Scorpio rising symbolizes that you're self-controlled, stoical, reserved in expression and silent in your defense.  You have great strength, depth, and the determination to overcome all adversaries.  Willful and self-reliant, you need to overcome lingering resentment and jealousy.  Some say this is the strongest and most difficult ascendant of all: the "razor-edged path" only taken by those who have been given the strength and power to do so.  Devil or angel, with Scorpio Rising the personality and the spirit do battle unto death.  And it is the personality that must evolve through death and rebirth.
You're magnetic and very aware of the sexual energy in your environment, and have the ability to drastically alter your surroundings as well.  You appear to others as intense, passionate, secretive, penetrating and sensitive.  You know how to get to the heart of things, and gravitate to positions of power and control.  There is a great reserve and hidden power with Scorpio Rising that is felt and respected by others.  It's not easy to know you, for you're a deep individual and silent even in suffering.  You're courageous, persistent, and cool-headed in a crisis.  The heavier the burden, the more you'll quietly see your task through to the end.

As you are intuitive and psychic, there is all the more reason for you to protect others from the accuracy of your sarcasm. You have healing power if used appropriately. The house your Pluto is in shows experiences necessary in developing self-awareness and your expression as an individual. Pluto's sign and aspects indicate your ease or difficulty in doing this. Heavy afflictions to Pluto can indicate viciousness, as you are very perceptive of others' weaknesses.

Famous people with Scorpio rising (a Scorpio ascendant) are/were Simone de Beauvoir, Leonard Bernstein, Chuck Berry, Napoleon Bonaparte, Glen Campbell, Johnny Carson, Paul Cezanne, Charley Chaplin, Dick Clark, Wally Cox, Bette Davis, Emily Dickinson, Michael Douglas, Clint Eastwood, Arthur Fiedler, Aretha Franklin, Sigmund Freud, Steven Gaskin, Johann Wolfgang Goethe,  Ed harris, Katheerine Hepburn, Charlton Heston, Victor Hugo, Julio Iglesias, Kris Kristofferson, D. H. Lawrence, Gordon Lightfoot, Charles Lindbergh, David Lynch, Penny Marshall, Groucho Marx, Mussolini, Nehru, Huey Newton, Nietzsche, Nijinsky, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Kenny Rogers, Diana Ross, Marquis de Sade, Red Skelton, Grace Slick, Rudolf Steiner, Margaret Thatcher, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Sarah Vaughan, Robin Williams, Walter Winchell, William Wordsworth, and Frank Lloyd Wright.

This Scorpio Rising-Scorpio Ascendant-Scorpio first house page and much of this 550-page website are excerpted from You and the Universe.