Dracula astrology

J.G. Ballard

HAUTE SCORPIO IS INSCRUTABLE Mysterious by nature, Scorpio is the only sign which can carry off a chic yet compulsive-obsessive aura. Do they have hobbies? Stuff that they just dabble in? No. They tend toward deep and abiding interests in subjects to do with sex, the occult, and other people’s money. Method-acting was invented by a Scorpio. So was the Rorschach ink blot test, where one’s reactions to blobs apparently reveal all manner of deep issues. Scorpios don’t feel the need to tell all. They can have whole years missing from their resumes and just shrug it off. Or they murmur “No, thank you. You must understand that after that night in Morocco I can never touch gin again.” Get the picture. Picture is private.

HAUTE SCORPIO IS DISCREET Unlike some signs of the zodiac, Scorpios do not stoop to scene-making under pressure. Someone naturally winds up on their secret crap list but they retain glacial serenity without grizzling. A secret confided to a Scorp is a secret forever safe. But, if you arouse their enmity, your secret could possibly wind up being posted on the Internet.

HAUTE SCORPIO IS SEXY Scorps are the sexiest sign of all – sex appeal simply oozes from their very pore. They tend to go to extremes of being either wildly celibate or deeply immersed in sexuality. Think Prince Charles and his intended reincarnation as Camilla Parker Bowles’s tampon, Larrry Flynt who founded Hustler magazine, Helmut Newton’s fetishistic fashion photography, Shere Hite’s Hite Report, in which she provided stats on the length of orgasms and the number of sexual positions. Robert Mapplethorpe’s nude photography, actress Vivien Leight’s (Scarlett in Gone With the Wind) apparrently legendary sexual appetite… Scorpios love to get it on. Actor Richard Burton was a celebrated rake who used a “throbbing sensation in my penis as a sort of barometer of when something important was going to happen.” Fashion designer Oleg Cassini said of Princess Grace of Monaco: “She had a very powerful sexual personality.” All Scorpios do.

HAUTE SCORPIO IS STRONG A Scorpio can get blood from a stone. Scorpios are brutually self-aware. They don’t flinch from self-examination. Nothing you can say gets to them because they’ve already thought of it. It’s how they remain impassive in the face of the worst provocation. Feeling the fear and doing it anyway is what they do. The great explorers Captain Cook and Christopher Columbus just kept going until they saw land. Canadian singer kd lang grew up in a place where being vegeterian was almost as difficult as being gay and somehow thrived.

HAUTE SCORPIO IS SPOOKY Is the Scorpio spookiness nature or nurture? There is something profound about this lot. They have powerful instincts which they often obey. When Robert Louis Stevenson wrote his strange tale, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, whose spooked psyche was he drawing inspiration from? Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, or maybe Dracula himself? Because they have the ability to focus on other people so strongly, they can be highly intuitive regarding another person’s needs, and can channel information that another person requires. Even the most seemingly plaid Scorpio is on some level operating as a medium, transmitting light and energy to those in need.

HAUTE SCORPIO IS PRINCIPLED Scorpios operate on an inalterable value system, one which remains in place despite vagaries of fashion, taste or common opinion. They are a noble people sticking to their own standards of what is correct, no matter what. The ancient Greeks saw integrity not as some nebulous goody-goody concept but as oneness, the very Scorpio trait of presenting exactly the same version of oneself to everyone, whether a pauper or prince.

LOW SCORPIO IS OBSESSIVE “I desire?” The astro motto for out Scorpio should be something along the lines of “I obsess”. Ask Scorpios not to obsess and they obsess about not obsessing. They will stay up all night chanting a non-obsessive affirmation or sit their scrawling the words “I will be less obsessive” a thousand times in red ink. They will become secretly obsessed with getting to the psychological roots of their obsession. Their idea of getting over an ex-lover is to drive past their house only twice nightly. They can be vile dinner party guests; they are so into their precious authenticity that they lose sight of how intensely they are boring everyone.

LOW SCORPIO IS PARANOID Paranoid? Scorpio? Of course not, they scoff. Scorpio just wants to know who sent that big moth to fly in their window. That disappearing lunch box is a plot by their child to discredit them. Someone says ‘’you’re looking well’’, Scorpio thinks it’s a curse. Scorpio’s social life can be conducted like a resistance movement – there are dozens of ‘’cells’’ of friends, each knowing little or nothing about the other. They do a lot of snooping which, should you stoop to it, would count as a betrayal but is completely understandable on their part. They peer into bathroom cupboards, not like Libra or Pisces, to see what products you’re using, but to find out about any medication or products having a possible sexual link. They micro-examine telephone bills with particular interest in mobile phone calls made when their partner was out of the house. They perform exhaustive Internet searches. They enjoy the concept of private investigation.

LOW SCORPIO IS VINDICTIVE Scorpio’s not-so-secret motto is “retaliate first”, and they do. Their methods are subtle but devastating. They like messing with other people’s emotions. They’ll let you know that they know your little secret. They play games to incite jealousy. They draw you out to talk in vulgar terms about sex or money, then withdraw, a slight smirk of contempt playing across their manipulative face. Scorps can juggle a thousand revenge agendas in their minds. It’s never too late. They can feed crap into other people’s minds about you without anyone guessing a hint of Scorp’s true and biased emotions. If a Scorp feels that you have violated their so-deep honour system, their ethics are then able to be ditched at the drop of a hat. It is because Scorps are so paranoid that other – perfectly nice – people are like them that they are so rigid about shredding credit-card statements, having people sign up pre-dating agreements, and keeping love letters or erotic photographs stored in mysterious locked boxes.

LOW SCORPIO IS GRUDGE-BEARING Okay, so not every Scorp takes up voodoo or looks for a bat to sacrifice when they want a credit limit increase or for their would-be lover to telephone. As any Scorp will tell you, they are not control freaks. They just completely freak, if they are not in total control of everything. It is a miracle that, given their obsession with sex, they are not all professional S & M experts of some description. There is something so disconcerting about having a drink with an old Scorpio friend when you find out they’re still in a stew about not having been made a school prefect. British historian A. J. P. Taylor said of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas that he “was a detestable man. Men pressed money on him and women their bodies. Dylan took both with equal contempt. His great pleasure was just to humiliate people.” Remind you of anyone? Maybe there was a slight personality conflict happening there, but it nevertheless sounds like a very Scorpionic syndrome.