Scorpio

Scorpio is the eighth sign of the zodiac, a fixed water sign, and this year the Sun is in it from 23 October to 22 November 2026. Ptolemy gives it a season, a ruling planet and a triplicity; Alan Leo gives it a character that, in his telling, nobody could mistake.

Where Ptolemy places Scorpio

Ptolemy sorts the signs by how they stand to the seasons. Libra is one of his two equinoctial signs, “the first after the autumnal equinox”, and a sign that follows an equinoctial sign he calls fixed, because the season that began in the sign before “is then more firmly established”. He does not list the fixed signs by name. Counting Scorpio among them, as the sign after Libra, is our reading, and it agrees with the modern label. The season is the northern autumn.

On gender he is direct. Having named Aries and Libra as masculine and diurnal, he writes: “The signs immediately following them are feminine and nocturnal”. Scorpio follows Libra, so it is a feminine, nocturnal sign.

Mars, the Moon and the fourth triplicity

Scorpio is one of the two houses of Mars; the other is Aries. Ptolemy says of the pair that their “relative distances from the houses of the luminaries are injurious and discordant”, the luminaries being the Sun and the Moon. Modern astrology also names Pluto as a ruler of Scorpio. The passages quoted on this page name only Mars, and the site’s data keeps Mars as the traditional ruler with Pluto listed as the modern one.

Scorpio is also the reason Mars has a share in its triplicity. The fourth triplicity, “formed by Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces”, is in Ptolemy’s words “left to the remaining planet, Mars, who has right in it by means of his house, Scorpio”. Because the three signs are feminine, he adds, the Moon by night and Venus by day govern it together with Mars.

The Moon stands poorly in the sign itself. Ptolemy puts her exaltation in Taurus, “while Scorpio, the opposite sign, is her fall”. His chapter on exaltations places no planet’s exaltation in Scorpio.

The Scorpio character, as the old books give it

William Lilly’s line calls Scorpio “a cold, watry, nocturnal, flegmatick, feminine Signe” and sets it “of the watry Triplicity, fixed and North”. These are qualities an astrologer weighs in a chart; Lilly is not describing people. In the passage on the fourth triplicity Ptolemy never uses the word water, so among the books quoted here the element comes from Lilly and, later, from Alan Leo.

Alan Leo, at the end of the nineteenth century, does describe people. He writes: “The Scorpio character is somewhat decided and unmistakable, being rarely, if ever, vacillating or feeble.” His own summary of those born in the sign is “very determined, reserved, tenacious and secretive”. He ties them to their element as well: “They have remarkable powers of attachment and seem to contain in themselves the silence of Pisces and the tenacity of Cancer, Scorpio’s companion watery signs.”

He does not flatter. “When living the purely personal life, living only for the self, the Scorpio types of humanity are very uncompromising and exacting beings, and their vindictiveness and fault-finding tendencies can be carried to abnormal degrees.” He also calls them “generally marked for their very dignified manner”, and he says their traits “cause them either to be very much liked or very much disliked”.

Water, and the order of Scorpio’s matches

Scorpio shares the element water with Cancer and Pisces, the same three signs Ptolemy joins in his fourth triplicity. In the list of matches below, which comes from our formula, Pisces is first, Scorpio paired with itself second, Capricorn third and Cancer fourth. Sagittarius, the next sign along the zodiac, is last. So one of the two fellow water signs leads the list and the other sits just behind an earth sign. The inputs that produce this order are set out on how we score.

Alan Leo’s phrase about the silence of Pisces and the tenacity of Cancer is a remark on character, not on matches. Setting it beside the list is ours.