You Are A Powerful Protection Spell
New moon at 9° of Scorpio and the Days of the Dead
In the early morning hours of Friday, November 1st, at 5:46am PST, the Moon goes dark and renews herself at 9° of Scorpio. Scorpio is fixed water, the deepest water. In many ways, she represents the dark, hidden, sometimes frightening aspects of the Water Mother, the sacred water that we all come from and return to. As a cosmic archetype of death/rebirth transformations, she heralds regeneration and healing. But she’s traditionally ruled by Mars, and her contemporary ruler is Pluto—so her healings are not soft and loving, but harsh and loving; intense and potent; effective. She knows that to create conditions for healthy regrowth, we must first allow exhausted forms to die, and me might also have to destroy all that is toxic to future healthy growth. So Scorpio tends to initiate healings with what stings, hurts, infuriates, and desecrates, or by inflaming around what has wronged us. She sometimes takes us to the depths of our own powerlessness to get us to locate the power we do have; to properly reignite our will to survive and live. She especially wants us to feel and channel the power of our strong emotions, our rage and grief, even our fear and panic, so that we can act decisively to protect all that is vulnerable and sacred. It can take a long time to master this level of intensity, this loving ferocity, but wherever Scorpio leads in your chart, that’s where you are meant to be a protection spell, on yourself, and on everyone you meet.
In the northern hemisphere, Scorpio presides over the dark heart of the fall season. It’s the time when the harvest ends, the cycle of life ends, and we hold our death rites. This year’s new moon in Scorpio is arriving exactly on Samhain, the traditional day of celebration of all this, which is just like bells ringing. Beautiful ghostly soul-stirring bells. New moons are times of contraction in the cycle, times when we are generally called upon to rest and recover before beginning again. But the Moon is in her fall in Scorpio—the Moon prefers more gentle energies—and so Scorpio new moons are not typically restful. They can be very potent and magical though, and a new moon on Samhain almost guarantees this one will be. A fresh current of manifestation is beginning, one that is intimately connected with all cycles of regeneration. There are stories that it is time, now, to close, and new stories longing to be lived and told. It’s a good time to be a good witch.
Other conditions are forming complex influences on this new moon. Mercury is at 28° of Scorpio, in a whole sign conjunction, adding some clarity, flexibility, and rational footing to our magic. It’s in a very close trine with Mars, Scorpio’s traditional ruler, who is currently at 29° Cancer and starting to slow down as it moves towards its coming end-of-year retrograde in Leo. In the warm mothering waters of Cancer, Mars’ instincts to protect and secure are heightened, but it also can’t fight openly or confront things directly. Mars doesn’t love being here, it’s a frustrating place to be, to have to contain our aggression. Mars in Cancer has to come at everything sideways and through the heart, through a lot of water and feeling—to fight the good fight using compassion and love, vulnerability and nourishment and kindness. It’s kind of beautiful really, for all of us to learn to better contain and channel our warrior energies, to integrate our anger and fight with our highest intentions for care and love—it’s just not easy. This trine with Mercury in Scorpio and Mars in Cancer is completed by Neptune, now at 27° of Pisces—that’s a grand water trine, which is an incredible amount of support. Like all the water signs are a full back-up choir to this new moon right now. I’m picturing all the Water Mothers up there, all the Sky Grandmothers, just in formation on the other side of the veil. There is also a mutual reception between the Moon and Mars, as they are in each signs that the other rules—just like with the full moon in Aries—so all communication lines are open. However tricky this integration might be, it is possible with this much support.
Mars is also in an opposition to Pluto at 29° Capricorn. Pluto is Scorpio’s modern ruler, and as archetypes they have a lot in common. Mars opposing Pluto just feels harsh, and it certainly reflects the extreme tension that I think many of us are feeling right now. A struggle is coming to a head. This opposition will be exact on Sunday. We know how this is playing out in the collective, as we are just days now from the fateful U.S. election day. Mars will enter Leo on Monday, and my hope is that we feel a big shift, a move into more active expression and labor, where all the built up tension will be able to translate into action and catharsis. On a personal level, you may be feeling this extreme level of tension, too. It could be between the demands of your work in the world, and how you meet your material needs (Capricorn), is in direct opposition with the demands of your body and heart, your need for care and tenderness and time (Cancer). It could be that this astrology is throwing some more fuel into the fire with regard to your own Pluto in Capricorn final project and your individuation struggle, as if you needed anymore. And it could really just be a classic Scorpio moment for you—everything is urging you toward a dramatic healing and evolution. You are the snake, and you are shedding your skin, and shedding all the old life that can’t come with you into this new life.
