Scorpio the 8th sign of the Zodiac is a sign of great intensity and of extremes as different as are its two symbols, the Scorpion and the Eagle.

Scorpio – The Scorpion or The Eagle

Scorpio the 8th sign of the Zodiac is a sign of great intensity and of extremes as different as are its two symbols, the Scorpion and the Eagle.  Each sign of the Zodiac has its positive and its negative side. All too often, uniformed persons judge a sign by its negative aspects only and thus dislike the sign.  Unfortunately, Scorpio is disliked more than any other sign. It was, however, this mighty sector of the Zodiac that early in man’s evolution stimulated life forces and roused matter to life; and this very same sign later killed the living creation in order to prepare for a new planetary existence that would carry evolution forward to a higher octave. Thus, the constellation of the Eagle became also the Scorpion, bearing the sting of death.

In its lower phase, Scorpio debases and stings the man, sometimes to the death, so that man may be aroused and awakened to the light of truth, and it is through such transmutation that Scorpio is the Eagle.  In this higher phase of the Eagle, we see the man of powerful thought and ultra-keen insight into people and things. The regenerative function is thus seen to reside in this magical sign, which rules death, the dead, and the raising from the dead – raising from the scorpion to the eagle that soars above the mountain tops and whose flight has more to do with the heavens than with the earth. Scorpio has to do with occult science, but especially with those phases of it that are related to regeneration, to the nature of death, to those who have died, to our relation with the dead, and to how death leads life on a higher level.  Magical forces and vast regenerative powers here have their rise.  The strong will in the lower, unevolved man simply serves the selfish and unbridled lower appetites and desires, whereas in the advanced soul it can manifest as healing power and as fruitful, positive, constructive deeds.  Thus, two kinds of power may be found here, which act as vast driving forces, extremes as different from one another as the two symbols, the Scorpion and the Eagle.

Eight begins a new octave.  It is the number of evolution, and so this eighth sign is of vital importance in this respect, because here is the field of feeling and desire, that mighty battlefield where lower desires related to the senses and the lower nature struggle with incessant intensity, until at last divine desires win the victory, as win they must if evolutionary advance is to be made.  Each triplicity has a central focusing which intensifies its forces.  Scorpio is the central or fixing sign for the water triplicity.  As a result, feelings and sensations are intensified in this sign to their highest power, becoming desires that produce either heaven or hell, depending on the soul’s quality and status.  Invariably, there is a mixture of both, for this sign of astral energy or soul force causes an experience of extremes, which work silently within, to restore and rehabilitate the soul through what St. Paul calls ‘the washing of regeneration.’ The forte of Scorpio is to raise old forces and faculties to a higher octave of power or condition.

No pain is more poignant and no ecstasy more exquisite than that provided by this sign of a fixed-watery combination. Here is a field of force that holds veritably the vice of Saul and the virtue of St Paul.  The first is blind to the truth and is murderous, whereas the second, a man of heaven twice-born, is profound, compassionate, and a zealous exponent of the Christ. Such a range of extremes, of powerful contrasts inherent in this highly occult sign, which cleanses and corrects the forces of feeling, so that the higher holier desires, and spiritualised thinking may result.  Neither extreme is weak; both are intense and strong-willed.  Often the soul of the Scorpio individual is most active in his feelings.  Not much intelligent spiritual thought is active yet; thus his feelings hold him enthralled and these correlate with the astral or soul world, the world of desires ranging from the lowest sphere of feeling to the very loftiest.  These divergent feelings will relate either to the Moon or to the Sun; therefore, feelings will be either psychic, watery, emotional, and of the lower nature, or they will be fiery and of the heart – respectively from below or from above the diaphragm.

In no other sign do we find such intense impulses for good or ill.  In the unregenerate they work in the lower desire nature and selfish personality with incessant insistence.  Small wonder then that Scorpio provides pronounced difficulties for the neophyte, for he would not yield to the seductions of Kundry and so become a Parsifal, must have dealt with the ugly serpent that lies in the swamps of the lower nature; the monstrous nine-headed Hydra, symbolic of unregenerate, passionate man. Its heads cannot be cut off, for if this were done, two new heads would replace each head lost, unless it were cauterized.  This means that feelings and desires cannot be repressed with safety, they must be transmuted, regenerating the man and engendering self-control.  No proper passage with safety upon the path of return to God is possible unless this lower Scorpion self is not merely repressed but entirely transmuted.

