The Zodiac - Scorpio

The Myths and Legends of Scorpio

As the Golden Huntsman, Orion, sets in the west each spring, his enemy, the Scorpion, rises in the eastern sky. For this is the Scorpion who, at the command of Artemis, the chaste goddess of hunting and the moon, stung the handsome Orion and caused his death, from which even Asclepius, the god of healing, could not save him.

The Scorpion was also thought to have stung the horses of the sun god's chariot when Phaeton drove them, causing them to bolt and career through the heavens, drying up rivers and scorching the earth below. It has also always been greatly feared by sailors, as its autumn setting promised storms.

But the Scorpion was really formed in about 5000 BC in the Euphrates valley, where it was sacred to the god of war and was a symbol of the darkness and decay of the waning year. Gilgamesh, the Babylonian prototype of all our heroes, was challenged by a scorpion-man who guarded the gates of the sunrise, which were great folding doors in the steep side of the mountains of the East.

Alchemy

For the alchemists, who believed that they could produce gold by releasing the spirit from its bondage in matter, November, Scorpio's season, when the earth decays, was their busiest time of year. Only then could the spirit be released, and base metal be transmuted into gold.