Hedgerow
Scorpio (October 23-November 21) is the third sign in the first grouping of the signs in the original Christian Zodiac. Insight comes from Primeval Astronomy, “The Gospel in the Stars,” presented by theologian and Lutheran minister Joseph Agustus Seiss in the late 19th century.
The ancients believed that Scorpio’s sign pointed to a mighty warrior who was injured in battle, yet still emerged victorious. With super human powers, he fought the monster Serpent Python, the three-headed fire-breathing Chimaera, and the deadly dragon. Thousands of years before the Greeks attributed this god-human to Herakles, and the Romans to Hercules, the Phoenicians and Chaldeans worshipped this warrior god as a savior and healer.
Scorpio in Arabic and Syriac, Al Akrab, means “wounding, conflict and war.” Its brightest star, Antares, means, “wounding, cutting, and tearing.” The Egyptians called Scorpio, Typhon or Python. The Coptics, Isidis, meaning, “the attack of the enemy.” In the Hebrew Zodiac, Scorpio was attributed to Dan, described as, “a serpent by the way, and an adder in the path.”
The Greeks believed that the god Orion claimed Scorpio would kill all poisonous reptiles, but Artemis intervened, killing him using a scorpion. Yet, according to the original story to which God’s Zodiac points, where there is a savior, there is also a destroyer.
As such, there is a personal God and Redeemer, and there is a personal destroyer, Satan.
Once again, the Cosmos points to an immortal struggle between good and evil, Seiss argues. The stars do not deny evil; they recognize it. But they also point to a hero (Jesus) who defeats evil foe after foe, is nearly crushed by the weight of pain and sorrow, and survives the deadly, poisonous sting of the scorpion.
You will tread upon the lion and the cobra; you will trample the great lion and the serpent. ‘Because he loves me,’ says the LORD, ‘I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name. He will call upon me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him.’ (Ps. 91:13-15)
Scorpio’s brightest star, Unuk, means, “encompassing” to the extent of struggling to survive:
“Dogs have surrounded me: a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and feet.
“The cords of death entangled me, and anguish of the grave came upon me. I was overcome by trouble and sorrow. (Ps. 22:16; 116:3)
Unsurprisingly, Scorpio’s first Decan is called, Serpens. This constellation reveals the serpent attempting to devour the crown, the immortal crown of the Savior and Messiah, Jesus. The serpent’s relentless pursuit of Jesus began in the Garden of Eden, and continues still.
Its second Decan, Ophiuchus, means, “the evil one held.” Evil is acknowledged as it is: it is restrained. In the Garden of Eden, Satan disguised as a serpent, tried to gain dominion over humanity. Adam and Eve lost, but God still saved them. God promised them that a second man, a Second Adam, would come through their children.
Despite the hold on him, Satan persisted. He used Pharaoh to try to wipe out Abraham’s decedents, then, Athaliah to annihilate the “royal seed” in the kingdom of Judah. Then, Haman, Herod, and many others. Satan failed to prevent Jesus from being born, and his relentless plotting continued. Satan tried to tempt Jesus for 40 days in the desert. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus descended to the depths of hell and torment– to the point of sweating blood. Next, Jesus died on the cross. But in death, Jesus defeated evil, and Satan once more.
Joseph August Seiss adds:
“It was an experience of agony the like of which never had been, and never could be again. It was the sting and poison of the great Scorpion struck into the Son of God, making all His glorious nature vibrate as if in dissolution. It was the prophetic sign of the Zodiac fulfilled in the Seed of the virgin.”
But the scorpio’s venom, and Satan’s power, was defeated. No matter how the devil is depicted– as a three-headed monster, serpent, or dragon– the hero of the story, while still wounded, crushes its head. Death is not final.
According to the Egyptians, the serpent slayer had a head of an eagle or hawk; the Greeks and Romans believed he cured the sick and raised the dead to life through blood sacrifice. (Ophiuchus was identified with Apollo and Coronis’s son, Aesculapius, the god of health and healing. He was skilled in medicine and renowned for using blood from the goddess of justice to raise Hyppolytus to life. In fact, the original star sign was not the scorpio, but an entwined serpent, similar to the snakes that encompassed Moses’s rod, which is one of the symbols still used today for medicine.)
But the Old Testament prophets foretold of the serpent slayer differently. He would “arise with healing in his Wings,” (Malachi 4:2) and “heal the broken-hearted and bind up their wounds.”(Isa. 61:6) More importantly, he would heal through his own blood sacrifice, not anyone else’s: “By his stripes we are healed.” (Isa. 53:5.)
This healer held even greater super powers than that of the pagan god, Hercules, represented by Scorpio’s third Decan. Hercules pictorially records the Messianic work of “Him who comes to destroy the Devil.” (1 John 3:8)
The brightest star in this constellation, Ras al Gethi, meaning, “the Head of him who bruises,” is the center of Hercules’s head. Historical records indicate that even the Greeks could not fathom the greatness or true identity of this god. Seiss remarks:
“The heathen in their blindness could not understand the story, and knew not what to make of the foreshowing; but in the light of God’s fuller revelation, and of the facts attested by the Gospel, we read the origin and meaning of it all, and see how God has been all these ages proclaiming from the starry sky the glories, labors, sufferings, and triumphs of His only-begotten Son, our Savior.”
The mythical triumphs of Hercules are a mere shadow pointing to the power of Jesus– who power has never been and will never be rivaled by any human being. Still, Satan plotted against and pursued Jesus his entire life. Seiss points out:
“To kill Him and to be rid of Him has ever been the intensest wish of all the Dragon brood, from the time Herod sought the young child’s life even unto this present. With all sorts of ill and wrong was He smitten while He lived, and plotted against in all the ages by the jealous, obstinate, and quarrelsome goddess of false wisdom and serpentine intrigue against the will and word of Heaven.”
Despite this, Jesus still came to save and overcame Satan’s poisonous attempts to destroy him. He came into the world to strike off the serpent’s head. Psalm 45:4, 5 point to his majesty and rulership overall. After he ascended to heaven, Jesus continues to rule today, sitting at the right hand of God the Father, with his footstool over the earth, continuing to restrain evil.
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