The virtue of the sign, then, is not merely death and birth – it does hold the secret of both – but more: regeneration, or better, rebirth, for out of the amniotic waters of Scorpio there comes this re-birth. Thus Christ declared in truth, ‘Except a man be born of water (Moon-personality) and of Spirit (Sun-Son-Christ-Self), he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.  That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.  Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again’ (St. John 3:5-7) Only thus is it possible to become one of those who have ‘gotten the victory over the beast’ as St John says in Revelations 15:2.  The test of Scorpio is so difficult and dangerous an experience for most people, because so many cannot lift themselves clear of its lower phase and mount up into the sky on eagle’s wings, which is the promise and provision of Scorpio’s regenerated forces.

The spiritualising power of the stellar script can be properly understood only through concentration and meditation upon the informing forces of the Zodiac and the planets, for these are the Spiritual Hierarchies who carry out the plan of God.  Thought, deep and sustained, upon the idea and being of God and his Christ, informs our soul to liberate at last his Spirit in us through the mediation of ‘the Lord from heaven,’ the Christ-soul within. Only after prolonged and profound thought can we realize that it was divine desire and design that created not only our solar system with our Earth, but also our physical bodies, which we now wear and use or abuse.  Thus are we indeed the temples of God.

Desire that is divine is at one with the will of god; it is directive in idea and creative in imaginative scope as well as in physical fact.  As worlds and systems are born of God’s divine desire, so the creations of men, God’s children, are likewise the fruit of desire; it becomes divine as man becomes purified and illuminated by the presence of the one priceless ingredient – the Son, the soul of god within, the Christ.  Desire in man must become transmuted to meet the need of an age of new truth when love shall rule, an age when the immaculate conception will no longer looked upon as a myth or a miracle but as a calm, planned, beautiful reality, as practical as it is perfect, for the children of the New Age – individuals of far higher sensitivity and purity – will need physical bodies that will be conceived in loving harmony and truth.

Since Scorpio is the sign of the warrior and the battleground of the desires and of the soul world, where man must fight to become victor, this statement identifying divine desire with the will of God becomes essential if we would evaluate Scorpio esoterically.  Here is the fixed force creative of desire that is ever urgent and intense.  According to the age of soul and the accrued debts from the past will be the assault of suffering and mighty conflict, lies and lust pressing it upon man till such burning in hell makes him at last exchange his lies and lust for truth and love. This is the light and direction of desire become divine.  So again do we see the magnitude of this magical sign of driving force, regeneration, and new birth.

As there are lines of force in water which transform it into the solid form of ice at a certain temperature, so there is a force in the sign Scorpio which transmutes feelings into the form of ‘solid’ desires which are intense.  It is not enough to say that this sign intensifies or fixes feeling, rather, we should realize that through Scorpio’s peculiar mode of motion, which is rotary or serpentine, feelings become charged and changed into active, dynamic desires.  Latent feelings live in the receptive, fluid, fecund Moon’s sign, Cancer, as psychic seed as it were, but they are brought to objective fruition only when they become driving desire in Scorpio.

With this occult fact in mind, and knowing that negative desires destroy the soul, whereas constructive, divine desires actually create positive will, which augments soul growth, we should understand Scorpio as that field of dynamism where Cancer feelings and sensations are transformed and become tangible.  Thus, generation becomes either degeneration or regeneration, according to the vice or virtue of the soul, for these forces inhere in this revolutionary-revelationary sign.
Realising how strong the desire element inheres in Scorpio, we see why it is called the sign of the warrior, for the ‘I AM’ has to do battle in Scorpio and should in time emerge triumphant from that ruly greatest of all wars, and not like Judas Iscariot betray the Christ or higher man.  Those who live on the lower levels grope in darkness.  Death and deception, the falsities of the brain-bound intellect flourish in the lush weeds of the desire world.  The Scorpio warrior has to deal with and work in this desire world, the great empire of error, until he fights his way to the light of truth in the sweated blood of his own agony and through just such suffering he emerges triumphant from the realm of death into the dawn of truth, the state of great joy.

