22 Apr A Little Death ~ Full Moon in Scorpio – April 26th, 2021

O Beauty! do you visit from the sky

Or the abyss? infernal and divine,

Your gaze bestows both kindnesses and crimes,

So it is said you act on us like wine.

On April 26th, 20201 the Full Moon in Scorpio will arrive, shifting the energy towards deep introspection. Under the light of this Moon, the flowers of evil bloom, luring you into the darkness.

The Moon in Scorpio illuminates the shadow, dredging up all the feelings that you’ve rejected and denied in yourself. All the pain you’ve swallowed will come back to haunt you now. Under this influence, a smoldering heat burns, coming out as rage, lust, and hatred. The more forbidden the feeling, the more narcotic it becomes.

The Sun in the fixed earth sign of Taurus dreams of creating heaven on earth. Joined by Mercury, Venus, and Uranus, the light of Taurus blesses the earth with an abundance of fruit, flowers and shaded groves where nature is a temple of eternal miracles.

But from across the zodiac, the Full Moon in Scorpio sees into the underworld, x-raying into all the layers of grief and decay beneath the soil. From the perspective of Scorpio, nature is hell, tormenting all living creatures with the ceaseless wheel of hunger and satiety and hunger again!

The world is a tormenting place, touched by heaven and cursed by hell. And this torment is reflected in your own soul, where elements of heaven and hell both flourish. The strife that these opposites create is exactly what this Full Moon in Scorpio seeks to reconcile, offering an opportunity for intense catharsis.

The energy is dark, but also intimate. You may find that someone is willing to listen to you in a way that you have never been listened to before. That’s bliss. And as intense feelings pour through your words, you may find a way to share the secrets that have been weighing on your heart.

The truly appreciate the vulnerability and power of this Full Moon demands a certain taste for paradox.The ability to handle paradox is best learned from the wisdom of the earth, which bears and reconciles all things. The earth receives all that is juicy and withered. It is as nourished by rain as it is by blood, sweat and tears. The earth supports the footsteps of heroes and villains, yielding to all life and death through boundless receptivity.

This same earthly wisdom asks you to bear with the hell that is inside of you. Bear with the bloody feelings of abandonment and hatred that the Moon in Scorpio reveals.

The Moon is considered to be in its fall in the sign of Scorpio, making this one of the most difficult Full Moons of the year. It is a Moon of pain and discontent where hunger and loneliness aches.

A hard opposition to Uranus will only agitate the ache, making the necessity of some kind of breakthrough seem urgent. The endless strife of addiction and obsession become so painful that you are finally wiling to find another way. Uranus will inspire you to advance, to make a leap of consciousness from opposition (fighting) to paradox (wholeness).

The endless opposition within your own psyche grinds you down with guilt and shame. But in paradox, opposite polarities are allowed to exist with equal value. In other words, your dark side has its purpose and is to be appreciated.At the Full Moon in Scorpio, you are reminded that it is the dark power of desire that gives birth to the real pleasures of Taurus. It is not perfect contentment and satiety, but the mania of hunger that inspires potent creativity and invention. It is the gaunt feeling of necessity that Scorpio summons which really drives you to evolve. 

There is nothing that evokes the beauty and horror of this Full Moon in Scorpio quite like the work of the 19th-Century French poet, Charles Baudelaire.

Baudelaire’s most significant collection of poems, Flowers of Evil, is a perfect reflection of the tension between heaven and hell, juxtaposing the Scorpionic vices with the Taurean virtues.

Baudelaire’s vision of beauty and death grew from witnessing the modernization of Paris. This was an aggressive industrialization that demolished the former pace of life and destroyed many ancient sections of the city. This tremendous loss to the grinding machine of industrial urbanism is the soil that his poetry grew from.

In response to the modern world, Baudelaire’s art was defiant and rebellious. He had nothing but contempt for the aesthetics and sensibilities of the mid-19th Century. When Flowers of Evil was published, he was cancelled by the corporate oligarchs of his day and many of its verses were banned for obscenity.  

But Baudelaire’s work is not obscene and he did so much more than just rage against the machine. His erotic synaesthetic explorations of beauty and corruption made the leap of consciousness from opposition into paradox, where both heaven and hell could be reconciled with one another.

From the Flowers of Evil, his Hymn to Beauty offers a perfect meditation on the paradox of Taurus and Scorpio. In this Hymn, he begins by asking Beauty if she originates from heaven or hell.

O Beauty! do you visit from the sky

Or the abyss? infernal and divine

He suggests to the reader that beauty is an intoxicant, a narcotic haze that causes bliss and suffering. As the title emphasizes, some flowers are born from evil.

Your gaze bestows both kindnesses and crimes,

So it is said you act on us like wine.

To him, the eyes of Beauty contain the evening and the dawn, both the nocturnal world of Scorpio and the daylight pleasures of Taurus.

…You are a candle where the mayfly dies

In flames, blessing this fire’s deadly bloom.

The panting lover bending to his love

Looks like a dying man who strokes his tomb.

Here Baudelaire sees beauty as the force that lures the moth into the flame. And describes the little death that follows orgasmic bliss. In his Hymn, beauty is worshipped as a force of attraction and annihilation.

Angel or siren, spirit, I don’t care

…o my queen, can make

The world less dreadful, and the time less dead.

Baudelaire’s Hymn loves and honors both sides of her nature, ending the strife and reconciling the paradox within his own soul. Ultimately, beauty in all her forms is what makes his time less dead.

Even amidst an urban wasteland, to an artist, beauty blooms everywhere. And this Moon in Scorpio asks you to be an artist, appreciating the beauty you find in divine and infernal places.

Baudelaire knew that the evil which blooms within you can not be conquered. The evil must be accepted, yielded to as the earth yields to everything. Only then will the endless war cease. It is easy to love one part of your soul at the expense of another. But this Full Moon in Scorpio asks you to be stronger than you have been, creating synthesis and internal wholeness from strife.

The internal strength of paradox creates unity strong enough to endure many crises. And this strength will be needed for the eclipses to come at the end of the month. 

Though the emotional tone of the Full Moon in Scorpio is intense, as the Moon starts to wane you will feel a wave of relief. A little death that lulls you into blissful sleep and dreams. Following the earthly wisdom of all the planets in Taurus, your darkness is gracefully accepted and transformed back into light.

Much Love,

Rachel