Scorpio Shamanic Journeying: Lower, Middle & Upper Worlds

BY NICOLE LAU

If you're a Scorpio, your shamanic journey isn't surface exploration—it's underworld initiation. While other signs visit the spirit realms, you die in them. Your Pluto-ruled water doesn't travel—it transforms, descending into the depths of all three worlds, emerging reborn each time you journey.

Understanding the Three Worlds

In shamanic cosmology, reality has three layers:

Lower World: The realm of power animals, ancestral wisdom, and primal instinct. Earth's underworld—caves, roots, ancient memory.
Middle World: The realm of present reality, nature spirits, and the living. The here-and-now in its energetic form.
Upper World: The realm of spirit guides, celestial beings, and cosmic vision. Sky realms—stars, light, divine intelligence.

Your Scorpio frequency accesses all three, but how you journey is uniquely shamanic—you're a natural psychopomp, death-walker, soul-retriever.

Scorpio in the Lower World: The Underworld Throne

The Lower World is accessed by going down—through caves, tree roots, wells, or tunnels. For Scorpio, this descent is not exploration—it's returning home.

Your Lower World Entry Point

Scorpio doesn't hesitate at the threshold—you plunge into the abyss. Your entry points:

• A grave or tomb—descending through death itself
• A black hole or void—surrendering to total darkness
• The ocean's deepest trench—sinking to where light doesn't reach
• A scorpion's burrow—following your totem underground

The key: your entry must involve death, darkness, or total surrender. You don't tiptoe into the underworld—you claim it.

Your Lower World Power Animal

In the Lower World, you'll likely encounter power animals that match your transformative frequency:

• The Scorpion: Your zodiac animal—teaches that your sting is both weapon and medicine
• The Phoenix: Death and rebirth—teaches that you must burn to rise
• The Snake: Shedding and renewal—teaches that transformation requires release
• The Eagle: Your highest form—teaches perspective from the depths

Your power animal won't comfort you. It will kill you (symbolically), strip you bare, force you to face what you've been avoiding. This is the medicine.

Lower World Scorpio Medicine

What you retrieve from the Lower World:

• Ancestral secrets: What your lineage hid, what they survived, what they knew about power
• Death wisdom: How to die and be reborn, how to let go completely
• Shadow gold: The power in what you've rejected, the medicine in your wounds
• Soul fragments: Parts of yourself lost to trauma, waiting to be retrieved

Lower World Journey Practice

Preparation: Deep, slow drumming (3-4 beats per second). Lie down in darkness. Set fierce intention: "I descend to die and be reborn."

The Descent: Visualize your entry point. Don't resist—surrender to the fall. Let yourself die. Feel the darkness, the pressure, the dissolution. This is not metaphor—let your ego actually die.

The Encounter: In the deepest dark, your power animal appears. It might attack you, devour you, tear you apart. Let it. This is the initiation. When you're nothing, ask: "What must I release to be reborn?" The answer comes from the void.

The Return: You don't climb back—you're reborn upward. Like a phoenix from ashes, like a snake from shed skin. When you return, you're not the same person who descended. Honor the death. Claim the rebirth.

Scorpio in the Middle World: The Shadow Realm

The Middle World is this reality in its energetic form—the spirits of places, plants, animals, and elements as they exist now.

Your Middle World Territory

Scorpio doesn't journey to light places. You're drawn to:

• Graveyards and death sites: Where the veil is thin, where spirits linger
• Deep water: Lakes, oceans, wells—where secrets are kept
• Abandoned places: Ruins, forgotten sites—where energy has been left behind
• Thresholds: Liminal spaces between life and death, known and unknown

Your Middle World Allies

In the Middle World, you work with:

• Ghosts and ancestors: The dead who haven't crossed—teach about unfinished business
• Water spirits: Deep, dark waters—teach emotional alchemy
• Psychopomp spirits: Guides of the dead—teach soul-retrieval and crossing over
• Shadow beings: What others fear—teach that darkness is not evil

Middle World Scorpio Medicine

What you learn in the Middle World:

• Present-moment alchemy: How to transform what's here NOW, not just in vision
• Psychopomp work: How to help souls cross over, how to retrieve lost fragments
• Shadow integration: How to work with what others reject, how to find power in darkness
• Emotional transmutation: How to turn poison into medicine, pain into power

Middle World Journey Practice

Preparation: Go to a liminal place at twilight or midnight. Bring protection (obsidian, salt, clear intention).

