The Season of Going Under
The Sun enters Scorpio on October 23 this year, and the old stories have always known what this season is for. It is the season of going under. The leaves come down, the sap pulls back into the roots, and the nights grow long enough to feel like a place you could get lost in. Samhain sits right in the middle of it.
Two of the oldest descent stories we have belong to this time of year. Inanna, Queen of Heaven, walked into the Sumerian underworld of her own free will and came back changed. Persephone was pulled into the Greek underworld against hers and came back a queen. Their stories were written down roughly a thousand years apart, in different languages, by people who never met. They still tell the same truth: you do not come back from the deep the same, you do not come back for free, and you do not come back alone.
This year the sky is telling the story too. Venus, the planet the Sumerians knew as Inanna herself, turned retrograde in Scorpio on October 3. She disappears into the Sun's light at the very first degree of Scorpio within a day of the Sun crossing into the sign. Inanna is going under at the gate of Scorpio season, right on schedule. And she isn't going alone. By October 24, five planets are retrograde at once. Below you'll find what this sign is really about, the myth underneath it, what the sky is doing date by date, and what it all means for your sign.
But first, a word on why a post about the stars spends time on goddesses and underworlds at all.
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Why Myths? Stories as Sacred Transmission
If you've only ever met astrology through daily horoscopes, it might seem strange to find ancient goddesses in a post about Scorpio season. But for most of human history, astrology and myth were the same body of knowledge, told in two languages.
Think about how fragile knowledge is. Languages die. Sumerian stopped being spoken almost 4,000 years ago. Empires fall, libraries burn, whole cultures disappear and take their textbooks with them. But a story survives all of that. A story can be carried by a grandmother who can't read, sung by a traveler who doesn't speak the original tongue, retold a thousand times by people who have no idea what's hidden inside it. The knowledge rides along like a seed inside a fruit, waiting for someone who knows how to plant it.
“What makes someone an initiate isn’t access to forbidden books. It’s learning to see the wisdom where others see only a story. As above, so below: the myth is the sky, told as a life.”
That's exactly how the ancients encoded what they knew about the sky. The movements of Venus, the phases of the Moon, the turning of the seasons, the cycles of death and return: they were watched for thousands of years and passed down as stories about gods. Anyone could hear them. Only some would understand them.
This is the oldest principle of the mystery schools. The teaching is never truly hidden. It's hidden in plain sight, in the stories everyone already knows. Even the Gospel of Mark says it plainly, with Jesus telling his disciples: "Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables."
The secrets of the ancients are all around us, in the fairy tales, in the holidays, in the names of the planets and the days of the week. What makes someone an initiate isn't access to forbidden books. It's learning to see the wisdom where others see only a story. As above, so below: the myth is the sky, told as a life.
So as we move through Scorpio season, we'll read the sign, the stories and the sky together, and you'll see they're all saying the same thing.
Scorpio, the Sign of the Threshold
Scorpio is fixed water. Not the rain and not the open sea, but the deep well and the still lake that won't show you its bottom. Water that holds what falls into it.
In traditional astrology Scorpio is the night house of Mars. Aries is Mars by day, out in the open with a sword in hand. Scorpio is Mars turned inward, the warrior who goes into the cave, the surgeon rather than the soldier. When Pluto was discovered in 1930, modern astrologers gave Scorpio to Pluto as well, and the name is a clue worth noticing. Pluto comes from Plouton, "the wealthy one," a Greek title for Hades. The lord of the dead was also the lord of riches, because everything of value comes up from below: the stored seed grain, the metals, the gems, the springs.
Scorpio is the eighth sign, and in the modern "natural zodiac" it is paired with the eighth house. Hellenistic astrologers already called that place the house of death. Not death as punishment, but death as the place where things change hands: inheritance, shared resources, what we give over and what is given to us when someone is gone.
The Sun's path tells the same story. At the Autumn Equinox, in Libra, light and dark stood balanced. Scorpio is the first full month where the dark is winning. The cross-quarter point of Samhain, halfway between equinox and solstice, falls when the Sun reaches about 15 degrees of Scorpio, around November 7. The door to the underworld opens in the middle of this sign.
The Myth Underneath the Season
Even the scorpion is a story. The Babylonians, who gave us much of the zodiac we use today, saw a scorpion in these stars too. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, a scorpion-man and his wife guard the mountain gate where the Sun goes down into darkness each night. So the sign we enter on October 23 began as a guardian of the threshold between the world of light and the world below. Now let's look at the two oldest descent stories, and what they're really describing.
