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TWELVE PHASES OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE: SCORPIO
The Scorpio phase of the yearly cycle of the life-force as it unfolds on earth and in human nature has been strangely misunderstood. Peculiarly negative attributes have been given to it as a result. They had to be negative because the interpreters failed to relate the Sign to the total cycle of the Day-force and the Night-force, stressing the ordinary individual's reaction to it at this stage of social evolution rather than the positive essence of the Sign itself; also because, with Scorpio, the coming of wintry days and long nights becomes evident, and primitive man resents this approach of physical darkness. He resents it, because he is rooted in the soil and a kin to vegetation and animal life. Scorpio brings tidings of hibernation; its frosts seal the doom of red and golden leaves. It has become thus the symbol of death. Only to a few could it mean "regeneration"; and even these few often did not realistically understand the meaning of such a regeneration.
While studying the symbolism of Libra we stressed the fact that the three zodiacal Signs of the Fall period were steps in the growth of society and of the social consciousness in man. During this Fall period socializing forces are surging with ever-increasing momentum following the increase in Power of the Night-force since the Fall equinox. The reality of human interchange, of living together within the organic, stable, permanent structure of a community is envisioned in Libra as a need and as an ideal of behavior. In Scorpio, this reality must be vitalized, made poignant and dramatic, inescapable. It must sink into the very flesh and glands of human beings; into their very depths and their very soul; into the substance of "personality." It must transform itself into a driving force. That driving force is sex in its social aspects, sex as builder of civilization.
The condemnation heaped upon Scorpio, "the accursed Sign," has paralleled the identification of sex and sin, which has conditioned so much of our Christian Western civilization. The subject, therefore, has become invaded by "complexes" and set attitudes, not easily transformed even by the most acute analysis. However, on the basis of a broad understanding of the complete zodiacal cycle of the Day-force and the Night-force much may be said which should bring light into many dark corners.
Sex has two basic aspects: procreative and non-procreative or social. The former corresponds to Taurus, the latter to Scorpio. That such a distinction has not been made by Western astrologers and philosophers is strange; for the correlation between Scorpio and the whole of sex-activity is very peculiar, considering that Scorpio is only a late Sign of the Zodiac and associated with autumn, the time when the life-force becomes somnolent in nature. Sex, as a strictly biological factor, is a primary function of all organisms and obviously should be associated with the animal mating season and the growth of flowers. It is symbolized by Taurus, the Bull — a hieroglyph of fertility and male strength.
Taurus is the sign of purely physiological and procreative mating. It is a phase of the process of personality-building. It represents late adolescence — its instinct toward unconscious procreation, its unsocial urge toward personal self-development through fecundating and being fecundated, thus, through sheer emotional experience. It witnesses the maximum emotional expression of the Day-force and of pure personality without any social context whatsoever. It is pure desire without mind or consciousness, without distortion or individual-social differentiation: a generic force which is universal and of itself has no "Meaning." It just is; as life is.
The sign Scorpio is the polar opposite of Taurus. This means that, in the society-building half-cycle of the Night-force's ascendancy, it occupies the same place occupied by Taurus in the personality-building half-cycle of the Day-force's ascendancy. To the Taurean mating urge corresponds, thus, another urge, which is Scorpio's essential characteristic. That urge is the urge in the individual to merge in absolute union with other individuals in order to constitute together a greater organic whole.
In Libra this urge is recognized as a motive for social conduct and group-behavior; but in the very depth of the Libran's feelings there is still much individualism. The Day-force is too strong to allow the personality to let itself go completely into any union with others that would be irrevocable. Libra is a state of unstable equilibrium between a waning individualism and a waxing collectivism. But in Scorpio the desire to be a separate individual is being overwhelmed with dramatic intensity by the need to be more than oneself; by the urge to flow into others, as little streams merge into great rivers and rivers into the sea. That urge is the transcendent and social aspect of sex. It represents, not the procreative sex of late adolescence which warns? to build, but the non-procreative, social and – yes — mystical sex of maturity which is a yearning for self-forgetfulness and union through another with a greater whole, and even with "God" — as the Orient and most secret traditions well understood.
Sex as a gate to "cosmic consciousness" has been known throughout the ages. Rituals have been devised to canalize this transcendental urge and lead it to its appointed goal. The Hindu Tantras and some forms of Yoga stress such rituals. All the temples of antiquity have witnessed them and many Western societies have taught secretly practices which would lead to this merging of energies into a vaster reservoir of forces. Since the advent of Christianity the subject has been shrouded in mystery and this is not the place to discuss this essence of all "practical occultism." But the reality of the zodiacal Sign Scorpio can never be understood until one realizes that the sex-force in Scorpio is not to be considered as a progeny-building force, but as a means to reach liberation from the narrow limits of self; to reach an ecstasy in which the individual becomes more than himself.
What does this "more" actually mean? The first concept such an ecstasy of union arouses in the consciousness is that of the "Soul-mate": the One and the Other merged into a transcendent union "ordained by Life or God since Creation began." This is the Romantic ideal of union — an ideal which does not belong to the realm of Taurus and progeny-building mating, but which burns through Scorpio. It becomes entirely transcendent with the mystics who soar toward union with "the Beloved" — Life, God, the Master, or whatever name is given to that mystic "Other" with whom and in whom self loses its boundaries and cosmic consciousness is reached.
