Scorpio is the sign of the Covert-Op and the Deep Cover Cop, the World Wide Vampire Slayer and the Witch Goddess in Chief, the Psychologist Emeritus and the Sorceress Semper Paratus. When a person or project has their Sun (identity) in this clandestinely inclined sign they will come to be identified with psychology, intensity, or deep level research. According to astrologer Judy Hall, Scorpios are naturals in “silent-but-deadly” professions such as experimental science or submarine surveillance. (Source) To illustrate: using its establishment date as its date of birth the Tonopah Test Range, aka “Area 52”, is a Scorpio Sun. (Chart) Area 52 is the younger, much more secretive sister of the infamous “Area 51” base. This Area 52 mission patch, obtained by way of geographer Trevor Paglen’s book Covert Operations and Classified Landscapes, suggests the base is home to occult projects, secret technologies, and silent-but-deadly aircraft that are to the year 2013 what submarines were to the year 1320:

Sitting 120 degrees from Scorpio is Pisces, the sign of Psychic and the Seer, the Mystic and the Mist, the Specter and the Spook. Pisces shares Scorpio’s attunement to the mysterious but whereas Scorpio seeks out the unspeakable, Pisces seeks out the unfathomable. Scorpio digs deep, Pisces dissolves boundaries. Scorpio susses out the taboo, Pisces puts the taboo in a trance. Judy Hall says Pisceans do best in professions that involve intuition, illusion, or imagery as well as any endeavor which requires connection to the ocean, be it the actual ocean or the oceanic realms of the unconscious. (Source) When a person’s Moon (emotional needs) is in this elusive sign they need to be involved in matters hypnotic, intuitive, illusory, or mystical in order to feel emotionally nourished. For instance, physicist Russel Targ is a Pisces Moon. (Chart) Targ has published more than a 100 papers on plasma physics, laser applications, and electro-optics but is best known for co-founding the Stanford Research Institute’s remote viewing program. Under Targ’s leadership, the SRI spent 23 years and $25 million investigating psychic spying methods for the CIA and other U.S. spy agencies. (Source)

Combine the secretive nature of a Scorpio Sun with a Pisces Moon’s affinity for the hypnotic realms of the unconscious and you get a Sun/Moon pairing that is imaginative, mysterious, and deeply in tune with all that is hidden. This pairing is quite capable of communicating information without speaking or speaking without communicating information, both of which are survival skills when you lead a life filled with subterfuge as Scorpio/Pisces often does. For instance, Claus Von Stauffenberg — the German military officer who was executed for attempting to assassinate Adolf Hitler — is a Scorpio/Pisces whose life was filled with more subterfuge than a Tom Clancy novel. (Chart) If you’re not familiar with Von Stauffenberg’s story he was portrayed by Tom Cruise in the 2011 film Valkryie.

Jefferson Anderson calls Scorpio/Pisces the Sun/Moon pairing of “The Sponge” whose ability to absorb energy from the environment “allows it take on the color of its surroundings like a chameleon”. (Source) To illustrate: using its launch date as its date of birth the U.S. government’s “Advanced Technology Observatory Platform” (ATOP) project is a Scorpio Sun, Pisces Moon. (Chart) Almost nothing has ever been officially disclosed about the ATOP project but between its astrological chart and clues found in its mission patch we can make some educated guesses as to its capabilities. For starters we know that since we’re dealing with a Scorpio/Pisces entity what’s not shown in the patch is more important than what is shown. Additionally, astrologer Stella Hyde says Scorpio makes for a great secret agent while Pisces makes for a great escape artist. (Source) We can thus deduce that the ATOP project might have involved some sort of technology which would allow a secret agent (Scorpio) to make his or her escape (Pisces):

According to Linda Goodman the Scorpio/Pisces combination of signs is associated with deeply subtle, very covert forms of movement. When paired together they take on “an other-worldly ability to navigate the invisible realms that connect people on psychic levels” she writes in her book Love Signs. (Source) It’s unlikely that ATOP has anything to do with the invisible realms of the psychic world, at least not on the literal level. It may, however, have something to do with technology that absorbs light from the surrounding environment in order to produce optical invisibility, not unlike what a chameleon does. In other words, a cloaking device. At least that’s what some informed observers such as Mark Pilkington, author of Mirage Men: An Adventure into Paranoia, Espionage, Psychological Warfare, and UFOs seem to think it might be. As Pilkington explains in his 2010 article on the mystery of ATOP patch, “today’s radar-evading drones are carefully optimised to blend in with the sky and to avoid casting shadows.” (Source)

Marie Curie is another Scorpio Sun, Pisces Moon known for handling dangerous material. (Chart) She won a Nobel prize for her pioneering work with radiation, also an “entity” which also casts no shadows. Something similar can be said for the infamous “Men in Black” (MIB), the ominously dressed government agents thought to show up at people’s door to intimidate them into silence should they learn too much about extraterrestrials. The concept of the “MIB” was popularized by the comedic film franchise starring Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith but they’ve been rumored to exist in real life since the 1956 publication of the book They Knew Too Much. Nobody knows for sure what the truth is about the real MIBs but many UFO aficionados seem to think they originated with the U.S. Air Force’s Air Intelligence Service Squadron (AISS), a classified unit established shortly after World War II. According to a recent article in Air & Space magazine:

