Scorpio Traits & Personalities
(October 23 – November 21)
DUALITY: Feminine
TRIPLICITY (ELEMENT): Water
QUADRUPLICITY (QUALITY): Fixed
Scorpio is imaginative, passionate and emotional, subtle, persistent, intense, obstinate, and unyielding.
RULING PLANET: Pluto – Ancient god of the netherworld and of the dead. In astrology, Pluto rules regenerative forces, and the beginnings and ends of phases in life.
SYMBOL: The Scorpion – A secretive, deadly creature that can poison its enemies. Its sting is often fatal.
GLYPH (WRITTEN SYMBOL): ♏ The pictograph is the stinger of the Scorpion connected to a representation of the human reproductive organs (the part of the anatomy that Scorpio rules). This was the symbol in ancient times for the phoenix, bird of immortality and regeneration. In symbolic terms, the curved lines and arrow represent strong emotions tied to practicality and aiming toward higher consciousness.
DOMINANT KEYWORD: I DESIRE.
POLARITY: Taurus:
Scorpio is the sign of inheritance and legacies. Its natives are given a sense of purpose and destiny, and find truest happiness in dispensing their life-force to others. Taurus is the sign of possessions and owning, and people born under this sign want to possess, collect, and have. They will not easily let go of what belongs to them.
PART OF THE BODY RULED BY SCORPIO: The genitals – Scorpio people are susceptible to infections of the urinary system and venereal disease. In addition, their volatile emotions are often the cause of exhaustion and ill health.
LUCKY DAY: Tuesday
LUCKY NUMBERS: 2 and 4
MAGICAL BIRTHSTONE: Topaz – Releases occult powers and brings serenity of mind. It also protects from enemies and illness.
SPECIAL COLORS: Crimson, Burgundy, Maroon: The glowing colors of passion.
CITIES: Liverpool, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., Newcastle
COUNTRIES: Norway, Algeria, Morocco, Tahiti
FLOWERS: Chrysanthemum and Rhododendron
TREES: Blackthorn and bushy trees
METAL: Plutonium
ANIMALS RULED BY SCORPIO: Insects and crustaceans
DANGER: Scorpio people evoke anger in others by their secretiveness and jealousy. Their sharp, stinging tempers can also enrage others to the point of violence.
All About Scorpio
This is the sign of extremes. Scorpio people are variously described as powerful, weak, independent, clinging, passionate, and cold. Clearly, you are a bundle of contradictions encompassing the best and worst in human nature.
The key to your personality is intensity. You do nothing by half-measures. Magnetic, emotional, capable of exerting tremendous force, your strength is hidden in the depths. In the sign of Scorpio the element of water is fixed, an image that suggests an iceberg or a bottomless well. You may appear impassive, sometimes unapproachable, but turbulent passions are always roiling underneath, invisible on the surface.
You live on many levels. While you present a calm and smiling face to the world, you’re ferociously persistent and extremely strong-willed. You’re also flexible when it comes to working out solutions. When thwarted, you don’t just accept defeat. You’re extremely agile when it comes to sidestepping obstacles and figuring out a dozen new ways to get to your goal. In a wonderful paradox, flexibility is one of your most effective methods of controlling situations.
Scorpio is the most misunderstood sign in the zodiac because of its complications and convolutions. Basically, you always have a hidden agenda. You’re someone of incredible depth and brilliance, and your inner psyche is a labyrinth of wheels within wheels, boxes within boxes. Even when you seem to be at ease and relaxed, you are always evaluating, figuring out your moves, working out strategy. Much of this has to do with control, which is what you are all about. For Scorpio to be out of control is to be in psychic danger. Nothing is worse for you than to feel swept away by outside forces. When you control you are safe. Your Scorpio evolution is the journey toward controlling in positive ways—putting order into chaotic situations, being of use to others and therefore meeting an unfulfilled need, arranging your personal environment so it works smoothly for you. The unevolved Scorpio tries to control other people and manipulate situations for its own greed. Thus, as you see, the forces of light and dark continually oppose each other in your turbulent psyche.
What you need is to transmute your fervor into positive relationships and meaningful work. It is very easy to waste yourself on what is unworthy of you, and then your feelings turn inward, become imprisoned, at times even destructive. More than natives of any other sign, Scorpios live at a high pitch of emotion. Its negative aspects are brooding, jealousy, resentment, even vengefulness. The positive aspect is your unswerving dedication once your emotions are engaged. The Scorpion energy, drive, and endurance are legend. Above all, you seek to give your life a meaningful pattern, to find a deeper purpose.
