It's said that you can recognize a Scorpio by his stare.  That famous stare has become downright notorious in general astrology textbooks and sun-sign columns.  Enigmatic, penetrating, probing while revealing nothing, apparently hostile or ruthless.  The man with the x-ray vision.  This little cameo, along with the infamous passion which is usually attributed to the sign, has gone a long way toward making life pretty difficult for Scorpio people.  After all, when someone asks you at a party what sign you are, and you look at them (penetratingly) and reply, 'Scorpio', and they give a little gasp and back away in fright, or instantly inquire what you're doing later, well, it can get a little…difficult. 

Scorpio is without a doubt the most perplexing and perhaps the least understood of all the signs of the zodiac.  Scorpios themselves do not help this problem, since they are indeed prone to playing the enigmatic, mysterious type when they are unsure of a situation and are checking out the currents.  Let's abandon preconceptions and start from the beginning.  What is it about the eighth sign that seems to provoke so much confusion, fascination and dread?  Open a medieval astrological text and, if you're strongly Scorpio - sun, moon or ascendant - you may as well take a flying leap off the Golden Gate Bridge, or turn yourself in to the police right away before you perpetrate violence or sexual assault on someone.  The descriptions are that bad.  Power-driven, sex-crazed, violent, warlike, vindictive, cunning:  the image is a pretty horrific one.  The modern equivalent isn't much better.  It's a real nuisance having to live up to Mata Hari (who was a Scorpio) or Don Juan.  Tiring, you might say.  What is Scorpio really like? 

Like Cancer and Pisces, this is a water sign.  Earlier, we talked about water as the element which is most connected with the feeling side of life.  This means that Scorpio, regardless of his habitual smokescreens - and make no mistake about it, Scorpio has the best smokescreens of any of the signs - is a sign of profound feeling and sensitivity, easily affected by the emotional currents inside him and around him, susceptible to the feelings of others, easily hurt, sympathetic, compassionate, often intensely lonely, and driven by an almost voracious need for relationship.  Never mind that 'loner' business that has been tacked onto the sign.  Scorpio is no loner at heart.  Just the opposite.  He longs for really profound, close union.  It's just that he's rather discriminating about whom he allows into his psychic field, being so intensely sensitive.  And also, he's well, you might say a little mistrustful of people. 

Let's talk about the mistrust.  Scorpio might prefer to call it realistic caution.  Like all water signs, Scorpio has no illusions about the goods in the shop window necessarily matching those in the shop.