Death, Dying, Transformation, Rebirth - Embodied Astrology for the Scorpio Full Moon - May 7, 2020
One of the many important lessons my mother taught me before she died (in Scorpio Season, almost 20 years ago) was that fear can transform and become a gateway. She did this when she ritualistically shaved her head and had a snake henna’d from her liver (the site of her cancer) to her third eye. The doctors all said that the eyes of most patients undergoing chemo became dull, and they were amazed at how glowing hers remained. I know there’s no way of knowing for sure, but I am sure too, that her glow was an emanation of her fearless-excited-acceptance of death, which was a simultaneous courageous-expansion of her spirit. While I know she tried to live, I also know that she never counted on it. By the time she died she was already beyond human, in her spirit form.
My mother used to have a ceramic painting hung above her bed of the goddess of life and death whose hair spiraled out into spider webs, who held the earth in her heart atop a coiled snake arising from her pelvis. As a child my mother taught me to respect serpents and spiders. She said a healthy dose of fear is a good thing, they can kill you, but don’t make the mistake of thinking they’re evil. She told me that both are symbols of the goddess, spirals/cycles of life and death, sensing/sensitive-wisdom of the strong-fragile web and belly down on the ground, the ability to coil and contain, the magic of weaving together, the magic of shedding skin that is a the magic of being born again, and again.
She told me that the symbols of spiders and serpents are access points to the underworld. That the underworld is a place that’s been buried in our bodies, where all of our most powerful emotions (fear, rage, passion, jealousy, desire) and traumas are rooted. These roots in the underworld, she said, grow into our actions and inactions, our choices, behaviors, attractions, values, needs, and everything we try to build in our lives. She told me these roots are tangled, knotted and deep. She told me that even though the underworld might contain a lot to be afraid of, it’s also the place where both power and creativity come from, and it deserves great respect.
Today is a full moon highlighting the Taurus/Scorpio polarity. Its symbolism is a reminder that everything born must die, any pleasure is always in contrast to pain, and the only stable certainty – the one thing we can all count on – is that we will die. At this time on the planet this symbolism is profound. Death is a pervading force (it always was) that has become increasingly visible and lurking behind every smile, every exhale and in the distance between us. So many of us are experiencing such deep loss: of life, plans, stability, savings, family, friends, and so much more. Somewhere in all of this is pleasure too… A slowing down, a settling in, connecting (finally) with a body’s rhythm and the deep need for rest, the realizing of tenderness and friendship in our distance.
It seems to me that we are collectively going through a quite profound dying process. Though we will feel the impact on our bodies and lives differently, the dying still is happening. Our oceans are dying, species are dying, so many of our kin are dying, the American/Industrial Dream is certainly dying and along with it many hopes for what our lives would build are dying. So… In this moment of death-all-around and on a day that speaks to us symbolically of death… let’s call upon our dead. Let’s raise them up and elevate their memories. Let’s call their names. Let’s sing out to the 265,000 (and counting) souls taken through COVID, let’s sing to the hundreds and thousands more that weren’t counted and all the collateral violences, tremors, traumas and endings. Let’s honor Ahmaud Arbery. Let’s lift the names and memories and big, blank erasings of dead buried under the settler colonial empire. Let’s call for our grandparents, great-great’s and beyond. Let’s honor the babies and children who went too soon. Let’s bring them in, into our hearts, into our minds, into our stories.
Scorpio teaches us that life eats life and arises from death. To live life well and fully, we must honor death. Scorpio teaches that through pain, suffering, and agony we transform. Like the phoenix, we burn and rebirth from our ashes. Scorpio teaches to go deep, deeper still, to get to the root, which means to be radical. Like snakes, we have to shed the skin of who we were and emerge, with more sensitivity, in who we are.
I was blessed by the company of friends from around the world this morning for today’s full moon lunar attunement ritual. We worked with the full moon chart and its associations/interpretations, explored the embodied anatomy of the Taurus/Scorpio axis, and played with accessing our serpentine, reptilian, monstrous, magical, transforming selves. The live event is over but the recording remains and can be accessed for the next two weeks. 100% of the proceeds given to Seeding Sovereignty’s Indigenous Impact Rapid Response Initiative. Click below to access the recording.
Full moon love to you and yours.
R
~ my prayer for the full moon in Scorpio ~
Oh Scorpio.
You of shedding skin, coiled power, webs woven, darkness rich, and death transforming.
You have so much. To teach us.
Please guide us in this time so full of endings, fear and dying. Help us to see where our attachments no longer serve. Help us to cut through illusion and delusion.
Help us to organize internally, to clarify between real power and false security.
Assist us in confronting what’s demonic, twisted and warped. Aid us in recognizing where we’ve become entrapped, enslaved, indebted to the monstrous forces of greed, envy and hatred. Aid us in recognizing where we ourselves are demons – twisted and warped. Where we misuse our power and bind ourselves to suffering.
Give us discernment, like a sharp blade, to sever the cords of bondage that keep us trapped and stifled in webs of illusion.
Help us to feel through the frozen layers of trauma, fear, shadow, into our roots. Into our erotic, creative, empowered potency. Into our magic.
Guide us in this time of transformation as we behold the end of the world as we know it. Help us to remember instincts deeper than survival, our sorcery, our connections unseen. Remind us of the power of our own power.