Tag: scorpio

On Mercury in Scorpio

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Hot-stepping Mercury has swung into Scorpio, where he will stay until just before midnight on the 5th of November*. Mercury joins expansive Jupiter in the watery depths of Scorpio, plunging into the foundations of the earth and assisting Jupiter in bringing light to the darknesses within each one of us and leading us away from our attachments to those things which pass away and toward those factors and people which allow us to experience life transformed and renewed.

In Greco-Roman myth, Hermes was not just the messenger of the Olympian gods, but he also served an important role as a psychopomp, that is, a deity charged with guiding the souls of the departed into the next life in the underworld.

The painting featured in this post is a late 19th-century work by the Hungarian Jewish artist Adolf Hirémy-Hirschl, depicting a dark-clad Hermes accompanying the souls of the departed to the banks of the Acheron where they will pass into the next life.

This painting is a stunning image of the resistance with which we approach letting go of our attachments; each of the souls, save those of the very young and very old, grasp for Hermes and attempt to get him to slow down his pace so that they can linger in the twilight of the world above just a bit longer. Yet Mercury stands unfazed amid the souls who are desperate to hold on to their attachments, and peacefully bids them to continue forward, holding his staff of healing out for those who cannot stand on their own.

Consider the mythic parallels between Mercury’s staff Caduceus, the bronze serpent Nehushtan in the Hebrew Bible, and the serpentine figure of the crucified Christ as we see him depicted in Eastern iconography.

In the Greeks’ telling of the mystery of death, every soul’s fate is not behind, but before them; the more ready a soul is to embrace their new reality, the better time they’ll have, and perhaps what for many is Hades can become Elysium. For the Greeks, our experience of the afterlife was determined a matter of virtuous acts; the more virtuous you were in your living, the more peaceful your dying and afterlife would be.

Yet for us, it may be a matter of learning to accept responsibility for our roles in our own stories, examining with fearless honesty (as Jupiter assists us in doing) those areas in which we have failed so that we may properly make amends with parties wronged—including making amends with ourselves.

Mercury’s glide through Scorpio over the next several weeks may help us let go of our attachments to our sense of shame and unworthiness or from the myth of perfection in order to assist us in accepting what we are: souls beloved and being healed. The path of healing is not to avoid things which feel like death, as detachment can indeed feel; the path of healing leads straight through death to the other side.

*Remember that the Fifth of November incident in English history was about throwing off a Protestant parliament to revert back to a Catholic theocracy—in other words, an attempt to return to the world “as it was before,” not dissimilar from the souls clambering back towards the sunlight in this painting. In that vein, it continues to baffle me that the Guy Fawkes grimace has become the symbol for “progress” used by Anonymous.

 

On Jupiter in Scorpio

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Jupiter enters Scorpio today! The astrological world usually livens up a bit any time one of the outer planets changes sign, as the farther out from the Sun the planet is, the longer it takes to move around the zodiac—and the more profound of a shift we feel as that planet’s energies change style to accommodate their new digs.

Jupiter is the Greater Benefic, the Bringer of Jollity, with ties to faith, philosophy, knowledge, education, and authority. Jupiter signifies freedom, release, and stewardship. Because of his moderately warm and moist temperament (not the literal planet, but the starry archetype! The actual planet would kill us with radiation before we even got to the top of the atmosphere), Jupiter is given to connecting hearts and minds as well as initiating shifts in perspective. He is a healer, a physician, a pedagogue, a friend. If Saturn is the Creepy Uncle, Jupiter is the Cool Dad of the solar system.

We see Jupiter’s archetype manifest in fiction in the persons of Little John of the Robin Hood legend and Professor Dumbledore. In history we see Jupiter’s archetype in the likes of St Nicholas the Wonderworker (from whom the Santa Claus legend derives), capriciously benevolent in all his dealings—yet who famously slugged Arius in the face at the first ecumenical council in 325 CE.

As Jupiter moves into watery Scorpio he will demand of us growth and expansion of the sort enshrined in the Fourth and Eighth steps of the Twelve Steps: “We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves” and “we made a list of all the persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends with them all.” Jupiter illuminates the still and deep waters of Scorpio in our psyches and in our behaviors and asks that we look to the bottom of the sea to find what is lurking within, sharing light and making amends with our shadow sides.

Because Scorpio is a nocturnal sign, Jupiter does not manifest as brilliantly here but his power becomes more focused on this kind of searching work in our psyches. Moreover he expands in this probing fashion whichever area of our birth chart Scorpio is to be found in. For example, in my own chart Scorpio is my tenth whole-sign house; Jupiter is now calling me to examine fearlessly my motivations and decisions surrounding my career, asking me to be true to my sense of vocation over against my desire to chase after dignity and status through ill-intended ego projects.

If you have a night chart, Jupiter is the benefic contrary to sect; the lessons you learn during this 13-month phase of your journey will not come as easily as they will for those of us who have a day chart. Yet the lessons will come all the same.

One more point: as the nocturnal malefic Mars rules Scorpio, Mars has a hand in calling Jupiter’s shots and directing Jupiter’s energy over this period of time. In fact, as Jupiter is in Mars’ house, Mars will be setting Jupiter’s agenda, especially as Mars enters Scorpio not too long after Jupiter does. It’s as though Mars and Jupiter will be teaming up across party lines to do the work in your Scorpio room. Because Mars will be on his own home turf, he’s like to behave himself!

The image that comes to mind is any episode of the A&E show Hoarders; Jupiter is the psychologist and the camera crew who comes into the compulsive hoarder’s home, while Mars is the cleanup crew and the hard conversations that have to happen in order for lasting change to occur in the life of the person who has become so overwhelmed by the stuff they’ve accumulated.

A similar show ran around the same time as Hoarders was on called Clean House, hosted at first by Niecy Nash and in later seasons by Tempestt Bledsoe. The problems were the same, but the tone was night and day—where Hoarders focused on the disasters going on in the house, Clean House focused on the opportunities! So those of us with day charts might get more Clean House and night charts might be a Hoarders situation.

So perhaps this transit will be for you a time of cleaning house in whichever part of your chart Scorpio is to be found in. Not sure which part is which? Run your chart, or get in touch with me and we can sit down to talk about how this next year might shake out for you.

Peace and all good, as ever.