What is Nessus Saying?

 

March 3, 2006

 

http://cainer.com/ericfrancis/mar3.html

 

Hi Eric,

 

I've just had a quick look at your Q&A and read with interest about Nessus. I've had a quick look at where it is in my chart, it's the only planet in an earthy sign and doesn't have any aspects to the rest of the planets apart from Q to my sun, which is part of a T-square. What is it likely to be saying about me? Where should I be looking at to heal? I do have a problem forming relationships to men and it is something I want to address, 'cause I'm fed up with getting it wrong.

 

Best wishes,

 

Vanda

 

 

Dear Vanda,

 

Everyone born in the 1950s and 1960s has a conjunction of two Centaur planets, Nessus and Hylonome. These planets were around the same position and moving at around the same speed for close to two decades. Through the 1950s and very early 1960s, they were in Taurus. Then in the 1960s the conjunction switched signs to Gemini, but remained fairly close. You were born with the Taurus version.

 

I'll refer readers back to a recent column two weeks ago when I covered Nessus in detail. Hylonome, which I have not covered much on these pages, you can sum up in two words: self-inflicted. My take on this conjunction is that it's about the abuse that was inflicted on the generations that came through the 'divorce era' of western society (which has not ended, but the trend seems to have really gained steam with this conjunction), and then the ways in which we took that abuse on, and continue to inflict it on ourselves.

 

You know, it's interesting. I hear a lot of people say that they have problems forming relationships with the other gender and they want to do it better. But I don't think I've ever heard someone write into this column and say they want to learn to communicate better with the other gender, how they can do that. This would fall under the general category of 'forming relationships', but it's a specific subtopic.

 

I think that to honor the themes of Nessus/Hylonome, we would need to form relationships with people who are dedicated to their own healing process. Those of us who hang around astrology (at least the way it's practiced in our neighborhood) are part of a little cult of self-awareness and personal growth. This is not exactly a mass-scale phenomenon, as most people really are out to get the best deal for themselves and that is their view of life.

 

Actually, we could say quite a bit about Hylonome/Nessus in Taurus as this relates to our society's obsession with what I will call selfish security. Rarely do we make an equation like, 'If the people around me are safe, then I will feel safe', or, 'My well being and that of my community are directly related'. Rather, we tend to say, 'I better get the best deal I can get'. This is how Nessus in Taurus might think, but because of the outer planet nature of Nessus, we're talking about an intergenerational situation and something that is inflicted on us by a kind of grand plan in society that few people are conscious of. (The ones who tend to be the most aware of people's values and also of how to exploit them are the top-level masterminds of advertising, marketing and public relations.)

 

Then, adding Hylonome to the equation, we perpetuate this thinking on ourselves, but it is a kind of trained self-attack. Are the values we espouse really are own? Or are we being pirated through a kind of 'values opening' or injury in Taurus signified by the Hylonome-Nessus conjunction?