Scorpio is the sign of Shaman and the Spy, the Hitman and the Detective, the Investment Banker and the Investigative Journalist, the Criminal Deviant and the Depth Psychologist, the Brain Surgeon and the Research Scientist, the Covert Op and the Deep Cover Cop. Co-ruled by Mars (the Lord of War) and Pluto (the Lord of the Underworld), Scorpio is the sign least likely to fear death. Astrologer Frances Sakoian warns, “In battle they will give no quarter and expect none. If one takes up cudgels against a Scorpio, he should be well fortified.” (Source) To illustrate: using its premier date as its date of birth, the original Terminator film has its Sun, Pluto, Mercury, and Saturn all in Scorpio. (Chart) The film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as the “T-800” model Terminator — a heavily fortified contract killing machine from the future who gives no quarter and whose cybernetic brain possesses no fear of death. Opposite him is actress Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor, a young woman who transforms herself from a wilting violet afraid of her own shadow into a ferociously self-sufficient badass who defeats the heartless killer sent to eliminate her and her unborn child. Both the T-800 and the Sarah Connor characters are textbook Scorpios albeit from opposite ends of the spectrum: one’s been programmed to serve the ice cold forces of technological centralization by inflicting death, the other’s been called to disrupt them by preserving life. Both are totally implacable in the pursuit of their objective(s).

According to astrologer Judy Hall, people with their Sun (conscious identity) in this intensely secretive sign make for great undertakers and insurance agents. (Source) They also do well in any career that requires infiltration, such as working for the internal affairs department of a Fortune 500 corporation. Schwarzenegger’s Scorpionic alter-ego the T-800 is not a literal undertaker or corporate insurance agent but its mission to infiltrate (Scorpio) the past and assassinate (Scorpio) Sarah Connor is designed to insure (Scorpio) that things goes as planned for a massive defense contractor known as the Cyberdyne Corporation. Scorpio, ruled by Pluto, is also considered the sign having dominion over nuclear energy. (Source) Not coincidentally, the T-800 is powered by an internal nuclear reactor that sits in its solar plexus region behind heavy armor. Human Scorpios are powered by similarly primeval, if intensely guarded, sources of energy.

While a person’s Sun sign tells us what they come to be consciously identified with, it’s their Moon sign that tells us what the needs of their emotional body are. If the Sun is symbolic of the head, it’s the Moon that’s symbolic of the heart. A person’s Moon sign will also tell us a lot about the home environments they feel most comfortable in. Astrologer Raven Kaldera associates the Scorpio Moon with the myth of Hecate, the Greek goddess of necromancy who feels more at home among the dead than she does the living:

The 1981 cult film Escape from New York, released (born) July 10th, 1981, has its Moon in Scorpio. (Chart) The film is a fictional work but its intensely subterranean atmosphere is an accurate projection of the environments a Scorpio Moon (Hecate Moon) tends to find themselves in. In it actor Kurt Russel portrays “Snake Plissken”, a former special operations soldier who must journey into the psychotic underworld of the American police state. Once there he must retrieve state (family) secrets so horrific they remain unspeakable until the film’s final moments. Like the dark parts of the human psyche that Hecate frequents, all roads into and out of this underworld are mined with explosives. Like Hecate herself, Russel’s character is considered a criminal, is very much a creature of the night, and is widely assumed to be dead. He doesn’t fly around on a silent broomstick like the witches associated with Hecate but he does arrive in the underworld by way of a silent glider, which can be thought of as the modern day equivalent of a witch’s broom:

In true Scorpio Moon fashion, Russel’s character alternates between “silent introversion and snarling rage”, to quote Kaldera’s description of this lunar placement’s emotional tendencies. In one scene an associate of Russel’s character is abducted by a gang of night raiders who burst through the floor of a burnt out cafe, a good metaphor for the swarms of free floating fears and other inconvenient eruptions from deeper parts of the unconscious that some astrologers associate with the Scorpio Moon.

