Crossing the inner ocean: Mercury, Chiron and Borasisi

Have you felt rather like your mind has not quite been as focused as usual this past week? Many of us have been thrown for a loop by Mercury encountering Neptune in Pisces straight after leaving its post-retrograde shadow phase. Now it’s headed for a conjunction that should act as a focusing agent — but with a twist.

Neptune, Mercury, Chiron and Borasisi in Pisces. Well, not exactly (but it is the Pisces Full Moon from September over the Atlantic). Photo by Amanda Painter.
Neptune, Mercury, Chiron and Borasisi in Pisces. Well, not exactly (but it is last fall’s Pisces Full Moon over the Atlantic in Portland, Maine). Photo by Amanda Painter.

Mercury will conjoin Chiron at the end of this week (1:08 am EDT March 29). Chiron is a centaur planet, named after the mythical half-human, half-horse creatures in mythology. Chiron in myth was a teacher and healer.

Chiron in astrology functions the same way — although the lessons we learn and the inner wounds we heal when spurred on by Chiron are not always the simple, convenient kind.

First Chiron raises our awareness of what needs our attention; once we’re aware and taking active steps, it “focuses energy and accelerates any movement already underway,” as Eric wrote his 2010 article, How to Cross an Ocean; How to Light a Fire.

Chiron will continue moving through Pisces for another four years or so (it first entered this sign in 2010-2011). While there, it is bringing our attention to both the health of the waters around us and the heath of the waters within us: our emotions, creative potential and the inner realm separate from ego, as well as illusion and delusion in its shadow manifestations. We’re all currently in a process of crossing the ocean of emotional, mystical energy and multidimensional realms within ourselves via the boat of Chiron, to use one of Eric’s images. Chiron-as-boat “includes such tools as perception, analysis, documentation and — most significantly — boundaries.”

This means we’ve had a few years now to get acclimated to this journey through our inner seas. You might feel like a seasoned sailor by now; maybe you’re still finding your sea legs. In either case, we’re getting closer to Mercury, the planet symbolizing our minds, encountering Chiron’s energy of focused perception. We’re about to gain some clarity about some facet of our inner world.

It seems that this facet we’re about encounter is related to a minor planet within two degrees of Chiron in Pisces right now: Borasisi. Borasisi was named after a god in a fictional religion in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Cat’s Cradle. Without getting too bogged down in the particulars of that story, think of Borasisi as having to do with belief — in particular, the lies we choose to believe.

Even more specifically, we can relate Borasisi to “the investment we have in being perceived a certain way because we have a certain partner; or how we want our partner to perceive us,” as Eric described in With Love from Borasisi in 2011.

If we’re willing to see it, it’s obvious how convenient it can be to dodge the truth through denial, through being willing to be duped because we want to believe a lie. In this age of everyone carefully crafting their online personas, we have tremendous investment in how we present ourselves and how others perceive us.

Meanwhile Neptune is slowly crossing Pisces, working to dissolve this separation between the illusion our egos are invested in keeping up and our inner core being. Chiron is making sure we notice the process — and that we get uncomfortable enough to embrace what we discover is true about ourselves.

Eric also wrote in the 2011 edition linked to above that, “There is something in Borasisi about the use of creativity and narrative for constructive manifestation. There is also something about the conscious use of interpretation as a means of improving our lives.”

This is the positive, constructive emergence of Borasisi. To get there, however, we’ll have to go through the process of Mercury meeting it and Chiron, perhaps shocking us with the truth — but in a ‘gentle’ way. You don’t need to con yourself to get by in this world, no matter what the advertisements tell you. You can believe in something real; it’s closer to you than you think.

5 thoughts on “Crossing the inner ocean: Mercury, Chiron and Borasisi”

  1. I read the link to the earlier discussion of Borasisi. I think our integrity can always be reclaimed. But we sure do masquerade a lot.

  2. “What if I didn’t need a crisis to force my decisions?”

    what if, indeed. i think i’ve lost count of how often i’ve wondered that!

  3. Amanda this is exquisite. Borasisi has a shadow similar to Neptune: lies vs delusion.
    Chiron’s not having any of that, and in the boat of Chiron, I can own vision, inspiration, and creative manifesting through belief in these. Neptune and Borasisi can work together for the highest.

    This post and Eric’s archived articles on Chiron the boat remind me again of my dream long ago, and the art I made about it. Maybe I need to make new art! Maybe the ocean does not need to rise up in a tidal wave to swamp me. What if I didn’t need a crisis to force my decisions?

    I didn’t know that when I started writing this comment.

    I’ll share the drawing with the updated for today blog post: http://carlasanders.typepad.com/orgasmic_alchemy/2014/03/the-boat-is-chiron.html

    And go make a new drawing, a new reality, one that isn’t so scary.

  4. Very nicely done Miss Amanda; I especially appreciate your recognition of the effects of most advertising, especially on the very young and the very old, and at certain times, the registered voters. No better symbols than Mercury-Borasisi-Chiron together could interpret the most negative side of this industry. I worked for an advertising company years ago and it has gotten so much worse since then. There are no taboos anymore about subject matter or duplicity of content; anything goes. Too many advertisers aim for the insecurities of target groups in order to sell their products. There was a time television stations, newspapers, etc., had scruples too, and would not accept advertising that preyed on the naïve. Alas, it is now a no-holds-barred approach to the mass consumer. Thank goodness for astrologers like yourself who make their readers aware of the pitfalls which the snake-oil salesmen style of advertising uses. They know your weakness and they use it to part you from your money.
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