It is incumbent on Scorpio persons to dissolve or transmute their personal limitations and inhibitions, learning to manage and control their very intense emotions and their secret life of feelings and desires held as a mighty magazine within, ever seeking to enlarge their views by gaining lofty eagle elevation.  Having reached the new altitude, they can divest themselves of the old, hindering personality conditions, for Scorpio signifies the raising of any faculty to a higher octave.  It speaks of death and dissolution, then regeneration and a new birth.  Everything in creation that makes the grade is incessantly raised to higher octaves of life and power, and the sign force that effects this elevation in consciousness is the dynamic, creative Scorpio, the power of the Eagle Spirits.  Often Scorpio proves to be a scourge to raise the man from the scorpion sting of death, so that he may be possessor of a higher new life.

In this fixed watery sign, old attitudes must be transformed.  By rising to a new altitude, one attains to a new attitude.  This conversion and elevation occurs usually through the office of much pain, and such pain is known to be benign, for the egotistic personality can be raised to higher expression only through the application of this very salutary prime mover-pain.  Hereby we see why Scorpio in its negative phase is correlated with purgatory, for one actually burns in hell when grappling with one’s desires, conquering them by generating will.  In this sign, vices such as jealousy, love of revenge and of argument, the urge to oppose and to fight, to be obstinate and to hate, must be reversed through the use of the will and, since Scorpio holds the power of immense driving force, no other sign is better designed to dissolve such demoralizing habits and confer supersensible powers in occultism and in healing, if one works with and loves the Spirit.

In this mightiest of alchemical signs, the colossal intensity and pressure – and often utter degradation - bring elevation in evolution through ‘the washing of regeneration’ The first seven verses of chapter three of St Paul’s Epistle to Titus is written as through for Scorpio souls; ‘Put them in mind … to speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers, but gentle, shewing all meekness unto all men.  For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another.  But after that the kindness of love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour; that being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life”.

Heirs of eternal life! What a heritage!  Yet one to which less thought is given than to temporal earthly inheritances.  Scorpio has rule not only over death and discarnate souls, but also over the goods of the dead; hence legacies come under its domain.  In addition to ruling over those of a material nature, it has to do with our soul-spiritual legacies that we bring with us from past earthly lives as our own rightful individual inheritance, accruing to our own eternal spiritual Ego. At present, we are writing as it were our will and testament for our next incarnation.  Invariably we fall heir to the results of our own deeds.

Many persons are prejudiced against various signs, but against Scorpio most of all, which, of course, is a wrong attitude.  The element of evil is often attributed to this sign; yet all human beings, whatever their zodiacal sign influences, have some error of evil to correct and transmute in their earthly life.  Only from the misuse and abuse of sign forces, from their negation, comes depravity.  Strength and healing power are the very essence of Scorpio, the dynamic octave sign of evolution and regeneration. Inherent in it that power which lifts the consciousness to a higher octave.  Therefore, one should ever point out the high privilege and purpose of all persons whose zodiacal configurations connect them with this marvelous, magical sign, for when the dark forces are dissolved through the white-magic side of Scorpio, the soul comes into a high reward as a true healer and helper of humanity.

He who would live in truth and preach its gospel must be devoted, and such devotion is the force of this sign.  There would have been no Reformation in Europe without Martin Luther, and there would have been no Martin Luther without Scorpio, the sign that gave him the positive militancy to change the course of church history.  In the unevolved and weak, Scorpio becomes debased, making the man depraved through lust, whereas in its highest Eagle phase it becomes the lofty light of the initiate.  The initiate, Goethe, had Scorpio rising with Saturn therein.  He is best known for his literary genius, especially for his Faust, showing the struggle of the soul in attaining peace; but the time is yet to come when the world will recognize the comprehensiveness of the spiritual and scientific world-conception of this creative scientist and philosopher.  The very great spiritual scientist and high initiate, Rudolf Steiner, likewise had Scorpio rising; his range of research in supersensible realms and his description of the cosmos, along with the practical application of spiritual science in all departments of life, are extraordinarily far-reaching, from farming to the Christ-Mystery.

