The Genitals and Excretory System Under Scorpio

Scorpio takes the genitals, the reproductive organs and the excretory system, the parts the older texts group as those of generation and elimination. Ruled by Mars in the classical scheme, the sign was read for acute and inflammatory complaints of the region, and its association with the eighth house of death and inheritance gave it a weight in prognostic judgments that went beyond the anatomical. Much of the medical astrology of these parts belongs to a literature that was written for and by men and about which modern readers should be appropriately sceptical. The scheme's treatment of the region is recorded here as part of the tradition; nothing in it constitutes medical information.

The zodiacal and planetary schemes diverge again here: Mars rules Scorpio and so governs the genitals in this melothesia, but the separate planetary scheme recorded under Organs gives Mars the gall bladder instead, one more instance, alongside the arms and lungs under Gemini, of the two body correspondence systems recorded here being used side by side in the historical sources without being reconciled. The classical texts also connect Scorpio, as a fixed water sign, to processes read as simultaneously generative and corrosive, the sign that governs both reproduction and the body's means of elimination, a duality later commentators linked to Mars's own reputation as a planet of both vigour and destructive excess.