Full moon Scorpio 5/10/17 Your Nether Regions

Scorpio is not just about the nether regions of your body or hell itself.  It's also about the nether regions of your psyche and your heart. At this full moon light is shed on the things we hide from ourselves and others. We have conversations about the things we never wanted to talk about. We face desires we wish we didn't have. But, there they are.

It's a time when we get stripped down and scrubbed sparkly—a big, sexy slough of old identities, fake smiles, and toxic secrets collects at our feet.

We step out into the world, exposed.

Personally, I like a good scrub. Inspect my bathroom and you’ll find all manner of exfoliant, loofah, and body brush. Once in a while I’ll treat myself to a microdermabrasion facial. It’s just a very deep exfoliation that’s done with a diamond-tipped wand (doesn’t hurt). This wand removes dead skin cells and makes microscopic cuts in the skin that cue the skin’s own regeneration process (it lives!). The removal of dead cells reveals brand new skin that can breathe and absorb whatever it comes into contact with more deeply (so hopefully you’re putting good, nutritious stuff on your skin).

I know, not exactly a conversation for the dinner table…dead skin, clogged pores, and all. But, that’s Scorpio. Scorpio has no use for anything superficial; it wants to know what’s underneath. It has the stomach for all the gory details, and always wants to “go there.”

“The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.”--Hunter S. Thompson (Mars in Scorpio 8^th house trine Sun-Pluto conjunction, moon 8^th house. That’s a lot of Scorpio)

A Scorpio full moon is always opposite a Taurus sun and sheds light on this dynamic:

Taurus	Scorpio
Amassing	Sharing
Control	Release
My $tuff	Our $tuff
Accept at face value	Nothing is as it seems
Leave well enough alone	Intervene
Preserve	Transform
Holding	Elimination
Constipation	Diarrhea

Yeah. I went there. Couldn’t help it. It’s such a perfect example of the extremes between Taurus and Scorpio. Everyone can relate to these body functions, and the metaphors can go on ad nauseam. Poop is also fitting because Scorpio rules the waste disposal process and reproductive organs. Yeah, all that “down there” stuff. Most people think of Scorpio as the sexy sign, which it is, but we forget it also rules forensics, investment banking, psychology and death. Believe it or not, these things have EVERYTHING to do with the KIND of sex Scorpio wants to have.

There are a million ways to do sex that are healthy and fun, and may or may not involve physical penetration (jeez, do we as a culture get hung up on phallic penetration as the defining act of sex or what), and may or may not involve other people. There’s recreational (Leo) sex, sensual (Taurus) sex, affectionate (Libra) sex, animal (Aries) sex, and on and on. The kind of sex Scorpio wants to have is going to cost you something. Now before you get all proud of yourself because it’s so easy for you to share, chances are that if it’s that easy, it’s not actually costing you anything. When something costs us, we’re talking about loss, our sense of security—being vulnerable. Scorpio wants the parts of you that are hardest for you to part with.  The price is high because what Scorpio offers in return is new life and higher power. I think that’s fair. Except when it’s not. Unchecked Scorpio energy manipulates in the name of absolute power. It can become obsessed with power, and boy is it shrewd and ruthless.

There must be stakes or else Scorpio is not interested. If Scorpio doesn’t walk out of an interaction a different person with a whole new perspective on life---if they didn’t leave a chunk of their soul behind or take a chunk of your soul with them, don’t expect to see them again. Anything short of a religious experience won’t be worth the effort. The Scorpio sex-perience needs you to invest---give up a precious part of yourself in the name of a merger that’s transformative. Through this merger, Scorpio is scrubbed clean with diamond blades. It dies unto itself so it can regenerate with tender new skin and be penetrated. Scorpio sex is alchemical. It is the penetrator and the penetrated—the scalpel and the incision.

Scorpio also has x-ray vision and wants what you got. The psychotherapist needs YOUR deepest feeling/thought material to create new solutions, the investment banker needs YOUR hard earned assets to turn them into something bigger, and a detective would be out of job without YOUR secrets to uncover. In the wrong hands, this ability to work with other people’s stuff can lead to ttrademark Scorpio jealousy.