No matter how malicious the man or how magnanimous, how sunk the sinner or exalted the saint, how foul the murderer or fine the martyr – all these extremes are found in Scorpio – there is at the same time an active, transforming fixed force that produces stability in the soul.  It takes strength to sin, such strength as comes out of this powerful fixed sign of desire and attachment; but, in time, sin will throw a man down hard, the reversal, rousing repentance.  And who is there in flesh who was not at some time a prodigal son, for all those who come to Earth are prodigal sons, and all souls will at some time suddenly remember their Father’s home and then and there decide to return.  They become tired of feeding on husks of flesh and form, and yearn for the Spirit and the life.  Such remembrance and return is invariably made under the direction of this mighty regenerator and prompter of God, Scorpio.  One thing is certain: no path of return to God can be trod until the battle is fought and won in this battlefield of the great illusion, the senses and unbridled desires whose forces are concealed in this occult sign where so much lies latent.  It offers the road of return, and often it leads through sex, for the sex organs are ruled by Scorpio.  This return is marked by the stability, the calm command and constructive control of desires, resulting from the competent management of feeling and the directive power of spiritualised thinking.

There is nothing lukewarm about people strong in Scorpio; it is all or nothing with them.  This fixed sign of intensity gives very decided likes and dislikes, sympathies and antipathies.  Its natives do not attempt to hide their opinions; they are outspoken, emphatic, strong, and unyielding.  They tread firmly on their heels and often have a pronounced lower jaw (and sometimes a prominent or ‘eagle-beaked’ nose; Scorpio rules the sense of smell). They are warriors or champions for evil or for good.  They have fine constructive ability, intense power of working force, and they do things with such celerity and dispatch that they have the job done while others are still thinking about it.  Instability is the mark of man who is inert and indifferent.  There might be applied to this kind of real ‘won’t-work,’ whose numbers make so much deadweight on the body of humanity, the words of the Christ: ‘I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.  So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth’ (Revelation 3:15,16).  When such souls come fully under the influence of Scorpio, they cannot be lukewarm; they are compelled into action that at last energises experiences that bring stability, that silent inner Eagle power, which commanded, allows the soul to soar into the skies and move in heaven.

He who would solve the mystery of life and death, he who would know why man must perforce make so many entrances and exits upon the stage of our earthly theater, must earn the right to go backstage and there mingle with the director of the great drama.  When this auspicious moment occurs, man must have gained a conscious control over all the soul forces of thinking, feeling, and willing, which make him a conscious cooperator in the great drama with the otherwise unseen directors of destiny.  No other force is more excellently designed to make man independent of time and space or make him a fine helper of humanity than the marvelous occult power concealed in Scorpio.  Truly, it is a storehouse of hidden power, which is not revealed to the profane or vicious, the impure or impious, the perverted or polluted, the licentious or lewd; all these heads of the Hydra, the snake of the lower self, must be cauterized through right transmutation before the secrets of life and death can be revealed and realized in this sign of generation, degeneration, and regeneration.

Scorpio ruling the organs of generation, man has been led by this serpent force into degeneration, the resulting lust flinging him down into the dust, to crawl as the snake must, yet with added writhings of agony, the impurity and iniquity at last inducing effectual reversal and regeneration.  Thus, in this sign of threefold power, through generation, degeneration, and regeneration, there works the magic that makes the Scorpio man more than man.  And then we realize the truth of St. Paul’s words: ‘So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written.  Death is swallowed up in victory.  O death, where is thy sting?  O grave, where is thy victory?’ (1 Corinthians 15:54,55).

The gates of death and of regeneration are opened by Scorpio.  It deals with death as a true Christ-dower, for death performs an important function in giving entrance to the spiritual worlds. Those born in or under Scorpio are always connected in some manner with death or the dead, those human beings without their physical bodies who live in the soul and spirit worlds, spheres of life closer to us than our hands or feet, right in our midst, where beings unseen affect the lives of those who live on the earth, for good or ill, according to their quality, while we, in turn, harm or help them by our attitudes.

Although the earthly body die,
The soul and spirit death defy
And are in contact much the same
With loved ones who are on Earth remain.

For worlds of soul and Spirit are
Not bound by space, they are not far,
Our soul and spirit in them live,
Our love to loved ones we still give.

