Spiritual Scorpio

October 23 thru November 22

Keyword: I Desire

Best Quality: Resourcefulness
Worst Quality: Troublesomeness

Synonyms:  ache, aspiration, bothersome, covet, crave, creative, difficult, drive, hunger, impetus, incentive, longing, lust, motivation, need, passion, spur, stimulus, want, wish, yearn.

“A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.”

—Horace Mann

When the subject of Scorpio arises most people think of sex in its most dramatic and passionate terms. We hear stories of Eagles and Scorpions; bursts of passion—primal, creative, destructive, and drastic. Desire directed toward lofty spiritual goals will, like the eagle, attain great heights of creative accomplishment. Desire focused on selfish craving, like the scorpion that is satiated only after it devours its lover, will consume everything around it. In either case, it is desire that causes motion.

While the archetypal energy of Scorpio is about primal power, its tangible influence lies in how we harness desire energy and how we apply it in everyday life. Like Rev. Patrick Ramsey reminded us in last Sunday’s sermon, it can move mountains.

Horace Mann tells us of the important role desire plays when it comes to teaching and learning. The Brotherhood of Light lessons teach that desire energy must be present each time thought and matter is moved from status quo into a new state. The image of hammering on cold iron highlights how impossible it is to create change without first generating the heat of desire. The only thing achieved is an annoying clanking of metal against metal and the only resulting movement is the effort to escape the noise.

The Thomas Mann quote calls to mind a vivid childhood memory that tells a story of how the metal of one’s psyche can be heated with desire energy and how mountains are moved, or—in my case—a brick wall crumbles.

The story: I’ve just turned thirteen years old and am entering my freshman year of high school. A few weeks into the new term I suddenly encounter a very dense and stubborn brick wall—its name is freshman algebra. The timing is shortly after my father’s passing. He was the one I went to when I struggled with math concepts. He was also the one who prodded me when I didn’t think the effort seemed worth the bother. Standing on the dark side of this brick wall, I find myself staring at the pages of my algebra book and NOTHING speaks to me. In class, the teacher’s words are a foreign language for which I have no interest in learning. I’m drifting along, knowing I’m in trouble but not really caring too much—the iron is definitely cold! First, my algebra teacher confronts me with my less-than-impressive performance in his class which arouses some concern but not enough to make me want to push through that wall! Then, a favorite teacher of mine calls me into his office. He tells me of his concern for me and reminds me that my lack-luster performance is going to determine the opportunities I have in the future. He knows I can perform much better than my current scores demonstrate. It happens that I really like this teacher and I feel his genuine concern. Part of me doesn’t want to disappoint him. More than that, I want him to think highly of me. Armed with new desire and determination I again try to bash through that WALL. As I sit on my bed, staring at the silent pages of my algebra book. I begin writing the equations on paper. I still don’t understand. The effort literally feels like I’m pressing my head against stone. I begin plotting x’s and y’s on graphs. I move a’s, b’s and c’s around equal signs without really understanding what I’m doing. I ask a friend for help. Slowly, somehow, in what still feels like magic, my determination and effort start to shift the sludge in my head. I see a new way of considering the “unknown.” The x’s and y’s and a’s, b’s and c’s are starting to feel like a little game for which there is a reasonable and predictable answer! The brick wall is crumbling; the light dawns; eventually it breaks through the crumbling wall. I can do freshman algebra! I feel victorious! Horace Mann would say the iron is no longer cold.

We all have similar experiences from which we may draw. By making personal experiences conscious and learning to call upon the feelings of achievement and pleasure they engender, they become a personal battery that jumpstarts the engine of desire.

REALIZATION is the keyword for the Scorpio tarot card. Without desire it’s impossible to acquire or achieve anything. Take notice of those things that create desire in your soul. Look at your birth chart for the keys to understanding yourself. Today, with an astrologer’s perspective, I look anew at the example of breaking through the brick wall of algebra. A quick glance at my horoscope provides insight into my personal chemistry and how my teachers were able to jump start my effort. I have Jupiter in Sagittarius (teachers) in the 10^th and it is trine my Sun in Leo (self-esteem) in the 6^th (no stranger to work) and in between the two legs of this trine sits Mars (math) in Libra. In my case just knowing that someone (particularly a male figure, with my absent father and both Jupiter and the Sun resonating with masculine energy) was what I needed to jumpstart my effort. The triumphant result of heating up the Mars math iron was all mine!

