Now that tension and uncertainty around the U.S. midterm elections has dissipated and we begin to reorganize our attention on new potential and new questions, I feel a little freer to write about month’s astrological shape. I don’t know about you, but I find it’s easier to think about things like retrograde planets stationing when highly important and hotly contested political elections are no longer immanent — especially since Election Day fell during the week that looked like it could potentially be the most volatile part of Mercury’s retrograde, as it crossed the ecliptic.
Some glitches in my personal experience have certainly borne out that theory. But I’ll take that manifestation of the astrology over polling-place shenanigans or a refusal to accept election results any day. Especially if the Blue Wave possesses Scorpionic depth and precision, and the kind of re-acquaintance with values and equitable relating that Venus is still describing. But of course, that’s all up to us going forward from here.
“Here” being the midpoint of Scorpio: the middle season of autumn, resonating with the echoes of ancient rituals honoring the dearly departed and fields turning fallow. There will be time soon for the building and the forward motion. Right now, however, Scorpio is inviting us to connect with “decomposition” as a necessary step in creating the fertile ground of future growth.
Overnight tonight, the Scorpio New Moon falls almost precisely at the midpoint of this sign at 17 degrees (exact at 2:02 am EST on Nov. 9). The Sabian symbol for 17 Scorpio suggests an invitation into a deeply fertile, inward connection to Spirit. If you can find some quiet, intentional time today or Monday, you might ask yourself:
What can I surrender to compost as I progress toward the darkest part of the year?
How much stillness do I need for that? How much disengagement from a habit or pattern will it take to allow surrender to move through me as a transcendent force?
Or to consider this from a slightly different angle:
How is getting caught in stagnant stasis different from holding space for a pregnant pause, from which something new might eventually issue?
Pivot Point
By the end of the week, on Friday, Nov. 13, Mercury in Scorpio and Venus in Libra each station direct, within about eight-and-a-half hours of each other. For several days on either side of Nov. 13, both planets essentially seem to stand still, representing a concentration of energy and, potentially, of events and insights manifesting in particularly Mercurial and Venusian themes.
Mercury stations direct at 10:54 am EST on the 13th, and Venus stations direct at 7:27 pm EST. Our collective mental-emotional-relational landscape could feel a little intensified or agitated.
But maybe it’s the kind of agitation that can loosen something useful from the background (or from the past, or from the subconscious) so that you can perceive it more clearly and use it productively?
In other words, rather that treating tonight’s New Moon in Scorpio as a “start button,” consider using it as a “start going deeper” button. The time for more outward expression of whatever you’ve been breaking down and re-conceiving under the surface, hidden from view, will arrive in a couple of weeks.
Mercury has been insisting we get precise and not settle for superficial understanding and communication during the review phase it began on Oct. 23. Since Oct. 3, Venus has been asking us to reconsider the different shapes power and equity may take in our relationships, the constant rebalancing it takes to find equanimity, and where our own value hangs in those scales.
The chart for this Friday suggests watching out for obsessive, emotion-driven thoughts. Getting caught up in them could obscure the secret (or previously missing) information, hidden forces, relationship insight, or balancing element that the review processes you began in October have been trying to lead you to.
Taking Unexpected Aim
On Nov. 24 (two days after the Sun enters Sagittarius), the Gemini Full Moon aligns with Uranus in Gemini, Neptune in Aries, and Pluto in Aquarius. Consider taking the broadest big-picture view on life you can stretch into, aim the arrow of your intention carefully, and see if you can harness disruptions, sudden inspirations, and unexpected upheavals — especially if they come from someone else.
Use what you encounter at this month’s Full Moon as leverage to make fundamental, evolutionary changes rather than just “react” and risk dissipating all that energy.
Yet also trust that if “reaction and dissipation” is where you end up, there will still be wisdom — or at least some kind of awakening — available as a takeaway. Our spiritual curriculum is ours to navigate, no matter how many tries or different forms it takes.
One look around at humanity and it’s obvious nobody’s getting this right on the first try. The pendulum keeps swinging between extremes. We cycle through breakdown and breakthrough, through fertilization-birth-growth-death-decay and back into fertilization over and over. Once in a while we look up, step back, and realize the path truly is a spiral not a closed circuit, and we’re actually a little further along than we realized.
Maybe, just maybe, that spiral path will make itself known to you sometime around November 13.
Speaking of spiritual curriculum:
These weeks during Scorpio’s call for us to compost and deepen — and then Sagittarius’s invitation to broaden our perception — are excellent times to reengage with a focused, safe container for an astrological consult or some clearing and grounding soul work.
I’d love to chat with you about how I can serve you with one or both of those modalities. Reach out and let me know what you’re experiencing and we can figure out what might fit (or if you already know, book it directly here).
It’s been good to breathe a sigh of relief this week; now let’s dig in.
With love,
Amanda
About the photo below:
I wanted to include the image above, which I took during a performance of “Medea and Other Friends I Made in Athens,” for more than just its aesthetic harmony with the top photo of reflections on water, or for an association between “death” and Scorpio. (If you are not familiar with the story of Medea, Google it.)
I am also not alluding to Euripides’s vengefully murderous character as any kind of commentary about the New Moon or recommended actions. 😉 Rather, this passage by Philip Vellacott from his introduction to the 1963 Penguin Classics translation caught my eye recently as I re-read the play after my trip to Greece in October:
“Just as in the modern world democracy, desperate to resist totalitarianism, resorts to totalitarian methods, weakening its own life in the process, so the fiery Greek temperament made the menace of barbarism the excuse for its own excesses.
“The lesson […] is that civilized men ignore at their peril the world of instinct, emotion, and irrational experience; that carefully worked out notions of right and wrong are dangerous unless they are flexible and allow for constant adjustment.”
In lieu of whatever connections I had vaguely intended to make between that quotation, the social and political climate in the US (and last week’s midterm elections), and the fixed yet passionate nature of Scorpio, I’ll instead ask you to let me know if it sparks any additional New Moon insights or intuitive nudges.
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