Scorpio Season

“Seeing Death as the end of life is like seeing the horizon as the end of the ocean.” (D. Searls)

Without mercy, end of October plunges us into dark cold waters of the most intense, mysterious, dark and sexual sign of the zodiac. Scorpio is closely linked to the cycles of transformation – Death and Rebirth. Each zodiac sign, and its astrological season, carries within it a medicine to help us transition into the next one. Scorpio teaches us the importance of facing up to the difficult emotions, intense energies, harsh truths & hardships that come with life sometimes, so that we can transcend the constrictions of our current form & shoot forward, past our comfort zones, like the arrow of Sagittarius, that follows up Scorpio’s contracting inward facing energy with a huge expansion.

Scorpio Season is designed to feel raw. It often stirs mud covering the bottom of our souls, forces us to navigate the suddenly murky waters and come up with methods to clean them up again.

Will you just wait it out and let the mud settle again to the very bottom – hidden from the outside world, slowly turning toxic? Or is there perhaps a different, uncomfortable but crucial way to consolidate our fears, doubts, addictions, shame, regrets,…fill in the blanks. Something is burning to ashes, so a new form (Phoenix represent Scorpios in their highest evolution) can emerge. Our relationship to ‘Death’ (Scorpio’s tarot card) will be put to test – where do we stand in allowing for the old patterns to fall off, the old ‘me’ to die, so that the new one can come into view?

Among the many fascinating and baffling phenomena in nature, one stands out to me as a great parable of our egos’ aversion towards change. You see, some caterpillars for no known reason stubbornly resist entering their next evolutionary stage that requires twisting and contracting themselves into a protective cocoon, awaiting their metamorphosis. They cannot postpone their death and subsequent rebirth forever though. Natural order of things will have its final say, always. Something quite curious happened to us globally this year. We were all called to the same chrysalis, to hang upside down together in suspension. No matter who you are, no matter where you are in the world, you cannot be untouched by the worlwide pandemic of coronavirus. You also cannot resit the transformation any longer.

In 2020, upside down in our cocoons, we witness history in the making.

The important thing to keep in mind is that Scorpio Season and the planetary retrogrades we transition through as the year slowly run out of time, do not just simply generate some random contractions in our lives. Rather, they illuminate shadows stirred by big transformations that we’ve already been going through for some time.

We’ll twist and turn, surely resist and mourn what’s been lost and cannot be called back again. We’ll cry, we’ll get angry, we’ll be frustrated, scared and baking shit loads of banana bread everyone is already sick of eating. But ultimately, Scorpio does not want us to suffer. It just longs to show us what kind of a badass fucking warrior princesses we can become, if only we step up to meet these challenging shadow energies. Scorpio is a master alchemist of the zodiac, and we all have Her somewhere in our chart! Her medicine is simple: at any given moment, regardless the retrogrades, the suspension, the election madness, the raw pain of dissecting, self-sabotaging Scorpio’s sting, it’s within our power to transmute that mud into gold.

“Grieve. So that you can feel something else.” (N. Waheed)

In Tarot, Scorpio is reflected in the dark & beautiful obsidian surface of the thirteenth Major Arcana card – Death.

A card that helps us understand that all, which is no longer meant for this world, must be shed and let go off, so we can walk baggage-free & renewed towards a next cycle and a new sets of lessons that are awaiting us on the path to our highest evolution. It probably sucks. Like with Death itself – it’s probably a transition we did not see coming nor did we care for it & most likely: we really really can’t be bothered with going through the muck right now, not right now!!! But 13th card’s message is the one of encouragement – Death is far from being the last card in the journey through Major Arcana.

Scorpio & Death play in the dark and darkness elicits fear. Like fear of dark, our inherent fear of dying – is eventually just an extension of our insinctual resistance towards the unknowable. We cannot know what is awaiting us beyond the ending (it could be an end of relationship, job, project, idea we had about someone or something, or you know..life) is a natural reaction, but also the one causing us pain and suffering. Because the only constant in this life is Change. Everything must and will change. And like with our 2020 chrysalis – the only way out is through.

“A sun sets, a day is born.” (Maori Proverb)