New Moon in Scorpio: Where Eros Meets Thanatos

A friend recently told me about a colleague she had come to consider a close friend. His wife had died tragically just a few months earlier. When she went to visit him, he invited her to spend the night.

She was shocked.

How could a man still grieving the woman he loved already be seeking intimacy with someone else?

I listened and was struck less by his invitation than by the horror it provoked in her. As though desire were a betrayal of the dead, as though grief demanded loyalty not only from the heart but from the body itself, and as though reaching for another person's warmth meant no longer loving the one we had lost.

However, life does not always respect the boundaries we draw around it.

Desire can erupt in the very depths of suffering. When we lose the person we love, the hunger for skin against skin can become almost unbearable, as though another body's warmth might remind us that we are still alive. Sometimes, it is precisely when death comes closest that we can feel the desperate, insatiable urge to live.

This paradox has two names in Greek mythology: Eros and Thanatos.

Desire and death.

Two forces we instinctively set against each other, yet which can become intimately entwined in the deepest, most visceral experience of being human.

Freud would later borrow these names for his theory of the life and death drives, but long before psychoanalysis, mythology had already made the intimate connection between destruction and desire, violence and tenderness, death and the fierce longing to live.

Saṃsāra, the cycle of birth, death and rebirth by Syamarani Dasi (Jadurani Dasi).

While researching this New Moon in Scorpio, I came across an ancient Irish tale of a warrior who returned victorious from battle, yet whose body could not seem to understand that the war was over.

The story goes something like this:

He returned at dusk.

His chariot moved slowly, drawn by horses drenched in sweat and mud.

He had won yet the heat of battle still raged through his muscles. His eyes searched for enemies who were no longer there. His hands kept closing around a weapon he no longer held. He had left the battlefield behind, but his body was still fighting, still braced for the next attack, unable to believe that the danger had passed.

He crossed the threshold of the village, but something within him was still fighting.

In the ancient Irish legends, Cú Chulainn returned from his first battles consumed by a warrior's fury so terrifying that no one, not even his own people, dared approach him.

Women were sent out to meet him, their breasts bare.

Faced with the warrior's terrifying fury, they exposed their naked bodies.

Overcome with modesty, he turned his gaze away and covered his face, giving the men just enough time to seize him and plunge him into a vat of cold water. The heat of his body was so fierce that the first vessel burst. The water in the second boiled over. Only in the third did his fury finally subside, and his body return to its human form.

Then they dressed him in fine clothes.

At last, the warrior could return to his people.

What fascinates me about this story is that the women did not awaken his sexual desire. They awakened his modesty. Their nakedness broke through his state of terror, interrupting a state in which his body had recognized nothing but danger.

Then he is cleansed by water, the womb waters: cooling what burns and restoring to the warrior the boundaries of a human body.

We now know that after a traumatic event, the body can remain in survival mode long after the danger has passed. Muscles stay tense, the nervous system remains on high alert, and even when life becomes safe again, the body may continue to react as though the threat were still present.

Among the Wari', an Indigenous people of western Amazonia, men who had killed an enemy traditionally underwent a period of seclusion, fasting and sexual abstinence. Within their cosmology, the enemy's blood was understood to enter the killer's body and participate in his transformation.

In today's Western world, we do not always know how to return from our own battlefields.

Some of us come out of relationships in which we constantly had to anticipate another person's moods, walking on eggshells, always on guard against the next outburst. Others have endured grief, separation, betrayal, or years of loneliness that have changed the way we approach intimacy.

These experiences are not the same, and not every loss is traumatic. Yet they can leave us caught in a painful contradiction: desperately longing for intimacy, only to pull away when it comes; yearning to love, yet terrified of what love might awaken.

The warrior becomes an inner archetype, the part of us that learned how to survive but no longer knows how to live without its armor.

How do we remind him that he no longer has to fight?

Cuchulain in Battle by J. C. Leyendecker, 1911

For centuries, women have followed armies. Some cared for the wounded and others offered their bodies to soldiers. What does a man seek when he has come so close to death and reaches for a woman's body? Perhaps the most primal, almost animal sensation of being alive.

