About the Academy
Services and Courses
Signs of the Times
Study Resources
Contact Us
Home

Study Resources:

SCORPIO                    The Eighth Sign

Fixed water, feminine, receptive.

Ruled by Mars and Pluto

“I SURVIVE and I AM INTENSE”

Parts of the body: the generative and eliminative systems

Concept: ”I seek myself in my own depths.” The mysteries of birth and death, rebirth, sex, reincarnation – life's cycles. The battle between the soul and the personality, the need to uncover and transform the deeply hidden emotions. Survival, life-and-death issues; penetration into hidden depths. Passion and desire. Trust and betrayal issues. Taboos. Control.

Qualities: passionate, sexual, deep, intense, mysterious, hidden, concealed emotions; loyal, giver of strength, creative/transformative, healer, spiritual seeker; powerful.

Liabilities: possessive, jealous, vindictive/vengeful, lustful, destructive, seductive, secretive.

Need to learn: to achieve true power by not seeking power for the self; to undergo symbolic death and rebirth; wise use of life energy. Trust is an issue with Scorpios.

Handling the Scorpio: Let them keep their secrets, don't probe. Cultivate trust.

 

KEY WORDS

 

• Scorpio consumers may like sexy lingerie, mystery gifts and spy novels.

How is Scorpio capable?

Scorpio is insightful and profound, loyal and courageous. Scorpios make good surgeons and psychologists, where they turn “invasiveness” into a virtue.

 

How is Scorpio fixed?

They exhibit unwavering feelings which are built up to generate great intensity; emotional problems can be hard to alter and dislodge; strong focus on the object of desire builds up heat. A magnetic, attracting energy.

Scorpio psychology

So much depends on their ability to face their own deep feelings, which are often blocked. If anger or fear are harboured, they can be extremely hard to get rid of, and very often cause illness. If Scorpios are positive, they are deeply loyal and strong people with a knowing outlook on life. Their insight and courage in the face of difficult or sticky problems is unsurpassed.

Scorpio Myth

Herakles and the Hydra

The hero Herakles was sent to fight the fearsome Hydra, a nine-headed monster who lived in a swamp in Lernea. To slay this dreadful beast was the second of Hercules' twelve labours. The Hydra was a nine-headed monster in the form of a long, writhing water snake. The Hydra was alternately conceived as having an elongated dragon-body with nine heads. It attacked, killed and ate anyone who ventured near its abode.

[The Queen of the Gods Hera didn't want the hero to succeed. See the Cancer myth to find out what she did to inhibit Heracles' success.]

The middle of the nine heads was immortal.  Hercules fought the Hydra with his club, but each time he knocked off a head, two more would grow back.  He finally achieved victory after instructing his nephew, Iolaus, to burn each neck stump immediately after he, himself, had severed the head, thus preventing any regrowth. As a final act, he buried the immortal head under a rock.

Arrows dipped in the Hydra's blood were poisonous and created formidable weapons.  Hercules accidentally shot Chiron with one later on

In an alternate version of the myth, Herakles tried cutting off the Hydra's heads, but many more grew in place of the cut-off ones. So he had to go into the swamp, kneel down [going into the dark, Scorpio-fashion] and lift the Hydra into the light, whereupon she withered up and died.

The message for Scorpio is to expose that secret cargo of emotion to the light, and it becomes manageable.

All Plutonic myths relate to Scorpio. The rape of Persephone and the rage of her mother Demeter are also both Cancerian and Scorpionic, as is the Hydra myth.

Persephone is abducted by Pluto into the underworld, where she loses her innocence and becomes initiated into mature and knowing sexual life. She is finally allowed to go free, but on the condition that she take nothing back with her. Her desire overcomes her when she grabs and eats a pomegranate seed on the way out of Hades – showing the binding nature of Scorpionic desire. A deal is struck with Demeter, and Persephone spends half the year with her mother, who allows vegetation to grow for that half of the year, and half is spent with her husband Pluto – god of the underworld and of wealth. This tale emphasises the linking of the underworld – the secret intensity of Scorpio – with the upper world or outer world, representing light and consciousness.

 

[Back to Study Resources]