It’s Scorpio season, a time of darkening. The sun moved into Scorpio on October 22nd. Scorpio season is one of transformation. In the Northern Hemisphere, the leaves are changing and falling, the air (for some) is getting colder, and there’s a holiday smack in the middle of it when people dress as ghosts and focus on death.

This Scorpio season, the big astrological story is an appropriately timed opposition between Mars and Pluto. You want it darker? Mars will be at the very last degree of Cancer, and Pluto at the very last degree of Capricorn. This will be exact on November 3rd, but we’re already feeling this, and this energy will be very present during the new moon in Scorpio on November 1st.

An opposition is like a culmination point, often with difficulty surrounding it, like the agonizing climb up last terrain to scale before arriving at the apex (I mean, I assume, I’ve never rock-climbed). Mars is the planet of action and drive, and Pluto is the planet of power. Cancer is a sign that’s about nurturing and the familial but also about tribalism. Pluto’s at the last degree of Capricorn for the very last time (finally) for hundreds of years, and Capricorn is a sign that is about power and structure, especially deeply entrenched structures, like capitalism and patriarchy.

So this opposition, which occurs right before Election Day in the U.S., signifies a struggle and ultimate culmination between actions and entrenched power. And with Cancer’s significations  encompassing both family and motherhood one on hand and tribalism and nativism on the other, we’re seeing two strands of aggression and activity. For many, this time is about trying to chip away at the patriarchal structures and people that have been and are currently trying to stymie the power of women in myriad ways, the most prominent being limiting bodily autonomy; for another bloc, it’s a fight to hang on to power, what they see as preserving their ideal version of this country, based on identification with whiteness, maleness, and wealth. 

No big deal, right? 

Here’s where we need to pull the focus in. A lot of astrologers have been pretty freaked out by the Mars-Pluto opposition and rightfully so (I started writing this before the Tr**p r*lly at the Garden, but that level of darkness feels very Mars opp Pluto). When we talk about the themes, we’re talking big picture, 40,000 feet type stuff. But in your own individual life, this really just could mean that you vote, in the way you plan to, and for a few weeks, you have to deal with some frustrating, disgusting, and anxiety-evoking news in the zeitgeist. It’s probably going to feel scary at its worst and mostly infuriating. It’s a good time to remember to set screen time limits and not doom scroll even though it’s going to be really tempting, with the Sun in Scorpio, a sign that is associated with obsession and compulsion. The shadow side of Scorpio wants you to allow yourself to dive deeper into a pit of rage and disgust. The more enlightened side wants you to trust your inner knowing and recognize others for exactly who they are, with crystalline precision and with no rose-colored illusions.

After the election in 2016, I felt totally untethered, as if I was waking up to an alternate reality. I could be a fool, or maybe it’s because I’ve since started taking Zoloft (shoutout to modern medicine!), but I don’t feel that way now. Will that change after November? Unclear. But even with all the absolutely horrific things happening in the world, I am hopeful. Is it because Pluto’s going to go into Aquarius, and we’ll all be able to upload our souls to the cloud and live eternally as part of some physics of the universe that we’re not even aware of yet? TBD!

This dark, fraught energy we’re experiencing now shifts in mid November, and late November gets easier, so hang in there and try to weather the current shitstorm until then.