Light and Dark
Pinax of Persephone and Hades on the throne. Found in the holy shrine of Persephone at Locri in the district Mannella. Locri was part of Magna Graecia in Calabria in Italy. National Museum of Magna Graecia. Photo: AlMare CC BY-SA 4.0
In my book, Goddess Astrology I give Persephone to Scorpio. Scorpio who understands and sometimes chooses to wander in the land of the shades. Once, I was a teaching a class and several of them were Scorpios, some Sun, some Moon, some Ascendant or a combination of all three. I was writing the book at the time and wondered about the myth of Persephone being tricked by Hades to stay underground. I asked these women, they were all women, would they rather be a Queen in Hades or mother’s little helper earth-side. With pausing a beat, they all laughed and said, ‘Queen in Hades!’
Of course they would. Scorpio is interested in many things, taboos, money, sex, but above all else, power. The status of Queen would far outshine being the daughter of the Great Goddess Demeter. No contest as one of the women said laughing.
I agree, Persephone may live in the barren halls of Hades, but she is Queen, a desirable, sought after Queen of one of the three most powerful Olympians. But Persephone also understands the power her mother wields. Demeter has brought nature to a halt, humans will starve, the gods will go without sacrifices. Persephone can save the day too.
Persephone rises, seal, Boetia, 1550 BCE.
Persephone rises from the darkness, her mother is appeased and she spends the fruitful months overseeing the rites at Eleusis with her mother. No one knows what happened at Eleusis, the penalty for revealing the Mysteries was death in Greece in the 5th C BCE. What we do know is there was dancing, there was darkness, there were torches and a revelation.
Persephone is the female expression of Mars that Scorpio represents. She is less the warrior than the fearless explorer. Persephone walks the dark corridors of Hades with Hekate at her side. Persephone knows the land of the dead, but also the sunny uplands of the human world.
In the myth, Persephone as Kore, is dancing in the meadows, carefree and innocent, when she picks a beautiful flower. As she picks the flower the earth opens up with a roar and Hades emerges on his chariot and snatches her away.
Many Scorpios will experience such times. When the earth opens up and they are engulfed or kidnapped by a force they cannot fight. Sometimes it is a death, a rape, or some other tragedy which blasts their lives apart irrevocably and nothing is ever the same again.
Of all the signs, it is Scorpio who can rebuild from such utter devastation. Water gives Scorpio the fluidity and adaptability to survive massive change, her fixity gives persistence, staying power to see the struggle to the end, her courage and fearlessness means she is an implacable force, a fearsome enemy, a bitter rival. And the best of them will reinvent themselves after disaster, the proverbial phoenix arising from the ashes.
Lorena Bobbitt is as a case in point. Lorena grew up in a middle-class family and spent her childhood in Venezuela. She came to the USA to study. She met and married John Bobbitt when she was twenty. Lorena claimed their marriage was abusive from the start, she suffered rape, beatings, and emotional abuse. The police were called multiple times, but he avoided prosecution as domestic violence was not against the law at that time.
On June 3rd, 1993 Lorena was raped when he came home drunk. While he was sleeping, she cut off his penis and ran away. She threw it from the car window and went to a friend’s house and called the police. She told them where she had thrown it and it was successful re-attached. Both were charged with assault and both were acquitted. Lorena spent a month in a mental hospital under observation but was released as she posed no risk to the public. In later life Lorena began campaigning for domestic abuse, she founded the Lorena Gallo institute to help victims of domestic abuse in 2007.
Although we do not have the time for this chart (and there is some dispute about the date) I feel this chart is a powerful expression of Scorpionic energy. Lorena has six planets in Scorpio, Sun, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Moon and Neptune all forming a powerful stellium which is opposed by Saturn in Taurus. Her marriage must have been a descent into hell for her, where, despite the beatings and rape, she was finally able to garner the strength to fight back. She retaliated to save her life, she said she feared her was going to murder her.
‘It was survival. Life and death. I was fearing for my life.’[i]
Most evocative of the act though, is a Mars Uranus conjunction in Libra. Mars, the knife castrates Uranus, the partner/lover Libra.
Afterwards, her Jupiter wanted to speak her truth,
‘The media was focusing only on the penis, the sensationalistic, the scandalous. But I wanted to shine the light on this issue of spousal abuse. When I went to Knoxville [to speak at a symposium for Lincoln Memorial University’s law review], the president of the school introduced me as a celebrity. I said, ‘Thank you, but let me correct you. I am not a celebrity I am an advocate.’[ii]
Lorena turned down a million dollars to appear nude in Playboy magazine. Her ex-husband had a brief career as a porn star, he was arrested several times for assault on his subsequent wives.
Scorpio, then goes to deeper and darker places than other signs, often unwillingly, but the treasures they discover in Hades realm make them the strongest of the signs, or the most resilient. Having lived in the dark corridors of the underworld, Scorpio has a conduit to the unconscious and can bring its mysteries into the sunlight to transform their pain.
Excerpt from Goddess Astrology. Buy here
[i] https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2018/06/lorena-bobbitt-john-wayne-bobbitt-25-years accessed 26.1.2021.[ii] https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2018/06/lorena-bobbitt-john-wayne-bobbitt-25-years accessed 26.1.2021.
Elisabeth Brooke 