The welfare of humanity
Is thus promoted endlessly;
The sense of loneliness is gone
As love flows freely on and on.
                                 Beredene Jocelyn

Scorpio reigns over the soul world, over death, and the after-death states.  Heaven and hell are those realms where hopes and wishes of earthly kind are, after death, fructified, frustrated, or finished with.  When every trace of the earthly is overcome, the soul is given over to the soul world, and the spirit is then free and unfettered to pursue its journey through the spiritland, after which it returns through the soul world to a new incarnation.  The soul world is a sphere of mighty contrasts whose range includes devils and divines, sinners and saints, the most devoted and the most destructive, those who have not conquered the dragon of debased desire and error, and those who lived the higher life – the Scorpio phase and the Eagle phase – with the neutral people intermediate.  Here is the judgment seat referred by St. Paul, ‘For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.’ (II Corinthians 5:10).  The soul world is the clearing house for the Ego.

By misusing Scorpio’s forces, man has degraded the sexual function and brought disease, debility, and death to the Earth, under which load of lust he still groans. The negative forces of Scorpio have debased man’s thought power and also his speech forces, inducing him to use dissembling words called diplomatic or tactful – crafty and subtle words, spoken, written, and thought.  When annoyed or aroused, the unevolved give sharp, stinging replies and are not too choice with language, yet no finer souls exist than Scorpio natives following the positive path.  The Christ makes it clear that words and thoughts are real and creative, and that every word must be accounted for and will come up for judgment.

As Scorpio rules over death and the after-death experiences, it is relevant to state that the soul world, also called the astral or desire world, is divided into seven main regions.  The three lower ones are called purgatory, hell or Hades.  In these regions the soul is cleansed of error and evil in a true burning in hell, for there the soul’s desires are frustrated, having no physical body for their fulfillment.  At length, though this painful though salutary service, the lower desires burn out, sympathy overcomes antipathy, and wishes become unselfish.  The three higher regions of the soul world are correlated with the triune forces of soul light, soul power, and soul life.  In these spheres, man receives his reward for all his good thoughts and his constructive, loving actions done while in the body; here all good desires become fructified and nothing but sympathy with the soul world prevails.  But there is a fourth sphere, a midway and neutral region, a state of consciousness to which the Egos of all those men gravitate in whose souls scientific materialism had predominated and who had identified themselves solely with their physical bodies.  This is an awful, colourless sphere, indeed.  The souls who come here are too good for hell but not good enough for heaven.  They believed that death ended everything, and here they live in terrible, grievous emptiness and boredom, until they free themselves from their attachment to the physical and unite their soul force in sympathy with surrounding soul world.

It is in the forces of the soul world, existent on the earth and in the after-death state, that man must conquer completely his selfish desires and his antipathies, and it is in this sign of the warrior and of serpent wisdom, Scorpio, that man must contest and conquer desire. In this conquest, the destruction of desire is not intended but rather the transmutation of desires to make them divine.  In this transmutation, man strengthens his force of will, with which sovereign power he is at last able consciously to direct his destiny and ‘rule his stars’.

Only when the sting of the scorpion is extracted can the wisdom of the serpent be secured and positive progress be made through the other signs of the Zodiac.  After the balance is turned in Libra, then comes the eight sign, Scorpio, the sign of the octave and of that field of force wherein man must secure his spiritual power through sublimation and spiritualization.  All those who failed in the preceding sign of Balance, Libra, tend to become depraved in Scorpio, whereas those who succeeded in Libra become individuals who can transmute the sting of the scorpion, master its mystery, and mount upon eagle’s wings to soar into the face of the Sun.  The scorpion crawls on the ground, but when the sting of the scorpion is transmuted, the wings of the eagle unfold, empowering the soul to soar to the mountain top.

These hints explain why this sign holds souls of such contrasting extremes as those of Dr. Rudolf Steiner and Josef Stalin, both with Scorpio rising.  We see how selfish feeling and desire drag the soul downward into the anarchy of habitual hatred, jealously, pride, secretiveness, vicious vindictiveness, malice, instant action ever inciting to strike through heart or head or hand, and a personality that is a detestable nuisance to itself as much as it is to others, until the very experiences of life, through their tumult and evil power, bring at last suffering in sufficient degree to bring release to a higher level of consciousness.  Thus does Scorpio become the power par excellence to effect regeneration.  The soul then ceases to look downward through the eyes of feeling and desire, but on the contrary it begins to look upward and becomes more and more sublimated, its gaze directed to God, knowing at last that those who ‘wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength and shall mount up with wings as eagles’.

