The dualism of Scorpio makes it a baffling sign, for the Scorpion combines materialism with spirituality. He is “the world, the flesh and the devil” and also the spirit that renounces them. He is full of the zest of life, which, however, is meaningful only after he has added a unique, almost mystic, significance. The search for inner values, for the key to the riddle of self, of world, of life itself, is Scorpio’s basic motivation, and his search, whether it takes him to spiritual heights or into the darkest of subconscious depths, is always intense. To him, “Life is real, life is earnest, and the grave is not its goal.” Scorpio takes himself, his work, his ideals, his love seriously and insists that others do the same; yet at the same time he is aware of the fleetingness of it, the futility of it, the smallness of it. Not usually religious in any orthodox sense, he has his own personal religion, which is more mystic than philosophic, and which is part of the depths of his profound nature.
Scorpio is the only sign that never produces a shallow person. The best of the rest dip into nonentities from time to time, but a Scorpion is always consequential. You must reckon with him even if you dislike or despise him. He can sink to the lowest level of them all if the sense of futility turns his great energies inward instead of outward; but to whatever level he may sink, he carries with him an essential dignity, as if to represent the greatness of Lucifer in fall as well as in glory. At its best, Scorpio is a mechanical, spiritual or legal genius, though rarely an executive. Luxurious and extravagant in his tastes, he lacks interest in making money because, when he calls on his maximum powers, they lead him to noncommercial fields. So great is his magnetism that he will generally be found in a position where he can get all he wants without giving his all, which is reserved for private, perhaps secret, pursuits.
Scorpio is careful of appearances, generally a conformist in all that meets the eye, and would not willingly let you into the private details of his life, thoughts and philosophies. Yet these are very clear to him and provide him with an unexpressed viewpoint that gives him great poise. He looks at the world with aware, perhaps accusing, eyes; he does not betray the secret he has with himself, which gives him reserve and self-assurance and an uncanny knack of making the other fellow feel that he knows more than he is expressing. Part of the secret of Scorpio (no one can tell you all of the secret except the individual Scorpion himself, and he won’t) is the simplicity with which he accepts the merger of the material and the spiritual. He relates all problems of life to a standard of intangibles that is unknown to other men, achieves a practical answer in terms of his secret, perhaps unconscious, doctrine of the worlds, and thus adds to his personality the sort of magic one would have who consulted with an invisible, but ever-present, guardian angel.
Grant Lew