← Encyclopedia of Astrology · lesson 21/235
Scorpio
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Scorpio falls in mid-autumn, when the leaves come down and what grew in the summer returns to the soil. The sign inclines toward depth, emotional intensity, loyalty and a wish to understand what lies beneath the surface. It is drawn to what others avoid — secrets, endings, power, transformation — and it rarely does anything by halves. Its gift is resilience and perception; its difficulty can be suspicion, or holding on to a hurt long after it has done its work.
Element, mode and polarity
Scorpio is a Water sign of the fixed mode. Water makes it feeling and intuitive; the fixed mode concentrates that feeling, so it runs deep and steady rather than changing with every tide. It is feminine (receptive) and nocturnal. Its fellow Water signs are Cancer and Pisces; its fellow fixed signs are Taurus, Leo and Aquarius.
Rulership and dignities
- Domicile: Mars in traditional astrology, its night house (Aries is its day house). Modern astrologers give Scorpio to Pluto, and many read both.
- Exaltation: no traditional planet is exalted in Scorpio.
- Detriment: Venus, whose home Taurus lies opposite.
- Fall: the Moon, opposite her exaltation in Taurus.
In a chart
Planets in Scorpio tend to act with focus, discretion and full commitment. The Sun here often seeks a sense of self through intense experience; Mercury inclines to probe, research and read between the lines; Mars acts with strategy and endurance. Venus, in detriment, may love passionately and possessively, all or nothing. The Moon, in fall, can feel emotions so strongly that it keeps them hidden. The house with Scorpio on its cusp is often where a person meets crisis, shared resources and the need to let something die so something else can grow. With Scorpio on the Ascendant, Mars (and, for modern astrologers, Pluto) becomes the chart ruler, and the person often comes across as reserved, magnetic and hard to read.
The tradition
Ptolemy counts Scorpio among the solid signs and places the Moon's depression here, opposite her exaltation in Taurus. He gives it to Mars as the second of that planet's houses, in square to the luminaries' signs, agreeably to Mars's inharmonious nature. Lilly calls Scorpio "cold, watry, nocturnal, flegmatick, feminine", of the watery triplicity, fixed and Northern, "the house and joy of Mars". It governs the genitals and the bladder. Its places are where creeping creatures live, gardens, orchards and vineyards, ruined houses near water, muddy ground and marshes, and in a house the kitchen, larder and wash-house. Lilly describes a strong, solid, able body, a broad or squarish face and thick, dark, curling hair. Its colour is brown; among its countries he names Catalonia, Valencia and the north of Bavaria. Lilly gives the Water triplicity to Mars by day and night.
In the tarot
The Golden Dawn's correspondences, which most English-language decks follow.
Major Arcana: Death
Its three decans: Five of Cups (Mars, 0°–10°), Six of Cups (Sun, 10°–20°), Seven of Cups (Venus, 20°–30°)