In the grand scheme of things my algebra experience isn’t dramatic or filled with sexual intrigue but it did help me soar. In retrospect, the triumphant feeling is something I call upon regularly. As occultists and Stellarians we know that each of us is unique and bursting with potential. As we study the Brotherhood of Light lessons we discover the secrets to unlocking our potential. With the desire energy of Scorpio we can realize anything we can imagine and are willing to make the effort to achieve.

By Vicki Brewer

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Excerpt from Spiritual Astrology by C. C. Zain

WHEN the Scorpion Grows Wings

Spiritual Text:
“Through Sex Man Contacts the Inner Planes, Drawing into Himself According to His Mood, the Finest Energies that Vivify the Spaces or the Grossest Forces from the Fetid Border Spheres.”

—C. C. Zain, Course 7

There is a creature of the desert which lives in the arid dust, hiding from the light of day under sticks and stones, preying upon other living things. It has claws with which to grasp, a cruel mouth with which to bite, and in addition, a deadly weapon where least to be expected, a venomous sting at the end of its tail. This creature is the treacherous Scorpion.

No other animal, perhaps, exhibits such intensity in its love making, and none is more jealous and cruel once its desires are satisfied. The male and female Scorpion, preceding the nuptial union, clasp hands in ecstasy, and each in rapt admiration of the other stands immobile for as much as a night and day. The enthrallment of the other’s touch seems, for the time being, to lift them to such heights of bliss that they are oblivious of the world and passing time. They are entranced by the wonder of it all. Desire so permeates their bodies as to render them motionless.

Yet when finally the spell is broken, and fertilization has taken place, a monstrous change in attitude occurs. In members of this and allied tribes, such as the spiders, the female is the larger. And it is as if, satiated by the long embrace, she were consumed with jealousy of a future rival, driven to frenzy by the thought her mate might desert her for another. This, at any cost, and at any cruelty, she is determined to prevent. She, therefore grasps her erstwhile lover, and despite his frenzied struggles, his mute entreaties, and his attempts to recall to her the beauties of their recent honeymoon, she tears him limb from limb and devours him completely.

Those, therefore, in the ancient past, who wished to portray in the sky the intensity, the power, the cruelty and the vileness of the destructive side of sex, could have selected no more fitting universal symbol than the Scorpion. The oldest seals and boundary stones of Mesopotamia bear the picture of this constellation; and it is one of the symbols to be seen on the Arkansas Astrological Stone.

All energy, wherever manifest, is the result of the interaction of positive and negative potencies, and broadly speaking can thus be considered as an expression of sex. That is, mental action and spiritual aspiration, as well as physical movement, are dependent upon desire; upon the utilization of energies on a higher vibratory level which if permitted to express on the Scorpion plane would manifest as cruelty and lust. Religion also is the sublimation of the love impulse, and all art and appreciation of beauty are its manifestations in a realm above that of the brute.

Because creative ability can express on an infinite variety of levels, it would not be feasible to represent each separate plane of its manifestation. Yet it would not convey the correct information if its expression were portrayed merely on the cruel, lustful and destructive level so well represented by the dastardly Scorpion.

Religion being a sublimation of the impulse which on a lower stratum leads the individual to seek a mate, the only Eagle among the constellations portrays the second decanate of the religious sign, Sagittarius. Yet tradition maintains that the Eagle is also the symbol for the higher side of Scorpio; and in symbolizing the four quadrants of heaven, instead of the Scorpion being used to represent the Scorpio quadrant, the Eagle invariably has been employed. That is, the four fixed signs of the zodiac, as representing the whole celestial circle, are always pictured as a Man, a Bull, a Lion and an Eagle; the Scorpion never being shown.

The Eagle is the bird which it was believed flew higher than any other creature. At least, in its upward soaring it ascends until completely out of sight. Moving thus upward into heaven, it came, quite naturally, to be considered the universal symbol of the highest spirituality. Thus in the Scorpion the ancients sought to convey the idea of the lowest and most vile; while in the Eagle they saw the symbol of those most exalted spiritual heights to which it was possible for man to attain.

This creative energy, manifesting on innumerable planes and permeating both the highest and the lowest in the universe, was expressed by the Mound Builders who left the Arkansas Astrological Stone as the zigzag bolt of lightning. They pictured it as coming from out the Scorpion constellation in the sky, descending to vivify the productive powers of man.

