When I checked in with my guides about the topic of today’s Scorpio Full Moon missive, what came immediately was “Opening Pandora’s Box.” It’s actually quite profound, but if that sounds a little off-putting (not to mention random), let me explain. And, there are plenty of threads to weave, so many thanks for your patience as I lay it all out.

Tonight’s Scorpio Full Moon is unspeakably powerful-not to mention being all about power-and is the best opportunity of the year (possibly many years) to heal old patterns and claim a new story for yourself through a potent death-and-rebirth.

(Note: I’m going to keep saying death-and-rebirth because in our modern 3D world we think of death as the end, something grisly, to be avoided at all costs. In my experience, all deaths are also rebirths. If that doesn’t compute for you, plug in the motivational-poster phrase “when one door closes, another one opens.” That’s what I’m referring to here: the new opportunity that arrives at the so-called end.)

Scorpio itself is the SIGN of death-and-rebirth; the sign of “everything that used to be sacred but is now taboo” according to Caroline Casey, including sex, power, magick, the Mysteries and all things occult, menstruation, the Dark Mother, priestess temples, and deep (now forbidden) emotions + desires, power, and the Underworld.

A Full Moon amplifies and illuminates those things that have remained hidden, so all Full Moons feel slightly Scorpionic to me, honestly. It’s a period of high emotional intensity, and this Moon is no slouch in that category.

This particular Full Moon is also playing host to a Mars-Pluto conjunction in Capricorn (at 22 and 21 degrees). Mars and Pluto are the traditional, and modern, rulers of Scorpio respectively, so the energy of the Moon itself AND this pairing is wildly exaggerated … all for the betterment of humanity, of course.

Now, Mars is the ruler of Aries as well, so the energy of desire and drive (and possibly explosive violence) is already at play: this is an Aries Lunation (cycle started at the Aries New Moon 2 weeks ago: the birth of the new small cycle within the larger cycle), Chiron is now at zero Aries, the first degree of the zodiac, and Uranus, which was sitting next to that New Moon, is at the very final degree of Aries.

Mars is exalted (extra-powerful) in Capricorn, and now sitting next to its “higher octave” partner, Pluto. If Mars represents the desire/drive (power) of the small-self, Pluto epitomizes the desire/drive (power) of the SOUL. This conjunction represents the personal and the trans-personal working together.

Pluto transforms, regenerates, calls a cosmic do-over so that we can leave behind the old wounds and stories and start afresh. This transformation requires surrendering to cosmic forces greater than ourselves-going into the Underworld-and when we do, power flows through us!

The magick available at this Full Moon is all about going into the Belly of the Beast, that land of our greatest fears, dropping all of our shields and weapons, and just TRUSTING that everything will work out. IF we can manage to do that, it won’t just “work out.” The results will be beyond our wildest dreams!

Now, back to Pandora and her box. (It’s really a jar; Erasmus mistranslated it in the 1500’s, and the scholar in me cannot help but set the record straight on that point. Impress strangers at a cocktail or networking party with that one. You’re welcome.)

If we skim the surface of this story, we can see it as an admonition not to open a “can of worms,” because then they can get away from us; it’s so much easier and cleaner just to keep the can closed.

Well, under the fire-and-ice pressure of the combined forces of Mars, Pluto, and a Scorpio Full Moon amplified by Jupiter also in Scorpio, that can will likely explode if it isn’t opened up. And the shrapnel inside is likely to be more lacerating than worm-bits. Just sayin’.

One of the great gifts of Scorpio is that the pressure is often so intense that we have to let go. When the choice appears to be between “very bad” and “worse,” it’s time to throw up our hands. Drop the hot potato/icy thing burning our skin. And this is always the very best thing to do: when things look grim, total surrender opens an unexpected door.

Or a jar.

Instead of trying to control all the worms, why not just let them go?

The message of any Scorpio Full Moon is to LET GO; this one cries for it more stridently than most.

Let’s peek under the lid of the Pandora story, shall we?

The tale as it comes down to us was originally (as far as we know) written by Hesiod just shy of 3 thousand years ago. Much like the Adam and Eve tale inspired by it, this story blamed all the evils in the world on the first woman, Pandora. According to Hesiod, she was created by the gods out of earth as a poisoned gift from Zeus to Mankind (there were only immortal men in the Golden Age, according to legend) as revenge against Prometheus for stealing fire from the gods and giving it to the men.

Pandora is beautiful and enticing in her shimmering silver robes and crown, and brings with her a jar. Unbeknownst to her, this jar contains all bad things, including death, disease, hard work, and probably jealousy and other things we now call cardinal sins. When she opens the jar (as in the Eve story, women’s curiosity dooms men to be exiled from an abundant garden of ease), she unleashes all these bad things, but closes the lid quickly, leaving hope stuck inside under the lip of the jar. Thus begins the cycle of death-and-rebirth, because men become mortal and women arrive to drive men crazy and to labor when bringing new life into the world.

(Do you see how nicely this fits with the Scorpio death-and-rebirth theme? I know, and there’s more!)

