Stories of Scorpio: Part 3

The Celestial Scorpion as the nemesis of Orion the Hunter

Orion and Scorpius/Scorpio and Taurus Images Public Domain. Scorpius Image credit Till Credner.

See Orion, running bravely towards the glaring Bull of the zodiac, yet fleeing the Scorpion? These three are linked in a common story. More about that in a minute.

This month we are all in touch with our Eighth House matters, Death, money, our power of personal agency, legacy, health or sexual matters, intimacy, dealing with secrets, confidential matters and investigative activities. The spirit of the Scorpion embodies the domain of the Eighth House.

The constellation of Scorpio is visible in both hemispheres, straddling the ecliptic and Scorpius as astronomers call it, is the Latin for Scorpion, and the constellation was previously known as Scorpio, and still is in astrology. This is the constellation from which the zodiac sign of Scorpio gets its name, a spectacular j- shaped constellation near the centre of the Milky Way.

Nature, religion and astrology were intertwined in the ancient world, and the scorpion has been here far longer than we have – hundreds of millions of years, more than 450 million, as compared with our six million or so, if we are counting the earliest known hominins, where the anatomically modern Homo Sapiens is thought to date back about 300, 000 years. The scorpion in the sky has been recognized as such across many cultures. Peoples north and south of the equator looked up and discerned in the sky what looked like a giant scorpion.

In Greek mythology the story of how the scorpion got there is intertwined with the story of Orion the mighty Hunter. The constellation of Orion too, is instantly recognizable as a human figure in every culture.

Orion, also called Nimrod, was the son of Poseidon, and was the most handsome man ever to walk the earth. He was a great hunting buddy and friend of Artemis. Her twin brother, the sun god Apollo glowered, seeing that Artemis fancied Orion something rotten, even though she had taken a vow of perpetual chastity.

Orion could be a bit of a sex pest, chasing the Seven Sisters, the Pleiades, so that Zeus confiscated them to the sky for their own peace and quiet. And a fat lot of good it did them, because when Orion died, killed by a scorpion (THE scorpion) Artemis in her grief, asked Zeus to post Orion upstairs to the heavens, which he did, right next door to the Pleiades, who guard the celestial bull pen of Taurus. Thanks a bunch Zeus. You didn’t think that one through, did you?

Via Wiki

Should the Heavenly Bull ever break free of his pen, said an ancient Arabic legend, heaven help us all because it will be the end of all things for all time. The Bull, once let loose will smash up every other thing in the known universe. Let’s hope he’s happy up there, and that Orion doesn’t start chasing the Seven sisters again away as he hunts Lepus the Hare, running towards the Bull, the Scorpion’s opposite number in the Zodiac. But Orion runs away from the Scorpion, fleeing west as the autumn wears on and Scorpio rises in the east.

So how did this situation come about?

There are many versions of this story. One of them goes like this. Orion was the beloved hunting companion Artemis, the goddess of the moon. But Orion had offended the gods of Olympus. First, as we have just discussed, he was a sex pest, chasing the seven sisters, the Pleiades, and then he was heard boasting he could defeat any of the gods in combat, or kill any animal on Earth or indeed, all the animals if he so wanted to. It was all about the thrill of the chase for Orion.

Artemis herself was a great hunter, but Artemis did not kill for the sake of killing (unless of course, she meant to murder someone, as she did with Actaeon). She was a protector of all creatures.

Wiki

The gods asked Gaia, the goddess of Earth to deal with Mr Sex Pest Gobby Bullyboy and Gaia sent a giant scorpion to attack him. Orion fought back. According to some accounts he killed the scorpion. This story has many variations. But whether or not Orion killed the scorpion, the scorpion definitely killed Orion.

Zeus was greatly impressed by the scorpion’s fighting spirit and its loyalty to Gaia, and raised it to heaven in token of its service to the gods, and the creatures and the ecology of Earth. Scorpio was the first eco-warrior. Who knew? But then, at the request of Artemis, who was devastated with grief, Zeus did the same for Orion.

Photo by Frank Cone on Pexels.com

Via Wiki

‘No other constellation more accurately represents the figure of a man,’ - Germanicus Caesar

But the battle continues. The Scorpion and The Hunter are never seen fully in the sky at the same time–nor can they fully see each other. As Orion rises in the east Scorpio scuttles below the western horizon as if running from Orion's revenge. But then every six months their roles reverse. Scorpio takes his turn climbing up the eastern sky and now it is the turn of Orion to disappear below the western horizon as if running to hide from his killer. Orion, who stands for our earliest origins and the Human as Hunter.

It was the human as hunter that founded the bedrock of the earliest human society, not the human as forager or farmer. Hunting has the highest immediate risks and stakes – Life, death or injury when the prey is powerful and dangerous, as with the auroch and the mammoth. Hunting demanded teamwork, absolute co-ordination and co-operation with no margin for error in a way that foraging did not, until farming took human civilization to a whole other level of organization, and the cities rose, heralding both the greatest achievements of Humanity, and also the greatest ills, for us, and the other animals. We are a social specie but we were never meant to live together in such great numbers.

Orion stands for the dawn of Mankind meaning all humankind, Man, the specie, the animal. We were not like the gorillas, we were never exclusively plant eaters. Always omnivores. We came down a different branch of that ancient ancestral tree.

Scorpio stands as a reminder to Mankind of his place in the scheme of things. Scorpio is the warning to Mankind against hubris. Not for nothing is Scorpio also conflated with the Serpent. Scorpio can be identified with the notion of karma. That the thing we crush beneath our heel may still one day find a way to strike back.

“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”

―Henry Beston,The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod

So too says the story of the Scorpion.

Photo by Andrey Tikhonovskiy on Unsplash

Scorpio is deep in feeling, very deep. Deep as Pluto, deep as Hades in the Underworld. And so is its capacity for compassion. But the Scorpion does not forget, and it can be very, very patient. Joe Biden is a Scorpio native and the US Election is held in Scorpio season, but this is a hugely volatile one astrologically speaking, balanced between the 5 Cups (disappointment and taking stock) and 6 of Cups (ancestry, family, nostalgia, power of self direction of local community).

Such is the mood board for this month on the world stage, explosive eruptions of steaming, boiling water, naked power plays, and hidden things coming to the light of day.

Thank you for reading.

Till next time :)