In Scorpio, one can indeed mount in thought to the mountain tops or, in a moment of passion and uncontrolled anger, one can become bereft of thought.  Feeling is so intense and so overpowering, so intensely and instantly active and so ready to strike with the sting of the scorpion, that in the undeveloped, such action actually annihilates thinking altogether.  In the moment of incitation, usually proceeding from the lower realms of the soul world or from discarnate human beings – the so-called dead – thinking is swept out and aside, and murder or other violent crimes are committed. All Scorpio souls need to exercise patience in order to prevent such a momentary loss of self-control and sanity, and to gain insight and understanding.

Once I corresponded with a man born in Scorpio, who was imprisoned in the largest prison in America.  He suffered his days there in the remorse of a hell that only Scorpio could create and suffer.  In a drunken brawl, this man gave vent to his feelings and, helped by invisible evil beings, he became bereft of reason and killed his wife.  Luckily for him and for the state, he was not put to death by the state as a scarecrow to other would-be murderers; he lived in a very real hell, in a remorse so intense that is was like true burning fire, and no remorse compares with that experienced by a Scorpio native, for he suffers as no other can for wrongdoing.

Remorse for wrong done is exemplified by the suicide of Judas Iscariot after his betrayal of the Christ.  Judas comes under the influence of this sign of the betrayer, and Leonardo da Vinci, in his Last Supper, placed him as the eight from the right, not counting the central figure of the Christ.  The Christ is like the Sun, and Leonardo in one of his sketches related the twelve disciples to the twelve signs of the Zodiac.  As the Zodiac would be incomplete without Scorpio, so would the twelve months of the year be incomplete without Scorpio, so would the twelve months of the year be incomplete without November, and the twelve disciples incomplete without Judas Iscariot.  It was Judas who gave the kiss that led to death.  By November, all plants have died; from Scorpio come those forces which needs must be death-dealing, so that new life may emerge again and evolution move forward and upward.

Even the greatest crime ever committed, the Crucifixion, the death of Christ Jesus, the Son of God, on the cross, led to the Resurrection and to the permeation of our planet with the sublime Sun-Spirit, whose continued life here enables the Earth to evolve through all cycles of time to come.  Lucifer, the ‘serpent’ of Genesis, tempted woman, then came death and division, the agony of sex suffering, the loss of our spiritual vision and of our touch with the divine beings, and the separation of mankind into various races and nations.  All this prepared the way for Ahriman and our present civilization with its intense, vigorous materialism, culminating into two world wars in the first half of the twentieth century and in our failure to establish genuine peace.  Even though our planet is known as the sorrowful star, the sphere of suffering, yet it is known also that the Earth has for its keynote joy, the utter antithesis of sorrow.  To know fully the sunshine of joy, we must know its opposite, the shadow of sorrow, and the deeper the shadow, the brighter the sunshine.  The perfection of man and planet will be achieved through polarity, the pairs of opposites at work in Scorpio to bring man his crown and consummation, converting, as St. Paul says, the earthly man into the celestial man.

Only as the solar Christ-light, the light of the world, illumines the earthly personal man, and Scorpio regenerates him and brings him rebirth, can it be said of man that he has become wholly and truly practical.  With this practicality attained, then does division cease, at-one-ment or union of body, soul, and spirit is achieved, and there stands the practical man of purpose and power with spiritual prestige won through Christ.  Thence comes full sanity in the realm of humanity.  In the forge of the fiery element it is easy to weld and shape metals, and many are the consummate artists, but this is not so when the perfect, priceless gem has to be cast.  Yet, so intense are will and desire in Scorpio souls that, awakened, theirs is the strength to furnish that furiously intense power that creates the philosopher’s stone, the pearl without price.