Combine a Scorpio Sun’s conscious orientation to intensity with a Scorpio Moon’s natural born instincts for the crossroads of life and the result is a Sun/Moon pairing that’s both fascinating and feared. Jefferson Anderson says this is the Sun/Moon pairing of the “Extremist” who takes nothing at face value. (Source) Stella Hyde says that its most extreme it makes for a great professional assassin, one who “spurns the bread-and-butter gangland contracts for the edgy intrigue, secrecy and destabilizing political fallout that comes with top-class, globally significant, grassy-knoll style eliminations”. (Source) To illustrate: using its establishment date as its date of birth, the U.S. government’s Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) is a Scorpio/Scorpio. (Chart). According to the Board’s Wikipedia page, it was established in 1992 “following the public outcry about the event after the release of Oliver Stone’s film JFK, which suggested a conspiracy within state institutions to murder the President”. (Source) At the time there was a surge in people who were unwilling to take anything at face value when it came to the extremist, globally significant, grassy-knoll style elimination of JFK.

Actress Famke Janssen is a double Scorpio whose big breakthrough came in the 1995 film Goldeneye in which she portrayed “Xenia Onatopp”, a ruthlessly intelligent James Bond super-villainess. (Chart) Janssen’s Scorpionic alter-ego Onatopp was, in effect, a female version of Dracula, the terrifying if iconic vampire character penned by Bram Stoker, himself a double Scorpio. (Chart)

Onatopp was a villain but not one without some redeeming qualities, at least in terms of what she represents in the world of film. The Bond series is infamous for depicting women as little more than helpless waifs who dispense sexual favors like pez. Onatopp was anything but helpless and, like a true Plutonian, she wasn’t about to be caught dead dispensing thrills on anybody’s terms other than her own. Janssen later came to fame for her portrayal of Jean Gray, a member of the X-Men comic franchise, who starts of as the weakest member of the organization only to die and be reborn as the strongest. For a double Scorpio like Janssen, both the Onatopp and Gray characters were pitch perfect although obviously the two were on opposite sides of the equation in regards to the nobility of their intentions.

Something similar can be said of 17th century poet Juana Ines De La Cruz, a double Scorpio, who according to astrologer Mystic Medusa, was “as widely condemned in her day as she was adored. Some say De La Cruz was THE most important poet of her time, influencing Walt Whitman, Emily Dickensen and so forth. She even wove theme of Hermetic magic into some of her poems. So Scorpio”. (Source) De la Cruz was a nun so her personal and private lives were likely reasonably mundane. However, given the cultural norms of the 17th century, her poetry and scholarly accomplishments certainly did mark her as an extreme outlier — something that, as a double Scorpio, she was likely quite proud of.

Scorpio is ruled by Pluto, the planet considered to have dominion over nuclear energy. When both of a person’s luminaries are Pluto-ruled the result is a person that is, in effect, a one (wo)man chain reaction of primordial traits. Linda Goodman observes:

To illustrate: General Curtis Lemay is a double Scorpio. (Chart) He’s best known for masterminding the firebombing of Tokyo’s civilian population during World War II — something which he admitted would have gotten him prosecuted for crimes against humanity had Japan won the war. He later advocated fighting a “winnable” nuclear war, was the running mate of pro-segregationist George Wallace in the 1968 presidential election, and many suspect he may have played a role in the assassination of JFK. He also happens to haven been the model for the psychotic if buffoonish General portrayed by George C. Scott in Stanley Kubrick’s legendary 1964 dark comedy Dr. Strangelove: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb:

Lemay was, by any reasonable assessment, a truly horrible person. He did, however, manage to do one thing right and that one thing was as Scorpionic as it gets. According to Eric Schlosser’s book Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety, it was Lemay who as the first head of Strategic Air Command insisted upon the implementation of extremely stringent safety measures when it came to the handling of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons were so new at the time that Lemay was one of only a handful of men on the planet who understood just how dangerous they were. The measures he implemented have since prevented a number of accidental nuclear holocausts from occurring — exactly what’s depicted in Dr. Strangelove. Stunningly, Schlosser makes a convincing case that Lemay’s efforts have likely done more to prevent nuclear war than all of Greenpeace combined. The man was a mean-spirited fascist, a virulent racist, and a war criminal through and through but within the Pluto ruled underworld even the Devil has something redeeming to offer the world.

About the Author: Matthew David Savinar is a California licensed attorney (State Bar #228957), voluntarily inactive as of June 2013. He can be reached for questions, comments, or astrological consults at his contact page.

The premier issue of Hexagon, now shipping: