Chiron: Walk Me Through This World

Light Bridge for Aries and Aries Rising

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Last year I was working on a project that brought me into the midst of a discussion of self-acclaimed skeptics. This wasn’t my first visit to this intellectual swamp of doubt, but I learned something that stunned me: not only are many skeptics questioning of any art form or branch of spirituality that is not validated by science; many have a special disdain for intuition.

They doubt its existence, proposing instead that the information that comes through this channel must be something other than what it is, such as wishful thinking, logic operating behind the scenes, or a figment of the imagination. You cannot afford any such seeming intellectual luxury; you are on a different path with a different agenda, and some of the most lavish opportunities of your life lie ahead of you.

I think the doubt of intuition by skeptics reflects a bias of the world. We know that science and the opinions of scientists are given inordinate intellectual weight, and that these things can be bought and sold like apples in a market.

Intuition, for its part, is something all our own. Yes, it can be unduly influenced by fear and expectations. However, it exists, we all know that it does, and we also know that taking advantage of its gifts is a matter of listening. Intuition can be trained and tuned; we can develop a conscious relationship with it, which is how we figure out how natural and normal direct access to knowledge really is. This is happening to you and for you; it has been for a while, and the pace of discovery is about to pick up.

Given the stunning pace of developments in your life — now and for the foreseeable future — intuition is something you’re going to need. There are simply too many events, too much information and too many people to be able to think through every last detail in a linear fashion every time you have a question or a choice to make. You are changing too fast to have a logical sense of who you are at any given time; this is something you must feel and understand, without necessarily having reasons to do so.

There is the part of you that simply knows; that feels the truth, can access that sensation with trust in your heart, and go with what is right for you. Gaining this trust is, at this time in your life, the bridge of light that you’re crossing.

Aries and the Cardinal Cross

Events within and involving your sign, Aries, have been reshaping the world, and doing so rapidly. Through 2010 we experienced a cardinal grand cross, involving Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn. This felt at times like a clash of realities, and gave the sensation of ‘everything, all at once’ — the essence of 2012. We are seeing the results of that aspect structure, which is still in effect, in global events during these very days. You have been living with them for a long time.

Anything that has the power to shape the world has the power to shape your consciousness and put you at a crossroads in your life. The idea is to be here as consciously as you can.

The most potent and long-lasting influence involves Uranus entering your sign for the first time in more than seven decades (Uranus was last in Aries from 1927-1935). In this event, we have Uranus crossing over the Aries Point, the first degree of the tropical zodiac. The net effect is a personal revolution in your life: another thing that, like intuition, many would say is impossible, based on the accumulated failures of people to change their lives at will. But this is not just about you making a decision; this is you in collaboration with the patterns of your life and the cycles of nature as documented through astrology.

One way or another, you will go through a series of metamorphoses which will present opportunities to reinvent yourself not just once but over and over again. This energy is rising now, and if you want to take control of your destiny this is the time to put your surfboard in the water. As you do so remember that surfing doesn’t mean you can control the wave, but it does mean you decide how you ride it. The wave is much bigger than you, and it’s going to require skill and timing in order to let this energy take you where you want to be — and in this, you have many choices open.

The thing to remember about changes involving Uranus is that they can happen fast and unexpectedly; the key to success is a combination of preparation, awareness, willingness to change — and holding a vision. While you may not be able to control a wave on the ocean, the kind of cosmic wave you’re about to ride is part of your psyche; you are, and have always been, in a direct relationship to it.

In the growth method and awareness development practice suggested by astrology, what we focus on is the relationship between the inner and the outer; between our intentions and the conditioning forces of the world around us. We are inclined to believe that the world outside our awareness has more influence than the one within. I am not so sure.

The conditioning forces around you are certainly influential. But they, too, are directly involved with the cycles of your experience. Let’s consider one of them briefly, and describe some of the opportunities for change that it suggests. Then, we will dive back into your inner world, where your ideas, your feelings and responses to all the different flows of input combine to create your total sense of awareness.

Here is the thing to remember: In the same year that Uranus takes up residence in your sign for the next seven years, it’s joined by faster-moving Jupiter. Jupiter will be present for less than a year, and is a kind of welcoming committee for Uranus. This is a strong suggestion that at the beginning of this process, as in right now, you will have some of your best ideas where to take your life. You have unusual access to orders of intelligence you may have only dreamed existed. The things you say, do, decide and envision now will have unusual influence on your future, so I suggest that — despite all the impulses urging you to speed up — you slow down and make your immediate decisions carefully. There will be moments when life seems to decide for you, but this is not quite one of them.

