Scorpio Season Symbolism

Scorpio season always feels like the wound and the salve. Perhaps, more accurately, the noticing of the wound and the applying of the salve. I feel the waters of scorpio pushing things through the pipelines of my body, mind, and energy allowing what was dormant to surface and what is stuck to clear. As fixed water, this is how I see scorpio - pipes. Infrastructure. Connecting everything underground, the unseen and unrecognized force that supports us when we turn on the taps to let a bit flow through - equally the drain that allows all we are done with to move onto the next stage.

With all water seasons I feel a surge of lucid dreams, quiet melancholy, deepening of connection with the other worlds and my own relationship to them. It can be supportive and cleansing. It can be heavy, like I am the cavern it all pools in. It can feel like swimming on a moonless night in the eerie quiet of oneself, the surrounding element temperate to ones own body creating a strange illusion between what I am and what I am connected to.

Scorpio, known as the sign of death and connected with the death card in tarot offers us a bridge. The Death card is the half-way point in the major arcana; a portal that offers us a vessel for moving forward with reverence. It’s a surrender, a dissolving of ones own will in a way. And it can be peaceful depending on our instincts upon its approach. But death is still death; there is still loss and grief and empty space no matter our perspective on it. It takes time for us to sit in this, adjust to it, be patient with it.

Every card that showed up for this seasons symbolism feels distinctly attuned. I read June, of Saturn and Honey, say that scorpio season is the scalpel and this feels so true even at the very base layer.

River

A river in many ways feels like natures pipe. Often when speaking about rivers my mind finds the connections to source, places to let ourselves be carried, allowing things to wash over us. But here, I am reminded of the shore and when we allow ourselves to sit in stillness that often we don’t need to get to where we are going so much as be patient with what is coming to us. Wherever you are sitting this season, allowing thoughts and feelings to move by you, there is a reminder here to stay present to what comes along it its water. What can you observe in the riverbed itself. Perhaps there is hidden pieces of gold here. Perhaps things that were once sharp or broken have become softened over time, realizing that you can pick them up again without pain. Yes, the river connects us. But it can also ground us. It can tumble us, and it can land us. If you feel you’re stuck or out of the flow it’s a good moment to look at what stones lay on the shore. What artifacts of your life are washing up for you now. It is a reminder of the growth you’ve made in things that perhaps, at another time, felt all consuming.

Grief

We can’t shy away from the realities of the world, particularly right now. The season of the lungs in TCM, also connecting us to grief, amplifies this theme. The genocides happening in the world. The personal realities we all face. The emotional gunk that has gotten caught in corners. Our grief doesn’t need a reason or a story - it simply needs a doorway. It needs us to allow it to move through, to make space, and allow it to exist alongside our other emotions and experiences. We do not need to isolate grief. We do not need to banish grief, and often times we do not need to make a story or cognitive understanding of it either. Here I ask you to recognize what grief feels like in your body, what your actionable relationship with it looks like vs your cognitive behaviour and perhaps reflect on grief that has appeared in your life. Call it in and ask it what it needs.

Harmony

So much of harmony is in movement - in responding. We must allow ourselves to surrender fully to the movements, shifts, and halts of our life. Contrast is also a part of harmony - the classic we need the dark for the light. I am always wanting a more eloquent way to say this but perhaps it is just that harmony is an acceptance of a completion vs a whole. Which is to say something can be complete in and of itself without being whole. Completion can exist in pieces and stages - we can complete a draft but it doesn’t mean we’re done the whole book. Often we can’t see the whole, so acceptance of it feels…. impossible. It turns to things like anxiety and depression and avoidance tactics. But we can see what is complete - at least so far. We can understand what is over (grief), what is still moving (river), the things that lay in between (harmony). Embracing harmony isn’t like listening for the perfect notes in a song, it’s not really about balance either. There is actually pleasure in harmony - this is an essential element to it. So amongst the more challenging aspects harmony asks us to create the balance by accepting pleasure. There is a huge difference between actively embodying pleasure and acting in avoidance - often avoidance is for numbing, which is not what pleasure wants from us. So in a way, harmony asks for pleasure which asks for presence which asks for embodiment. It’s how letting yourself have the big cry can be really fucking cathartic even if it feels scary to let yourself go there. Harmony is available to us in all seasons, and its particularly important for us to prioritize it in this season.

Raven

The shadow eater, my constant friend and sometimes enemy. The raven helps us pick away at the things we are avoiding, locking the door on, and trying to hide. It isn’t about exposing us to the world so much as exposing us to ourselves. In fact it’s not about exposure at all so much as it is about having help. The raven is a mirror of sorts. The raven is a friend - and maybe it is literally a friend reflecting something back to you. Maybe the raven is your journal or your therapist. Sometimes it’s a dream revealing to you what you’re afraid to look at or signs and situations leading you towards clarity. The raven can be confronting but the goal of it is to reveal the gems that are entwined with the shadows. Allow yourself to release. Maybe give something back to the river, engage with the space of grief alongside the raven, finding harmony in the ebbs and flows offered here.

White

And in the deepest synchronicity with all that has already been said, we have white. There is a cleansing. There is a freshness. There is a reprieve. The first thing that comes to mind is fresh, white sheets. Crawling into the comfort of something soft and sacred. Allowing the release to not be totally terrifying or debilitating, but a place to land for closure and fresh starts. If it is the season of death, it is also the season of life. Life has a gestation period. It is the space between the pen and the page, the head and the pillow, the minutes and the hour, the seed and the sprout. I think there can often be so much pressure with this energy - like we don’t want to make a wrong move or spill something or the pressure to make it perfect. This is lived in linen. This is the cloud that holds water that is 197508293842098420 years old. It’s the pearls in the jewellery your grandmother wore decades ago. Socks after oxyclean. Bones in the earth. Foam of the ocean on the shore. White doesn’t ask us to be perfect - it asks us to live. Quietly, slowly, in whatever way we need to. It asks us to turn a new page and take the time we need writing on it. Take away the pressure of perfection and try to find some of the joy in trying.