In November, the astrological month gets going on the 4th, just a few days after the calendar month begins.
If you use lunations to see which way the cosmic winds are blowing, you know how much a New Moon chart can say about the month ahead. It’s the birth chart of the new cycle, setting the template for the four weeks to come.
Scorpio line-up
On 11/4, the starting gun sounds at 13° Scorpio, where the Sun and Moon conjoin. Wherever this degree falls in your natal chart tells you where November’s action is, for you personally.
If your chart features squares and oppositions to that point, they bring grist to the Scorpio mill. Planets around the middle degrees of any fixed sign will provide intense friction, making sure you can’t ignore what Scorpio is trying to teach you. The New Moon falls exactly opposite Uranus, with Saturn at the apex of the T-square.
Whatever lessons Scorpio has planned, they will be right in our face.
Agitation
Keep your eye on the early degrees of fixed signs, too. Mars is at 3° Scorpio, and will agitate whatever it touches. Mercury, which
ingresses on Nov 5th, catches up to Mars five days later at 7° Scorpio, amping up whatever is already going on.
Scorpio’s laser-like drive may show up as overt force (Mars) or as hidden power (Pluto)… or both. Our best bet is to try to dispense with the stereotypes that surround this most compelling of signs.
Let’s try to see it with fresh eyes.
Attraction-repulsion
Pop astrology nurses a serious attraction-repulsion for Scorpio, which is apt, considering the obsessive nature of the sign.
We’re also suckers for the allure of the forbidden. Scorpio governs taboos, which both terrify and titillate us. We celebrate this witch’s brew of contradictions on Halloween (see “The Veil Between the Worlds”).
Much drama accrues to things that are invisible to us, such as information (Mercury) we don’t know, motivations that are unvoiced (Mars) and emotions we keep secret. Scorpio’s rulership extends to everyday hidden things, too, such as microscopic particles and lost objects.
People tend to find the shadow expressions of this archetype more compelling than its healthy expressions. This may be true of all the signs, but with Scorpio a peculiar charisma is attached to its misuse.
Consider that Scorpio was traditionally assigned two symbols: the scorpion, signifying its ability to sting, and the eagle, signifying its intense perspicacity. Yet in most people’s minds, the creepy crawling insect has become the sole signature, not the noble, high-soaring bird.
Fear of the dark
We demonize what we can’t understand. It’s an idiosyncrasy of the human mind that we have conflated the concept of darkness with evil, which derives from our fear of our own hidden depths.
We’re all like Ted Lasso in that episode where he was emotionally suffering but insisted he didn’t need therapy. We are afraid of the dark of our own unexamined unconscious.
Underlying all such phobias is our fear of death (discussed in this article), the ultimate Mystery over which Scorpio presides.
Keep in mind this month that being spooked by what we cannot see says more about us than about the thing itself.
