Hang Loose: Standoffish New Moon in Scorpio is Taking Shape

Water is thought to be the most mutable element, but it is this quality of being able to change that makes it so supreme. Here, an engine block is being reduced to sand and rust. This is at West Beach near the Block Island dump. Photo by Eric Francis.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

Scorpio is the sign of hormonal desire and the drive to connect, to merge and to create life. Monday, the Moon and the Sun align in the dark and mysterious 8th sign for the annual New Moon here. This event would be quite enough on its own to draw up the waters from inside the cave systems deep beneath awareness.

Yet the New Moon is also joined by Mars and Ceres, which are infusing the nearly unstoppable emotional prowess of the sign of the Scorpion (who never changes his nature). It is my assessment that the whole concept of Scorpio, with its associations of sex and death, is much of what makes people nervous about astrology in total. It is the sign of all taboos; of all that you cannot mention at the holiday dinner table.

When we consider that Scorpio is a fixed water sign, one might think: how do you ‘fix’ (set, or hold still) the substance that can penetrate everything? How does one make permanent the very element that is never so? How does one fasten the unfastenable?

Examples of ‘fixed water’ might include fossilized seawater, permafrost, or an iceberg so massive nothing can survive colliding with it. If you can think of other examples from nature, I am curious what they are. (A glacier is more of an active process; I would associate them with cardinal earthy sign Capricorn.)

When I was on the Block Island ferry last week, a photographer named Jonathan Wallen noticed I had real gear, sat down at my table and introduced himself. He invited me to the island the next day and said he would show me around. I was treated to the ultimate photo tour, including a museum-like workshop on his property (those are for a later series). The highlight was the rocky beach adjacent to the former garbage dump — truly a place of beauty and wonder, revealing the power of the sea to reclaim anything and everything.