Scorpio, the scorpion of Pensilva

If the slope of a hill comes between the eye and the horizon, sloping towards the eye, while the eye is opposite the middle of the height of this slope, then that hill will increase in darkness throughout its length. This is proved by the 7th of this which says that a tree looks darkest when it is seen from below; the proposition is verified, since this hill will, on its upper half show all its trees as much from the side which is lighted by the light of the sky, as from that which is in shade from the darkness of the earth; whence it must result that these trees are of a medium darkness. And from this [middle] spot towards the base of the hill, these trees will be lighter by degrees by the converse of the 7th and by the said 7th: For trees so placed, the nearer they are to the summit of the hill the darker they necessarily become. But this darkness is not in proportion to the distance, by the 8th of this which says: That object shows darkest which is [seen] in the clearest atmosphere; and by the 10th: That shows darkest which stands out against a lighter background.

Leonardo da Vinci
Of Painting in a Landscape

The sun is in this sign from 24^th October to 22^nd November. A water sign.
Key words: creation, birth, death, sex, regeneration, passion, research, secretiveness.
Light or planet: Pluto.
Body parts: sexual organs.

Scorpio is one of the few constellations whose shape corresponds to its name. Scorpio is the scorpion which killed Orion the hunter at the command of Artemis, the goddess of hunting and the moon. The Scorpion was also thought to have stung the horses of the sun god’s chariot when Phaeton drove them, causing them to bolt and career through the heavens, drying up rivers and scorching the earth below. In around 5000 BC, this scorpion was sacred to the god of war and was a symbol of the darkness and decay of the waning year. A scorpion-man who guarded the gates of the sunrise challenged the hero Gilgamesh. For alchemists, November, the season of Scorpio was the busiest time of year. This was when spirit could be released and base metal could be transmuted into gold. The pincers of the original Scorpio reached as far as the present-day scales of Libra. The present Scorpio lies between Libra and the centaur Sagittarius. Alpha Scorpii is known as Antares meaning “against Mars” because its red colour rivals Mars. It is a red super giant of the spectral class M1 which changes its brightness irregularly from 0.9 to 1.1 Magnitude. Its diameter is about 950 million kilometres but its mass is only 15-25 suns, as a result the density of the giant is extremely low. In the open star cluster M7-NGC 6475 of total brightness 3.3 Magnitude, it is possible to see 50 to 80 stars, the brightest of which are of 7.0 Magnitude. It is about 800 light years away from us. North of the Scorpion’s tail lies the Butterfly star cluster, appearing to the naked eye as a fuzzy patch half the diameter of the full moon.