Matthew's Mysticism: Scorpio Season 🦂

Each month, MOBImag brings you Matthew’s Mysticism – astrology from a Black queer astrology embodied artist’s perspective.

‘Tis the season for a crisis, which Scorpio represents in astrology. 2020 has brought a global pandemic and has further illuminated the misuse of power in our government. However, simultaneously, people have moved from jobs that didn't value them or provide emotional fulfillment, have gone on to start their entrepreneurial endeavors, and black queer people have come into positions of political prominence. We are seeing the seeds of a world that are moving from disempowerment to empowerment. This is what Scorpionic energy is all about – finding where we have been disempowered and transmuting that energy to come into a space of complete autonomy. 

As of recent, we have witnessed the victories of Richard Torres and Mondraine Jones. Two New York native, Queer Black men who have not only gained more empowerment and agency for Queer people but also more agency over their identity struggles and points of disempowerment. 

Mondraine Jones is a practicing attorney from Westchester county, who during his time as a Harvard grad student, saw the parallel between him and a closeted character from Noah’s Arc who dated women and kept his relationship with men private. 

Richard Torres, however, is particularly interesting because of his openness and candor in expressing a tormented background. Living with the intersectionalities of being a gay child growing up in the Bronx public housing, which later in his young adulthood resulted in a depression that eventually led to suicidal thoughts and substance abuse, were all things he was made to reconcile. All of these things being themes that fall under the sign of Scorpio. 

Seeing as how Ritchie is 32, this makes him a part of the Pluto in Scorpio generation (people born between 1983-1995). Torres shows us the purpose of the Pluto in Scorpio generation at large whose call is to confront, go through and transmute topics around sexuality, societal taboos, and crisis. It is divine timing that during the most important elections in years, he as a Pluto in Scorpio native has achieved political authority. 

In ancient Greek mythology, Scorpio, ruled by the planet of Pluto, created a need for an individual to identify the darkness, and depth of their psyche and their soul. Pluto, the God of the underworld, kidnapped Persephone, Daughter of Demeter, the Goddess of the earth realm. In kidnapping the young and naive maiden, Pluto rapes her and commands her to live in the underworld with him for half the year, and in the upper world with her mother for the other half. In this place of darkness, Persephone is stripped of her naivete. She is made aware of her illusions about the world and brought to her lower nature where she actualizes the insurmountable riches that lay within, returning to the Upper world as a more integrated psyche and soul.

Like Persephone, our new congressman Ritchie Torres has learned the ability to withstand dark and treacherous terrain in his own life. He serves as a catalyst for Pluto in Scorpio generation and beyond: confronting, reconciling, and shifting the narrative from being invalidated by a less than accepting environment and background of substance abuse, to seeing the beauty in his struggle that now allows him to relate to so many people; including his fellow congressman, Mondraine, who was inspired to run as an openly gay man, after seeing Torres do so. Torres elucidates the beauty of Scorpionic energy, that Phoenix rising from the ashes, able to reveal the truth of his identity, recovered and pioneering for both the Black, Gay, and disenfranchised communities. The transformation that has taken place in him is now able to serve as the bedrock for a successful run in congress that will foster the development of his community that seeks transformation. 

Profoundly, Scorpio season has brought about the fruits of reparations for our people, providing us with blueprints for positions that we are not only qualified for, but worthy of. Spearheading us into the Age of Aquarius (who is all about humanitarianism and revolutionism) transformative Scorpio season undergirds these themes through its ability to destroy false paradigms to discover what is real; a justice that says space must be made for people’s darkness, and once they’ve transmuted this energy, grant them the ability to rule, as Pluto caused Persephone to do. Shifting the narrative, we have the pleasure of witnessing an epoch in time where transformation happens when we get to primal motivations and honor what is lasting and real. The election of Ritchie Torres and Mondraine Jones displays this.