Saturn Square Pluto: 2008-2011

As I mentioned, your sign is part of the cardinal cross of the heavens, which is about to be illuminated by Uranus, the forward-thinking planet of revolutions and inventions. For a few years there have been two other transits happening on the cardinal cross, working together and directly influencing you. In a real way these transits — Pluto in Capricorn and Saturn in Libra — have been making room for the changes you are about to make. As well, there have been a series of eclipses along this axis for the past year-and-a-half, shaking up your root system and compelling you to be more independent than you’ve ever been.

Pluto in Capricorn represents the ways in which you have been seeing your potential as someone who participates directly in the world. Most astrologers would say that Capricorn is your career house and that this transit is about pumping up your ambition. That’s true as far as it goes; what is really happening is that you’re starting to see the potential for your own growth and ideas for who you’re becoming, meeting up with the upheavals and changes that are gripping the world.

The old structures are crumbling; so too are your old ideas about what you wanted to do with your life. The sense of instability you may feel is the same as the sense of potential. This is true despite whatever doomsayers may be claiming to prophesize. Times of change are always the best time to create a vision and seize the day. We are in an enormous moment of change now, but the wave is only beginning to crest. And if you keep alert and allow yourself to grow and change, you will meet the changing structures of the world in a perfect moment of synchronicity.

At the same time as your own potential is dancing with global developments, there is an influence in your relationship house that is clearing space in your personal sphere, so that the new people in your life have some room to coexist with you.

Saturn in Libra is clearing away your old ideas about relationships: the pretenses and expectations they were based on, the outmoded concepts of commitment, and your cinematic fairy tales that directly prevented you from having actual encounters with actual people. If you spent any time the past 10 or 20 or 30 years living in imaginary relationships, that is coming to a rapid halt, and while this may be ‘disillusioning’, remember that the only thing you lose when that happens is illusions.

Saturn and Pluto nearly spent a year in an exact square, and while this aspect is technically separating and has a wide orb, it’s still influential. The theme is seeing the unified themes of the changes you are making in your sense of mission, and the changes you’re making in your relationships. You’ve reached the time where the two have to work together. You simply cannot be a submissive partner in one aspect of your life and an influential person in another. If you’re going to become the master of your destiny, then that involves having partners who are directly supportive of that, in relationships that work in perfect harmony with your highest life goals.

This requirement is more than enough to fracture any even mildly dysfunctional relationship. And it’s certainly possible that you’ve been going through enormous changes in your relationships, wondering why this has to be. It comes down to dharma: to a living, breathing, active sense of purpose that is rooted in cooperation. If your relationships don’t have that, you don’t want them. As for the ones you want, if you keep your focus on what is the most important to your personal sense of mission, your human encounters are likely to follow suit.

A one-word description for this process would be maturity. You are being called into your full adult presence in the world, and that comes with the need for awareness and conscious decision-making.

To the extent that past years of your life have been lived in a state of chaos over your intentions, you are now encountering what may feel like an overwhelming need for focus, clarity and the conscious claiming of your power.

Uranus in Aries: Conscious Individuality

Everything I’ve been describing involves cultivating the awareness of yourself as a distinct individual. If you attempt to go along with the crowd, or abdicate your power of choice to others, this is likely to backfire on you; if you find yourself somewhere you don’t want to be, trace your actions and figure out where you gave up your power — and claim it back right there on the spot.

I understand fully that this is challenging; and I understand the reasons this is so. These primarily involve our relationships to parents and partners. What I did not say about the Saturn-Pluto square I described is that part of what it’s making room for is your freedom from the bonds of your family. I see that mainly as a function of Pluto in Capricorn, which is challenging you to break away from the willpower of your dominant parent (most likely your mother), and establish yourself as an individual with individual will.

This can feel like an act of revolt and revolution, and you may feel a backlash of guilt. Just about everyone breaking free of what held them back in the past goes through a process of relinquishing or overthrowing guilt. Just saying these words is making me want to write a book on the subject (there is plenty in Book of Blue), but I will say this: Guilt is generally perceived as a sign that we’re doing something wrong. It’s quite clever that way, it is convincing and we do feel wrong when we feel guilty, even though we rarely are. And in that feeling, its secondary function is to make everyone else wrong.

