How Do You *Really* Feel?

Navigating the deep and powerful currents of the Scorpio New Moon.

Today’s Scorpio New Moon takes place at 12:46 UT, at 9o 34’ of Scorpio, heralding the mega-charged opposition between both its ruling planets, Mars and Pluto, which will be exact on November 3rd. 

While the Moon will be in Scorpio only until November 3rd this month, and we’ll continue traversing Scorpio season until the Sun moves into Sagittarius on November 22nd, the aspect between Mars and Pluto will continue to unfold until late April 2025 thanks to an upcoming Mars retrograde, so I’m seeing this lunation as an overture of a powerful development in the collective. 

Consummate warrior and daredevil Mars is facing off with the King of the Underworld, Pluto.  We’re seeing these do-or-die archetypes playing out on the world stage, with the fever-pitch of the US presidential election, war escalating in the Middle East and Ukraine, and the devastation of extreme weather. But even though the media is fueling narratives of division and doom, and a view of the world much darker than it is in actuality, every archetype has a life-giving potential. 

As we attune to today’s lunar new beginning, even though things might feel extra hard, chaotic, or out of control, I want to encourage our attention and actions toward tilting the scales in that enlivening direction.  Each of our small, but essential contributions add up to the collective result. In the backdrop of the Moon’s rebirth this cycle, we again have a Grand Water Trine supporting us (Neptune in Pisces, Mars in Cancer and Mercury in Scorpio), encouraging us to link up our emotional circuitry to encompass deep truths, actions of care for self and other, and compassionate understanding. Saturn, too, chimes in with a sextile to the New Moon, asking us to step up in our acceptance of the whole, flaws and all — applying our wisdom, imagination and spiritual dedication. 

Deep into Scorpio Waters

Scorpio’s deepest drive is to come face to face with psychological, emotional bottomline truth. To do so, it digs under the polite pleasantries of its predecessor, Libra, to ask, “how do you really feel?” 

What are your true experiences and thoughts, deep down — that innermost layer of self that we often only reveal in rare flashes and glimpses, and sometimes not at all? 

It’s no surprise that Scorpio is interested in the subjects that bring up the most charged, complicated and raw parts of ourselves: sexuality, death, disease, power, relational intimacy, crime, psychology, and the mystical and occult, to name a few. 

The logic of the Scorpion is that intense experiences are the environment that brings out what’s most real in us. The paradox lies in that Scorpio can get caught up in hiding from the very same transcendent connection, intimacy, realness, nakedness at a soul level that it most longs for. That very same intensity of feeling can become overwhelming or terrifying, or set off such explosive echoes within, that Scorpio would rather remain in control, creating dams, walls and defenses to hide behind. 

Let’s also add to the mix that when we’re in a Scorpionic mindspace we can become biased toward the darker view of people and reality, and in a very real sense, become trapped in a perceptual prison of cynicism and nihilism.

I had a friend in high school who embodied the epitome of Scorpio energies. With multiple personal planets in Scorpio, including its ruler Pluto, and the South node, all in a tight conjunction, he could have been the official poster boy for the sign. 

He was an avid athlete too. For a time, I remember he was really into mountain biking. One time, as our group of friends was casually chatting and somebody commented on the brutal scrapes on his legs and arms. He told us, deadpan, how when he was having a hard time at home he would push himself to the limit on his bike in the hopes that he would wipe out and get really hurt. 

And he would. 

Somehow, I don’t think any of us were indifferent. We simply listened. We knew what it was like: looking back, most of my schoolmates were of a Scorpio South Node generation, with Pluto in conjunction, meaning we were intimately familiar with all manner of emotional horrors, neglect, and loneliness. But, hopefully, we’d earned some of Scorpio’s wisdom too, which creates space for such savage truths, without needing to try and make them go away.  


Scorpio’s challenging invitation is for us to develop the titanic emotional strength, the grounding and compassion needed to look straight at every facet of the human experience, especially the taboo, unpleasant, volatile and exiled expressions of our feeling nature — without flinching, collapsing or retaliating. Indeed, ultimately we might be strong enough to welcome them into the fold of wholeness and love. Not an easy path, but a necessary one. I have found that at the bottom of these experiences lies, always, a deep desire, a real soul-longing asking to be actualized. Recognizing those passionate longings as directives from the core of our being becomes the reward for the hard work we do with Scorpio. 

Trust, Healing and Hope

How do we allow ourselves to become the quivering, raw nerve ending, exposed to life — without going mad in the process? I feel this question takes us to the next level of Scorpio’s task, which is the development of relational trust. 

Take the story I shared about my high school friend: he trusted us enough to speak a painful truth out loud — trusted himself enough to be able to say it. We know that sharing vulnerable experiences outloud with safe people heals shame and isolation — and the destructiveness they engender. But let’s think of something else I’d call a quintessential Scorpionic experience, though we may not always realize it: going to the dentist. 

Intimacy and vulnerability? Check.

Fear and visceral intensity? Check.

At the dentist, we’re even dealing with what we normally consider the “gross” side of life — bacteria, decay, bodily fluids — a classic aspect of Scorpio’s domain. Oh and side note, most of us have had a dream about losing teeth — which tends to symbolize something in our lives that evokes deep vulnerability, uncertainty, or fear of losing control. All deeply Scorpionic themes. 

What makes going to the dentist a positive experience, versus a terrifying one, is whether we’re lucky enough to have a kind and competent practitioner in a comforting atmosphere, so that anything that may be festering, rotting or out of alignment can be handled with tact, healed and cleansed. That particular dentist might not be our friend, but they’re fostering trust nonetheless. I’d say that is nothing short of alchemy: here’s someone we can bring our — sometimes deeply disturbing — oral health issues to, and in turn, they can help restore our very symbolically  charged teeth back to balance. 

And alchemy is a big end goal for Scorpio. A transmutation and integration of what is terrifying and overwhelming through presence, skillful space-holding and intelligent bringing-into-light. In life, we need not only deep bonding with people we can trust to witness our emotional darkness, but also systemic spaces and opportunities that normalize and treat the decay inherent to life — both literal and metaphorical — with care and skill. 

Trusting that all manner of decomposition — anything that can die, ferment, turn sour, rot, unravel, fall apart — can be treated as part of life, and woven back into it in a robust way, we can develop a more spacious attitude toward it, and feel more deeply held by life. We’re less paralyzed by darkness, less intent on crafting defenses against it. We learn that life is cyclical, that we can travel to the Underworld and return, and come back stronger and wiser.  Developing this kind of trust seems to me like an essential ingredient in building the world that’s to come.

Over to You

In addition to all I’ve shared, here in the North we’re crossing the portal of Samhain (which is astrologically exact when the Sun hits 15 degrees of Scorpio, which is November 6-7), marking the end of the Wheel of the Year — the time when the veil thins and spirits join the living, in that liminal space between this physical dimension and the Otherworld. Meanwhile, friends in the Southern Hemisphere are celebrating the blossoming of joy and love with Beltane! 

Dear friends, how are you navigating the deep and powerful waves of the moment? 

Work with Me

If you’re looking for some extra support and guidance on these New Moon themes from an energy healing, psychic or astrological perspective (or all three), I have some session spots still open for November.  

If you’re wanting to take advantage of the current discounted sessions I’m offering (aura healing, and energy work mentoring, which are fantastic supports to find your center in challenging times) , you have until the end of November to do so! 

Check out these specials under Autumn Tune Up (and my regular services) here, or email me at hello@karineglinton.com if you have any questions or would like to check out if working together would be helpful for your individual situation. I look forward to working with some of you!

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