruler – Pluto (and Mars)
The real truth: The Vedic Lunar Signs behind the western astrology sign of Scorpio. These Lunar Signs, or Nakshatras are as follows. Please see my separate starwheel Blog which describes the destinies and characteristics of these different types of Scorpio http://wp.me/p179Ad-i5 :
Swati (23 October -6 November)
Vishakha (6 November – 19) November)
Anuradha (19 November -2 December)
SCORPIO CHARACTERISTICS:
Scorpios learned in childhood to mistrust. They saw dark shadows standing behind their parents. The gates of Hell yawned open at the outer edges of their religious teaching and their education. Scorpios are often masked or enigmatic. They are suspicious and afraid of being hurt. Some hide their profound feeling and sensitivity behind an habitual smokescreen. They are proud, and can’t see that it is sometimes necessary, even courageous, to yield. They can be brooding, neurotic or egotistical.
Scorpios are very subjective and concerned with their own personal values, and can be downright fanatical in their views about people and life – fanaticism which can spur them on to unpleasant, even evil actions and biased, distorted judgement. Facts confuse an issue!
They are very attuned to the shadow in others, and can intuit others’ dark side very quickly. Mistrust of others’ motives can be crippling.
They loathe superficiality. They loathe weakness of character, but can care for the weak or those who need to be healed.
They are sympathetic and compassionate, BUT they are also very ready to be ruthless. Although they respond to suffering, pain and loneliness, they are intolerant of weakness: they feel that no matter what sort of mess you are in, you can do something about it – they fail to realise that people are made differently, and not everyone has their capacity for ruthless self-discipline or their potential for self-transformation.
They are driven by a voracious need for relationship, but their fear of being hurt &/or their power issues can leave them intensely lonely and without partnership for years, or forever.
Scorpio has a great problem relinquishing control: this means control on a lot of levels: spontaneous showing of emotion, controlling other people, arch-manipulators who pull strings all around them to keep the world in its place. Some make absolute power their ultimate goal.
Scorpios are all-or-nothing about work. They commit themselves to whatever they do. They ruthlessly move mountains.
Their insight enables them to outsmart, avoid or bludgeon their way to what they want. – they can wait for years, if necessary, to achieve their implacable goal. If they do appear apathetic or outwardly submissive, this is because they are eaten up from within by furious resentment and jealousy.
Every Scorpio carries a wound of some kind – an emotional or sexual problem or conflict or frustration, which – no matter how hard he tries – refuses to be solved. He has a penchant for creating crises and pitting himself against his enemies or against life. In this, he is self-destructive.
Scorpios have an acute sense of Justice, and don’t seem keen on turning the other cheek. The Scorpio does not hold the intellectual balanced justice of the Libran; it’s a powerful gut-level emotional reaction – and the Scorpio dictionary may not distinguish this from retaliation or revenge. In fact, revenge can become an art form. One example is the ‘happy family’, where the wife sabotages her husband’s masculinity and loads her children with guilt at her unlived life. Scorpios can be very prepared to use sex for punishment. A Scorpio can systematically and protractedly ravage a marriage, can be possessive, jealous – even pathologically so. Shadow Scorpio is the calculating user who denies or justifies his or her abuse. Scorpios often litter Divorce situations with the gravest suffering and injustice.
Shadow Scorpio can be fanatically possessed by an ideology and at some level or other, project what they cannot deal with themselves out onto the world and define it as their mission to redeem humanity: whether it’s in the home, at gun-point, on the rack, at the stake, from the fundamentalist pulpit, the politician’s seat in parliament, the social worker’s assessment unit or the psychiatrist’s cell in the custody and control unit’s therapy section.
Mysterious, fascinating and sensual, Scorpios have passion in abundance. Many Scorpios have a deep and mystical feeling about sex. Sex and love can be bound up with some sort of longing which ordinary relationship cannot provide. Sex can be a symbol for reaching a different order of experience – perhaps surrender: a magic gateway to upper (or lower) realms. But the Shadow brings in cruelty masochism and fantasy. Scorpios usually worship the erotic and reject anything ‘mechanical’. Scorpio possesses a capacity for enduring love – and this can sometimes amount to an act of self-sacrifice: it can be permeated with fanaticism. Either way, there will be nothing lukewarm. Scorpio can devastate love by his/her need to maintain control. – and this includes jealousy, as much as it includes deep and enduring love. Scorpio may very well seek to possess or re-make his/her lover. Scorpio may fail to respect the partner who will not fight him/her – and yet that fight can destroy everything: so either you have to fight, or be persecuted as ‘pathetic’. Either way, Scorpio has to win. If there isn’t a fight, it will be a case of a seethingly repressed Scorpio sabotaging and manipulating. Scorpio relationships can all too often be marred by implacable resentment and revenge for every slight (real or imagined) and constant blow-ups and crises. They will viciously cut deep and take the view that honesty precludes compassion.
Yet: Scorpio tends to hold traditional attitudes to marriage!