I would propose that guilt is evidence that we’ve been abused and controlled. Think of it as barbed wire that’s been embedded in your skin since before you remember, making it painful, subtly or overtly, every time you move; every time you eat; every time you fuck; every time you want to make a decision for yourself; and most significantly, every time you want to be free of an oppressive situation.

Claiming yourself back in the face of this kind of guilt, and claiming your feelings from guilt, is precisely what I mean by individuation, at least in the first phases. Through doing this you’re able to figure out who you are and what you want, and make tangible decisions to act on that information.

This is conscious individuality — and only you can give yourself permission and the freedom to do it. As I have suggested and will probably say a few more times, this feels like an actual revolt. That’s why most people don’t quite get around to doing it; the bonds of guilt are too strong, and their courage is not strong enough to break them. What we think of as love is often made mostly of guilt. Love has no blame whatsoever — and that takes guts. Yet with Jupiter and Uranus in your sign, while the courage and guts to make these changes in perception may not quite be inevitable, they’ve never been more available.

When you combine this with the unprecedented restlessness that you’re likely to be feeling, you have some real possibilities opening up for you. The thing is, it’s just really good to understand what’s happening and why you might feel certain kinds of emotions. To make one last statement about guilt, I would say that rather than being a sign that you’re doing something wrong, it’s proof that you’re doing something right. Rather than being evidence that you must turn back, it’s a signpost that you’re headed in precisely the right direction.

If you can see how your past history of control dramas makes you susceptible to them now, you get the chance to heal some very deep material. Many, many people are tired of living as slaves, and others are just figuring out that’s what they’ve been lured into being. Yet slavery as an externalized function, such as being trapped in a marriage or employment situation you cannot stand, reflects something that’s been conditioned into us, and that is where the healing that sets us free really happens.

I would like to offer you an example of some of the psychology inside this, in a reading that comes from the subtle planets — the minor planets. Then, I will return to the theme of intuition.

Uranus, Pluto and Authority Complex

Looked at one way, the astrology of 2011 and well beyond has you in the role of personal revolutionary: the one who ‘changes the world in me’ — and this ripples out as a vector. By many accounts you are being called upon to change the world, but as I’ve suggested, Uranus transiting your birth sign (or rising sign) is about unadulterated individualism. This is a challenging notion for a modern Westerner, starting with the problem that we associate individuality with things like sneakers, toothpaste and getting that very special mauve-colored credit card we deserve because we’re so special.

Then there is the real, gritty, down-to-Earth process of self-actualization — words we don’t hear very often anymore, and which may come back into more extensive use with Uranus bursting the whole concept of “I” into a vast experiment rather than something we’re all so convinced we’re certain of. There are various other degrees of the fantasy level of individuality for those slightly less shallow than falling for the special credit card; they can involve over-identification with a sports team, astrological sign or country.

Once you start actually probing into yourself, you will know it because you start making discoveries. Once you’ve gotten that far — sorting out fact from fantasy about self-actualization — you can embark on the process consciously, and when you go there, you’re likely to encounter authority.

If you watch the news, you will see over and over again that authority dramas are played out — that’s basically what the news is. Whether we’re watching governments try to implement pat-downs and naked photos, including for children, as mandatory prerequisites of flying on a commercial airliner, or watching private banks seize the federal treasury, the central issue is control. But control is not something that starts on this level; in truth it’s a deeply personal issue, magnified to the collective level.

Throughout the writing of Wilhelm Reich, there are references to what he calls the authoritarian mini-state: our family of origin. He is stating in blunt terms what it often takes years to decipher about ourselves in therapy — that our family experience molded us into these people who are totally submissive and consequently struggle so hard to express the most basic life energies. Consider that as part of a ‘normal’ upbringing we must subjugate eating, shitting, pissing, breathing. Then comes school and its ongoing authority and control drama.

One reason we are seeing so much authority drama in the world right now is that people are starting to wake up to how controlled they have been, and deciding they no longer want to be that way. Let’s consider this in terms of your chart structure and your current astrology.

Pluto in your 10th house and Capricorn could be read as career ambition — that’s the simplest, most mundane take. Under this theory, most astrologers would warn you not to become power hungry, advice that might be useful to 1% of the population. Most people do not encounter the opportunity for actual power in their professional lives. Most of the time, we run into it as something we bang into or get snagged by. Looked at another way, Pluto in Capricorn in your 10th is about learning how to manage your encounters with power: cautiously, consciously and noticing when you go limp.

