Scorpio: the next 2 years

For the other signs in this series, go to Topics on the right of the page, and find 'Sun Signs 2008-10'.

Using solar astrology for the sign Scorpio, we have Pluto currently entering your 3rd House, while Neptune and Uranus continue their final 2 years in your 4th and 5th Houses respectively. The Angular Houses are the most significant, so the outer planet that is most affecting you continues to be Neptune, though Pluto changing signs will alter the emphasis of that.

As a deep-feeling, instinctive Scorpio you feel at home in the watery 4th House of home, origins and family. But you also cling to old ways – to old family relationships and to old, outdated notions of who you are. And you can cling like your life depends on it. But as a Scorpio, you know that life involves periodically dying and being re-born; this is how you understand the process of growth.

The forces for change may have been quite savage back in 1998, when Neptune crossed your solar IC. (You may, for example, have placed inappropriate trust in a family member, and come severely unstuck). But since then Neptune’s presence has been more like a gentle insistence, a quiet but steady dissolution of the old. If you are reading this, it’s probable that you are quite a different sort of person to your parents and siblings. Neptune’s transit through the 4th has pushed you to acknowledge this, to stop pretending to yourself that you are part of the same tribe: you really are out there on your own. But there is a deep liberation and empowerment to this realisation, you know who you uniquely are much more than you ever did. Neptune’s function has been to help you drop some illusions, and the sign of Aquarius has helped you feel comfortable as an individual outside of conventional groupings.

Pluto’s entry into the 3rd is exposing you dark Scorpios to the light of reason. It is not enough to know instinctively what is going on underneath how people present themselves. You need to be able to put what you see into words, so that you can understand better what it is that you sense, and so that others can benefit from your insights.

As a Scorpio you have probably had to learn to trust your intuition and your feelings, for they are not a recognised means of knowledge and value-judgement in our society. But you also need to learn when not to trust what you feel: if you are in a bad mood and a bit paranoid, what you feel is not a very accurate gauge of reality. This is what Pluto in the 3rd is about for you. For all its powerful connection to the instincts, Scorpio can be quite a primitive sign that finds it hard to be self-aware, to stand back from how it feels and consider the facts and the broader picture.

Neptune in the 4th has been very much a feeling place for you, and while much transformation has been occurring on that very personal level, it is time to stand back and put it into words and to develop objectivity. Pluto is giving you the power to do this, he wants to drag you out of the primordial swamp. Now is the time for developing the fine art of consulting your feelings while bringing objective facts to bear. This will bring a new roundedness and fineness of perception to what you see. Resistance is futile! If you continue to operate one-sidedly from your gut responses, Pluto will ensure that you get it gloriously wrong.

Uranus gets us to think outside the box, he upsets the comfortable ruts that Scorpios, as a fixed sign, are prone to. Neptune has been dissolving your attachment to old, conventional, family-bound ways of being; Uranus in your 5th is enabling you to walk out and express your liberated self in its unique, individual way. This may appear eccentric and strange to many people, but to you and those who understand you, it appears perfectly normal.


Prometheus steals fire

So the overall theme here is the emergence of a free individual as you cut the ties to the past, bring more reason and objectivity to your experience and then find the unique expression of this new more individuated person you are becoming.

At the same time, Saturn will be spending the next 2 years in your 11th House. Saturn is where we can give concrete expression to the transformational undercurrents of the outer planets. So in a way what is happening is that you have been breaking free of group consciousness, but it also time to return there in a different way. Instead of being identified with one particular tribe, narrowly and unconsciously, you are now in a position to feel your connection to the greater whole. You can come and go as you wish with no sense of guilt, and you have ideas and insights to put into action that are for the benefit of humanity generally.