Who are you in the dark? Scorpio Season Alchemical Meditations

The light of the day is steadily dimming.

The green world bids us farewell in a final show of brilliant golds, oranges, and deep reds.

The dark of the night becomes more familiar…

…and begins to pull our inner shadows forward.

Here on Gaia’s surface in the Northern Hemisphere, many of us are bringing in our final harvests of fruits, berries, and gourds…the bounty of a generous earth now preparing to sleep.

Though many of us feel the grief of the end of the growing season, most of us do not rely on these harvests for our survival, as was the case for many of our ancestors.

This final flourish of food for our cellars and pantries meant sitting with the sometimes harsh reality of the limit of the resources they’d have on hand through the dark and scarce winter ahead.

The fact of this harsh reality and the pressure this season places on the human spirit gave shape to the many classical associations of the temple of the scorpion…

…possessiveness and play with boundaries, death and what lies beyond it, power games, fascination with the morbid and extremes.

Scorpio season also brings with it arguably the highest of holidays in the Celtic calendar— Samhain.

Samhain is a three-day festival where the community gathers to (among other things) honor and consult the dead and pray to and propitiate the invisible powers…

…as these invisible powers are now the only ones able to assist us in surviving the dark times ahead should our pantries fail to feed us.

The time of the works and power of the material world has now ended…

…and that of the powers of the invisible realm are only just beginning.

This final harvest and the pending deep sleep of the mighty trees and powerful medicinal plants opens the doorway for the transfer of power from the above to the below—

as the spirits of the land and the fey make their way deep into the Earth towards the fires at her center.

This door opening could be seen as a “cause” of the famous thinning of the veil that allows us to read our most life-altering fortunes,

dream our most powerful dreams,

cast our deepest spells,

greet our beloved dead most intimately,

and propitiate the fey and our other invisible allies with peculiar potency.

Scorpio knows how to work amidst this great transfer of power and liminal doorway to the dark.

Scorpio is at home amongst the death knells surrounding us.

Scorpio knows how to protect itself from those with mal-intent from both the visible and invisible realms.

Scorpio has skill with the power moves necessary to get their share of the harvest to survive the winter ahead.

For those who weren’t wise with their decisions during Libra season, these power moves could include manipulation and shady dealings with beings living and dead.

It requires great stores of energy to get through this time when our beloved trees and creatures of the green world no longer provide us with their nourishment and the sun’s strength to lend us his vitality, warmth, joy, and generosity rapidly wanes.

Even those who have made wise decisions in Libra season will have to prepare during the first half of Scorpio season to bear the discomfort of the temperature shifts, light changes, and lifestyle adjustments.

This process brings up difficult emotions, thoughts, and sensations in our bodies as we are confronted with our limitations…and the choice to accept them, ask for help, or take what’s not rightly ours.

Difficult relationship dynamics emerge as people spend more time huddled together about the hearth fire.

The main themes of Scorpio, sex and death, become rather prominent as we humans get used to sharing close quarters once more.

We struggle as we watch loved ones suffer through illnesses and pains brought on by the cold.

We also long to share the warmth and pleasure of their bodies…and prioritize finding ways to get it.

In short, during this season we are asked to renegotiate what it is to be human and to have needs and desires in the absence of ease and abundance…in the cold and the dark.

We are pushed to the edge to ask ourselves what it costs to get those needs and desires met…and what one is willing to do to wield power and protect what’s ours in the face of all the others asking that same question.

So I ask you, as you prepare to stand before your ancestors this Samhain with offerings from your own year’s harvest, who are you when pushed to the edge?

What are you willing to sacrifice to survive?

What are you willing to do to protect your own?

And what are you willing to take from others?

Have you met your own darkness in close quarters and in need? Do you have some holy words that might need to be whispered into your shadows? Are there some whisperings coming forth that you might need some silence and shadow to properly hear?

We all need to do this work, but none of us can do it alone.

Want some help in your transmutations and transfigurations during the season of the dark?

Join us in the School of Heaven and Earth to join a community of humans dedicated to working with the spirits of the stars and soils to build a better world...

...and consider crawling in her sister school Sibyl's Cave to join some world-building word witches, oracles, and dream walkers if you want to learn to truly thrive in the darkness of the pre-created realms.