The Shift: Don't close your eyes—see through the veil. Notice what's between—the spirits, the shadows, the energies that don't belong to the living. What needs to be released? What needs to cross over?

The Engagement: Introduce yourself as a death-walker. Offer to help. Ask: "What needs to be transformed? Who needs to be guided home?" Listen. You might encounter lost souls, stuck energy, or your own shadows.

The Action: Middle World work for Scorpio is active transformation. You might need to guide a spirit, clear energy, or face your own darkness. Do the work. This is your gift.

Scorpio in the Upper World: The Phoenix Realm

The Upper World is accessed by going up—through trees, mountains, ladders, or flight. For Scorpio, this ascent is rising from the ashes.

Your Upper World Entry Point

Scorpio doesn't climb—you explode upward. Your entry points:

• A volcano erupting—riding the explosion from underworld to sky
• Phoenix wings—burning and rising on your own flames
• A geyser or fountain—water pressure shooting you skyward
• Death itself—dying completely and waking in heaven

The key: your ascent must involve transformation, intensity, or rebirth. You don't gently float—you erupt.

Your Upper World Guides

In the Upper World, you'll encounter guides who honor your depth:

• Pluto/Hades: Your ruling planet as deity—teaches that death is not the end
• Kali: Destroyer goddess—teaches that destruction is creation
• The Phoenix: The archetype itself—teaches eternal return
• The Alchemist: Master of transformation—teaches that lead becomes gold through fire

Your guides won't sugarcoat truth. They'll show you what you need to see, not what you want to see. They'll demand your transformation.

Upper World Scorpio Medicine

What you receive from the Upper World:

• Alchemical vision: The blueprint for transformation, the formula for turning poison to medicine
• Death mission: What you're here to kill (ego, systems, illusions) and what you're here to birth
• Phoenix blessing: The knowing that you can survive anything, that you always rise
• Power reclamation: Your full intensity, your full depth, your full truth—no more hiding

Upper World Journey Practice

Preparation: Intense drumming or silence. Set intention: "I ascend to receive my alchemical mission."

The Ascent: Visualize yourself burning. Let the fire consume everything false. From the ashes, explode upward. Ride the phoenix flames. When you arrive in the Upper World, it's not all light—there's darkness here too, but conscious darkness.

The Audience: Meet your guide in the alchemical laboratory or the phoenix nest. Ask: "What am I here to transform? What must die for the new to be born?" Receive the formula. It will be intense.

The Return: Don't descend—dive back like a meteor. Bring the fire. When you land, immediately act on what you received. Scorpio medicine evaporates if not used.

Integration: The Scorpio Three-World Practice

Your power comes from moving between all three worlds through death and rebirth:

Lower World: Die completely, retrieve soul fragments, claim shadow power
Middle World: Transform what's here NOW, guide souls, alchemize darkness
Upper World: Receive the alchemical formula, the phoenix blessing, the death mission

Then transmute. Shamanic journeying for Scorpio isn't about visions—it's about actual transformation.

Scorpio Shamanic Tools

• Drum: Deep, primal rhythm—like a heartbeat slowing to death
• Obsidian: Volcanic glass—for protection and shadow work
• Snake shed skin: If you can find it—symbol of transformation
• Fire: Candle or bonfire—for burning what's finished
• Water: Deep bowl or ocean—for emotional alchemy

Common Scorpio Journey Challenges

Intensity overwhelm: The journey is so intense you can't continue. Practice: This is your element. Breathe. You can handle more than you think.

Addiction to death: You keep dying but never fully rebirthing. Practice: The point is transformation, not just destruction. Complete the cycle.

Isolation: You journey alone and don't share what you learn. Practice: Your medicine is meant to be used. Teach what you've learned in the underworld.

Your Shamanic Superpower

What makes Scorpio journeying unique: You don't just journey—you transform. You're a natural shaman, psychopomp, death-walker. Your journeys aren't entertainment—they're initiations that change you at the cellular level.

Other signs visit. You die and are reborn.

Scorpio, you are the shaman who walks between life and death. The alchemist who turns poison into medicine. The phoenix who proves that death is not the end.

Welcome to your shamanic path. Now transform everything.