Mercury in Scorpio in the Eighth House

The placement of Mercury in Scorpio indicates you have a need to function at a deep mental level with authenticity and integrity. Much of the behavior and many of the personality characteristics associated with Mercury in Scorpio are a result of this need to mentally perceive the truth about yourself and your environment. Mercury is indifferently placed in Scorpio. The positive aspects of the placement are symbolized by the natural sextile between Scorpio and Mercury-ruled Virgo. However, Scorpio is the Fixed Water sign and both fixity and water are problematic for the air and mutable-associated Mercury, as symbolized by the natural quincunx between Scorpio and Mercury-ruled Gemini.

The Fixed Water of Scorpio pulls the mental energies associated with Mercury to deep places, from which escape to the outer world is difficult. In these deep places, the Mercury-associated functions gain power through access to reality and truth. However, Mercury’s air is challenged to adapt to the flow of Scorpio’s water.  The Mercury functions are naturally more comfortable in the realm of the ordinary and the everyday.

Mercury’s placement in Scorpio suggests that there are certain personality characteristics and qualities with which you identify. Typical Mercury-Scorpio qualities are listed below, with positive qualities listed first and their more negative, or dysfunctional, counterparts listed afterward. These qualities are divided into three categories, corresponding to major Mercury-symbolized functions: intellect, communication and the nervous system.

Insecurities

With Mercury in Scorpio, if you are insecure, your mind is obsessed with being dominated by forces beyond your control. At its extreme, this can turn into a paranoia-like fear. In order to “protect” yourself from being dominated by other people, you constantly search for ways to dominate them. This mental preoccupation with power and control eats away at you and makes you suspicious and fearful.

Mercury in the 8th House:

Mercury in the 8th House is a somewhat challenging placement for the planet because of the 8th House’s association with privacy. Even though public communication may be difficult for you, Mercury in the 8th House suggests a variety of strengths. These strengths can be developed once you realize that developing your mental and communication faculties is possible once these are turned in the right direction.

As an individual with Mercury in the 8th House, while you may experience some difficulty with abstract or objective forms of mental activity, you are likely to become adept at cognitively understanding emotions and the motivations of others. Rather than perceiving by deduction, you are more likely to turn your mental attention to those matters where a more intuitive perception is valuable. Generally, with Mercury in the 8th House, you are most comfortable mentally when dealing with private or internal matters.

Having Mercury in the 8th House, although your mind’s intuitive functions may be highly developed, this may not be evident to others because you may not display your mental or communicative aptitudes. You are likely to be interested in things that are secret and enjoy thinking about intimate details. You can be highly observant of nuances and personal details that others may overlook. For this reason, you are often an excellent judge of character and able to predict how people will act and react.

Insecurities

With Mercury in the 8th House, if you are inwardly insecure you will be terrified of discovering real intimacy and may subconsciously adopt a variety of mechanisms to avoid any awareness of a level of intimacy in which you would lose yourself. One such strategy is to intellectualize the intimate. Sexuality, intimate emotions and relationships, even death, are reduced to mechanical, mental formulas. Having Mercury in the 8th House, you may like to think about or talk about sexuality and other intimate matters, but you do not really participate in them – you do not really feel intimate.

For the individual with Mercury in the 8th House, another strategy is to prevent the mind from having any meaningful engagement. Your conversation is perfunctory, or you are reluctant to engage in conversation with others, preferring to be alone. Your thoughts are all on the surface. Your mental capacity may appear weak, because it is not exercised.

Having Mercury in the 8th House, a darker defensive strategy involves being mentally focused on the negative side of intimacy. You may have a mental fascination with death or with sexual perversity. You may avoid intimate contact to the extent of becoming anti-social. Your mental fascination with death and destruction, however, generally will not proceed beyond talk.

Intellect’s Focus

With Mercury in the 8th House, you are likely to focus your intellect on things that are below the surface, on intimate details. You may have the type of mind that cannot rest until you have perceived the source of things and have stripped away all superficialities, completely, to get to the essence of a thing that may lie hidden to others. Besides this tendency, your intellect may contemplate matters of sexuality or life and death. You may also have an intellectual interest in managing others or in power relationships.  As an individual with Mercury in the 8th House, you may be interested in economics from the standpoint of how resources are shared. If you are a lawyer, your area of specialty is likely to be in contracts, wills, divorces and other matters involving the intermingling of resources.

Uncover deeper insights into your personality, motivations, & desires with an In-Depth Astrology & Numerology Natal Chart Analysis.

Article referenced from:

• Gargatholil, Depth Astrology: An Astrological Handbook – Volume 2: Planets in Signs

• Gargatholil, Depth Astrology: An Astrological Handbook – Volume 3: Planets in Houses

Click Here to Access the Complete Depth Astrology Collection with full excerpts.

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