Perhaps the most famous AISS unit (relatively speaking, for a secret organization) was the 4602nd. With 19 detachments spread across the United States, the 4602nd was, like other AISS units, officially responsible for “rapid exploitation and field analysis of downed enemy aircraft and uniformed personnel.” But the unit was soon tapped to investigate reports of unidentified flying objects in conjunction with Project Blue Book, the Air Force’s UFO inquiry. Some buffs insist that the legendary “Men in Black” figures who supposedly harassed UFO witnesses were from the 4602nd. (Source)

Using its establishment date as its date of birth, the AISS is a Scorpio/Pisces organization. (Chart) Even if reports of UFOs and “Men in Black” are the product of imagination or fiction, the AISS still fits the profile of a Scorpio/Pisces organization as they are tasked with top secret missions (Scorpio) to capture crashed enemy airmen — individuals who can be thought of as the modern day equivalent of escaped ghosts (Pisces Moon).

According to astrologer Grant Lewi, this pairing “can see right through people, maybe better then they can see themselves”. (Source) The ability to see through people while remaining (nearly) invisible endows this pairing with the capacity to see things hidden out of sight and hide things that are seen in plain sight. To illustrate, sculptor Jim Sanborn is a Scorpio/Pisces. (Chart) He’s best known for creating the encrypted Kryptos sculpture at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. In true Scorpio/Pisces fashion, Sanborn placed four coded messages within the Kryptos sculpture, each of which is a mystery hidden in plain sight. (Source).

It took 8 years for one of the CIA’s cryptanalysts to decipher three of the messages, one of which happens to nicely sum up the Scorpio/Pisces approach to life, “Between subtle shading and the absence of light lies the nuance of iqlusion”. If you’re wondering what the word “iqlusion” means, it turns out Sanborn included misspellings in the messages to add an extra layer of subterfuge to the Kryptos mystery. (Source) Scorpio/Pisces can be sneaky like that.

Twenty years after the first three Kryptos messages were deciphered, the fourth remains a mystery.

Kryptos may be Sanborn’s most famous sculpture but some of his others, such as the Cyrillic Projector located at the University of North Carolina, are just as riveting:

Astrologers Suzi and Charles Harvey say one of the Scorpio/Piscean’s greatest strengths is the ability to “capture the imagination” while “evoking a mysterious atmosphere”. (Source) Sanborn’s Kryptos statue has captured the imagination of a generation of cryptanalysts, both amateur and professional, while his other statues have made his name more or less synonymous with the “ability to evoke a mysterious atmosphere”. Here, for instance, is a Sanborn sculpture outside M.D. Anderson’s library at the University of Houston courtesy of Flickr member “MeltedPlastic” that is both captivating and mysterious:

Many of Sanborn’s sculptures make use of what a Rhizome.com article calls “eerie luminescence”. (Source) While few Scorpio/Pisceans will necessarily become sculptors like Sanborn, many will be attracted to lagoons, full moons, and other haunting landscapes which are both eerie and luminescent.

Hilary Clinton is probably the world’s most (in)famous Scorpio/Pisces. While Sanborn is known for placing hidden messages inside the Kryptos statue he was hired to build at CIA headquarters, Clinton is now (in)famous for hiding email messages in a private server she had built, possibly to elude the prying eyes of three letter agencies like the CIA.

Like his fellow Scorpio/Pisces Marie Curie, Sanborn is fascinated by invisible forces of nature such as radiation. In a sculpture entitled Critical Assembly, Sanborn included a disassembled sphere that had been designed to hold the nuclear payload of plutonium and uranium — glowing substances which Marie Curie actually carried around in necklaces she fashioned, a habit which ultimately led to her death.

Sanborn probably hasn’t ever made a habit of carrying radioactive materials around in necklaces like Marie Curie but for his sculpture Terrestrial Physics, he did recreate a fully functional particle accelerator. When working on the sculpture he managed to achieve nuclear fission, albeit at a low level. (Source) He also seems to have exposed himself to naturally radioactive uranium ores for his Uranium Autoradiograph Series. (Source) Few Scorpio/Pisces will go so far as to handle materials that are literally radioactive the way Curie and Sanborn have but many will end up working with issues that are psychologically, socially, or artistically radioactive.

This pairing’s affinity with the death, danger, and the dark undercurrents of the occult means it’s also going to lean towards the paranoid side. For instance, in an interview he gave with the Washington Post Sanborn described the extremely secluded nature of his art studio, “I needed 15 acres, minimum, to insulate myself . . . I have video cameras, threatening signs, whatever it takes.” (Source) That Sanborn would go to such extremes to protect his privacy makes perfect sense. Of the 144 Sun/Moon pairings, Scorpio/Pisces might be the one most likely to subscribe to the philosophy of “It’s not paranoia when they really are watching you” — a philosophy that recent events have proven is no ghost story.

About the Author: Matthew Savinar is a California licensed attorney (State Bar #228957), voluntarily inactive as of June 2013. He can be reached for questions, comments, or astrological consults via Twitter, YouTube, Spreaker, Soundcloud, or his contact page.

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