Scorpio is a water sign in the fixed mode, and is an unusually intense and powerful sign, especially in comparison to its water cousins Pisces and Cancer.
Scorpio is ruled by two planets: Mars, the red planet of strength, force and war, and Pluto the mysterious “visitor” and regent of the underworld.
While the waters of Cancer correspond to the life-giving springs, rivers and tidepools, and Pisces to the great oceans, Scorpio is related with glaciers, icebergs, powerful waterfalls, and deeply hidden water tables.
Scorpio is water as a powerful force that can crush and destroy, or lies in wait as ice, embodying a mystery of the transformation of energy.
Scorpio rules the sexual organs, the body parts most worshipped and reviled, mysterious, powerful, taboo. Scorpio is the sign of regeneration, and in order to regenerate there must be death and sex.
Scorpio season is in the autumn, when the foliage begins to die off and animals prepare to hibernate. This is the season of death, of going inwards as we move from the autumn equinox -with light and darkness in perfect balance- toward the darkest time of the year at the winter solstice.
Scorpio ushers in the darkness and drives us to explore all that is hidden in the darkness, all the subconscious desires and fears, and deep within that darkness, the light of the essence.
The gnostic, the mystic, the fearless spiritual warrior, must deeply understand the energy and process of Scorpio.
In order to not be slaves of desire, the darkness of the ego must be observed and felt, but not identified with. In order to not fall into sleep and hypnosis there must be a conquering of the fear of death, and a profound respect for the power of sexuality.
If we are conscious and have faith then we can learn the most powerful lesson of Scorpio, which is transmutation.
Scorpio is represented as a scorpion in its densest manifestation, and an eagle or a dove in its refined or transmuted form.
Transmutation means to transform one substance into another, in particular a denser substance into something more refined. Scorpio has access to the divine potential hidden within sexuality, and with the key of transmutation that raw power is sublimated into fire and light.