We are now in the season when the Sun moves through Scorpio. All Souls’ Day, and Dia de Los Muertos all mark the same threshold. Nature begins to withdraw, light fades, the days grow shorter, and roots feed on the fallen leaves.
I. The Transformative Water of Scorpio
Scorpio is the densest point of water. It is where emotional flow stops moving on the surface and begins to move inward. Its water is not like Pisces, open and oceanic, nor like Cancer, of springs and rivers. It is underground water, from wells and caves. It is psychic matter that ferments, needing darkness and time to turn into something new.
The sign is feminine and nocturnal, naturally turned inward. Its energy seeks to understand the mystery of its own power. Ruled by nocturnal Mars, its strength is to penetrate. Mars in Scorpio is the iron that goes down into the flesh of the soul. Scorpio is therefore a liminal sign, a guardian between the worlds of the living and the dead, the visible and the invisible. It is the point where the self realises that it is not enough to exist with the other, as in Libra; one must die in the other to become whole. It is the last of the interpersonal signs and the first to feel the pull of the transcendent in the mutable fire of Sagittarius.
In the zodiacal wheel it seals the human cycle of relationship and prepares the birth of Spirit. Its task is to strip away what is false, to burn what is useless, to let the gold of pure awareness rise from the mud. Scorpio is the abyss where love turns into spiritual power and fear turns into vision.
II. The Major Arcanum XIII
That abyss of Scorpio is also found in the Tarot, as revealed through Arcanum XIII: the card of Death. It tells of the inner death of what has served its time. The scythe clears what has lost its life so that the invisible seed can rise again. This is the Scorpio work: the death of the false self, the dissolving of forms that block the spirit.
Arcanum XIII mirrors the mortal phase of the natural cycle. Scorpio rises in the heart of autumn in the Northern hemisphere, when daylight shortens and both fauna and flora prepare for the silence of winter. The Sun weakens and shadows lengthen, the world seems to retreat into itself. It is no wonder that this descent of light coincides with Samhain, with the Day of the Dead, and with All Souls’ Day, the moment when the veil between the states of being and non-being grows thin, with the voices of the unseen felt again among the living.
The Arcanum XIII also cleares and prepares the path for the Sagittarian light that follows. What dies in Scorpio is reborn as vision in Sagittarius. The old self, heavy with attachment, is stripped away so that the higher self, turned towards Spirit, can emerge. It is no accident that Scorpio corresponds to the eighth house in the Zodiac, the house of hidden things and transformation, one of the dark places of the chart, without a direct aspect to the Ascendant.
From that inner night, the soul rises into the ninth house, domus Dei, the house of God. This movement mirrors the passage from Arcana XIII to Arcana XIV – Temperance. After death comes balance, the restoration of harmony. The figure in Temperance, pouring liquid from one vessel to another, repeats the alchemical gesture of the Great Work.
III. The Gospel of St. John – The Eagle
Scorpio has long carried two faces. One belongs to the scorpion that crawls upon the earth and the other to the eagle that soars above it. This double nature expresses the deepest mystery of the sign, the power of transformation from instinct into vision, from the depths to the heights.
In the ancient tradition of the fixed signs, each element of creation was guarded by a living creature: the Bull for Earth, the Lion for Fire, the Man for Air, and the Eagle for Water. These four together form the tetramorph, the four living beings described in the visions of Ezekiel and the Revelation of John. In Christian symbolism they became the sigils of the four Evangelists: Luke the Bull, Mark the Lion, Matthew the Man, and John the Eagle.
Scorpio corresponds to the Eagle among them. The lower creature, tied to instinct and shadow, is transformed, transmuted into the winged one that looks directly into the Sun. The same energy that once crawled can then ascend. This is why Scorpio is called the sign of regeneration.
John, the Evangelist, the Eagle, speaks from this regenerated height. His Gospel is the most inward and initiatory of all. Where the other Gospels tell the outer story of faith, John reveals the inner act of vision, the contemplation of Divine life itself. His words rise like the flight of the Eagle, but they are born from the same descent into depth that Scorpio knows so well.
Even within the Christian tradition, the Gospel of John has always been treated as Sacred in a different way. It was read only on specific feast days, never in the daily homilies, since its content was seen as too high, too inward, too radiant for ordinary teaching. It is, in its very nature, an esoteric Gospel.
The word esoteric comes from the Greek ἐσωτερικός (esōterikos), meaning “inner” or “within.” It refers to what is taught inside the sanctuary, hidden from the outer world, unlike ἐξωτερικός (exōterikos), which means “outer” or “public.” The esoteric path is the way that turns inward, toward the mystery. And this same turning is what Scorpio embodies.
Scorpio is the inward water, the hidden movement of consciousness that draws vision away from appearances toward the secret heart of being. Its work is the same as John’s: to enter the darkness so that Light may be seen from within. Both speak of revelation that cannot be proclaimed to the crowd, but must be lived and experienced in silence. The descent of the Logos into matter and its return to Light are the very alchemy that turns the Scorpion into the Eagle, i.e., instinct refined into vision and knowledge into illumination.
In this way, the Gospel of John mirrors the Scorpionic mystery. It unveils the inner alchemy of Christianity, the descent of the Word into matter and its return to Light. The Eagle is the sign of that ascent: desire made pure, instinct made vision.
Κύριε ελέησον