The New Moon In Scorpio Reminds You To Keep The Faith

At midnight EST on November 15, the moon will be new in Scorpio. I’m playing Phoebe Bridgers’ new cover of “Iris” by Goo Goo Dolls and thinking about the hard work of being in love with the dead. The cover, recorded with Maggie Rogers on harmonies, feels like a divine feminine makeover of a song already Scorpionic in all other ways. If you’re not familiar, “Iris,” took over late 90’s alt rock airwaves as part of the soundtrack to City of Angels, a movie about an angel who falls in love with a human and trades immortality for Earthly love. The movie itself was a remake of an older German film called Wings of Desire. Death, desire, a life for a life, fallen angels, transformation, grief — these are themes potent with Scorpio power. More so, Bridgers released the cover on Friday the 13 for one day, as fulfillment of a promise to her fans with all proceeds benefitting Fairfight, a voting-rights and advocacy organization led by Stacey Abrams (politics/power).

Of course, I’m not here to simply wax and wane on limited-time music released by Sapphic-adjacent artists who feed my 90’s alt-rock nostalgia. Like any Scorpio writing about Scorpio things, I’m interested in patterns, in a world that smirks when you say the word “coincidence” and moves on, knowing what it knows. The Sun will be in Scorpio for a couple weeks yet, and the world of music, art, and expression, will only serve to feed the large collective hunger — which is transformation and expansion. This kind of collective hunger is enlarged by a conjunction of Jupiter (expansion) to Pluto (transformation) that occurs two days before the new moon. Covers are only a small example of such things, covers that help fund political movements invested in restoration of power (to the people) are more so. Mercury stationing direct in Scorpio coincides with postal service workers coming clean about bribes regarding voter fraud claims, and re-surfaced assault allegations against the only officer charged in the Breonna Taylor case.

Scorpio energy moves through all realms like an art restorer, clearing the layers and lies to reveal the true picture underneath. Scorpio energy is not interested in harmony or beauty unless we’re speaking of the terrible beauty of death and rebirth, the kind William Butler Yeats wrote about over a hundred years ago in “Easter, 1916,” a poem about uprising against against empire and for the power of the people. It’s true that the conjunction of Jupiter and Pluto in the realm of Capricorn (structure, government), might create space for revolution that’s more than just a whisper and — cue Tracy Chapman, our Aries lighthouse, returning to the big screen while Mars (ruler of Aries) is retrograde in Aries, to sing “Talkin’ Bout a Revolution” two days before the conjunction — Mars stationing direct one day after. Yet, Jupiter and Pluto coming together in another kind of terrible harmony, that of expansion and disease — especially as it is tied to workings of governance — and here, too, we can measure spikes of COVID. The astrologer Chris Brennen (Scorpio!) has mapped the correlation and the results are, well, eerie.

As ever, the only way out is through, and there’s no car fast enough to get us out of this kind of destructive force. It’s on Earthlings to take hold what is dying around us with grace and prepare the Earth for the life that comes. The new moon’s sextile to Pluto and Jupiter in Capricorn makes this mandate that much more compelling, if not hopeful. Hope is a through line here, and despite the shadowy connotations Scorpio shoulders, Scorpio energy is sustained by faith — faith that wheel turns, faith that the phoenix will rise from the ashes. Astrologer Annabel Gat recently shared that legend holds Scorpio is a sign born into intergenerational grief that must learn to turn the grief into medicine. Under the new moon, our grief is our medicine. Medicine, here, is a kind of magic power and magic — at its core — is life force. A life for a life, we begin again, changed utterly.