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the end, only submit to whatever he understands as his gods. And he sometimes has some pretty peculiar gods, this enigmatic fellow. Find a Scorpio who has gone apathetic and outwardly submissive and you'll see someone eaten up from within with furious resentment and jealousy. Often this is unknown even to himself. Then you'll come up against real destructiveness, of the worst kind - like in those 'happy' families where the wife quietly sabotages her husband's masculinity and loads her children with guilt in revenge for her unlived life. Repressed Scorpionic rage isn't pretty. Nobody promised it would be. But every Scorpio has the courage to face whatever is in him, and transform it. As we said earlier, Scorpio has no illusions about life.
There is one famous myth which is particularly fitting for Scorpio. It's one of the twelve labours of Hercules. In this particular labour he is told to slay the Hydra. Beneath the outward success and power, this myth describes Scorpio's real destiny. Hercules is sent to destroy a large, deadly creature called a Hydra, which inhabits a dark cave in a swamp and preys upon the folk of the countryside. The Hydra is a serpent-like beast with nine snake heads, each of which is equipped with deadly poison fangs. A sort of multiple cobra, you might say. And it has a very nasty propensity: cut off one of it's heads, and it sprouts three new ones in return.
Hercules at first attempts to club the Hydra to death, then to slice its heads off. He is about finished, since this results in a proliferation of heads. Then he remembers a piece of advice given to him by a wise teacher. The Hydra cannot stand the light. So Hercules gets down on his knees and lifts the creature up into the sunlight. It shrivels up and begins to die. Only one head remains, for that one is immortal, and buried within it is a precious jewel. But one head is easy for Hercules to handle. He simply buries it under a rock
The explanation of this myth isn't really necessary for Scorpio. They usually come, sooner or later, to that place in life where they discover the hydra within themselves. But some explanation may be of value to the less introspective signs. We can say that the hydra can mean many things: jealousy, vengeance, resentment, anger, frustrated sexuality, violence. Scorpio is a sign of intense desire; and the hydra's many heads can mean the many desires of the uncivilized human heart. Left to grow in the darkness, they can become poisonous, and begin to destroy others. But they cannot be dealt with by repression. They must be understood, held up to the light, respected as part of oneself. And although vanquished, it is a good idea to remember that one immortal head. For Scorpio, all human beings carry within them the seeds of good and evil. Evil is not an abstract thing, or somebody else's fault; it is in everyone. Human brutality cannot be blamed on society, but ultimately only on oneself. It is relevant to realize that Freud, the great founder of modern depth psychology, had Scorpio rising. Therein lies the deepest meaning of Scorpio's myth: come to terms with the hydra in yourself, and you redeem the world.
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