In Parsifal’s quest for the Holy Grail, we read of Amfortas, who ruled the castle of the knights with power, until one day he yielded to temptation, lost the sacred spear, and received a wound that would not heal.  From that moment he lost his spiritual prestige and his power, and he lay agonized with the wound.  When Parsifal came, he saw the sad state of Amfortas and was stupefied with compassion.  He left Amfortas and passed through intense sufferings and trials, until he was able to return with acquired Christ-power, the full insignia of the Grail.  With the sacred spear he touched Amfortas’ wound, which healed immediately, and thereafter he took charge of the Grail castle.  Here we see how dangerous the serpent power of Scorpio may become, unless we pass the test that raises the spiritual forces in man, as can be done in this mighty magical sign.  May all those having this sign force, who read this, realise their privilege to work and make themselves holy, so that they may bring themselves up into the ken of the One who heals all wounds.  And these will be the ones with the gift to heal others.

In the soul of every individual there resides the harvest of all his good and all his evil, as an essence.  This is the sum total or quintessence of all his earthly lives.  When a man leaves the ways of the world, walks upon the path of return to God, and undergoes the necessary training for the attainment of higher knowledge, the fruits embody themselves into a shape that is spiritual visible.  All evil thoughts and actions that have been committed but not atoned for will, when the aspirant seeks conscious entrance into the higher worlds, face him in the shape of a demoniacal form called the Guardian or the Dweller on the Threshold.  Those aspirants who have trod the upward path, whose hearts have long expressed love, will have nothing to fear at this time.  It is only those filled with pride and hatred, who have refused to face themselves as they are, that are likely to collapse in palsied fear and terror at this meeting.  All those who have cultivated the wisdom of love, with its reverence and humility that give the quality of teachability, have faced the Dweller through many a life.

The Dweller on the Threshold is the result of all unredeemed evil, and today we see mankind as a whole facing its Dweller.  This is an astral entity; it feeds upon the foul food of the lower regions of the desire or soul world with its murderous desires.  The lies and lusts of the past, all that is left over, must now be redeemed.  Mankind as a whole now faces the consequences of its hatred, greed, and ignorance.  This synthesis of sin comes from the crawling, stinging lower phase of the sign Scorpio, and before we can move on to the higher, new life cycle, which the Eagle, the higher phase of this sign, brings, we must have faced this demon and dissolved its evil forces.  This dissolution would not be possible save for the sum of all our good forces and that Great Guardian of the Threshold who emerges as the embodiment of all that is glorious and grace-filled.  The power given to us by this beautiful, benign being, the embodiment of all our good and truthful thoughts, feelings, and acts as well as of all that we may yet become, allows us to face the fiendish Dweller on the Threshold and to dissolve it wholly.

Standing between the place of Crucifixion in Libra and the Mount of Ascension, which is the virtue of the higher Eagle phase of Scorpio, there remains to be dissolved this Dweller on the threshold comprehended in the lower phase of Scorpio, the sting of evil, ‘the adder on the path’, spoken of in the Bible. ‘Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path (of return to God), that biteth the horse heels so that is rider shall fall backward.’ This statement aptly refers to Scorpio.  Also, ‘Dan, shall judge his people,’ and ‘I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord’ (Genesis 49:16-18).  Only as we redeem the sting of the adder on the path with the antidote of Christ-love and truth, can we cease feeding on low and base desires and feelings, and through their regeneration raise on Eagle’s wings, to soar and to see into the face of the Sun.  When we mediate upon this sublimation and perfection of the man, let us think of this eight sign of octave and evolutionary Eagle power.  Note well how Scorpio correlates with the law of spiraling evolution, from the lowest to the loftiest.  All who would dissolve the evil Dweller, who would meet his challenge and pass the barrier that prevents premature entrance into the spiritual realms, must burn this barrier away with love and selfless devotion.  For it is only those who rise from the lower life of lust and lies, the great human ignorance, and hatred, who earn the wings of the Eagle to mount and soar to heavenly heights.

Once the Eagle phase begins to manifest, secret sources of life become available, leading sometimes even to initiation.  When Scorpio’s intensity and dynamic power are combined with insight, one may gain a deeper vision and achieve much, both in exoteric activities and in esoteric studies.  Through ‘soul x-ray’ insight into people and things, this sign confers an acute faculty for detection, which manifests on various levels, from the detective to the spiritual researcher.  Its penetration vision sees clear through the souls of others.  This penetration and insight serve also the diagnostician. Doctors are almost invariably strong in Scorpio.  This sign makes the best surgeons, with a steady hand, unswerving and skillful.