Hence, typical reactions to Scorpionic people and situations:

“You see right through me. It feels so good to be seen, warts and all. It feels so good to trust. I want to bare my soul to you. Tell you all my secrets.”  Or,  “You see right through me. Get the fuck away from me. That’s not for anyone to know but me. You’re intrusive and creepy.” 

Where might you fall on the possession/power axis that is Taurus-Scorpio?  Right around this time we’re likely to go to one extreme or the other. This full moon should reveal how much exposure you can stand (emotionally, financially, psychologically) and how close you’re getting to the edge. There’s no tightrope walking during a Scorpio full moon. You either jump into to the abyss or retreat into familiar territory. All or nothing. High stakes.

This full moon chart speaks to the closing of a chapter. The full moon (fruition) in Scorpio (death/rebirth) sextiles Pluto (modern ruler of Scorpio), and is accompanied by the changing of the lunar nodes on the Virgo-Pisces (final rest) axis. We’ve been exploring our capacity wake up-and-deal and retire-and-heal for 18-months. We’re sure to feel a palpable shift as the nodes move onto the Leo-Aquarius axis. The nodal shift and the apex of the full moon happen within 24 hours of each other. Something in you or your life is wrapping up. Can you feel what it is? And, no. You are not exempt from Scorpio. It’s represented somewhere, to greater or lesser degrees in everyone’s chart.

We’re all made of the same stuff…just put together differently. It’s YOUR job to find how your relationship to the world works. It’s YOUR job to uncover all the ways you’re similar to your fellow humans, animals, plant life, and cosmos.

That’s astrology.  It’ll cost you some effort---maybe a leap of faith and imagination. The rewards are plenty.

New Moon Taurus 4/26/17 Meditation/Manifesto: The Body Always Wins.

Preface: Before I go on to revel in the palace of the body, know that I include the mind. As far as I’m concerned the mind exists in the body. Living this concept is a constant practice. We’ve all had a lot of conditioning to regard the two as separate, contentious entities. I think the mind is the part of the body that connects it to the abstract idea of time, providing context and narrative. They’re always connected for better or worse.

The body. The meat. The corpo (body) REAL. The matter. In the earthy world of Taurus, only matter matters. The fire signs can keep their inspirations, water their emotions, and air their ideas. The world of Taurus springs from the soil. It’s WILD-life, not the brainchild of city planners and scientists. Taurus is the all natural, all sensing skin we live in. It’s the material…in every sense of the word. We can touch material. It’s 3D, and therefore real. Taurus likes “real” because it likes security—to feel solid ground with its body, luxuriate in the bounty of nature. Simple, right? How do we fuck this up so badly?

The body works best when it’s prioritized. We get into trouble when the body becomes a slave to our ideas about how we think it should be. The mind manufactures a million stories, the body only one: I survive. There is no one way the body should move, look, feel, perform, and it really has no meaning and yet it IS you. It’s how you’re recognized and how you recognize everything in your world. It’s your signifier and interface. You can do your best to outsmart it, hack it, whip it into shape, or beat it into submission, but the body will always get its way in the end. Like the bull, Taurus’ symbol, complicate and fuss with this sweet, simple animal at your peril.

Your body will always tell you how to survive, heal, protect, and nourish yourself. Touch is nervous system nourishment. Movement is tissue nourishment. Rest, food, and water nourish all of our combustive/electro-chemical systems.