The Hopi Indians of our Southwest, however, living in a region where lightning is a constant source of danger, where trees and dwellings are frequently struck during the numerous summer thunderstorms, where life is forfeited to this menace from the sky, regarded the lightning not so much as the symbol of the sexual power, as the manifestation of its destructive use. Instead of picturing the Scorpion, they pictured the lightning. And to indicate the constructive trend of the sexual force they used, as Old World peoples did, the Eagle.

Strangely enough, their ceremonies in which the destructive lightning is used to indicate the lower Scorpio attribute, and the Thunderbird, which is an Eagle, is used to portray the higher side, coincide most perfectly with our knowledge of the co-ruler of Scorpio, knowledge which we have gained only since the discovery of the Planet Pluto, early in 1930.

This most remote member of our planetary family not only has an affinity for the Scorpio sign, but in a violently marked manner it expresses, in its observed influence upon human life, both extreme characteristics of the sign. It may partake of the highest or the lowest, belong to the light or the shadow, produce glorious life or ignoble death.

In such Hopi ceremonies, therefore, as have for their object the overcoming of evil and the prevention of destruction, the Thunderbird commonly plays the leading part. It is he who at the winter solstice, for instance, after a struggle, dispels the darkness, brings back the Sun, and gives to earth the light.

These ceremonies, in which the Thunderbird takes part, are held in a kiva, or chamber beneath the ground; for Pluto, the planet of Scorpio, rules the underworld. This underworld, however, is not merely the ignoble region of the desert Scorpion, but also the high empyrean of blue in which the upward soaring Eagle is lost to sight. That is, it is the invisible world, the realm of the afterlife, divided into a realm of light and a realm of darkness, into heaven and hell, into the abode of the good and the dwelling place of the wicked.

The kiva, therefore, into which the Indians go to hold communion with the dead, to get in touch with their ancestors and to perform their more sacred rites, is built underground to symbolize that region where the spirits of the departed dwell. That is, such constitutes an appropriate surrounding for the Thunderbird to express his peculiar powers; for in all lands Scorpio is recognized not merely as the sign of sex but also as the abode of Death.

In Central Asia the constellation still is known as the Grave Digger of Caravans; and Greek mythology tells us that invincible as Orion seemed, he was finally vanquished by a Scorpion. Juno presided over marriage and was the patron of women distinguished for their virtue. It was she who sent the Scorpion to bring the downfall of Orion, who had incurred her displeasure. True to its nature, it lay concealed in the ground, and stung him in the foot as he passed. As the foot represents understanding, and as nothing defeats understanding more quickly than passion, the significance of this story is obvious; that he was vanquished through unwise devotion to sex.

Orion sets in the west, goes down to defeat, just as Scorpio rises triumphant in the east. And it will be remembered that Phaeton also met grief through his encounter with the Scorpion, which sank its sting into the flank of one of his steeds as he strove to guide them through the heavens.

From the commencement of this sign, to the first of Aries, where the Sun is released from the signs of winter is a distance of five months. This circumstance, together with the knowledge that on its inversive side Scorpio rules those forces and entities which most torment mankind, makes Revelation 9:3-5, understandable:

“And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads. And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man.”

Because, as psychologists have discovered, the sex impulse is the seat of most of those insistent desires which when suppressed lead to a wide variety of nervous and mental complaints, and because the mating urge is so strong a force wherever life manifests, the Key phrase given Scorpio, where the Sun may be found each year from October 23 to November 22, is, I Desire.

Its energy is either creative or destructive, light or darkness, and can express in any field. Creative writing calls it into use, all art is its expression, the orator can sway his audience little without it. Yet whether it takes the upward trend, carrying its user on the back of the Eagle into rarer atmospheres, or sinks him in the mire of grossness and dissipation, depends upon his Desires. These give the trend which the energy must take, and the energy carries him along wherever it goes. If Desire is in the direction of refinement, charged with aspiration to something better, his progress is assured. If it is toward the sensual it pulls him down.

Desires become surcharged with emotion, and emotion tunes the nerves and etheric body in on invisible energies of a similar vibratory rate. This leads to the text: Through Sex Man Contacts the Inner Planes, Drawing into Himself According to His Mood, the Finest Energies that Vivify the Spaces or the Grossest Forces from the Fetid Border Spheres.

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