FULL MOON IN SCORPIO, MERCURY SQUARE PLUTO, AND MERCURY SQUARE MARS

We are building into a pretty intense week, with energies that feel prickly, sharp, deep, and penetrating.

This week brings us face to face with a powerful Full Moon in Scorpio on May 12th at 9:56 AM Pacific at 22 degrees of Scorpio. If you've been feeling the intensity building over the last few days, you are right on point.

Mercury entered Taurus on May 10th and slowly begins to build a square with Pluto, an aspect that becomes exact on May 12th, right after the Full Moon in Scorpio. This pressure has been building within our psychological space, within our words, our communication, our relationships. Wherever you have the fixed signs in your chart, you're going to feel this intensity: Scorpio, Taurus, Aquarius, and Leo.

THE DANCE OF INTENSITY

With Mercury moving into Taurus, it's squaring both Mars in Leo and Pluto in Aquarius, bringing us back to the themes from the final Mars and Pluto opposition we experienced in April. This was part of a series of three oppositions that have been happening since November 2024.

This week is about death and rebirth, transformations, and alchemy. It's about power dynamics, power struggles, attachment, and intensity. It brings forward questions: Where are we gripping to the old? Where are we trying to control or contort? Where are we subtly manipulating our experiences? And where are we afraid to surrender?

THE POWER OF CHANGE

This is a week of deep psychological transformation. It's going to reveal to us how we think and feel, what needs to transform. As we know, alchemy requires heat and pressure. Change and transformation can be fast and quick, which is often the case when Uranian energy is involved, or it can be slow and subtle. It can also be layered. we can have fast transformation woven into more slow, deep, penetrating transformation. We can have many transformations all at once.

SCORPIO THE ALCHEMIST

As we move into the Full Moon in Scorpio, the Moon in one of the deepest, most penetrating alchemical signs in the zodiac is fully illuminated by the Sun, which is paired with Uranus this week. Scorpio is the sign of the Alchemist, the shaman.

After we move through the seventh house and that Venusian journey through Libra. finding pleasure, relating, mingling, exploring, and examining relationships. we dive into the depths of Scorpio, the 8th house. We enter the subconscious. We enter what's beneath our desire to relate. What is it like to fully merge and transcend boundaries?

I would say that Scorpio is like the honeymoon phase wearing off, when we start to see the subtle surfacing of the other person's patterns. It's real. Scorpio births transformation and change.

PHOENIX RISING

Scorpio is fixed water. It's about surrendering to the inevitable death that must be in place before we can birth something new. The highest expression of Scorpio is the Phoenix, the Alchemist, transforming again and again, turning lead to gold.

Scorpio is about the transformation of the ego. It dissolves self to find self, transmutation through being present with and embracing the fire, the heat, the pressure, the difficulty. It is the conscious warrior that uses its subconscious material to transform rather than avoiding or protecting it.

In its highest expression, Scorpio is detached. In its lowest expression, it is so attached that it can't let go, that it seeks to manipulate and control the other, or the self, the identity, the ego.

When the Moon is in Scorpio, our internal landscape becomes more intensified. We're not simply experiencing feelings. We're moving beyond them and into the depths of our subconscious, into the roots of the feelings and experiences. Everything gets magnified during a Full Moon in Scorpio.

As we know, a Full Moon is when the Sun and the Moon are opposite, and the Sun fully illuminates the Moon. This means our internal landscape, our emotional landscape, our psyche, our subconscious is illuminated. It's a time when we can see what's hidden within our subconscious, our basement. all the boxes that we like to keep closed and tucked away.

It's always a time of reckoning and revealing. Much can be revealed during a Full Moon phase because the internal landscape is fully illuminated. We can see more. We can feel more. But it can be very confronting as well.

URANUS

This is a time that things can feel agitating or sharp. Things from the past that we thought we were over or complete with begin to surface again. Begin to poke us and invite us to respond differently.

Uranus has been moving through Taurus since 2018. Uranus is the planet of innovation, change, and transformation. It seeks to innovate and evolve and upgrade whatever it's touching. It's disruptive in that it oftentimes brings fast, quick change.

With a planet like Uranus in a fixed earth sign like Taurus, it can be destabilizing—it's meant to be. Think of how much has changed for you, personally and collectively, since 2018. I sometimes feel like Uranus has been this jackhammer, just going to town on the spaces within our internal and collective systems that are concrete, that are fixed, that we never thought would change.

This is the last Full Moon in Scorpio that will be opposed by Uranus, probably in our lifetime (unless you are a baby and you're listening to this), because Uranus is getting ready to shift into Gemini in July.

This is a deep alchemical process. This is such a powerful opportunity to meet the change that's being asked of us with courage, clarity, and curiosity. It's excavating what we thought was secure and rooted within our lives.

We also have Pluto that's been retrograde in Aquarius since May 4th, the ruler of Scorpio. With Pluto in its own underworld, this is a very deep and penetrating Full Moon.

