Scorpio & the Death-Rebirth Cycle
How was Saturday’s Scorpio New Moon for you? I woke up with an irrational sense of panic early in the morning, a few hours before the New Moon was exact – while it was in its deepest, darkest balsamic phase. The wind was howling outside. I managed to calm myself and then awoke again, shortly after the moment of the New Moon. The wind had quieted, but a sense of uneasiness remained.
This New Moon is pretty prickly and raw with today’s Mars-Pluto square looming over it, encapsulating it. Breathe gently into your soft creature body and bring sweet care to any turmoil within.
There was a family I used to babysit who liked to watch Disney’s Fantasia 2000 film, repeatedly. My favourite part (which I would watch again after the children went to sleep) was The Firebird Suite. The 10-minute clip depicts a spirit of spring who brings life to the forest again after a long winter. However, she not only awakens life in the forest, but also awakens the firebird within the volcano.
The firebird unleashes its fury upon the land, destroying all the new life.
The spirit of spring barely survives this onslaught of fiery lava, and is devastated by the destruction. It is now her turn to awaken to the hopeful possibilities of renewal, and the transformative and relentless power of creation and rebirth. The barren forest returns to life beneath her touch.
This short musical clip illustrates Scorpio’s archetypal dance of life, death, and transformation.
This death-rebirth cycle repeats continuously throughout our every-day lives and in the environments that surround us.
May these examples remind you of your infinite rebirth potential at the time of this Scorpio New Moon:
⚫ Every day, the sun dies… and is born again the next morning.
⚫ Mirroring the sun’s cycle, we too, die each day. Our bodies tell us it’s time to rest and rejuvenate our life force through sleep. The next morning we awaken, our conscious minds alert and our bodies refreshed and alive.
⚫ Flourishing green trees and plants collapse under winter’s cold weight … only to be magically brought back to life the following spring.
⚫ Once a month, the moon disappears into darkness. The moon dies with the end of a lunation cycle… and then is reborn. A few days later we will catch sight of the baby crescent moon winking at us from the sky.
⚫ A healthy tree releases many seeds. When it eventually rots, fertilizing the earth… it is surrounded by its baby saplings.
⚫ When a caterpillar has grown into its full size, it retreats into a chrysalis. It undergoes a profound transformation and… emerges with beautiful wings – as a butterfly.
⚫ Ice loses its form as it evaporates, and yet… it returns to us as life-giving rain and water. This too is a death, and a transformative rebirth.
⚫ As we attempt to align with nature’s cycles, many of our human-made products are now recycled and re-purposed. This brings new life to expired and discarded dead matter.
⚫ Snakes grow within their skin until they can grow no more. They shed their tired, restrictive sheath and then… leaving their dead cells behind them, they slither onward with a brand new skin.
⚫ Human cells die as well… and regenerate continuously, throughout a human life span.
⚫ When the human body is tired of this continuous cellular death, it undergoes another type of transition when the heart ceases to pump.
⚫ And yet at that very moment, somewhere in the world a baby is taking its first breath. Souls leave their human form while simultaneously… other souls are being birthed into embodiment.
⚫ In fact, every exhale is a death. And every inhale is transformative rebirth, bringing oxygenated life to our cells.
⚫ The end of every significant chapter in our lives holds a death seed… from which new life awakens.
⚫ The end of childhood. The end of highschool. Our first break up. Our first divorce. The end of a job. Retirement.
⚫ All these endings hold the seeds of a new beginning; your next chapter, your next transformation.
⚫ Archetypal death and rebirth narratives weave their way through every major spiritual and religious tradition. From reincarnation to resurrection.
⚫ Some believers speak of dying to themselves and being “born again”. And yet we all are. Every day, regardless of faith. Over and over again.
Many of you are likely familiar with Clarissa Estes’ book: “Women who run with wolves”.
One of my favourite chapters is called “Marking Territory”, and her wise words bears repeating at this time.
She writes for women, but her words are applicable to everyone:
“A body who has lived a long time accumulates debris. It cannot be avoided. But if a woman will return to the instinctual nature instead of sinking into bitterness, she will be revivified, reborn… The woman who returns to the instinctual and creative nature will come back to life. She will want to play. She will still want to grow, both wide and deep. But first, there has to be a cleansing.”
“Women have died a thousand deaths before they are twenty years old. They’ve gone in this direction or that, and have been cut off. They have hopes and dreams that have been cut off also. Anyone who says otherwise is still asleep…”
“While all these things deepen individuation, differentiation, growing up and growing out, blossoming, becoming awake and aware and conscious, they are also profound tragedies and have to be grieved as such.”
“To make descansos means taking a look at your life and marking where the small deaths, las muertes chiquitas, and the big deaths, las muertes grandotas, have taken place. I like to make a time-line of a woman’s life on a big long sheet of white butcher paper, and to mark with a cross the places along the graph, starting with her infancy all the way to the present where parts and pieces of her self and her life have died.”
“We mark where there were roads not taken, paths that were cut off, ambushes, betrayals, and deaths. I put a little cross along the time-line at the places that should have been mourned, or still need to be mourned…”
“I encourage you to make the descansos, to sit down with a time-line of your life and say “Where are the crosses? Where are the places that must be remembered, must be blessed?” In all the meanings that you’ve brought forward into your life today. They must be remembered, but they must be forgotten at the same time. It takes time. And patience.”
“…Descansos is a conscious practice that takes pity on and gives honor to the orphaned dead of your psyche, laying them to rest at last.”
“Be gentle with yourself and make the descansos, the resting places for the aspects of yourself that were on their way to somewhere, but never arrived. Descansos mark the death sites, the dark times, but they are also love notes to your suffering. They are transformative.”
~Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Mourn your many deaths.
Create a ritual to honour and grieve your previous selves – the wounds they bore, the efforts they made, and the successes they celebrated.
And then open up to your next chapter.
Your next breath.
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