A body's purpose is not to be trained, decorated, manicured, "fit," "well," disciplined, in service of the will, sacrificed for spirit, or strengthened to bolster a fragile ego. Your body is not an excuse, therefore it should not be loathed. It is not what's keeping you from love, happiness, or transcendence (btw all that magical stuff happens when we are most IN our natural bodies and closest to the earth). Most of all the body was not meant to be abandoned (Taurus stays put). And, we leave ourselves all the time; whenever we indulge in the numbing extremes of physical pleasures and pain, give our agency to others, and thoughtlessly follow rules we had no hand in creating. It happens every time we turn a coach, teacher, doctor, lover, advertisement, or guru into any kind of authority, and value their interpretation of our bodies over our own. We leave ourselves whenever we chase fairy tale carrots dangled in front of our big brains that promise greatness if we adhere to a system, alter our chemistry, or feel *this* feeling, but not *that* feeling. We’re wired to feel ALL the feelings. It’s how we know what to feed ourselves. A lot of us use chemicals and teachers to help us do this. No harm in that, though intent plays a huge role in how that works for you. If we’re working with a guide or a drug in an effort to inquire about ourselves, and further inhabit our bodies, that’s very different than using those aides to give us quick answers or take us away from ourselves.

So much has been designed to dismantle our connection to our body, feel shitty about ourselves, then try to sell us back our confidence, vitality, and sexuality. You can’t buy what’s already yours. We are able to outsource everything our body was meant to do...is hungry to do. Instead of using our bodies to navigate wilderness, we follow maps of routes that have been paved in cities designed for convenience and efficiency. Instead of physical play, lovemaking, and close combat, we go to gyms, watch porn, use weapons and snipe at each other on Twitter. When we don’t fight, play, and love each other with our bodies we stop recognizing ourselves, and ourselves in others. Then we feel separate. Taurus doesn't do separate, it’s ruled by Venus, the planet that joins.

This new moon is asking you to experience and demonstrate loyalty to your natural self. We do not need to master the body, undo all the “damage,” or fix what’s broken. We’re not broken. Worst-case scenario, we’ve unknowingly made some connections that aren’t working in our best interest. Big deal. Connect it differently. When we can feel our bodies, we can truly feel at home…wherever we happen to be. When we have access to our bodies, we don’t need access to the Internet (as much).

When we talk about the body and Taurus, we talk also about mother earth, Gaia. Like the body, when we mine it for resources and artificially amp up its productivity...we fuck it up. Body/Earth gets sick. Body/Earth is not a machine designed for maximum efficiency. It’s wild, intelligent, responsive, process. Your body doesn’t need to look a certain way, and neither does a tomato (have you seen heirloom tomatoes). The best we can do for all WILD-life is get out of its way, and feed it what it wants.

We will need the security of being connected to our safe stable Body/Earth these next two weeks. We have some radical, unpredictable energy zinging around. Some of it looks quite edgy. But, nasty or nice, there are some surprises in the works as retro Mercury gets right up in there with the Uranus/Eris conjunction in Aries. This is a firework-curveball. It’s blindsiding news, and that thing that came from outta nowhere…again, for better or worse. Invest in what you can touch during this phase. It will keep you sane.

New Moon Meditations/Questions:

For the next 2 weeks can you use your mind to serve and listen to your body more? Allow your body to be the boss of you.

Can you distinguish body needs from ego needs?

Do you feed your body based on what your senses tell you they want, or do you make decisions about what to do with your body, based on external goals or to fix psychological states?

Do you do things with your physical body that you'd rather not do to be polite, impressive, or to shut out feeling?

Do you only share caring touch with your romantic partner(s)? Do you forget to touch yourself?

Do you over fortify your bank account or body out of fear of scarcity? Do you under nourish body/bank account (guilt for abundance)?

Is the food you’re eating real food? Are you eating plants that have not been fucked with?

Do you have a stash of money saved up that makes you feel secure? Taurus loves a good cushion.

Do you have at least one space you can visit in your home or office that feels like a sanctuary?

Do you have routine (mindless) stories about your body? Are they even true? Are they as real as the skin you’re in?

READING LIST. SO GOOD. Further meditations on the bod.

https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/natalie-diaz-on-the-physicality-of-writing/

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/12/neoliberalism-creating-loneliness-wrenching-society-apart

https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/06/20/the-body-keeps-the-score-van-der-kolk/

https://aeon.co/essays/it-takes-neuroscience-and-poetry-to-map-the-tributaries-of-touch