Full Moons are also a time of release, letting go, and surrender. Scorpio governs power, control, attachment, and intimacy. It's related to the 8th house. This Moon can really highlight issues that we hold around boundaries, control, and the exchange of power—power dynamics in relationships.

It will ask us to confront the parts of ourselves we typically keep hidden—our shadow. It's an opportunity to notice the psychic downloads we're getting. Scorpio is such an intuitive sign, deeply psychic, so we get to sense and feel and touch what's beyond the physical. We get to explore our intimacy, not only with others but with the world, with what's beyond.

It's also going to surface any of the emotional layers or patterns that we need to confront as we move into this next chapter, specifically in relationships. Where do we need to move beyond the veils of disconnection, the fears of intimacy, the layers of unhealthy or unsupportive attachment to others?

Because the 8th house also connects with money and resources, this Moon asks: Where are we afraid of being in our full and complete power around self-resourcing or shared resources?

BREAKING FREE

This Moon can reveal deep truths. With Uranus at play, with Mercury at play, it's a time to expect the unexpected—sudden revelations, breakthroughs, disruptions, or openings that can really shift or change your perspective.

As we know, our subconscious is a survival system. We grip to what's familiar, even if it's not serving, simply because it's safe in its certainty. Scorpio pushes us to evolve past those familiar walls and thresholds.

This Full Moon really illuminates where we still remain tied or tethered to outdated systems, beliefs, values, ways of relating to others, ways of relating to money. It's going to ask us to liberate ourselves, to break free from those walls of confinement and familiarity, and to create new ways of rooting, new ways of relating, new ways of creating abundance and financial security.

MERCURY’S DANCE WITH PLUTO AND MARS

This week starts off with this Full Moon in Scorpio. confronting, revealing, pushy. Then we move into a Sun-Uranus conjunction on the 17th, which will once again reveal where we've remained fixed, where we're stuck, where we're afraid to let go, specifically in the area where Taurus lands in your chart.

Mercury begins the week squaring Pluto and ends the week squaring Mars. So we're in this pocket held by the two forces of power. We've had this Mars and Pluto opposition since November pushing and pulling, forcing us to look at where we fall into unsupportive power dynamics in our personal lives and collectively, and where we're afraid of anchoring into our true power, our higher power.

Mercury's going to be squaring both of these entities, asking us to get real, to get clear, to confront our own participation in the power dynamics, and to use the alchemical power of Scorpio to move beyond it.

What has been your relationship with power? Where do you play into power dynamics within your life? Even if it's subtle—it usually is very subtle, even covert—but I can guarantee you we all, to some degree, participate in some sort of unhealthy or unsupportive power dynamic within our lives, in relationship to self and our relationship to others.

This is a time for full ownership, full reckoning, full confrontation of the spaces and places within us that we are maybe not super proud of, and to bring loving awareness, recognition, and responsibility so that we can move beyond them, so that we aren't controlled by these beliefs.

Where are you falling into the unhealed or lesser evolved aspects of Scorpio, which can be reactive, quick to sting, hidden, reclusive, protective over the ego? And where are you being invited into the Phoenix archetype—fierce, but also able to rise above the fight and see the wider perspective, embracing the fire, the pressure, the confrontation, the difficulty?

I have a feeling that this week is much more about meeting our relationship with self and seeing that reflected in our relationships with others than it is about how we're relating to others. You might feel this inner conflict being reflected in your relationships, but it's not really about the relationships themselves.

We know that our relationship with self anchors and sets the foundation for our relationships with others. This isn't coming from a narcissistic obsession with self. This is coming from a need to have inner security in order to relate in a healthy way to other people.

PRACTICAL NAVIGATION FOR THE WEEK

Creating space for yourself, knowing there will probably be activations that arise. Create some space between you and the activation. Notice and observe what's happening internally. Is there a trauma response happening? Is there an internal feeling? Is there an emotion coming forward? Take some time before you respond. We want to watch reactivity this week. That Scorpio sting.

Also observe what you're doing and why. Are you fixed to a pattern or a belief or a way of doing something because it's what you've always done? Tend to the nervous system, tend to the physical body. Taurus is about embodiment. It's about the physical.

Notice what you're putting in your body. Maybe it's a good week to do a cleanse from substances, observing what we're using to cope. Maybe it's a good week to just eat really mindfully or take a break from social media.

We need resources to navigate this week, so what are your resources? What really helps you? Maybe it's taking magnesium at night, maybe it's a daily walk, maybe it's your meditation practice, calling a friend every day, going to your therapist or practitioners. Whatever those resources are, utilize them this week. Lean fully in. The more you resource yourself, the more capacity you have to be with the discomfort, to be with the activation, to be with what arises.

Thank you for your presence, for being here. As always, I just adore and cherish every single one of you that I get to come into contact with. Thank you. Let me know how this episode lands for you. And happy Full Moon.

— Soul Archaeology

THIS BLOG IS A REVISED TRANSCRIPT OF EPISODE 99 OF MY PODCAST “SOUL ARCHAEOLOGY’.

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