One of the chief characteristics of this sign of hidden and secret things is secretiveness.  I remember one born in Scorpio who often used to say, ‘Never let the left hand know what the right hand is doing,’ with no knowledge or idea of the real meaning of this phrase, but simply in the light of the secretiveness common to this sign.  Yet, there is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed at some time, sooner or later, in this life or in future incarnations.  This applies, too, to every supposedly secret thought, be it good or evil.  What we sow in thought, feeling, and deed, that also we shall reap.  As the eight and octave sign of the Zodiac, Scorpio is concerned with evolution, and evolution is a process of an unfolding, spiraling ascent whose circling scrolls would never mature and bring forth new life by fostering the growth of consciousness were it not for the process of sowing and reaping.  Evolution is the very life of God in pulsed beats of in- and outgoing breath whose measure conditions time and space, season and ages and, through the Christ, creates the conditions of destiny by the effective working of cause and effect.  Thus the perfect Word speaks and constructs the cosmos, and the harmony of the spheres voices the order that is divine, in virtue of which the law of correspondences in time will bring it to pass that the will of God is done on earth as it is in heaven.

Just as we must climb the highest mountain to obtain the finest and farthest view, so must we go to the greatest of the Gospels to get the most profound view of God’s plan for man and planet.  This view we find in the Gospel of St. John, the Gospel for which the symbol is the Eagle of the sign Scorpio.  In no other of the Gospels do we find such sublime, all-embracing, transforming, transcendental, eternal ideas that hover and circle on the earthly plane.  These transcendental ideas are the wings that carry us to the heights of eternal, divine wisdom in the Eagle realm of the wisdom-filled Cherubim of Scorpio.

This divine wisdom was embodied in the divine, cosmic man, Christ Jesus.  The Word, known to the Greeks as the Logos and to the Persians as Honover, the ‘meaning-filled tone’ proceeding from the sublime light-being, the Spirit of the Sun, this Word, which was ‘in the beginning,’ created all things and ‘was made flesh’ in Jesus of Nazareth, revealing the fullness of God’s grace and truth.  This Word makes the water taste like wine, cleanses the temple, makes it possible to be born again, born of the Spirit, gives eternal life, is the well of water springing up eternally, so that man need never thirst, heals the nobleman’s son and the infirm man, and says: ‘I AM the bread from heaven – man need never hunger; I AM the living water; I AM the light of the world, the Spirit-light that streams down upon, irradiates, and weaves through all existence and gives sight to the blind; I AM the Good Shepherd who gives his life for the sheep; and I AM the resurrection and the life.’

Every human ‘I’ is a part of the divine ‘I’ that encompasses all the wisdom of the universe as it was, is, and shall be.  From the Gospel of St. John flows to us this eternal wisdom; therefore, this Gospel has in it the power needed for the continuance of the Earth’s existence and further evolution, and the power that every human ‘I’ needs for the achievement of the transformation of the sting of the Scorpion into the soaring wings of the Eagle.

The Fiercest War That Man Doth Wage

No value have the things of earth
Save as they serve to bring to birth
Within the person of the man
A fruitful knowledge of God’s plan.
The fiercest war that man doth wage
Takes place within his earthly cage,
From this he has to free his soul
To bring to birth the Christ, his goal.

All contest comes to Christ the man,
All fiery forces are but fan
To fuse the Spirit with the Earth
Till God’s own Son is brought to birth.
The Lord from heaven builds the flesh,
His Spirit doth it full enmesh,
Then doth his alchemy divine
Transmute the base, the gold refine.

When once we are become of God,
Alive are we to light the clod –
Those souls so sunk by matter stark
Who take the light to be the dark.
These blinded mortals hinder much,
As souls diseased we treat as such,
The Earth today is hampered by
These darkened ones who Christ belie.

No other will but God’s be done,
No other race but his we run,
We are not clay but God’s own kin,
Only the touch with earth brought sin.
Yet shall the Earth be made pure white
By love and life of Christ, the light;
Our sins although they scarlet be
Are wiped away because of Thee.