I’m a double Scorpio with Libra rising, and because of this I’ve been looked at askance all of my adult life. Mostly by women I’ve known or run into at parties. I’ve also been reading astrological analyses of Scorpios all my life, and it is their opinion, boiled down, that Scorpios are killers — just evil conniving rage-hounds with big stingers.

I wouldn’t want to go anywhere near a Scorpio based on these descriptions. And yet I’ve known Scorpios all my life and have come to like or enjoy or admire or care for quite a few of them. They’re good, worthy, fascinating people, and are never boring or at least are interesting mixed bags. They’re certainly not emotional terrorists looking to shove knives into people and eat their organs for breakfast and then howl from high rooftops.

Astrological authors really have it in big-time for Scorpios. They condemn me and my kind without mercy. So I decided eons ago that the people who write these truly ugly condemnations of Scorpios (“unscrupulous terrorist, morbid jealousy, total arrogance, sadistic and aggressive brutality”) are deranged, and to throw out the whole astrological analysis thing and just trust my own instincts and feelings.

I know what the Scorpio drill is. It partly means a person with a tendency to lash out when feeling weak and vulnerable and threatened. There’s a current of truth to this. I’m not a day at the beach when I’m being cornered and attacked. But I’m not a zoo animal either. I have thoughts and insights and observational powers and experience and determinations that have come from decades of living. And I know what “Taurus” and “Virgo” and “Libra” and “Gemini” and “Aquarius” mean, and it’s mostly just sloppy crap shorthand that sometimes echoes in little ways and sometimes has nothing to do with anything.

To hear it from the astrology crowd each and every person born under the Scorpio sign is a problem. Millions of people across the globe walking around with arrogant and sadistic terrorist personalities, ready to pounce on their victims and rip them to shreds and chew their ears off because of when they were born? It’s material from a cheap horror film.

I’ve gotten to know and and have worked with exceptionally bright and accomplished people all my professional life — the best people in the top fields — and no one of any brain size or developed intelligence buys into astrology as anything more than a burp diversion while buying groceries. It’s the truth. We’re all astrology dilletantes, but no one who’s been around and knows what goes is any kind of real follower.

The ones who do subscribe to astrology tend to be (no way around this) women for the most part, and women in particular who haven’t had a thorough education. I’m sorry if this sounds dismissive, but astrology is for people who read Tarot cards and go to seances and read supermarket tabloids. It attracts people of limited perception and intelligence.