In Hesiod’s misogynistic version of the Pandora myth, she is the mother of all evil in the world. Letting what was in the jar to go free was the wrong thing to do, obviously. Because she was stupid and couldn’t just sit quietly, looking pretty.

But here’s the interesting thing about history: things only started getting recorded in writing at about the time when Patriarchy appeared and Sky gods took the place of Earth Goddesses. So all the old tales exist[ed] only as oral histories or in images. And a single image can tell a story less compellingly than a written account with all the juicy details.

The name Pan-dora means “all-gifts” or “all-giving.” And since the current version of her story doesn’t feel much like a gift, it’s likely that she was an original Earth Mother Goddess like Gaia. There’s at least one vase predating Hesiod showing her rising from the Earth with her arms raised in blessing or benediction, as a goddess of Abundance would do.

So you see, stories can be re-written. The threads that you don’t like can be pulled out and others woven in in their place.

For the men like Hesiod who was promoting the new Mt Olympus sky-gods, the old story had to be shifted to make Pandora’s gifts to humanity bad, not blessings. And now we can shift it again if we want to; make that jar full of true gifts rather than “evil” energies. A showering of blessings onto all humankind.

Just as we can re-claim Pandora’s story, so can we re-claim our own stories. Re-write them. Allow them to have a life of their own.

Over the next day or so, I’m going to go into my own personal Underworld-my own Belly of the Beast-and open up my own jar of feelings that I’ve tried so very hard to keep a lid on for so many years. It’s time to embrace them and then let them go. Not just because they might be like a boil that needs to be lanced, but also because like all humans, I’m feeling the call of the Phoenix right now. I need to let go of what I’ve outgrown so that I can live into the next, ever-more-brilliant version of me.

Do I know who I’ll be on the other side? Nope. But I’m excited to meet her.

As I was writing this, I decided that tomorrow is the perfect day to be the client of my Legendary Self Exploration, for once. I’ve been meaning to do it for myself for the past year, but never really got around to it. This commanding Scorpio Full Moon is the perfect time to commit to my own upleveling via the letting-go of old stories and images of myself.

Here’s what a Legendary Self Exploration looks like, in case you haven’t done yours yet:

First, I open your Records and offer lots of support for your Third Eye chakra. Then I call in your Legendary Self. It’s very empowering for the client to get to be the authority on her/his Legendary Self; I just hold the space and ask the questions for the recording. (Did I mention that mutual empowerment is one of the strong suits of Scorpio?)

Then, once we’ve gotten all the information we can-and so many visuals-from that Divine Aspect of you that holds the thread of Purpose throughout the lifetimes, we turn to the Akashic Record Keepers for some elaboration, including what your greatest gifts are that the world cannot afford to miss out on, the ways in which you are already showing up as your Legendary Self, the stories that still need to be unspooled in order to live the life that you were born to live, and much more.

Saying that the Legendary Self work is powerful is like saying that water is wet. Yes; and… Clients have shared that it has completely shifted how they live their lives: the amount of trust they have in their own abilities, a deep and fulfilling grounding or foundation for their next steps, an opening-up to who they truly are. One dear client even said that she had come to realize that she had never really breathed before doing this work…

Oh, and if you HAVE done the Legendary Self and are feeling you’re ready for the next step, let’s talk about Being Mythic.

Wishing you a transformative Scorpio Full Moon! Please don’t waste this intense and mighty opportunity to shift your story about yourself.

Own Your Magick,

P.S.: If you’ve got a not-good-enough story that has been dogging you for as long as you can recall, don’t you owe it to yourself to re-flip the script, the one that was flipped when you came into this lifetime as someone who was here to help pull the world out of its old, disempowering stories into a new Edenic world of Love? I’ve worked with close to a thousand people on this, and to a person, all of them have felt that they could not operate in their power because of how others saw and judged them.

Isn’t it time, at this Moon of Power, to stand up into your own?

Whether or not you identify as an Indigo (or Rainbow or Crystal), if you’re reading this, you want to step into your Powers for Good. I promise that you are ready to step into full ownership of your gifts. Stop giving power to others’ perceptions of you as Hesiod’s Pandora (bearing many gifts, but all bad), and start living as that God/Goddess of Abundance that you were born to be. The world needs your special brand of vision or healing.

If the Legendary Self feels too “big” for you right now, I am also offering a new service, especially for Indigo-scale adults. It’s a stand-alone, but can also be considered a compelling stepping-stone toward my higher-level work. It’s a 45-minute session where I enter your Akashic Records to see where you are withholding standing in your own Light and offer you the keys to healing that place, as well as a short integration call the next day. I call it the “Star Lineage Remembrance.”

The truth is that we all create our own “blocks.” These are areas where it didn’t feel safe, as children, to be seen. If you felt judged for your gifts and learned to hide them for your own protection, it could be time for you to look again to see if you’re ready to let the safety mechanisms go.

I’ve opened up space in my calendar for exploratory conversations. Is Pluto whispering to your Soul about the Legendary Self Exploration or the Star Lineage Remembrance?