Scorpio zodiac sign characteristics

Scorpio (The Scorpion), October 23nd - November 21st

This is the Middle Sign of the Water Triune, and corresponds to the generative organs of the Grand Man.

Its colors are scarlet, golden-brown and black.

Its birth stones are topaz and malachite.

Its profession is surgery, medicine and the ministry. It has at times a gift for public speaking, and works best in partnerships, firms and trusts.

Its chief characteristics are love of labor, tenacity, activity, justice, silence, skill and attachment.

Its tribe is Simeon—meaning " He who hears or obeys".

Its planets are the Asteroids and Mars.

A peculiarity of Scorpio is the fact that most of its inhabitants are brunettes—either possessing dark hair, dark eyes, dusky complexions—or all three.

They are robust, warm-blooded and inclined to put on flesh in middle life. They should guard against heart trouble, weak back, lumbago and gout.

This is a feminine sign, having like its Head Sign, Cancer, a strong leaning toward domestic life and home comforts.

Scorpio people possess in common with all the Middle Signs a great respect for the ideas and customs of the public, and for persons of wealth and high position. With this comes a high regard for appearances and generally very good taste in dress.

These people make excellent public officials, as the public ideas are their laws, and a love of work thoroughly done is second nature to them.

Perhaps their greatest heights are reached as surgeons and physicians. Their magnetic presence, great skill with their hands, cool, clearheaded judgment, and indomitable will, coupled with an immovable self-control, and an absolute belief in their own powers make them phenomenal surgeons and inspirational diagnosticians.

A spiritually awakened Scorpio person is most earnest to help mankind, often in the ministry as well as medicine, and their quiet superiority of demeanor, graceful tact, and fine command of language are great helps toward their success.

These water people love the ocean and ocean voyages, and are often found as sailors or in other transportation work. They seem to keep the coolness of their native element always with them, which when in excess, causes them to become cold, unsympathetic, calculating and unfeeling. This coolness of demeanor, and its stern sense of justice and integrity and an uncontrollable desire for freedom and liberty, have caused Scorpio to be greatly misjudged as being harsh, selfish, unfeeling and dissatisfied.

A good Scorpio person is very much like our Puritan forefathers. Stern, forceful, liberty-loving, dealing out severe justice, untempered by mercy, industrious himself and having no patience with those who are not. Harsh in his criticism of others, but brooking neither criticism nor interference himself. All this softened and beautified by a devoted love of home, tender and helpful, and a noble desire to be of use to all mankind.

But the unawakened, worldly-minded Scorpio person has a decidedly unpleasant character to deal with. These are the men who use their tact and magnetism to gain friends whom they drain dry and cast aside, to be taken up again with infinite diplomacy if again found useful. They calculate to a penny what everything with which they come in contact is worth to them, and take nothing else into consideration. Their self-love is abnormal, and their feelings super-sensitive, yet they have no regard whatever for others. The unregenerate Scorpio woman is much the same in a weaker way. Her criticism weakens to a habit of incessant nagging and scolding, and her calculating traits turn to petty selfishness. They are both tyrannical, passionate, jealous and suspicious, and if not constantly fed on flattery will make things very unpleasant for those around them.

In fact these untaught Scorpio people can be the most unhappy of the Twelve Signs—a single smile from their married partner, causing them untold pangs of jealousy and storms of tears and reproaches follow, and even blows from the Scorpio man, for there is no jealousy nor passion like Scorpio's when once aroused. The husbands, wives, and children of Scorpio people have a hard time of it usually, which seems a shame when their unparalleled self-control and strength of will can so easily conquer these habits of harshness, jealousy and selfish irritability, and the tact, magnetism and devoted home-love of their nature could make the home a paradise and all within it more gloriously happy than all the plodding, clumsy good intentions of a lifetime of some other less gifted sign.

In other words, Scorpio has it in his own hands to be an absolute scintillating happiness to himself and everybody else, or else suffer misery unequaled, and at the same time make all about him perfectly wretched.

And when he starts out to make mischief there is no one to equal him at it.

Like Cancer, Scorpio people are apt to be lazy. They prefer to direct others to work rather than work themselves. And there is no more exacting and tyrannical task-master than they. But they have the virtue of having anything committed to their care, well, and thoroughly done.

These people venerate book-knowledge and always try to show how much they know and to appear as if they knew more. All the Middle Signs have the characteristic. It is a part of their love of appearances, which is also the cause of their suspicious and consequently jealous natures.

They see the evil itself in the slightest appearance of it.

They should fight with all their strength against this foolish and hurtful trait and learn the lesson of consideration for others' feelings, and none for their own. And when they realize that a true friend is an inestimable treasure, whether of immediate value or not, and that flattery is worse than poison, they will become the loveliest, as well as the most fascinating people in the world.

But it is almost impossible to make a Scorpio person acknowledge his own defects. They are so used to the flattery they demand that they succeed in deceiving themselves, and like Virgo and the other Middle Signs, become very indignant when told of their most apparent faults and will deny them unconditionally. They might know that that very indignation is a sure sign that they have been hit in a vulnerable place. And when they once acknowledge their failings and set to work to cure them, the battle is almost finished, for their strong will makes short work of it. Some Scorpio natures by their own observation of the bad effects of their suspicious jealousy and incessant nagging, have stopped short in fear and trembling of the deceit, aversion and disgust their actions cause, and have won back despairing husbands and wives, miserable children and deceitful employees by their gracious tact and magnetism.

In fact, in spite of their harshness Scorpio's marriage relations are tolerably happy, and their partners excuse them because of the love behind the jealousy, and the strong nature within the petty selfishness. They generally marry young, and if their partner dies, marry again, because they cannot bear to live alone. A marriage with Virgo is sympathetic, as they are very much alike; though in some cases inharmony may result from the two critical natures brought together. Libra is sometimes congenial but apt to be stormy. Pisces is harmonious but would be apt to suffer from Scorpio's passionate nature.

Cancer in some cases would be congenial, but both desiring to lead would cause trouble. Taurus would be an excellent match, the thick-skinned complacency of this sign, easily shedding Scorpio's criticisms, and a union with Capricornus would be likely to be happy also.

The two most fortunate weeks in the year for Scorpio people are those beginning February 19th and. July 3d, but they should be careful during the week beginning April 13th.

"Astrology", by M. M. Macgregor (1905)