Your Monthly Astrology Update: Shift Your Karma This Scorpio Season
Art Direction and Photograph by: Catie Menke. Model: Darby Ball.
Copy by: Alison Brownell
Model: Darby Ball
Editor: Jeni Fjelstad
Creative Direction by: Catie Menke
On October 21 (or 22 if you’re on the East Coast), the sun slinks into Scorpio, ushering in a month of deep reflection. The sun doesn’t particularly love being in Scorpio, as light is the antithesis of the swamp that Scorpio likes to reside in, but bringing that light to what is hidden allows us to see our subconscious conditioning more clearly, helping us to undo some of our more difficult karma.
Scorpio rules all that we aren’t meant to talk about in polite conversation: Sex, death, and taxes. But that’s oversimplifying it. Polite conversation also rules out the examination of your childhood programming, speaking about your trauma, or working through your crippling debt. Frankly, I think so-called polite conversation rules out discussion of all the things worth discussing in life (but this could also be why I find my foot in my mouth so often).
This isn’t with the intent to make you feel badly about yourself, but so that you can understand your own motivations — and see where these fears have been guiding you to do things you don’t love, or be someone that you may not want to be. Scorpio doesn’t just rule these thoughts but also the origin of them as well. During this time, you aren’t only examining what’s in your mind, but truly pulling things out by the root. Ideas you picked up from parents, teachers, friends, neighbors, your creepy uncle (c’mon, we all have one), bosses, and mentors become illuminated and show us where we’ve been hanging on to things that don’t actually belong to us.
Conversely, instead of your discomfort motivating you to transform, connecting your own subconscious dots might make you more comfortable with who you are. The core of who we are and how we developed isn’t always difficult, and you may truly appreciate those experiences, instead of being pissed off that you were carrying around someone else’s baggage for so long. Regardless, while only a fraction of us are Scorpios, we all get to practice being in touch with our shadow natures during this time.
Now, some of you might be saying, “Um, shadow nature? I don’t have that. I’m a very happy person!” (à la Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally).
What nagging feeling have you been ignoring? What person that grates on your nerves have you been putting off having a conversation with? What situation is so untenable that you don’t think you can bear it any longer, yet you’re fake smiling through it so hard your molars have been ground flat into your jaw? When we finally face what makes us uncomfortable and why, we can begin to alter our karma.
Let’s use our teeth grinder referenced above. She was taught not to complain because her mother always punished her for it when she was a child. So, she grins and bears it because she doesn’t know how to confront situations that make her feel uncomfortable or maintain her boundaries in a healthy way. The karma she’s perpetuating is the loop that runs in her subconscious: That her needs don’t matter. As a result, she keeps attracting the same situations that cause her to bypass her needs for the sake of others. By looking at the situation from the origin and handling it there (and yes, this person would likely best be assisted in this process with a therapist), she can begin to shift her patterns. And her karma instead becomes that of someone who shows up for her own needs, sets healthy boundaries, and stands up for herself.
Art Direction and Photograph by: Catie Menke. Model: Darby Ball.
In this example, it’s pretty clear that this person would likely need more than a month to make that change. That’s perfectly okay. This season isn’t for cramming 40 years of therapy into four weeks but for identifying where you have let the ideas of others imprint on your own thoughts and behaviors. That is the work of this season. Because once you see something, whether it’s an unsolicited dick pic or your own adopted shadow behaviors, it cannot be unseen. And from there, you have to take action to change what you can no longer abide by.
Think about something in your life that makes you uncomfortable. Ask yourself why. Then why again. And then why again. Keep following that thread to when you first felt that discomfort. From there, think about how you might show up differently in your own life if that initial instance had been ideal. That gap between what was and what you’d like to be is where your journey to shift your karma is meant to take place. Your journey may be quick, in that when you see it, you are capable of making the change immediately. For others, it might be working through something with a trusted friend or reading a book on the subject to get more enlightenment. For others, it might be serious couch time with a therapist.
Whatever that gap is for you, Scorpio season is here to show you that when you explore what you’re afraid of by bringing light to the darkness, you can rise from your own ashes like the phoenix.
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