Here, the archetypal imagination introduces another figure: the woman known as the sacred prostitute. The historical existence of sacred prostitution remains debated, but as an archetypal figure, she invites us to explore a sensuality that is neither submission nor sacrifice.

She knows desire, what it can awaken and what it can destroy, and above all, she has desires of her own.

Imagine her standing at the edge of a river.

The warrior approaches, his body still stained with blood.

She watches him for a moment, neither admiring him nor shrinking away in fear. She notices the exhaustion in his eyes, the tension in his jaw, as though he were still expecting the next blow.

She steps closer, close enough for him to feel the warmth of her body.

Then she takes a cloth, dips it into the river, and waits for him to offer her his hands.

Only then does she begin to wash away the blood.

Water trickles between her fingers as the cloth brushes his wrists and moves slowly up his forearms.

He watches her movements, fascinated, as though his hands, so accustomed to violence, were discovering the forgotten language of tenderness.

She does not try to control them.

She simply lets them rest in her own.

He feels the warmth of her fingers against his skin, the cool water running between them. He could pull away at any moment, yet he stays, suspended in that delicate space between the instinct to defend himself and the desire to surrender to her touch.

She has not erased the war or healed his wounds.

But for a few moments, his body no longer needs to be a fortress.

The body that had prepared itself for death begins to awaken to desire.

And yet desire promises nothing.

We can long to be held without daring to let ourselves be known, and we can offer our bodies while keeping the most vulnerable parts of ourselves out of reach.

Eros does not necessarily come to heal us.

He may comfort us, distract us, even intoxicate us. But he can also awaken the very wounds we thought we had buried forever.

French woman photographed in a brothel reserved for British officers during World War I, circa 1917–1918.

In Greek mythology, Ares, god of war, becomes the lover of Aphrodite, goddess of love, beauty and desire, bringing together two powers that seem to belong to opposing worlds.

Ares advances, conquers and imposes his will.

Aphrodite attracts, seduces and awakens what lies beyond the reach of will.

One knows the intoxication of battle and the other, the intoxication of the senses.

Aphrodite is no gentle, submissive figure offering comfort to a weary warrior. She is a goddess who answers to no one, who can ignite desire without satisfying it, seduce without surrendering herself, and bring even the most powerful man to his knees. For all his strength, Ares discovers that there is one thing he cannot command: his own desire.

Ares may conquer a territory but he cannot conquer his own desire.

In Botticelli's Venus and Mars, the god of war lies deeply asleep, his lance and armor reduced to playthings for mischievous little satyrs. Venus remains awake, contemplating the man whose strength no longer needs to prove itself.

The warrior has laid down his arms because he has discovered that there are moments when strength can finally surrender to rest.

This encounter finds a particular resonance in the astrology of this New Moon in Scorpio, as Venus retrograde in Libra forms a sextile to Mars in Leo, while the proximity of Mars and Jupiter symbolically magnifies passion, confidence and the desire to assert one's power.

In the language of archetypal astrology, this dialogue invites us to question how we desire and how we encounter one another.

Sexuality can become another battlefield when we seduce to hide our vulnerability, seek one conquest after another to avoid getting attached, or depend on someone else's desire to feel worthy.

Genuine intimacy begins where these strategies of the ego fall away.

Two people cease trying to impress one another and become acutely aware of each other's presence.

A gaze that lingers.

A breath that slows.

The charged silence between two bodies that have not yet touched.

Nothing has happened.

And yet everything could.

Under the other's gaze, the warrior feels his defenses begin to crumble. He discovers a desire that no amount of strength can control.

To love is to allow another person to become irreplaceable, while knowing that nothing can guarantee their permanence.

It is here that Eros and Thanatos embrace most intimately: when the warmth of another body against our own allows us to feel, in a single shiver, both the rapture of their presence and the terror of their possible absence.

The warrior understands now.

His armor never protected him from this truth.

It merely allowed him, for a time, to avoid looking at it.

I find myself thinking once more of the man my friend told me about, and of his invitation, whose intentions we cannot know.

Perhaps he was simply seeking companionship, a little warmth, or a night in which the weight of his solitude might become more bearable.