Yet it’s also about taking authority over yourself. The 10th house is the house of expressing one’s ambition. It’s where we express our purpose in the world. Generally it’s about one’s true career as opposed to one’s day-to-day work; the day-to-day is the 6th house, and most folks never quite make it from the 6th to the 10th — or the 6th is what they do, and the 10th is what they are subject to.

Pluto in Capricorn, as a global transit, is about a changing world. Capricorn represents governments, banks and large corporations, and we are in the middle of a huge restructuring which is really a power grab. And it happens that this total shakeup is going on in your career house, which may represent either some extreme earthquake in your professional life, and/or the restlessness of wanting to do more and bring your soul into your career. There is the implication that as the changes to society come, if you watch the world with your soul, you will find your place and your way to where you want to be.

Speaking of soul — and the growth process of the soul-in-form of which we are all in the midst — that is the layer I think it makes the most sense to focus on. In the chart for the Aries ingress of the Sun (the vernal equinox), there is a configuration that includes an exact conjunction between Pluto and the centaur planet Crantor. This takes the Pluto transit down to the level of personal emotional catharsis. This is an extremely rare aspect event that was warming up through 2010, that spans all of 2011 and is still close in 2012. (Note, we last heard from this conjunction in 1886-1888. It happens less than once per century.)

Pluto’s collaboration with Crantor covers releasing our deep emotional reactions to power, from habitual victimhood to the projection of guilt as attack. Crantor takes that Pluto in Capricorn to a deeply individual level: what you might think of as the hormonal level. It’s the energy of a centaur contacting Pluto — acceleration of the process, and making the process conscious and available on a personal level.

Contacting this in the Aries ingress chart are several other points, in particular Kronos (authority, respect, self-respect), Child (the responses of a child, or as if one responds as the child self) and Minerva (themes of daddy-pleasing and thus acting ‘politically correct’). So what we have here is a story about how we respond to authority, why we do or don’t stand up to it, and whether we take authority over our lives. This is about growing up, in our not-so-very-grown-up society. We actually do respond to authority like children; we are expected to submit to any whim of anyone with any power at all, no matter how we may feel about it.

Asteroid Child tips us off to how this is a fundamentally childish response, or rather a conditioned response we learned in the authoritarian mini-state of the family of origin. In that mini-state we establish our value, or rather, seek approval, by being compliant to authority. And we expect this to work when we’re adults.

From this compromised state, we are expected to grow up and be superstars, making our special unique contribution to the world. Often what happens is that frustrated little children get into power, craving the approval of their parents and thus selling out their souls in the process.

Occasionally, people go through a process of purging their childhood issues (i.e., they grow up into adults) and express their authentic core reality in the world. And this is the option that is open to you — with consciousness. The whole issue with Pluto is that (like Neptune) it tends to function below the level of awareness; and that is never a good idea where relationship to power, success or ambition are concerned.

So the quest of this transit is to do the deep healing work, and understand the connection between your family of origin and how you relate to powerful people and entities — and how this influences your sense of what is possible in your life. From there, you gradually self-actualize, learn to address your power, and find your place in the world.

Your Relationship to Groups

One of the things that is changing fast in the world is the concept of group loyalty. The concept has been co-opted by institutions such as various churches and corporations, which are not able to sustain the concept under the influence of Pluto in Capricorn.

Part of that crumbling involves the exposure of corruption, for example, in the groups known as investment banks. How many times do we need to hear about air-conditioned doghouses, or pastors preaching purity who have sex with anything that moves? Many people are realizing they want no part of these kinds of organizations.

Yet Uranus in your sign is encouraging you to get together with seemingly like-minded others. I suggest you be cautious about this because you’re still getting to know your own mind, so you can’t really be in a position of knowing what others think and where you might match up. I assure you that the role of groups and your involvement with them will be a prominent theme of the next seven years, though it’s vital that you put your own individuation process first. When group power coalesces, even in informal situations, it’s easy to submit or sell out to it.

At this point in your development that could seriously compromise your growth. So, too, could the pressure to conform and maintain the illusion that you still are the person you once were. Indeed, to change as rapidly as you’re changing, you may need to alienate or distinguish yourself from people you know; certain relationships may reach the point where they are no longer sustainable. Most of us deal with feeling like we’re ‘a little too weird’ by acting less weird than we are and doing our best to blend in. I would propose that for you, those days are gone.

