It can be tempting to fall prey to the lore around Scorpio. There is no other sign (except for, perhaps, Gemini) that has come to possess such a polarizing reputation in the public imagination. Our sweet Scorpio finds herself constantly reduced to the flatness of one-dimensional interpretations of her darkness — Scary! Dangerous! Bad! (Are we still really judging things as wholly “bad” or “good” in 2024?) And perhaps the most controversial element of all is that these rumors are at least partially true.

To love a Scorpio is to be stung. There’s no way around it. Maybe it’s the lie that they didn’t mean for you to uncover, told under the premise of protecting you from some painful truth, but deep down executed with the utterly banal intention of self-preservation. Or, more often than not, it’s their obsession with every detail of your mundane idiosyncrasies, in a way that makes you feel like there’s nothing you could possibly be but the bravest soul that ever dared to travel to meet theirs in this dimension. And then, like the darkly swirling whirlpool they are, the inevitable maelstrom of hatred brews, and the Scorpio delivers their most important lesson of all: that lust and obsession, however intoxicating and world-altering, are light-years away from love.

The trouble with one- or even two-dimensional assessments, however, is that they fail to encapsulate the complexity of the eighth sign. For a scorpion may have one tail, but it has two claws. This brings us to the Black Dumpling Sculpture by Jess Sellinger Ceramics. A study in juxtaposition, the soft vulnerability of a melty dumpling is hardened in black lacquer, fixed in time and space. An antithesis of everything you think a dumpling would be, it’s an homage to every Scorpionic being, to their dueling urges to be both loved and protected from others. The scorpion has depths that ensure their insides will also be pried open — whether they like it or not, and no matter how hard they may toil and calculate to keep all their secrets.

A Scorpio’s deepest fealties can only lie with beings they perceive as powerful as they are — or more so, complementing that inescapable desire to subjugate that which makes them feel powerless. The scorpion is so burned, and yet so blessed. So poisonous, and yet so alchemically healing. The seduction of isolation battles with the craving to be held and seen in all their pain, all their darkness, all their hard-won familiarity with the underworlds that most souls spend their entire lives trying to escape. To love a Scorpio, then, is to fiercely protect their softness with the same shadowy ardor that they use to construct their inner adamantine fortresses.

My friend had two pet scorpions. They lived in mutual suspicion for months, until one ruthlessly cannibalized the other in the night.

Goth Shakira is an Aquarian digital conjurer and Queen of Pentacles divining in Los Angeles.