Scorpio in astrology: Pluto, Mars and the sign's dignities

Scorpio sits in the middle of autumn. Ptolemy (Tetrabiblos, book I, chapter 11) counts it among the four “solid” signs, with Taurus, Leo and Aquarius: those that follow the equinoctial and solstitial signs, and where the moisture, heat, dryness or cold of the season touches us more firmly. The modern word is fixed. The element is Water, shared with Cancer and Pisces. Lilly calls it cold, watery, nocturnal, phlegmatic, feminine, a fixed sign of the watery triplicity (Christian Astrology, book I, chapter 16).

Modern psychological reading draws from this a sensitivity that does not spread itself out but holds. You work through intensity and instinct: you sense what goes unsaid, you see through masks, you go toward what is hidden, and lukewarmness bores you.

• Your strengths: strength of character, magnetism, loyalty, courage under trial, a great capacity to regenerate.
• Your challenges: jealousy, the need for control, holding grudges, a mistrust that can isolate you.

In love, you look for total and exclusive intimacy; the trap is wanting to control everything about the other person. At work, you are strategic and tenacious, at ease in investigation, psychology, research, finance or medicine, wherever digging is needed. Your lesson: put that intensity to work for what you build rather than for power struggles.

For Ptolemy (book I, chapter 17), Scorpio belongs to Mars, along with Aries: two signs of a nature like the planet's, set in square to the houses of the luminaries, in keeping with the destructive and inharmonious quality he attributes to Mars. Lilly makes it “the house and joy of Mars”, his night house (book I, chapters 10 and 16). Since the discovery of Pluto in 1930, modern astrology has assigned the sign to that planet.

AstralPro uses Pluto, without exception. The consequences show in your report:

• Pluto in Scorpio is in domicile, and Pluto is the dispositor of every body placed in this sign.
• Mars in Scorpio no longer has a domicile; with neither exaltation nor fall, he is read as peregrine. In a night chart, the Water triplicity, which Mars then rules, can still give him support.
• A house whose cusp is in Scorpio has Pluto as ruler, where a traditional astrologer would read Mars.

Scorpio faces Taurus, and the two planets tied to Taurus lose their footing there. Venus, for whom Taurus is a domicile, is in detriment; Lilly likewise puts her in detriment in Aries and Scorpio. The Moon, exalted in Taurus, is in fall. Ptolemy justifies this pair (chapter 19): the Moon, after her conjunction with the Sun in Aries, shows her first phase in Taurus, which becomes her exaltation, and the diametrically opposite sign, Scorpio, her depression. Lilly specifies a degree, 3° Scorpio, which the AstralPro engine does not use: every Moon in Scorpio is in fall.

None of the seven traditional planets is exalted in Scorpio, and AstralPro grants no exaltation to Uranus, Neptune or Pluto. The Dignity column can therefore show only three words for this sign: Domicile (Pluto), Detriment (Venus), Fall (Moon).

In AstralPro's calculation by element, the three slices of Scorpio point to the three Water signs: from 0° to 10°, Scorpio, sub-ruler Pluto; from 10° to 20°, Pisces, sub-ruler Neptune; from 20° to 30°, Cancer, sub-ruler the Moon.

The table of Indian decans that al-Biruni gives in §451 of his Book of Instruction in the Elements of the Art of Astrology (1029) follows the same logic and gives Mars, Jupiter and the Moon: the traditional rulers of Scorpio and Pisces hold the first two places, which modern rulerships hand over to Pluto and Neptune. The faces of the Greco-Persian tradition, for their part, give Mars, the Sun and Venus, and Lilly assigns the same degrees in his chapters on those three planets. Your report does not use them for the decans.

In the positions table, a body in Scorpio shows its degree, its house and its dignity. In the dominants, it adds its score to Water and to the fixed mode, and if the sign gathers at least three of the ten planets, each one gains a stellium point. The Dispositors section sends every body in Scorpio back to Pluto. The House cusps table gives Pluto as ruler of any house that begins in this sign. Finally, in chapter I, the decan paragraph of each block names Pluto, Neptune or the Moon as sub-ruler.

Camille Morel, AstralPro's sample chart (fictional data), has her Ascendant at 15°59' Scorpio and six bodies in the sign: Jupiter at 0°50', Venus at 6°30', Mercury at 6°37' (retrograde), the Sun at 21°55', Pluto at 25°17' and the Moon at 27°09'. This one sign brings together all three possible verdicts:

• Pluto, in the 1st house, is in domicile; it is also combust, 3°23' from the Sun.
• Venus, in the 12th house, is in detriment.
• The Moon, in the 1st house, is in fall; at night, she remains the light that leads the chart.
• The Sun, Mercury and Jupiter are peregrine.

Pluto is the dispositor of the other five and its own dispositor; it rules the 1st house, where it sits. The dominants draw the consequence: Water 76%, Fixed 82%, and Pluto at the top of the planets with a score of 10.0.

The decans split the group in two. Jupiter, Venus and Mercury are in the 1st decan, sub-ruler Pluto: the decan doubles the color of the sign. The Sun, Pluto and the Moon are in the 3rd, sub-ruler Moon, Cancer: a shade of attachment and protection. None occupies the 2nd. As for Mars, the sign's traditional ruler, he is at 3°38' Sagittarius, in the 1st house: in this report, he rules only the 5th and 6th houses, whose cusps are in Aries.