Yet you are also being drawn to participate in the wider world, and that means with others. You will need to be patient as you vibe in with the people you belong with, where you can participate as yourself rather than as any facsimile or approximation of yourself. Perhaps this idea will resonate with you. Alice A. Bailey writes in Esoteric Astrology, in her chapter on Aries, “The human being in [his/her] eventual recognized group relationships is of more importance than appears in [his/her] individual life, which the orthodox horoscope seeks to elucidate. It only determines his little destiny and unimportant fate. Esoteric astrology indicates [his/her] group usefulness and the scope of [his/her] potential consciousness.”

Though I am saying it in more inviting and less harsh terms, this is what I’m getting at: When you consider the superficial and self-centered quality that has a grip on our society, it makes a lot more sense. When we look at a horoscope and ask, ‘Will I make a lot of money? Will I be famous? Will I find true love?’ these are individual manifestations that do not consider how our lives really exist in a dynamic with the world around us. The horoscope is a collective instrument. We are all sharing the same sky, the same Earth, the same planets, the same events.

In the first instance, the group you belong to is that which includes everyone who is alive at this moment. In the second instance, your group is everyone who is challenging their idea of who they were in the past. When you meet these people I suggest you ask yourself if it’s still true the next day, and the next.

Inner Vision, Intuition and Intimacy

My beloved friend, the poet Jason Blickstein, decoded the word intimacy as into me see. When we have the ability to see into ourselves, we are capable of intimacy, we crave it and we are able to share nourishment. The limit of intimacy is inner vision.

With Chiron embarking on an eight-year journey across Pisces, your solar 12th house, you are about to get a profound window into yourself.

You’re also about to learn something about intuition, which first shows up as the experience of sensing who you are. You’ll also learn something about imagination and your own creative journey, but — if we use astrology as a guide — at the center of your experience is an encounter with direct access to the source of your emotional intelligence.

The 12th house is a region of consciousness that is indeed unknown to many Westerners, except as it manifests in ‘strange’ dreams, ‘unconscious’ motives, ‘secret enemies’ gossiping about them, and occasional flashes of insight into how interconnected everything/everyone is. Chiron’s presence in this house makes its reality tangible. What is normally a deniable source of information — we certainly tend to doubt what our intuition tells us, and rarely show it the full respect that it deserves — will become tangible and manifest for you, under the influence of Chiron. You will have access to anything you need to know, if you consciously seek that access, or if you take the signs that it’s making itself known. And, here is the catch, and the root of all ignorance: you will be responsible for what you know.

We get no gift in astrology without a corresponding need, responsibility or quest. As Chiron embarks on its journey across the shadowy, zero gravity world of the 12th house, it will bubble into your waking consciousness. The 12th is the house of dreams, but it’s also the house of the waking dream of everyday awareness.

Uranus in your sign portends a transformation of your self-concept and state of awareness that is so total, so radical and so unpredictable in its expression that you need an entirely new guidance system to help you make the most of this. As you burst into one new personality matrix after the next, Chiron in Pisces will help you continually sense your inner presence expressing itself through you.

You might call that spiritual grounding. You might call it a connection to the nonphysical. You might describe it as a bridge that connects all your incarnations (in this lifetime and others), which will help you feel secure in the many rapid transformations that you will make.

Yet this connection or point of contact is what some would describe as intuitive. What you learn and discover defy ‘normal’ concepts of rationality or consensus reality. And it can defy what people want to think about.

Chiron through the 12th can bring lots of shadow material to the surface of your psyche. You’re likely to get a tour of everything you’ve avoided, feared or denied in the past, at the same time you get information about how to heal those very things. You will need to listen carefully, and hear well — and you may feel called upon to take action where there is no guarantee involved. As ever, where Chiron is a presence the key is to proceed with awareness, compassion, love and the intention of healing.

That’s always the case, of course; when do we really have guarantees? Yet now, the kind of changes you may be inspired to make will summon you to a depth of trust that you may have very little experience with, and apparent reasons to doubt. Your intuition has been erratic for a long spell of your life, and you’ve learned to depend on other means to get the information you need.

In more ways than one, indeed, in every way, the past and what you learned in the past are subject to a complete review, and much of what you’ve come to be certain about you will discard for better methods. One of those methods will involve the sense of spontaneous transformation that does not take time, or rather, the time that it has taken has now elapsed and you are ready to make the leap.

Jupiter and Uranus in your 1st house and Chiron in your 12th house are a perfect synthesis of consciousness and awareness; of inner and outer; of receiving and giving; of yin and yang. That is enough to help you bring your world into existence as you embark on this amazing journey. It’s an invitation to allow your outer life to become consistent with your inner life —  and what a difference you will notice when you’re expressing this.