Here Is Your Scorpio Homework This Season

 BY LISA MARIE BASILE

It’s your Scorpio-in-chief here to take you on a subterranean journey, cradled in the arms of the sign of death, rebirth, and transformation.

Once Scorpio season hits, we tend to gather ‘round to talk intensity and sexuality and darkness and the occult. We may ask ourselves, What is this darkness? What is this silent creeping feeling blooming out of my belly like a black tulip? What is this intense desire? What are these fears? Why do I want to fuck or meditate or go inward so hard? Why do I want to dance until morning? What shall I do to survive this intensity? Do I run or lean in-in-in, into that dark mansion of Scorpio? Must I make space for that intensity and regeneration? Can I rent a bunker?

I want to tell you this: Be not afraid. Yes, this is a heavy season, but it is also a season that permits you to feel it. It wants to comfort you through it, even if it at first it may feel painful. You may be thinking about your place in the world, how to move through grief, what you want to let go of, and how to heal your childhood self. Scorpio, in its shadowy mystery, is beckoning you to go deep. To stop looking away from the abyss.

To that end, below is your Scorpio full moon homework. Go with one or two of the ideas below, and know that any momentary discomfort will yield rewards. Just be sure to ground yourself and seek comfort or support from a therapist or a friend if things get too heavy.

Drop the bullshit, seek rebirth, and stare into the abyss

Scorpio doesn’t have time for bullshit, for the superficial, or for the useless things that serve no purpose and only hold you down. Stare your problems in the eye. Begin making plans to walk away from something that hurts you. It may not be immediate, but you can use this full moon to begin taking stock of ways to make a move and give blood to your desires. Start recognizing bad patterns. Take stock of friends who constantly let you down, of the job that hurts your soul, of the project that isn’t inspiring you—and make an out plan. Taurus asks to perhaps save money or put something aside for yourself, when possible.

Delete those toxic texts, ideas, and people — and be rid of it. In endings, scorpio finds rebirth; you’ll grow wings where a wound was once.

Decide what makes your life better and richer and move toward it. It’s not easy, but when you decide what doesn’t serve you...an opportunity happens. 

If it feels scary, that means you are exercising a demon or confronting the shadow self. Lean into it.

That said, not all situations are currently changeable—that’s okay. Take this opportunity to reframe your needs; you may not have full control over everything, but where can you find autonomy? Where can you plant seeds of change? Is the change you’re seeking internal? Perhaps that inner growth will transform your physical reality? If you need to lean on others (Scorpio asks us to be vulnerable) to make all of this happen, do so. This may mean seeking community resources, medical care, or the love of a friend. You are safe in your need and your vulnerability. Any actualized Scorpio will tell you this, despite their proclivities toward the secretive or seemingly stoic. In short, rebirth is a process, and it doesn’t always happen in a vacuum.

Scorpio is the sign of death and rebirth, so lean into its dark ways and part with whatever is dragging you down. Any depths you go into, you want to go into willingly—not because someone or something is pulling you into the abyss.

Embrace the sensual in all of its forms

Find a way to tap into your sexuality—that could be through sex magic (setting intentions and focusing on them during the act of masturbating or having sex), dancing or lying around in your finest lingerie, or honoring your sensuality by reading some beautiful poetry — Neruda, Sappho. Pick flowers. Eat honey and cinnamon. Listen to sexy music (I recommend Sevdaliza, FKA Twigs, and Banks, or this Scorpio playlist). Dance in your underwear. Light a candle and apply oils to the skin. 

Set a goal and use the full moon to power up

Don’t just set any old goal (I mean, you totally can), but this is the time to go deep. Is there something you’re deeply pining for on an existential level — something that you need to birth, to pull from the watery depths of the self? Is there something you’re trying to conjure on a big level, something life-altering? Do it. Say it. Meditate on it. Write a list of ways you can make it happen. Envision shimmering light surrounding your body and infusing it with drive. Envision swimming in a vast black ocean where you and the dark are alone together; what do you feel? What do you see? When you swim to shore, what do you see? Make it yours.

