Halloween may be over, but astrologically we are still deep in Scorpio season. Scorpio is a sign that asks us to confront our deepest fears — those who have strong Scorpio signatures in their charts are constantly navigating their own relationship to worst-case-scenario thinking, whether that shows up as anxiety or as a profound sense of mission to avert climate disaster. Scorpio brings an awareness of how things end, how leaves decay, how civilizations collapse, how relationships turn sour, how we lose the ones we love merely because we are all mortal. Whether those are conscious thought patterns or not, strongly Scorpionic people (which isn’t just anyone with a Scorpio sun sign) use a lot of energy navigating these truths. That’s why Scorpio has a reputation for intensity — there are high stakes for any interaction.

Being aware of how things can and do fall apart — and what happens next — is a superpower that Scorpio season shares with us in this time. The “what happens next” part is something most of us don’t focus on, but Scorpio is essentially a healing energy. After each death comes a rebirth. Scorpio may wield the surgeon’s blade, but it also reminds us that our bodies know how to knit themselves back together after a needed intervention, and that what was causing us pain can be released.

This Scorpio season has a strong emphasis on learning, uncovering, and being ready for change. That’s because we begin in the midst of eclipses in Scorpio and Taurus. Eclipses highlight information that’s been hidden (sometimes hidden in plain sight) and the Scorpio-Taurus axis helps us navigate sometimes scary changes (Scorpio is associated loss, trauma, mortality) while staying grounded in the goodness of being alive and embodied (Taurus themes). Scorpio gives us the courage and wisdom to face the scary situation; Taurus allows us to know when the crisis is over and what we need for aftercare.

November 8th’s lunar eclipse in Scorpio is also activated by Uranus — a planet that portends even more change and instability, but this time with a flavor that is decidedly political. Here in the US, it’s also Election Day. Make wise choices for yourselves this day and expect the same or even heightened levels of chaos as our democracy struggles with anti-democratic right-wing factions. We are living in a historically unstable time as the outer planets align and shift into new signs over the next few years. Part of the Scorpio-Taurus lesson is to learn how to face these times courageously, and where we establish our own personal sense of safety as the world is changing.

If you are feeling scared or depressed about the state of things right now, you’re not alone. This month’s astrology may highlight these moods, but your goal is to learn more about your agency during this time. What does your fear tell you about what you’d like to protect? Have you let yourself grieve changes and loss that you weren’t able to prevent? Ongoing change and loss that is out of your control? Naming what you can’t control, what are you learning about where you do have power and agency? What are you here to defend and protect (Mars retrograde questions)? What fears do you need to face about yourself and your relationships in order to grow (eclipse questions)? Who and what help you ground into your body and feel held, happy, and safe right now?

We move to Sagittarius season on the 23rd — a time to integrate what you’ve been learning and reconnect with passion and joy. This is also the end of eclipse season, so if you’re trying to understand what changes you need to make in light of new information you’re learning, see if you can put off big decisions till after the 23rd.

I’ve got more details on the big transits of this month on Patreon, and you can always get in touch for a reading. I’ve recently expanded my sliding scale options and am now offering a reduced rate for return clients. You can also find me on Instagram, and listen to my New Moon podcast The Hum.

May what you’re learning this month be healing for you and for the world. May you have the support and space and love to integrate it deeply.

Aries

Be willing to learn: How to greet change with your feet firmly planted. How to do emotionally what your body knows how to do already: digest change, metabolize it, draw nourishment from it, and then release what isn’t working for you. Let the process take time. Don’t panic when it’s a mess. Keep reaching for nourishment, keep releasing what isn’t feeding you.

Taurus

Be willing to learn: What your beloveds are trying to tell you. You may be surprised in an important relationship, and focusing on your surprise will block you from focusing on what they want you to hear and know and accept about them. Process your surprise (ideally without them), process your feelings (ditto), but also make sure that this important person knows that you’re listening and that you care. You get to integrate new information slowly and make your own choices about what you might want in response, but begin right now by being willing to listen with love.

Gemini

Be willing to learn: How to take things very seriously while not needing to know what they are yet. How to let a relationship, a creative project, or a big life transition find out what it needs to be as you live into it. Where you find groundedness during change — in your body, in your daily rituals and rhythms, in the way you can shush your worrying brain by immersing yourself in the here and now.