Inanna: the evening star goes down
The oldest descent story we have is Sumerian, written on clay tablets nearly 4,000 years ago. It opens with a line worth carrying through the whole season: "From the great heaven she set her mind on the great below." (ETCSL translation)
Inanna, Queen of Heaven, goes down to visit her sister Ereshkigal, queen of the dead. Before she leaves, she tells her faithful minister Ninshubur what to do if she isn't back in three days. She passes through seven gates, and at each one something is taken: her crown, her jewels, her ring, her measuring rod, finally her royal dress. She arrives with nothing, is struck dead, and hangs on a hook for three days. Two tiny mourners sent by the god Enki sit with Ereshkigal in her pain and grieve alongside her, and in gratitude she gives them Inanna's body. Inanna rises. But no one leaves the underworld for free, and her husband Dumuzi, who didn't mourn her at all, is sent down in her place for half of every year.
Now read it again as the sky.
Inanna is the planet Venus, the brightest light in the sky after the Sun and Moon. For months she shines in the west after sunset as the evening star. Then night after night she sinks lower toward the horizon and the Sun, until she disappears into its glare. That is the descent. When she returns, she rises on the opposite side of the sky, in the east before dawn, as the morning star. In the poem, when the gatekeeper asks who she is, she calls herself Inanna travelling toward the east.
Persephone: the maiden and the seed
Persephone's story, told in the Greek Homeric Hymn to Demeter, is the same descent through a different door. She doesn't choose it. The earth opens and Hades takes her. Her mother Demeter, goddess of the grain, grieves so deeply that nothing on earth will grow. Before Persephone is returned, Hades gives her a pomegranate seed, and because she has eaten the food of the dead, she must spend part of every year below. It is Hermes, the Greek Mercury, who guides her back up to the light.
On one level, Persephone is the seed grain. She goes into the dark earth, and the fields lie bare. She returns, and the green comes back.
She is in the sky too. The constellation Virgo, the maiden, holds an ear of wheat, marked by the bright star Spica, which is Latin for "ear of grain." Ancient writers linked this maiden with Demeter or her daughter. Every year in mid-October the Sun passes directly over Spica and the maiden's wheat vanishes into its light. Days later, the Sun leaves her behind and crosses into the scorpion's gate. The maiden has gone under.
The ancient sky-watchers didn't separate the facts from the meaning. Venus going down was a goddess being stripped of her crown. The seed in the ground was a daughter waiting to come home. Once you see that, the stories stop being quaint and start being instructions.
And they agree on what descent asks of us. One goddess chooses to go down and one is taken, but both come back changed, both pay a price, and neither makes it out alone. That's the shape of Scorpio season, and this year the sky is acting it out.
The Sky This Scorpio Season
Venus goes under
This is Inanna's descent happening in real time.
Venus has been retrograde since October 3. On October 23, the same day the Sun enters Scorpio, she meets the Sun at 0°45' Scorpio and disappears. This is her inferior conjunction, the moment the old cycle ends and a new eight-year Venus cycle begins. Two days later she slips back into Libra and turns direct on November 13.
Venus rules what we love, what we value and what we find beautiful. With her retrograde in Scorpio, expect old loves, old wounds and old questions about worth to surface. This is not the season to buy the expensive thing or rush into a new relationship. It is the season to ask what you still value once the jewelry comes off.
Mercury, the guide of souls, turns back
On October 24, a day after the Venus conjunction, Mercury stations retrograde at about 21° Scorpio and stays retrograde until November 13. Remember that in the Hymn to Demeter it is Hermes, Mercury's Greek self, who goes down to bring Persephone back to the light. He was the guide of souls, the only god who traveled freely between the worlds.
The usual Mercury retrograde advice applies: back up your files, double-check travel, read contracts twice. But in Scorpio this retrograde goes deeper than miscommunication. Conversations you've avoided will find you. Secrets surface. Old memories ask to be retold, and this time more honestly.
The slow movers
Saturn and Neptune are both retrograde in Aries until mid-December, and Uranus is retrograde in Gemini until February. These are background currents rather than headlines, but they add to the feeling that the whole sky is pulling inward. Add Venus and Mercury, and from October 24 to November 13 five planets are retrograde at once.
One planet moves the other way. Pluto, Scorpio's modern ruler and namesake of the lord of the underworld, turned direct on October 15. The gatekeeper has already opened the door.
The Taurus Full Moon: October 26
The first full moon of the season falls at about 3° Taurus, just after midnight Eastern time on October 26. The Sun sits across from it beside the newly hidden Venus, and the Moon squares Pluto. Taurus is the sign of keeping: the body, the home, the money, the things we hold. Scorpio is the sign of letting go. This full moon lights up exactly what you are clinging to and asks whether it's yours to keep.
