The sign and its names
Vrishchika means a scorpion, and the sign is drawn as a scorpion with its tail raised. Scorpio is the Latin word for the same animal. It is the eighth sign. In Devanagari the Sanskrit name is written वृश्चिक.
Element, quality and ruler
Scorpio is a water sign and a fixed sign. The four elements each hold three signs 120 degrees apart, and Scorpio shares water with Cancer and Pisces. The water signs are the fourth, eighth and twelfth of the twelve. The three qualities repeat around the circle, and Scorpio shares fixed with Taurus, Leo and Aquarius. The fixed signs sit in the middle of each run of three: the second, fifth, eighth and eleventh. These are traditional labels for sorting the signs.
The ruling planet of Scorpio is Mars. Mars also rules Aries. Mars also rules Scorpio. It comes closest to Earth, and looks brightest, once every 26 months or so, when Earth passes between Mars and the Sun.
The nakshatras in Scorpio
Scorpio covers sidereal longitude 210 to 240 degrees, which is exactly nine padas, or two and a quarter nakshatras. The nakshatras with a part inside it are: Vishakha (pada 4 only); Anuradha (all four padas); Jyeshtha (all four padas). Their ruling planets are Jupiter, Saturn and Mercury. Scorpio holds Antares, the red star that marks Jyeshtha. It is the second of three water signs, between Cancer and Pisces. Its opposite sign is Taurus.
The Moon takes about two to two and a half days to cross a sign, so a moon sign of Scorpio lasts that long each month. The nakshatra the Moon is in narrows it down further. Use the nakshatra finder to see both for your birth.
Moon sign Scorpio and Sun sign Scorpio
Your Vedic moon sign, the rashi, is the sidereal sign the Moon was in at birth. Your Western sun sign is the tropical sign the Sun was in. They are different measures, and the sidereal zodiac sits about 24 degrees 13 minutes behind the tropical one in 2026.
For Scorpio the dates show it. In 2026 the Sun is in sidereal Scorpio from 16 November 2026 to 16 December 2026, and in the Western Scorpio from 23 October 2026 to 22 November 2026. Only about 6 days of those two ranges overlap, so most people with a Western sun sign of Scorpio have a Vedic sun sign in Libra, and a moon sign in any of the twelve. The moon sign changes every couple of days, so the moon sign calculator asks for your birth time and place.
The padas of Scorpio and the navamsha
The nine padas inside Scorpio take nine navamsha signs in a row. They start at Cancer and run on to Pisces, then the next sign, Sagittarius, starts again at Aries. That is how a single degree of the moon sign points to a second sign in the D9 chart, which is read for finer detail.
Counting from Scorpio
Vedic readers often count planets by their distance in signs from the moon sign, called the position from the Moon. With a moon sign of Scorpio, the count runs: Sagittarius is second, Capricorn is third, Aquarius is fourth, Pisces is fifth, Aries is sixth, Taurus is seventh, Gemini is eighth, Cancer is ninth, Leo is tenth, Virgo is eleventh, Libra is twelfth. The sign opposite Scorpio is Taurus, and the two signs in a trine with it are Pisces and Cancer.
Sun in Scorpio: Vrishchika Sankranti
The Sun enters Vrishchika in mid November. It starts the Tamil month Karthigai and the Malayalam month Vrischikam.
Calculated with the Lahiri ayanamsa and whole sign houses; every setting is on the method page. Last checked 2026-10-04.