You have a philosophical turn of mind and may become interested in religion and the occult. Your sixth sense enables you to intuit things before they happen. You are blessed with a native understanding of the human heart and a great awareness of life’s secrets. All the water signs (Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces) tend to be psychic, but you Scorpios delve into the powers of the mind that others are afraid of. This is the zodiacal sign of birth, sex, death, and regeneration—areas of human existence in which a person confronts the mysteries of the universe. Many Scorpio natives are brilliant doctors, surgeons, scientists, and spiritual leaders. Jonas Salk, Christiaan Barnard, Marie Curie, and Martin Luther are among them.
The complexity of your mind makes it difficult for you to skim the surface; you must uncover what lies beneath. Whether you are studying a new subject, learning a language, hunting down a fact, or just reading for amusement, there is a quality of penetration in the way your mind works.
Your finest attributes—and your worst—are revealed in relationships. With Scorpio, relationships are usually complicated. This is not surprising when you consider that you can be simultaneously generous and affectionate, violent and unpredictable; in your sunniest moods there is always a hint of an imminent change in the weather. You are deeply loyal to friends but are also intensely jealous and possessive. You cannot tolerate the thought that anyone you love might have a yearning, or even a simple yen, for anyone else. With you, it is usually all or nothing at all. Moderation, restraint, and certainly casual are not in your emotional vocabulary.
You never forget a kindness and will try to repay it handsomely. Conversely, you never forgive an injury and will wait years to get even. In fact, most of the time getting even isn’t enough—you want vengeance. It is strictly not advisable to do harm to any Scorpion. You make a dangerous enemy, for you are as subtle and deadly as the symbol of your sign.
You are a fierce competitor, though often you manage to conceal this from others. You file away pieces of information, facts, and names, and don’t hesitate to use what you know if the occasion arises. When you spot a weakness in a rival, you move in quickly for the kill.
You are adaptable, able quickly to channel your formidable energies into new paths and to embark on an entirely different career. Confronted with disaster, you will try to turn it into success. Practical and shrewd, you believe in tangible immediate goals, and your single minded concentration on getting what you want is formidable.
Clever with money, conservative about spending it, you have an excellent chance to amass wealth. In business, you tend to accomplish things first and announce them second. By the time an opponent is aware of your progress, it is a fait accompli.
Your nature makes you subject to obsessive drives that can be resistant to reason. You will dominate and control anyone who lets you. Suspicious and wary, you are reluctant to trust your heart to anyone. But once you do, you love deeply.
Too many astrologers, in describing the sign of Scorpio, forget to emphasize how loving, generous, kind, loyal, even gentle a Scorpio can be. Many idealists who adhere to high principles and are a great positive force for helping others are born under this sign.
What all Scorpios have in common is intensity of feeling. Emotion not only rules, it characterizes you. You are passionate in love, and passionate about everything in which you become involved: work, relationships, hobbies, causes. You are an individual painted in vivid colors; there is no such thing as a pastel Scorpio.
The Inner Scorpio
You have great strength, determination, and willpower. But no matter how calm and cool you appear on the outside, you’ve got a well of seething emotions underneath. For the most part, though, you keep your intensity under control by channeling it into useful activities. You’re a high achiever, and you seem to “get” things in a flash—with powerful psychic feelings you’ve learned to trust. Your instincts tell you that you’re destined to do something important and you’re not going to let yourself fail along the way. When you latch on to a new opportunity, you explore it in great depth before going ahead. Deep inside you is a gladiator spirit, and if you channel this fighting energy into positive goals (your continuing lesson), you will always be one of life’s great winners. At times, however, you feel you are a lone warrior in a harsh world. You’re a complex person who can’t always express how you feel, but one thing is certain: The things you want, you want badly.
How Others See You
It’s probably your secretiveness that makes people so interested in finding out what you think. You’re often the guru in a group, the one with uncanny hunches about the future and piercing insights into other people’s motivations. Many believe that even your humor contains the barb of truth. People are aware of your reputation for sensuality and fantasize about you as a lover. You’re frequently viewed as over-controlling and too ambitious— even power-hungry—but also as someone who can be trusted, because you never make false promises.