Yet, Scorpio has a rare potential as a lover, for understanding and insight – because he/she misses little. Scorpio may do his utmost to read and meet the other’s needs. Like all water signs, they thrive on being needed. They are not afraid of ugliness, whether internal or external. They have depth of awareness as to motive.
Double standards are often part of the Scorpio game. What’s good for Scorpio, s/he won’t tolerate in you. They are subtle, complex and never obvious.
Their fierce individuality can inspire respect – even love (if it doesn’t inspire fear and hatred).
Yet underneath it all, there’s Scorpio’s need for affection, acceptance, reassurance, love and companionship. They cannot bear coldness. They are terribly sensitive. They’re hurt by neglect. If they are embarrassed by so much emotion, they can become hard-driving workaholics, ruthless and ambitious. They do need some arena where they can unleash or transform.
THE SCORPIO MYTHS
a) Pluto and Persephone
Pluto is the ruler of Scorpio: Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, saw Persephone innocently playing in a field. Aphrodite told her son Eros to fire an arrow at the God Pluto, who was nearby so he would be consumed with desire for Persephone. But symbolically, it was Persephone who brought Pluto upon herself when she picked a narcissus flower: the earth gaped open at her feet and Pluto issued forth drawn by black horses breathing fire. Pluto abducted Persephone to the Underworld, raped her and made her his Queen.
Persephone’s mother, the Harvest Goddess Demeter was distraught. Not knowing where Persephone had gone. Demeter wandered the world grieving. All the crops on earth withered, and it was winter. Eventually, with the help of the other Gods, a deal was struck, so Persephone now only spends half the year in Hades. In the other half of the year, Pluto gives Persephone back to Demeter, thus the gift of Plenty is made to the earth. Thus, out of the black suffering of Pluto transits, plenty and rebirth can be won. From the magical secret union of Pluto and Persephone, flows the tantric cosmic fire of creation and conception: great opportunity: an open window beyond time and space: a void where anything can happen. It is the union of apparent opposites. It is miraculous rebirth out of destruction.
b) Hercules and the Slaying of the Hydra
Another myth that is relevant to understanding of Scorpio, is ‘The Slaying of the Hydra’, from ‘The Labours of Hercules’. Just as you feel you have resolved matters, a new dimension of challenge and pain can manifest. The Hydra had nine heads. As Hercules cut off one, the rest just kept coming and coming and coming! In the end, Hercules lifted the Hydra out of the stagnant swamp it dwelt in, exposed it to the light of day, and killed it. And after the nine heads were cut off, Hercules gained the jewel the Hydra had been hoarding!
c) Ishtar and Ereshkigal
A third myth that is relevant to a full understanding of Scorpio is from Babylon: Ishtar, radiant Queen of Heaven descended into the Underworld to attend the funeral of the husband of her sister Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld. As Ishtar descends, she is forced to give up her clothing and possessions, and is eventually hung up on a hook – utterly brought low. So great is the sister Ereshkigal’s power in her grief and rage, that none of the Gods can do anything to save Ishtar. Ishtar remains abandoned and defiled. The world is bereft of light. Eventually, the solution the darkness is found. The Gods fashion two little mourners who can slip unnoticed past the guards of the Underworld. The Mourners win Ishtar’s return to the skies because they realise that what Ereshkigal needs is to be listened to. Ereshkigal needed her grief and rage to be understood and honoured.
d) The Erinyes
The fourth myth needed for a full understanding of Scorpio is that of The Furies (the Erinyes). The Furies were born when Cronos (Saturn) castrated his father Uranus who had become a tyrant. Uranus had been imprisoning his children back in the womb of his consort Gaia, because of his dissatisfaction with them. So, Saturn (Cronos) castrated his father with a sickle – and where the seed of the dying Sky God fell on the Earth, it produced the terrifying Goddesses of Vengeance called The Furies.
In fact please note carefully, the ancient Greeks knew it was ill-omened even to mention their name so they referred to them ass the Eumenides – The Kindly Ones! instead – to try to (nervously) placate them! The Furies pursue all those who offend against the Laws of Nature, who sin against the family, who live some aspect of their life that is somehow out of true, who live contrary to their True Selves. And this manifests as illness. The Furies are the avengers of Natural Law.
HIGHER SCORPIO: But, in conclusion, please note that as I said, there is the Higher Scorpio: the Scorpio individual who has been through the conflict and the pain and gone through this to the light, and thus can now show the light to others and heal others. This is tantra: out of darkness, light. The lotus is a beautiful flower whose roots are in the murk at the bottom of the pond. And do see the Blog for the three Vedic Lunar Signs (Nakshatras) that lie behind the western astrology sign of Scorpio.
My astrology website is www.starwheelastrology.com, where you will see that unusually I combine both western and Vedic Astrology. I have completed an advanced psychotherapeutic course in western astrology plus a course, and advanced course and a further advanced course in Vedic Astrology, as well as degrees and counselling qualifications. I am pleased to offer birth chart readings, Predictions, Relationship readings and ‘Understand Your Child’ astrology. I teach basic and advanced courses in western and Vedic Astrology and have 19 years’ experience working as an Astrologer. Email: michaelconneely@gmail.com.