There is always a moment in any transformation where we get scared. We are being asked to let of of the old and familiar—and even if we can see why that is, even if we want change and we are theoretically onboard, we have to sacrifice the comfort of the known, the stability and security we’ve built up, the illusion of control. We have to put some skin in the game as an offering to pull of this transformation. Scorpio has so much medicine to offer us in this moment. But the transmission that feels most potent to me might be about how to stay on the path, how to not give up. Scorpion ferocity is one level of it—the sheer energy released by being in touch with our emotions. And another level of it is the spiritual wisdom of deep water and deep time. The change and liberation we seek, for all souls, for all sentient beings, it is a long game, a long path, longer than any of us can know. It is, at the very least, the work of many generations.
No matter what happens next week with this election, our work continues. Even if the results are what we want them to be, our work continues. If your energies are flagging right now, the Scorpio new moon wants you to stop spending only your own personal energy. Remember that you belong to an impossibly large network of being, and you can connect to this network and let its energy flow into you. This network of being includes the human world, the more-than-human world, and the unseen world. It includes ancestors and mushrooms, tigers and hawthorn trees, the Moon and the Earth and the Sun and all the planets and stars. Scorpio wants to help you dig very very deep, to drop a tap root all the way to the Source. Let it re-source you. Give thanks to the Universe, the anima cosma, Water itself, and watch how that opens the way. Make some fresh vows around what you love, and how you want to live, and how you want to show up as a force for healing and love in this world.
Some Live Events Next Week!
Monday - Just one more shout out —Amber Tamblyn and I are coming together for a live Zoom call next Monday, November 4th at 6pm PST / 9pm EST. This live event is for the paid subscribers community of Amber’s substack Listening In the Dark (named for her incredible book on women and intuition) — and my paid subscribers are invited as well. This event will be recorded and released later for those who can’t make it! We are going to talk about our big feminist feelings and what my work at the intersection of creativity and trauma healing has to do with this moment. I will also be using my special trauma therapist powers to guide us through some practices for grounding the all the excess charge that will be buzzing through our personal and collective nervous systems. If you are already a paid subscriber to either newsletter, you will receive an email with the Zoom link next Monday. If you’re not yet but you want to join, just get in the paid subscribers boat in the next week.
Tuesday - Next Tuesday, November 5th, I will be activating the live group chat feature of this newsletter for the first time, from 10am-noon PT. It will have no paywall, all subscribers are welcome. I thought it would be fun/wild to gather a record of the oracle and tarot cards we all pull that morning, and any crazy dreams anyone has, as we tune into how the energies are coalescing that day. I will be posting whatever card or cards I’ve pulled that morning and what I think they mean, and hopefully some of you will as well! Come say hello and tell me what you’re sensing!
Friday - Next Friday, November 8th, at 7pm, which will feel like a thousand years from now, I will be reading poetry in Portland, Oregon at Mother Foucault’s with poet Emily J. Mundy of Seattle’s The Poetry Seance. Emily is currently touring to celebrate her first gorgeous poetry collection, the very-Scorpio What Blooms In the Dark, now out on Moon Tide Press. It will just be the two of us that evening, having an intimate reading and conversation with each other and the dead. It’s a free, though we will likely try and siren call you to buy books. If you’re in the Portland area, please come hang out!
Ritual & Writing Prompts
And now a little extra love for paid subscribers: a collection of links to the archive of writings on Scorpio lunations in In the River of What’s Happening Now, some specific guidance for ritualing with this new moon, and a creative writing prompt to inspire some new work.
(Disclaimer: Prompts are suggestions, not instructions. Play with what inspires you, ignore what’s doesn’t, adapt it all in any way you see fit.)
The Scorpio archive (in reverse chronological order)
How We Heal - full moon at 4° of Scorpio (spring 2024)
The Darkest Hour - new moon at 20° of Scorpio (fall 2023)
The Gift of a Healing Crisis - full moon lunar eclipse at 14° of Scorpio (spring 2023)
Emotional Supernova - new moon solar eclipse at 2° of Scorpio (fall 2022)
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