Moon in Scorpio

The Moon is in Scorpio today, and the tradition counts this as the sign of the Moon's fall. To see why that placement carries a particular tension, it helps to look at what each half brings.

Sepharial describes the Moon as giving softness and adaptability of nature, variableness and a love of change. Ptolemy calls her the body that principally generates moisture, working closely on living things because she is the nearest of the lights to the earth. In both accounts the Moon is the yielding, responsive part of the sky, the part that takes an impression and moves with it.

Scorpio asks for nearly the opposite. Pavitt lists its leading traits as intensity of purpose, indomitable will and unflinching determination. He writes of a remarkable power of resistance, of rising again after reverses, and of rarely showing emotion by any change of expression. A body that wants to adapt and show what it feels is placed in a sign that holds on and keeps its face still. We read the Moon in fall through that meeting. Feeling does not vanish under this Moon. It goes underground, and it is held with more force than usual.

Our kabbalistic reading gives the sign its higher form. Scorpio carries the letter Nun and the faculty of smell, which Ginsburgh calls the most spiritual of the senses. For him it is the sense of discernment, by which true judgment is made rather than by what is seen or heard. Pavitt notices something close to this. He says the sign has a strong perception of right and wrong, and a perceptiveness its people often credit to quick deduction.

Pavitt is just as plain about the hard side. When badly aspected, he says, this nature turns domineering, restless and unreasonable. Its sense of justice can harden into an eye for an eye. And it tends to discredit whatever it cannot personally feel, taking the limits of its own understanding as the limits of nature.

So the Moon here sharpens instinct and judgment. It also makes it easy to mistake a private grievance for a clear perception.

The practice follows from that. Today, when something strikes you as off, whether a remark, an offer or a mood in a room, stop before you act on it. Write down in one line what you sense. Beneath it, write what you actually know. Keep the two lines apart. The first is the discernment Ginsburgh describes, and it deserves respect. The second is your check against the narrowing Pavitt warns of. If the two agree, you can act with confidence. If they do not, ask one direct question before deciding.