I grew up in Durban, South Africa. That means I grew up swimming in the Indian Ocean. I loved (love) the beach deeply, but I was (am) always a little afraid of the ocean. Or rather, I always had a deep respect for the ocean. A few times, I had the experience of what we called being “dunked”. 

Being “dunked” is when you’re swimming and a wave ‘gets you’. It keeps you under the surface, holding you in its grip. You know you have to wait until it passes, you’re running out of air. You cannot breathe and you cannot surface, you have to submit to the wave’s timing, you feel the power and pressure of water on your body, overcoming the strength of your own muscles.

Water is very strong, you realise. You try to stay calm, you panic. The wave passes and you pop up, spluttering and heaving, desperate for air. You make your way to the shore, you feel very alive and you feel very grateful. 

This year’s Scorpio season feels a bit like being dunked. Something is holding you in its grip, it’s terrifying, uncomfortable and ultimately puts you in a deeper relationship with your own vitality, resilience and capacity to emerge. 

Scorpio season begins with Venus conjoining the Sun, marking the middle of the Venus retrograde. On the same day Mercury turns retrograde. Two days later we have a full Moon in Taurus, with the Moon and Sun forming a square to Pluto. Chiron is in the mix. I feel like the drama and pain of the whole year wants to be faced and transmuted over the weekend of 23rd October. And at the same time, there is some kind of lightening, a relief, release – a sense emerging from the grip… 

These are my free, abridged horoscopes. In the full-length horoscopes each sign comes with a Gqom track. Gqom is a genre of electronic dance music that comes from my hometown, Durban. 

Gqom feels fundamentally Scorpionic to me… its deep association with night-time and night-life, it hard-hitting and relentless (almost spiritual) sound, its steady sustaining beat that requires you to submit to it in order to go through it – popping out the other side sweating and infinitely lighter. It’s not exactly an easy-listening sort of genre, but once you let it get you, you get it.

To listen to your sign’s track and support my writing, sign up here for 3€/month.

scorpio

If you could turn your body into a weapon, what would it look like and how would it work? 

sagittarius

If you could turn your body into a navigational device, where would it take you? 

capricorn

If you could turn your body into some kind of community center, club or watering hole, what exactly would the architecture look like? 

aquarius

If you could turn your body into a microphone, what would be announced?  

pisces

If you could turn your body into a myth, what would be the narrative arc? 

aries

If you could turn your body into a tracking device, what would it track? 

taurus

If you could turn your body into a telescope, what far-distant object would you focus on? 

gemini

If you could turn your body into an animal’s body, what would it be? 

cancer

If you could turn your body into any artwork by any artist, what would it be? 

leo

If you could turn your body into a campfire, what stories would be told around you? 

virgo

If you could turn yourself into an appliance, what function would you have? 

libra

If you could turn your body into a vessel, what would you want to hold?