The Scorpio New Moon: November 9
The new moon falls at about 17° Scorpio in the early hours of November 9 Eastern time, just after the astronomical midpoint of Samhain. This is the darkest new moon of the darkest sign, the moment at the bottom of the descent. Set intentions here the way a seed is planted: in the dark, without needing to see what grows.
Mars meets Jupiter: November 15 to 16
As the retrogrades end, Mars and Jupiter come together in Leo, starting a new two-year cycle between them. After weeks underground, this is the fire coming back on. Leo asks to be seen, and this is the energy of re-emerging with something real to show for the journey. Just don't mistake the rush for the finish line. Venus won't be fully clear of her retrograde territory until mid-December.
Times are given in Eastern time; in Europe, several of these fall a few hours later, sometimes on the following date.
Scorpio Season Horoscopes
Read these for your rising sign, also called your ascendant. Your rising sign is the sign that was coming up over the eastern horizon at the moment you were born, and it sets up the houses of your chart: which area of life each sign, and each transit, falls into. That's why a rising sign horoscope will speak to your actual life far more precisely than your Sun sign. If you don't know yours, you'll need your birth time. Any free birth chart calculator will give it to you in seconds.
Scorpio moves through your eighth house of shared resources, debts, inheritance and intimacy. This is the house of what you merge with others, and Mercury retrograde here may bring a loan, a tax matter or a joint account back for review. Venus retrograde in your house of partnership adds the deeper question: in your closest relationship, who holds the power and who holds the purse? The October 26 Full Moon lands in your house of money and self-worth, exposing what you've been holding onto for security. Your gate this season is control. The reward comes mid-November, when Mars and Jupiter meet in your house of pleasure, creativity and romance. Let yourself enjoy what comes back.
The descent happens in your house of partnership, and the October 26 Full Moon falls right on your rising sign. Someone close to you is holding up a mirror, and the reflection may be uncomfortable. Mercury retrograde brings back old conversations with partners, business or romantic, that never quite got finished. Meanwhile Venus, your ruling planet, retrogrades through your house of daily routines and health, asking what your body has been carrying for you. Rest is not optional this season. When Mars and Jupiter meet in your house of home and family in mid-November, put your energy there. Your gate is the version of yourself you show to others.
Scorpio moves through your sixth house of work, health and daily ritual, and Mercury, your ruling planet, turns retrograde right there. Expect old habits, stalled projects and unresolved health questions to come back asking for a proper ending. This is a good season to change one ritual that no longer serves you. Venus retrograde in your house of creativity and romance may bring back an old flame or an abandoned creative project. Look honestly before you relight either one. The Taurus Full Moon falls in your twelfth house of the hidden, so pay attention to your dreams. Your gate is busyness itself.
This season runs through your house of creativity, pleasure, romance and children, while Venus retrogrades through your fourth house of home and roots. What brings you joy and what makes you feel safe are being renegotiated at the same time. You may find yourself revisiting your childhood home, literally or in memory. The Taurus Full Moon lights up your house of friends and community, showing you who truly belongs in your circle. The New Moon on November 9 is a beautiful time to begin a creative practice nobody else ever needs to see. Your gate is the need to take care of everyone else first.
Scorpio digs down into your fourth house of home, family and ancestry, right as Samhain thins the veil. This is a season for ancestor work, family stories and the things nobody in your family talks about. Mercury retrograde may bring family conversations back around until they're finally honest. The Taurus Full Moon sits at the top of your chart in your house of career, asking whether your public life still matches who you are underneath. Then Mars and Jupiter meet right on your rising sign in mid-November, which makes you the first one up from the underworld. Bring something real from the depths of your family story when you rise. Your gate is pride.
The descent moves through your third house of communication, learning, siblings and short journeys, and Mercury, your ruling planet, turns retrograde there. Words matter more than usual this season. Reread before you send, and listen for what's underneath what people are saying. Venus retrograde in your house of money and values asks what you've been undercharging for, and what you're still paying for that you no longer value. The Taurus Full Moon lights up your house of higher learning and travel, a good moment to commit to a deeper course of study. Mars and Jupiter meet in your twelfth house, so do your best work quietly. Your gate is the need to get it right.
Venus, your ruling planet, retrogrades back into your own sign, so you are living Inanna's story more directly than anyone this season. With Scorpio moving through your house of money and self-worth, the question at every gate is what you are worth without the adornments: the titles, the looks, the approval. Mercury retrograde may bring back an old financial matter. The Taurus Full Moon falls in your eighth house of intimacy and shared resources, revealing what is truly being exchanged in your closest bonds. When Venus turns direct on November 13, you begin your climb. Mars and Jupiter in your house of friendship show you who helps you up. Your gate is the need to be liked.