This however is only one aspect of that process of merging into a Greater Whole. The other is symbolized in Christianity by the union of the consecrated individual with the Church, the mystical Bride. Here we have the merging of the individual with the glorified community; a merging as poignantly intimate and emotionally fervent as the most perfect union of bodies and feelings. To know that the community exists and to be eager to work for it is Libra's realization. But in Scorpio there must be identification. Scorpio is the symbol of sex as psychic identification, with no thought of physical progeny — in fact, often in such a manner as to exclude the possibility of procreative results. In such psychic identification the Night-force triumphs — and the spiritual reality of civilization is born.
The home (Cancer) is built upon Taurus' procreative sex; but civilization (Capricorn) stems from Scorpio's social transformation of sex, via the mental generalizations and the social enthusiasms of Sagittarius. And here we touch upon the much discussed subject of culture versus civilization. Culture is rooted in the energies released in Taurus and in the Day-force; civilization in the energies released in Scorpio and in the Night-force. Culture deals with particulars; civilization, with universals. Culture is based on traditions which are conditioned by climate, geography and inheritance of biological factors handed down from generation to generation. Civilization is the result of the work of creative geniuses and leaders who have fecundated the minds of countless human beings with their vision and their understanding. While civilization develops in the Sagittarius phase of the life-cycle, it has its roots in Scorpio. It has its roots in the urge, strong in all leaders of mankind, to pour of themselves unceasingly into the vast matrix of humanity.
That civilizing power is an aspect of the Scorpio type of sex, because it is born of the yearning to identify the self with the Greater Whole, humanity; to transcend oneself by fecundating society . . . and by being fecundated by divinity. That transcendent sexual activity bears a progeny; but it is a social progeny, a progeny of the spirit or the mind. And in that activity the Night-force operates, as, in Taurus, the Day-force sings through the fruitful mating of bodies.
There is nevertheless a negative side to this picture of release of power in Scorpio; a side provided by the waning Day-force which, then, has become more introverted and subjective, perhaps more subconsciously resentful in its action. It is the dark side of civilization: greed for social power and lust. That greed arises in the individual who, instead of merging himself into the greater whole, draws toward himself the energies produced by the living together, the human interchange of values and the commerce which are the foundations of society. Commerce, which is born — or at least permanently established — at the Libra level, generates abundant fruits in Scorpio. If these fruits are cornered by the greedy, then there is social sin. Every man who misuses the products of social interchange of values commits a sin against society. All big business trusts which are built on greed, all politicians who barter in public authority, all racketeers and gangsters, all leaders who play upon fear and mass-passions commit the sin of Scorpio. They lust for social power — instead of fecundating society as true civilizers, and of identifying their destinies with the destiny of their people.
The same is true of individuals who seek forever sexual pleasures and self-satisfaction. In these things, only the negative aspect of Scorpio is to be seen. The negative Day-force turns back to its own use the new energies produced by the molding power of the Night-force. It dreams, where it can no longer act. It creates pictures and temptations; it exacerbates desire. It produces sexual neuroses, where the yearning for merging into a greater stream of power through another human being — or through groups — is frustrated. Lust is born usually from a sense of defeat; just as criminals are often thwarted "men of action" who had it in themselves to fecundate society with their own genius.
Scorpio is no "accursed Sign," and sin or misery comes only where the great creative force is twisted and perverted by fears and complexes born of meaningless traditionalism disguised into virtue, or as a result of chaotic and vicious social conditions. It is where the free-play of energy in Taurus did not occur that the unfulfilled personality, when confronted with its new birth as participant in the life of society, recoils from the step represented by the positive Scorpio. Instead of that exalting union with others through which regeneration would come, a sense of frustration prevails which unfits the individual for that step. Resentment against society, or against the whole of life, prevails. And that resentment, that subconscious violence which would destroy the very means for liberation into the greater state, are, to be symbolized by the stinging and poisonous Scorpio, in whose tail there is social and individual death.
It is not that the scorpion should be regenerated into the eagle, as symbolists are wont to say. The scorpion is a degeneration. It is not a natural product of healthy evolution. The eagle, or better still the phoenix, is a more adequate symbol of the reality of that phase of the natural cycle of yearly transformation which follows Libra. The phoenix symbolizes the birth of life at a new level through the burning of all limitations into the fire. This fire is the real symbol of the energy which burns in the man who has reached the eighth phase of his journey along the Zodiac. It is the fire which destroys lesser forms and summons greater ones to be developed during the Sagittarius period of the cycle. This fire is the transcendent and occult aspect of sex — which is very different from the instinctual procreative urge released in Taurus as a purely earthy and fruitful energy.
Much has been said about the thoroughness, ruthlessness, ambition, cruelty, jealousy and passion of persons in whose charts Scorpio is a dominant factor. But it is remarkable how many human beings, beside Scorpio types, display such characteristics and how often Scorpio natives fail to reveal them! Most of these negative traits in historical or living personalities are the direct results of an archaic social state. The Scorpio type constantly identifies himself with society, and society's passions are his passions. Society's ecstasy and glory would also be his ecstasy and his glory. He is a man in whom the energy of the social process flows with compelling intensity. If that energy is turned toward destruction he becomes a superb destroyer; a ruthless chieftain or a criminal. When humanity will have learned to live as an organic whole, balanced, harmonious and healthy, then its Scorpio types will take on wings and commune with the Sun, as eagles indeed.
Scorpio is one of the four symbolic Gates through which Avatars are born; men who are the mouthpieces of the generic Father of the whole humanity, who is called "God." Scorpio symbolizes God's power as the supreme Civilizer of an united mankind; and it is significant that one whom millions have named "Avatar" and "Manifestation of God" was born in Scorpio: Baha'u'llah, the great Persian prophet who, less than a hundred years ago, proclaimed the Oneness of humanity through a new World-Order, and heralded the great age of organic mankind which will dawn.
