Maybe it's the Scorpio rising. The mutable placements. Or, it could be that my chart is stacked with close aspects to Uranus. Whatever it is, I go through a consistent biannual crisis point where everything in my life becomes dismantled and rearranged. I'm either moving homes, my immune system collapses, a relationship is coming to a dramatic end, or some other obscure spectacle is occurring. I've tried to blame myself for it, but it doesn't seem to matter whether it's in my control or not, shock and discomfort is on repeat. Though I do hope this isn't mistaken for a complaint, I often gain some valuable realization shaken loose from the rubble. I only bring it up because I am experiencing one of these rearrangements now, during Scorpio season with Saturn in a mutable sign and Uranus opposing the Sun, and I'm coming to find that there is some semblance of routine even in the chaos.
Whenever the crisis emerges, I wrap myself in a much needed cocoon. It's like that of a werewolf contained in a cage on a full moon, thrashing and kicking, but safe in a prison that it cinematically instructs its loved ones to build around it until they are "back to normal" again. When the bulk of the change has passed, I start from ground zero, micro dosing regular life. Instead of anxiously avoiding meals, my first task is to ground back into eating three times a day– preferably something fresh. Then comes the other things, showering regularly, finding my way back to the meditation app, then to daily exercise, and tending to the piles of laundry. It's all pieced back together in the enclosure– but the final step is going into the outside world again. It starts with a walk.
I took a walk today, finally signaling to the universe that the winds of change have settled and I have survived it (again). I wonder sometimes if the sky worries about me and is put at ease when it sees my exhausted stumble out on the road again. When I stepped outside, I realized that it's fall now. While I have been shedding and changing, the trees have changed and shed their leaves, the ground is now crunchy with the evidence that something else has passed. I didn't even notice! Even though I'm in the deep South at the moment, it has gotten cooler outside and the Sun is hanging much lower in the sky, much earlier in the day. Sometimes we bow to the Sun because of its exuberance, but in Scorpio season, we bow lower, almost by force. The light is now right in our eye line and we have no choice but to accept the change that the season presents (because if we did have a choice, we probably wouldn't). Or, when I've lived in colder cities, I wonder with my neck crunched, eyes on the snow beneath my feet, why the Sun isn't keeping me warmer if it insists on being so bright– but then finding myself missing the blinding light as it gets darker and the ground freezes over.
I have unwittingly built a routine to survive in the aftermath of a destabilizing change. It's a deeply wholesome practice, a true sign of self love that I didn't realize I had grown into. I probably wouldn't have gotten there without so many exhausting upsets time and time again. There is a resilience there and an acceptance that routine will fall away with the old, but it can come back as I settle into the new. Many things will change: your environment, your body, your resources, the people around you. At the end though, after the cocoon, the panic, the tears, and debilitating grief, there are still the basics: You need to eat, you need your sleep, your mind has to settle back into peace eventually (this one is hard for me), physical movement is necessary, and you must come back to nature because... well, the sky probably misses you and the bugs need something to crawl on (at least, this is what I tell myself as I find a crawly stowaway in my bra as I write this...ew).
This is why Taurus opposes Scorpio and the 6th house opposes the 12th house. After the ending, the death, the purge– life goes on. We have to rebuild new habits with where we are and with what we do have.
It reminds me of the time my family and I moved into a domestic violence shelter. For awhile there was chaos. Losing our house, putting our things in storage, everything is out of sorts and you do only that which is necessary. You find those liminal spaces encountered again and again, parked at a gas station, or the storage unit, or stopped in the drive through window. The crying has finally stopped and you're doing the only thing that is truly necessary: getting gas, taking a pee break, securing your things, or eating something from the closest and cheapest fast food restaurant. In times of crisis, you don't care about nutrition or stability or exercise– it's about acceptance and survival. Once we got settled in the shelter though, with the new smells and new sounds and new bugs (this place was Scorpion infested and isn't that so symbolic?), we created a new routine too. Routine comes after survival.
As kids, a staple part of our morning was chocolate milk. Once intake was settled, once we fought over which bunkbed to sleep in, once the suitcases were unpacked, as the first night passed and the first morning came, the chocolate milk was made and the first piece of a new routine had been established. After chaos, it starts with chocolate milk and it ends with going back outside, back to school or work or whatever, but now from a new starting place. We go back outside, not necessarily because we want to, but because... well, the sky probably missed us. And life must go on.
Even while we are each on our own timeline, living in our own seasons. Some still immersed in grief, some not ever getting the chance to create a routine let alone stick to it, some at the moment where they remember to breathe, others deciding to finally take a shower, or a nap, or even that first walk outside. It's nice to remember that we all have to pee. We all have to eat. We are all connected by the human experience. The experience where, you've already been sad and stressed for so long that there is an inevitable moment where you forget to be sad and stressed and you laugh instead. Laughter protesting your very circumstance even as the cycle repeats, the amnesia wears off, and you start crying again because you are hit with the reality of where you are right now. These are things that I've seen everyone experience and that is... weirdly comforting.
I don't know where you are, what you're feeling, or if you're safe this holiday season, but I hope you remember to come back to the basics. Or that you forget about any strenuous circumstance long enough to shake with incredulous, gravity defying laughter. I think that is the true transition from Scorpio to Sagittarius season. Don't forget to come back outside when you're ready.
Happy holiday season.
Your friendly neighborhood astrologer,
Katie