This is your season, and the descent is personal. The Sun, Mercury and briefly Venus all move across your rising sign, and the New Moon on November 9 is yours alone. Use it to begin again in the truest sense. Mercury retrograde on your ascendant may bring old versions of yourself back for one last conversation. Venus retrograde through your twelfth house of the hidden asks you to rest, retreat and grieve before you rebuild. The Taurus Full Moon lights up your house of partnership, putting a significant other in sharp focus. Mars and Jupiter meet at the top of your chart in mid-November, bringing real career momentum once you surface. Your gate is armor.
Scorpio sits in your twelfth house, the house of the unseen: dreams, solitude, retreat, endings and the things you don't show anyone. This is your quiet underworld before your own season begins on November 22. Mercury retrograde here may surface old memories in dreams or unexpected moments. Venus retrograde in your house of friendship and community may show you who sat in the dust for you this year, and who didn't. The Taurus Full Moon lights up your house of work and health. When Mars and Jupiter meet in your house of travel and higher learning, the call to go somewhere far away will be loud. Your gate is restlessness.
The descent moves through your house of friends, groups and long-term hopes, while Venus retrogrades across the very top of your chart in your house of career and public life. A professional relationship, a role or your reputation itself may need to be re-examined. Mercury retrograde could bring back an old colleague or an abandoned dream for the future. The Taurus Full Moon falls in your house of pleasure and creativity, reminding you that joy is not a reward you have to earn. Mars and Jupiter meet in your eighth house in mid-November, which can bring support or debt through others, so choose carefully. Your gate is ambition.
Scorpio crosses the top of your chart, your tenth house of career and calling, while Pluto sits on your rising sign and has just turned direct. This season is about what you are really here to do in the world, and which title you would surrender at the first gate if asked. Mercury retrograde may reopen a work conversation. Venus retrograde in your house of travel, beliefs and study may bring back an old teacher or an old belief to re-examine. The Taurus Full Moon lights up your house of home and family. Mars and Jupiter meet in your house of partnership in mid-November, bringing someone important forward. Your gate is detachment.
The descent moves through your ninth house of faith, study, pilgrimage and long journeys, which makes this one of the most powerful seasons of the year for you to study the mysteries. Mercury retrograde here is perfect for returning to an old teaching with new eyes. Venus retrograde in your eighth house of intimacy and shared resources may bring old bonds back for review, emotionally or financially. The Taurus Full Moon lands in your house of communication, so say the true thing. Mars and Jupiter meet in your house of work and health in mid-November, giving you energy to rebuild your daily life. Your gate is escape.
Walking the Descent: A Practice for the Season
You can follow Inanna's road right alongside the sky. Four moments, four simple practices.
October 23, the Sun enters Scorpio and Venus goes under. Choose your Ninshubur: a friend, a journal, a practice that will know you've gone down. Then write down the seven things you'd be most afraid to have taken at the gates: your titles, roles, comforts, stories about yourself.
October 26, the Taurus Full Moon. Look at your list in the moonlight. Ask Inanna's question of each one: What is this? Circle the one you already know you're carrying out of habit rather than love.
November 9, the Scorpio New Moon. Sit at the bottom. No fixing, no lesson, no intention-setting checklist. Light one candle in the dark and let it be enough. If an intention comes, plant it like a seed and don't dig it up to check on it.
November 13, Venus and Mercury turn direct. Begin the climb. Name the people who sat in the dust with you this year and thank them. Then ask, gently, what in your life didn't notice you were gone.
This is reflective work, not a substitute for real support. If your descent this season is a genuinely hard one, reach for an actual Ninshubur: a friend, a therapist, a helpline. Even Inanna didn't do it alone.
The nights are getting longer. Let them. The seed grain sleeps underground all winter, and nobody calls that failure. Whatever you set down at the gates this Scorpio season, may you rise in the east with only what is truly yours.
Join the Initiates
The sky doesn't stop teaching when Scorpio season ends. Venus rises again as the morning star, the Sun moves on toward the Winter Solstice, and every new moon, full moon and turning of the wheel carries its own story waiting to be read.
If you'd like to learn to see the wisdom where others see only stories, join the Hekademia newsletter. You'll receive each new post from The Library, seasonal guidance like this one, and early word when the doors of the mystery school open at the Winter Solstice.
Esoteric teachings, ancient mysteries, and a few secrets worth keeping.
