The Moon is waning, and reaches its New phase Friday morning at 8:47 am EDT — the day after Halloween (All Saints Day). A waning or New Moon generally does not signal the most energetic Halloween celebrations, especially on a weeknight, as the lunar vibe is more about winding things down toward completion. But if you have a spooky gathering to attend, there is good news.
In the wee hours tomorrow, the Moon enters Venus-ruled Libra, boding well for putting the final artistic flourishes on your costume or décor. Then, at 1:29 pm EDT on Thursday, the Moon enters Scorpio ahead of its meeting with the Sun on Friday.
So although the overall energy will not be building in an extraverted kind of way, it will still be concentrating and setting the stage for any especially Scorpio-themed activities. That may include some inner transmutation of whatever you’ve been working through (or stuck in) these last four weeks.
Scorpio is a fixed sign and a water sign. “Fixed water” might seem to translate to “stagnant” — and that is a potential downfall of Scorpio, if its pains and passions cannot find a suitable path for expression and healing. But as the saying goes, “Still waters run deep.” It’s what’s below the surface that counts most during Scorpio season, and if you can give yourself that time for stillness, you may discover more is moving and morphing than you realized under your surface.
Even if you do not consider yourself pagan and do not celebrate the end of the harvest and beginning of “winter” (the dark half of the year) with Samhain, it is hard to ignore how palpably the dark is overtaking the light this time of year in the Northern Hemisphere. There is a natural call to pause and draw in compared to the activity-inspiring spring and summer.
Even if you are not Catholic and do not specifically honor deceased loved ones at All Souls Day (Nov. 2) for that reason, the land in this half of the world whispers with dead leaves, and I often notice I am drawn to honor what has passed. It’s no wonder these two feast days found their place near the middle of Scorpio season, or that Halloween (“the eve of all hallows,” or holies) has for centuries included depictions of the dead: the dead have ceased to be in the light and so, it seems, are we about to as well, though in a less permanent way.
As much as I love the long days of summer, it is the night, the darkness — Scorpio — that compels us inward: to our secrets; to the subterranean well of our emotions; to the existential fear of annihilation we all face when nothing is able to mirror us back to ourselves. Are we dead in that moment? No; but we face the abyss of the unknowable to which we all, at some point, must succumb.
That can be terrifying. And yet… There is much comfort to be found in the dark, in the reprieve from always being “on” just like a fluorescent light bulb. The darkness gives us a space that the light cannot — a space that can be generative and womb-like.
Scorpio rules the generative system (the genitals), by means of which we come into the world. Why shouldn’t the seed of an idea need darkness to germinate, just like the seed of any other fruit?
What about the seeds of grief, catharsis, metamorphosis, or regeneration? Tears in response to a poignant story spill more easily in a darkened theater than on a sunny sidewalk. Caterpillars must completely disintegrate in the close, dark space of a chrysalis in order to transform into the entirely new form of a butterfly.
Similarly, Scorpios possess the potential to transmute their intense desires (including the desire for justice) into deep devotion and humanitarianism. Passions that might easily express as harshness in the company of deep, unhealed hurts become instead the fuel for generosity, efficiency, and self-sacrifice toward the greater good.
It is all too easy to fixate on the ‘shadow side’ (in the Jungian, psychological sense) of any sign, especially those that tend to express with particular intensity. If Scorpio has earned its reputation mainly based on its shadow expression, rather than for its more creative, productive, and soulful potential, we might consider how easy it is to be provoked in this world we live in — especially in recent years.
We all cast a shadow, and we all have Scorpio somewhere in our chart. What are you using its potent, transformative power for?
With love,
Amanda
P.S. Sections of this post were excerpted and adapted from a longer piece I wrote about Scorpio and darkness in 2015 for Planet Waves, inspired in part by a Guardian article by Jeanette Winterson.
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