Write a letter to your dead

Grief is a beautiful, complicated, overwhelming, and natural thing; it lets us peer into the truth of life and it mirrors back to us the deepest, most sincere parts of our ourselves. If you spend your time actively avoiding grief, you may have to spend some time letting it in eventually, right?

This is the time. Write a letter to your dead (perhaps, in this case, your grief is metaphorical). Visit a loved ones’ grave. Eat lunch in a graveyard. Thank the dead for welcoming you. Light a candle in honor of someone who passed or set up a small altar in their name. Go there. Feel it. Scorpio will cradle you in her arms and fill you with rejuvenation and comfort when you’re in pain. You just have to be willing to move through that murky threshold. Make like Hecate; go forth into the crossroads. 

Yes, Scorpio is cthonic and intense—but she is fiercely loyal and wants the best for those who embark into the liminal. Trust me.

*This is an updated piece from 2018.

---

Lisa Marie Basile (she/her) is a poet, essayist, editor, and chronic illness awareness advocate living in New York City. She's the founder and creative director of Luna Luna Magazine and its online community, and the creator of Ritual Poetica, a curiosity project dedicated to exploring the intersection of writing, creativity, healing, & sacredness. She regularly creates dialogue and writes about intentionality and ritual, accessibility, creativity, poetry, foster care, mental health, family trauma, healing, and chronic illness. She is the author of THE MAGICAL WRITING GRIMOIRE, LIGHT MAGIC FOR DARK TIMES, and a few poetry collections, including the recent NYMPHOLEPSY. She is also a chronic illness advocate, keeping columns at several chronic illness patient websites. She earned a Masters's degree in Writing from The New School and studied literature and psychology as an undergraduate at Pace University. You can follow her at @lisamariebasile.

Let This Scorpio Walk You Through Scorpio Season

BY LISA MARIE BASILE

I don’t care whether you believe it or not, the Scorpio exists. If it’s not a personality carved out by the celestial, then it is most certainly an archetype born out of real-life human beings, the kind—like me—that drinks, breathes and moves about attached to some chthonic place. We are the people who were born rummaging through the dark. We were the kids who weren’t like the others. We were the adults who realized our strangeness is actually power. Grew into our wings.

Scorpios, I’m talking to you here—but if you love someone who is a Scorp, it’ll benefit you too: It is like we cipher what we need from the darkness just in order to make it through the day. It could be that we drain a crowd of its mass energy—taking just a little bit from you there, and you there, and you over there so that no one aches for what went missing, or it could be that we consistently keep one foot in the otherworld, always dreaming, always obsessing, always plotting. It could be that we expertly speak the language of endings. Because we know endings mean something comes next.

Ruled by Pluto, lorded over by death and sex, we are intrinsically linked to the body—the body as sigil, the body as engine, the body as an immutable thing, and, of course, the body as a thing with an end-date. We can’t seem to ever really live here, on earth, in our town, in our houses, in our workplaces—because a part of us always off somewhere bent over in a corner, meddling, whispering, hiding, licking our wounds, or opening them.

Sure, for the secular among us, it could be that the zodiac is nothing more than a tool for suggestion. Like some view Tarot, for example, astrology provides a map for meditation—rather than being a stone-cold, steadfast, set-in-stone reality. (I mean, hello, "13 signs"—no Scorpio is going to fucking budge, no way). When you’re a scorp, you know it. It’s not like the Aquarius who says "Yes, I am eclectic!" or the Leo who chants, "Look upon me!" Or even the dreamy Pisces, who, like the three water signs (Scorp included) is also always attached to otherworlds. A Scorp is a Scorpio is a Scorpia. Even if you don’t want to be a Scorpio anymore, you’re stuck with us. Trying to hide it is akin to being drunk. You might be able to get around, but you’ll never feel quite right.

Scorp might even influence you if it’s in your chart or, say, your moon sign. Either way you know it. You can feel its pincer spread inside you. You can feel its poison push through you whether you want it or not. When Scorp  has you, she has you. I can’t tell you differently. 

So brings us to Halloween season—scorpio season. This time of year has always been magical for me (surprise, surprise). I was born November 3—right after all the beautiful festivities honoring the dead (were I to be a Halloween child, well, I curse the universe for failing me…). I’ve always felt most alive now, and with all the talk of Scorpio season, I feel at home, like I’m understood, like I’m seen—not just banished to the shadows of scorn and sex and wound and water and darkness.