Cancer

Be willing to learn: How your love for the world can reach the world. What you have that you can share, expand on, and spread out toward those you want to be in relationship with — be those individuals, collectivies, or ecosystems. How to keep your heart open enough to love a world in crisis, while protecting yourself from feeling it’s up to you alone to save or fix anyone (individuals, collectivies, or ecosystems). When to grieve, and how to grieve deeply so your heart also remembers how to well up with joy.

Leo

Be willing to learn: When you can stop trying to impress someone who is never going to see you clearly. How good it feels to bring all that energy back into your own heart, into the connections that do see you and celebrate you. How to heal the part of you that still wants some kind of external validation from a person — especially if that person represents a kind of social power you don’t: whiteness, cis-masculinity, able-bodiedness, thin privilege, straightness, cool kid status, etc, etc. Power hierarchies warp our capacity to see one another, to love and be loved, but you know better than anyone how important it is to keep trying. Allow this month to unhook you from the thorns of needing to be seen a certain way, and invite you into the warm embrace of receiving love for exactly who you are.

Virgo

Be willing to learn: How to create a community around you — not your ideal community, not a perfect community, rather a community that recognizes you are part of many groups and those groups don’t have edges that you get to define. Community isn’t your perfect dinner party but includes people you wouldn’t have chosen but are thrown together with. Community means finding how and when you can find common cause, and how and when you can’t. I guarantee there will always be at least one person in a given group (collective, household, neighborhood, workplace) that you can’t stand. And someone who can’t stand you. What you are discovering right now is that weave of interdependence that means you can’t really separate yourself from them, and that’s a good thing. Your homework is to understand why.

Libra

Be willing to learn: How to feel safe in your body when your body is experiencing stress. What soothes, what recharges, what feeds you when you’re at your limit? Do you know where that limit is? Do you often push past it? Welcome learning a new somatic map of your inner life and how to befriend the animal part of you. You are learning how to ground and recenter not as a retreat from the more stressful changes, but as way of being able to welcome those changes.

Scorpio

Be willing to learn: What you’re being called to become, independent of what your relationships expect you to be. This is a time of radical transition for you, and you are taking your first steps towards a self that isn’t fully formed. Let yourself be curious about where you’re headed, while acknowledging that as you change your relationships will also change — some may grow closer, others may grow distant. Don’t let a core fear of change block you from exploring what you need to explore: you will be loved on the other side of this.

Sagittarius

Be willing to learn:* How to stay present when your mind wants to go deep into the future or past. What helps the here and now feel rich with possibility. How to honor your internal cycles of connection and retreat, planning and making, doing and resting. How to remember that none of this is final, and some if it is quite fleeting. Invite your mind and spirit to settle a little more deeply into what inspires you instead of flitting away toward the next task. Most of all, this month will challenge your sense that you ought to know what’s coming next. Release that expectation and it will be a far more interesting ride.

Capricorn

Be willing to learn: How to indulge your inner teenager — both the rebellion and the idealism. How to access that part of you that still burns and yearns — not to let it dominate you, but to accompany it in a new way. This is a month of getting a crush on your wildest self while being responsible to your wisest self. Something is breaking through, breaking free, and breaking open your shell. Ideally, that something is a part of you that you’ve been missing and it’s time to reconnect.

Aquarius

Be willing to learn: How to accept both the responsibility and the spotlight of being good at what you are good at, what people need from you. Reckoning with how your ego might get in the way, or your desire to hole up at home and not engage, or your focus on just your intimate circle rather than casting a wider net. You are learning how to show up for what matters to you in new ways. In so doing, you are learning what you need to restore and ground yourself. These two may feel opposed at times, but they are fundamentally reliant on each other. Find your way toward that sense of balance.

Pisces

Be willing to learn: How to make meaning out of days that might otherwise blur together — your ordinary (or exciting or tedious) life against the backdrop of major world events. Ask yourself what happens in your body when you read the news. Ask your body what’s happening in your mind when you do something routine. Get curious about how you as a single drop of water can ripple outward and affect a larger current. Accept that you will never seen that final big wave, you can only imagine yourself at its edges. Find your place in a network of water drops, each creating a system of ripples and waves that overlap and plait and make serious change.

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