And my friend, of course, was equally free not to desire that closeness.

Yet our conversation left me with a question that reaches far beyond their story.

What does it mean to remain faithful to someone we have lost?

Must we preserve their absence as a sacred space that no one else may ever enter? Must we continue living with our breath held, afraid that the smallest pleasure might betray their memory?

Or can we love the dead without withholding our love from the living?

There is no obligation to desire again, no prescribed duration for grief, no exemplary way of returning to life.

Some choose solitude, others encounter a new love, or discover forms of tenderness they could never have imagined.

None of these paths measures the depth of what has been lost.

Perhaps we can cease to regard the return of life as an act of infidelity toward the life that has ended.

We can carry within us the memory of a touch, a voice, a familiar breath, and one day feel our body awaken in the presence of someone new.

What we have loved is not erased by what comes afterward.

The human heart was never meant to be a fortress built around the dead.

And perhaps the greatest courage of Eros is to lay down our armor and open our arms once more, knowing that love will always leave us vulnerable to loss.

Venus and Mars by Sandro Botticelli, circa 1485.

New Moon Ritual

At the Full Moon in Taurus on October 26, we encountered Hecate at the crossroads. She invited us to listen to our deepest desires, choose the one we wished to honor first, and entrust it to a guardian object until this New Moon.

Now the time has come to reclaim that wish and begin giving it form.

In the sky, Venus retrograde in Libra opposes Chiron in Aries, while Mars and Jupiter in Leo stand opposite the North Node in Aquarius.

These four points evoke the Mystic Rectangle, an astrological configuration in which opposing forces are held within a potentially creative structure.

Strength and vulnerability.

Desire and freedom.

Attachment and the awareness of loss.

Hecate meets us once again at the threshold, torch in hand.

This time, the invitation is to dare to move toward what we desire, without denying the vulnerability that comes with it.

When to Perform This Ritual

You can perform this ritual from the evening of the New Moon, November 9, through the weekend of November 14–15. Mercury goes direct on Friday the 13th and Venus on Saturday the 14th.

The Four Gates

Find a quiet place and gather a candle, a sheet of paper and a pen.

Take up the guardian object and the wish you chose during the previous ritual. If you did not participate, simply choose a desire that truly matters to you.

Light your candle and draw a large rectangle on the paper.

Write your wish at its center and place one question at each of its four corners.

♀ Venus — Desire

Does this wish arise from my authentic desire, or from my longing to be loved and recognized?

⚷ Chiron — The Wound

What old fear might prevent me from fully welcoming what I desire?

♂ Mars and ♃ Jupiter — Courage

What armor can I begin to soften so that I may move forward without abandoning my boundaries?

☊ The North Node and Hecate — Becoming

What first concrete step can I take to bring this desire into the world?

Allow your answers to emerge without forcing them.

Then return to the wish at the center of your rectangle and read it once more.

Beneath it, write down one simple action you commit to taking before the next Full Moon, on November 24.

Place your guardian object upon this intention and speak these words:

"I honor what I have lost, and welcome what is waiting to be born."

At the Full Moon in Taurus, our desire found its voice.

Under this New Moon in Scorpio, it begins to take shape.

May we find the courage to enter Scorpio's deep, fertile waters, carrying both what we have lost and what still longs to be born.

And may the Mystic Rectangle offer us a vessel in which these seemingly opposing forces can meet, and something new can begin.

 Mystic Rectangle of the Scorpio New Moon

References

Táin Bó Cúailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley), episode of Cú Chulainn's boyhood deeds. Translated by Joseph Dunn, 1914.

Conklin, Beth A. “Women's Blood, Warriors' Blood, and the Conquest of Vitality in Amazonia.” In Gender in Amazonia and Melanesia: An Exploration of the Comparative Method, edited by Thomas A. Gregor and Donald Tuzin, pp. 141–174. University of California Press, 2001.

Byers, Andrew. The Sexual Economy of War: Discipline and Desire in the U.S. Army. Cornell University Press, 2019.

Budin, Stephanie Lynn. The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity. Cambridge University Press, 2008.