Scorpio season is time to get acquainted with our shadows and the unknown. We’re tasked with achieving certainty in so many parts of our lives, knowing where we’ll be in the next five years, even the next five months. We have to know how our creative projects and relationships will work out—what success they will bring, how long they will last—before diving into them. The pandemic has brought us face-to-face with the fact that the future is in shadow, like walking through a dark wood with only a small lantern in hand. Scorpio season allows us the opportunity to integrate that truth instead of running away from it.

This season is also a time for intimacy, privacy, and even secrecy. Another expectation in our social media-steeped culture is that we aim to be seen, that being seen means we’re successful and that it’s normal to share the stuff of our lives with others (even strangers) on an ongoing basis. This energetic theme calls to mind Michaela Coel’s Emmys speech in which she says, “In a world that entices us to browse through the lives of others to help us better determine how we feel about ourselves, and to in turn feel the need to be constantly visible…do not be afraid to disappear…And see what comes to you in the silence.” 

With Mars and Mercury in the sign for most of the month, we’ll feel Scorpio’s influence in the ways we act in the world and communicate. There will likely be an edge of intensity in your emotional realm—desire dances with resentment this month. We’ll need to be direct about what we actually want from people or situations because crossing our own boundaries and tolerating what’s happening to us will cause us some deep emotional distress. 

Scorpio is co-ruled by Mars and Pluto, which means that it’s easier for our actions to be in alignment with those hidden impulses that we might rarely admit to having, even to ourselves. It’s critical to give these impulses space this month, especially as we move into Sagittarius season at the end of the month—the sign of hard-earned wisdom, the school of life, and wanderlust. We can’t always know our own minds, let alone the complex internal worlds of other people (which, truthfully, sometimes surprisingly, operate entirely differently than our own). It’s okay not to know why you want something, but it’s powerful to acknowledge that you don’t rather than constantly trying to justify yourself.

On the 4th, there’s a New Moon in Scorpio. The following day, Venus moves into Capricorn. This energy may feel a little uncomfortable, or it could unleash you. Scorpio’s tarot card is Death, and Capricorn’s is The Devil. These archetypes illustrate this energetic relationship. Death both encloses life and liberates it, perpetuating the flow of matter between one state and another. The Devil symbolizes limitations that we’re comfortable with, which can ultimately make us feel like we have control over our destiny (which can feel like freedom). These archetypes also serve to remind us that the “difficult” parts of life are built-in; there’s nothing “wrong” with them. Likewise, your own shadows and inner demons are not there for you to get rid of them; they simply are.

Because this energetic conversation between Death and The Devil happens through the Moon and Venus, it’s a great time to think about your relationship to your mortal body, the way it’s an instrument for your emotions and sensory experiences while you’re alive. These transits open up a portal for you to step way outside of your intellectual mind and into your wild body, intrinsically connected to the laws of nature and the cycles of death and rebirth; grief and joy.

There will be a lunar eclipse during the Full Moon in Taurus on the 19th to round out the month. This will give you space to process any difficult or heavy feelings that have come up through the rigorous trials in a very Scorpionic forest. It’s a Moon for indulgence, physical pleasure, and playing with the fun side of darkness: mystery, seduction, and animal instinct.

On the 21st, the Sun moves into Sagittarius, followed by Mercury on the 24th. With all of your newfound self-knowledge, or a thirst to discover even more about who you are, it’s time to start soaking in all you can learn about this world and your unique signature within it through every medium: books and podcasts, thought-provoking conversations, new projects and relationships, classes, and travel. As we lean into the final weeks of another strange year, Sagittarius season calls us to keep our binoculars and field notes in hand to make a careful study of all the wonder life has to offer.

Keagan is a writer, tarot reader, and astrologer. Find her on Instagram @moonsingemini to book a reading. Subscribe to her monthly tarotscope newsletter here.