But the scorpio is more than Scorpio season. And we’re more than the qualities we’re usually defined by. As sexy and intimidating and intoxicating as we seem, I believe that Scorp is, in equal measure, made from darkness and light. Capable of immense transformation and instrospection, this sign—and its wild season—is a time when we can confront the shadow and find good it in. Find a home in it. Become comfortable with our discomforts. Especially around loss, grief, fear, body, desires, and identity. Do not worry that this season will bring out your ghosts and leave you scared and haunted and overwhelmed—because you can harness all of that and use it to your benefit. (And just think: For some of us, it’s always Scorpio Season. If you don’t live in this place in perpetuity, consider yourself, well, lucky?). 

But for just this season, transient and ending, you can indulge.

Some of the indulgence tips I include below are therapeutic in a very DIY way. I encourage you to seek professional help if you feel you need it, though. Working through your pain or grief on your own is one thing, but if you feel you need help, do ask for it. The Scorpio would want you to be good to yourself, even if she doesn’t always express it.

Here are some ways Scorpio Season can be curative—if you work it, rather than fear it.

1.Keep a shadow journal.

Here is where you’ll write down all those secrets, all those fears, all that loss, all those people you miss, all that pain. You want it out, and down. You want to sit with it, read it, accept it, and know that these secrets are safe (the scorpio is very secretive, which can make her sick). But mostly, being able to feel a little more comfortable with your wounds can actually lessen their sting.

2. Power your transformation.

If you want to be the person who stops showing up late, or the person who finally lets himself feel loved, or the person who wants to speak up when you think you ought to, scorpio season is the time to make those efforts. With scorpio’s intense transformative powers, this is the time to apply all that energy. You might here of scorpio’s death wish, but really it’s the fact that scorpio feels the need to transmorph, to kill a part of themselves off (give birth to another) and send it to the grave. 

3. Talk to the dead.

Scorpio is the sign of the dead, sure. We all know that. And while that might mean Scorpios are busy walking that liminal space, it doesn’t mean you can’t join them. Whether the veils are literally or metaphorically open—because many people and Scorps are secular and don’t really believe this season is really a time of spirits—it’s still a good time to meet grief head-on. (Again, see note above around seeking professional help if you can’t move through grief on your own).

I like to write letters to my dead, sometimes I like to bury those letters, and sometimes I like to visit those graves or places where the dead are and just talk. I took part in something called Into the Veil a few weeks ago, where I recited poetry in a graveyard. The event was produced by Atlas Obscura, and was a truly death positive evening in that it allowed visitors to discover art and transformative ritual around death. The more we sit with it, the more we acknoelege it, the less power it holds over us—at least that’s the theory. It may be hard to stomach (for me, it was), but being surrounded by all those tombstones meant something: Life regenerates, life moves, life ends, memory lives, memories mean something, and that we ought to to live while we have the chance—live for our loved ones who cannot. Who didn’t get a long enough chance. This scorpio season, sit with the dead, or your dead, and just try to find a way to make peace. It’s probably different for all of us, that way, but it can yield beautiful results.

---

Lisa Marie Basile is the founding editor-in-chief and creative director of Luna Luna Magazine. She is also the moderator of its digital community.

Her work has appeared in The Establishment, Bustle, entropy, Bust, Hello Giggles, Marie Claire, Good Housekeeping, greatist, Cosmopolitan and The Huffington Post, among other sites. She is the author of Apocryphal (Noctuary Press), war/lock (Hyacinth Girl Press), Andalucia (The Poetry Society of New York) and Triste (Dancing Girl Press). her book, nympholepsy, was a finalist in the 2017 tarpaulin sky book awards.

Her work can be found in PANK, the Tin House blog, The Nervous Breakdown, The Huffington Post, Best American Poetry, PEN American Center, The Atlas Review, and tarpaulin sky, among others. She has taught or spoken at Brooklyn Brainery, Columbia University, New York University and Emerson College. Lisa Marie Basile holds an MFA from The New School. @lisamariebasile