Scorpio Herbs: Boundary Medicine of Death & Rebirth | Astro-Herbalism
Why do Scorpio's plants come armed with thorns and stings? Kyle Denton (Tippecanoe Herbs), Michelle Lundquist, Mario Garza (Symbolic Studies) and Slick Dissident joined Chance Garton for the Scorpio installment of Astro-Herbalism, reading mugwort, wormwood, damiana, rose, rose hips, stinging nettle, lemon balm, yellow dock, ashwagandha, calendula and comfrey through astrology and the doctrine of signatures: a plant's shape, color, scent and growth as clues to its qualities and symbolic meaning.
In this remastered episode (originally aired November 18, 2022), audio has been improved and tangents trimmed, turning a rough livestream into a focused master class on Scorpio's themes of sex, death and regeneration, elimination and fasting, the Death card and the Venus Rose, the gate of the great mystery, and the boundary medicine of thorns and stings that guards the gifts of Venus.
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In this episode
Core themes
The Deepest Sign and the Season of Letting Go
Mario frames Scorpio as perhaps the deepest sign in astrology, and Gabe reads the story of Judas Iscariot in the sky, with the scorpion reaching back to put its claws on the scales of Libra and the thirty silver coins as the thirty degrees of a sign. Kyle opens the plants with mugwort, noting that Scorpio rules the genitals and the organs of elimination, and links the season to fasting, starving parasites both physical and emotional. Michelle describes mugwort as an emmenagogue that warms the pelvis, and shares what a 72 hour fast taught her.
Mars in the Bitter Cup: Wormwood and Damiana
Kyle reads Culpeper's tale of Mars calling a council of war in his own brain and choosing to heal poor sinful humans with wormwood, a warming, bitter, aromatic cleanser and famous vermifuge. He contrasts aromatic plants that send energy outward with bitter plants that pull it back to the center, and finds a pun in the antinociceptive effect of absinthe. Michelle then credits damiana, a Mars herb and Mayan and Aztec reproductive tonic, with starting her study of herbalism, and calls it a nurturing ally for anyone healing from sexual trauma.
Death Card Roses and the Gate of Mystery
Mario notes that the five petaled rose on the Death card echoes the Venus pentacle traced over eight years, and that Scorpio sits opposite Venus ruled Taurus. Kyle reads the Death card as Mars initiating the underworld, present for the falling of Venus, while Chance observes that the same person of the Trinity is both destroyer and regenerator, just as the organs of generation and elimination share one level of the body. Mario adds Crowley's bubbles and fish, the royal stars Antares and Aldebaran as silver and golden gates, and the old scorpion woman met at death.
Boundary Medicine: Rose, Rose Hips and Nettle
Kyle sees Scorpio season's rose hips as the vestiges of Venus left as weapons and blood, a toning and relaxing food for the hips and uterus. Michelle shares rose as the plant that brings beauty to ugly situations, along with the sub rosa custom of secrecy, and Chance finds shush in the Hebrew letters of a word for rose. Kyle names the thorns boundary medicine, Mars protecting its Venus, then carries the idea to stinging nettle, whose stings he describes as hypodermic syringes and whose urtication therapy Roman soldiers used to wake their limbs.
Gentle Allies for Dark Places
Michelle presents lemon balm as an uplifting, bee loved herb that Paracelsus called an elixir of life, and closes her set with calendula for the lymph and soft tissues and comfrey, the knitbone, ruled by Saturn. Kyle adds lemon balm as sunshine on the fog for vata season, yellow dock for iron absorption and colon tone, and ashwagandha for sleep and fertility. He also weighs the liver caution around comfrey's pyrrolizidine alkaloids. Gabe hears death's invitation in the name comfrey and praises the old poetic language of plant medicine.
Quotes
“Sometimes Scorpio is referred to as the gate of the great mystery, which I think is really fascinating and makes a lot of sense.”
“I think of putrefaction and nigredo, the blackness, you know, the alchemical process that corresponds with Scorpio.”
“The same person of the Trinity is both destroyer and regenerator. And so here we have in the Scorpio and in the body, you know, at the same level of the body is the organ of generation and the area of elimination or destruction.”
“So plants that are aromatic have a way of diffusing energy outwards and they bring our energy out to our periphery, whereas plants that are bitter bring our energy back to our center.”
“There's a lot of plants that move up, that move up or that move out, and these plants warm downwards. And that's definitely a signature of Scorpio in my mind.”
“It brings beauty to ugly situations. And that's one of the things that I've just picked up from this plant.”
“I think it's almost like Mars protecting its Venus. And I call it boundary medicine.”
“Look, I have this abundance of joy, of love, of all of these things that I would like to share with you if you want to stop. But you can't just come and pick me with impunity because I'm gonna cut your jeans open.”
“Nettles are this is the plant that you can identify at midnight on the new moon. How? Because it will say, Hey, watch it, buddy. You're walking on me and I'm gonna sting you and you'll feel it right away.”
“The plants want to help you bring these things to light. And I think that doing it gently, doing it slowly is the way to go.”
“Something like lemon balm is just like sunshine on the fog. You know, it's not like the fog horn that's blasting the fog away.”
“Whereas the old medicine was like come free and much more poetic and beautiful. And I feel like that language has gone through a gnarly shift and I'm just glad to learn the old ways.”
“Each sign has its specialty, but Scorpio goes deep, so kind of allow yourself to go deep.”
Gabriel, known on air as Slick Dissident, co-hosts InnerVerse's Vibe Rant show and is a longtime recurring guest on the podcast. He teaches occult symbolism and tarot on his YouTube channel, ranging across the Major Arcana, the esoteric Enneagram, mythology and archetype, mystic linguistics, and the symbolism hidden in popular film. He is best known for Tarot-tories, his own system mapping the 22 Major Arcana and zodiac archetypes onto the geography of the United States.
See all Gabe episodes→Kyle and Serena Denton are community herbalists creating wild-crafted and organic plant medicines out of Milwaukee since 2015. I have used their teas and tinctures on an almost daily basis for years now. Kyle is a great friend of InnerVerse and has appeared on the channel more times than I can count. These products work, not in the allopathic "pharma-medicine" way, but in a terrain-support, consciousness bolstering plant-teacher sort of way.
