on taurus & scorpio: the axis of desire & control

part 2 of 6 in the zodiacal pair series

astrology for writers is a labor-intensive, exclusively reader-supported publication. if you enjoy getting this newsletter in your inbox, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.

ICYMI

🎨 Book a mini-reading with me! “Unsticking Your Creative Practice: A Mini Reading to Jumpstart Your 2025” is now open. In it, I offer two paragraphs of written advice and practical insights geared specifically to your chart. The write-up is especially focused on my core practice of Input vs. Output — that which might most nourish you (input) and the structures/practices that might help you produce (output). Book a reading by emailing jeannakadlecauthor@gmail.com with all of your birth data (date, time, location!) and any relevant info about your creative practice. Pay $135 either through Venmo (jeanna-kadlec) or PayPal (jeannakadlecauthor@gmail.com). And the PDF is delivered to you within 1-2 weeks!

🗓️: We’ve Been Here Before: A Historical Retrospective on the Astrology of 2025 is now available for download!

🎧: Calling all chronically ill girlies! The latest Call Your Coven episode, Chronic Coven: Illness and Spirituality, is out on all major streaming platforms (and YouTube).

Last month, I received a gorgeous question from someone in the astrology for writers Discord:

I’ve been really interested lately in what we can learn from polarities between signs and how working with the energy of a sign’s opposite can help us move toward healing. I’m thinking especially in terms of nodal placements but also generally. Could you talk through a little about what opposing signs can learn from each other? I have a good handle on Virgo-Pisces, Cap-Cancer, and Aries-Libra (tho would love to hear your thoughts), but Aqua-Leo, Scorpio-Taurus and esp esp Sag-Gemini are a little opaque to me still.

This question has inspired a series devoted to each of the six zodiacal pairs, because to explore the polarities/axes of the six zodiacal pairs is to understand the whole of human experience. Last month, we began this series with on aries & libra & also the nodes, which articulated Aries & Libra as The Axis of Positionality as well as my more academic/theoretical take on the nodes and why I’m not especially considering them for this series.

Before we dive into our second pair, Taurus & Scorpio, permit me to repeat myself, since some folks are new here, or haven’t read the prior installment:

There are 12 zodiac signs. Of these, there are 6 pairs of opposing signs, called “opposing” because they are 180* away from each other. The pairs always come in complementary elements (air and fire; earth and water), and they are always of the same modality (cardinal, fixed, mutable).

We each, all of us, have every sign in our birth chart. Personally, I find that the signs folks are most uncomfortable with, or critical of, are usually reflective of the part of their chart they are most uncomfortable with and critical of. Understanding the axis on which these signs reside deepens our understanding of not only the signs, but also of how the chart works together as a whole.

That said, let’s dive in.

Taurus & Scorpio: The Axis of Desire & Control

Earth & water; fixed (signs that come in the middle of, and so stabilize, seasons)

I’m gonna be honest: I struggled with this one. Taurus (the middle aka “fixed” sign of spring in the Northern Hemisphere) and Scorpio (the middle sign of autumn) are often associated with (re)birth and death, as well as physical & emotional security (two things that I also associate with one of the other water-earth combos, Cancer/Capricorn).