If you know you know

A few years ago, I was having a conversation with a Scorpio sun who had some non-performing graduate students she was in charge of, and she described to me how she was parceling out exactly how much energy she would give to each. She also mentioned she would deliberately stop feeding certain people attention. (Most) Scorpio suns can do this relatively naturally. I, with Saturn in Scorpio, was incredulous (Saturn in a sign means that you struggle throughout life with mastery of the elements of the sign). I thought to myself "you can just stop paying attention to people??? HOW???" I've since gotten a crash course.

Such is Scorpio. It's a tough sign to comprehend if you're not familiar, but it's a water sign, therefore it deals in emotions, but not the simple emotions of "I feel happy" or "I feel sad": it's the more complex combination of psychological programming and responses over time, like the abandonment issues you have because your childhood babysitter quit without saying goodbye or something like that. If Cancer planets are Sesame Street (no offense intended by this—Cancer planets can be plenty complicated, Cancer just has to do with being aware of which feeling is which and attending to it), Scorpio planets are Oprah's realm.

Complex psychological programming does not show itself freely, obviously. One of my favorite and most dangerous characteristics of people with Scorpio or a strong Pluto is the lack of surface reactions to most stimuli. I am here to tell you that they do react and are reacting, but it's happening in the depths. Do yourself a favor and never needle a Scorpio to get them to react outwardly. If you have a Scorpio who is currently having a negative reaction, please move out of the way.

A few weeks ago, I was describing some drama that one of my relatives was experiencing to a friend, and an acquaintance overheard me, and decided to contribute her opinion, which was that I should override the wishes of the relative and immediately insert myself in their business to personally fix the problem. I told her doing that would be inappropriate. She persisted in her argument. It's a good thing it was dark out, because she provoked instantaneous rage and I knew my eyes were flashing (sometimes with Scorpionic people or Plutonians—I use the two terms interchangeably—this is the only warning sign you are going to get before all hell breaks loose). I dealt with my anger by attempting to find this acquaintance on Facebook to figure out her birthday to better understand why she was pissing me off so badly. The little voice in my head was telling me I was wasting a lot of time and energy on anger that would be better served doing anything else, but I was out for blood. I didn't succeed in my search, but a few weeks later she volunteered enough information that I've now got a date and a year: her Mars is conjunct my Saturn, which explains the exchange in the first place. Her aggression (Mars) was needling my sense of mastery (Saturn). I felt I had put all possible energy into helping my relative except for encroaching, and my acquaintance thought I should encroach (and damn the consequences, of which there would be many).

So: Scorpio planets can be really good at boundaries or really terrible at boundaries and it really depends on how evolved and self-aware the owner of said planets is. There's no way to know which it is without taking time to get to know the person, so do yourself a favor and don't make assumptions.

Another issue with Scorpio is trust. Read any literature about Scorpio and this word comes up (and if it doesn't, what you're reading is trash). It's hard to win the trust of a Scorpionic person and easy to lose it. Once it's gone, it's gone permanently. If you're not a consistent person, I strongly advise you not to play in the deep end with these people. In my experience, you get a strong sense of resistance from them at first (they don't know you; they're not going to tell you shit) and over time with consistent demonstration of honesty and good intentions, they will let you in...if they feel like it. And there's levels to that. Let's say there's 10 levels, 10 being you can sleep in their bed with them and read their journal: no one's ever getting past level 7. It's not something Scorpionic people think about, they assign levels automatically. Their emotions are little fortresses. If you have no exposure to this, I understand if you think I'm kidding. If you've experienced this, then you know. Recently, I got an email of congratulations from a Plutonian in my life who seems to be letting me in to level 2. I might frame it. (Proving I have good intentions has taken multiple years.)

Scorpio eats complicated drama for breakfast. They do emotional nuance. They run through scenarios, like "given the way this person reacted to this stimuli, here's how they're likely to react to that situation." They can do the advanced math of the dynamics of a group of people around a table. They can tell if someone's upset. They can see the signs. What they won't necessarily do is admit to seeing what they saw. Sometimes it's to afford you some privacy and sometimes (unfortunately) it's part of playing a little game with you.

For those of you with a strong Pluto of a bunch of Scorpio, or even in some cases just Pluto in Scorpio, and you are in the population of people with really terrible boundaries, I encourage you to learn some. It requires time and effort, which Scorpio tends not to mind, but it takes some maturity to understand that other peoples' drama is not for you. Scorpio likes to merge so much with the psychology (or sometimes entire being) of others that the demarcation lines get pretty blurry in terms of what belongs to whom, but for your own sake and your sanity, at least learn how to pull back so that you can do it in the event of an emergency. Here's a hint: the opposite of Scorpio is Taurus, or sensory shit. Get out of other peoples' feelings and into one of your five senses if not all of them. Go sit in a field like Ferdinand the Bull. Go to a basketball game like Benny the Bull.  Another way to do this is through meditation and intentionally bidding energies that are not yours adieu. Rationale: you cannot solve someone else's feelings, as much as you might like to.

XO,J