Eris in the 3rd solar house. Spiral Door aspect, Quaoar and Ixion in the 11th solar house. Pluto working toward the 12th solar house. Saturn in the 7th solar house. Chiron-Nessus conjunct in the 1st solar house. Mars retrograde in the 6th solar house. Venus retrograde in the 7th and 8th solar houses.   Aquarius is the relationship house for Leo; the career house for Taurus; and the house of home and security for Scorpio. This article covers Aquarius Chiron returns at the end.

CHIRON, Nessus and Neptune are acting like permanent residents of your astrology, distant planets that are together compelling you to think of yourself more deeply, and differently, than you ever have before. This is saying a lot, as you are one for whom personal inquiry is as natural as breathing, perhaps more so. One of the gifts of your sign is a natural skepticism which lets you take nothing for granted. But now this is being pushed past all limits.
 
Like Aries, Aquarius provides a nexus point for where a conscious individual and his or her community (or society) meet. But the relationship, Aquarius-styled, is more complex and involves what feels like an eternal process of logically integrating each individual thought or idea with its implications and wider ramifications. In other words, it's never just about you; and no idea stands alone. There is also the necessity, always, to deal with group reality presented by Aquarius, a factor which is being called into focus by so many planets in your sign.
 
Aries often takes many leaps as an individual and is capable of considering itself much more freely from constraints imposed by collective reality, though the awareness of Eris in that sign is changing this as we speak. Fire signs, with whom you have many significant relationships, play a somewhat faster and looser game in life than you do. Air signs, particularly yours, need a theory to back things up, evidence that the theory holds some water, and a collective agreement among others as to the truth of what you perceive.
 
Speaking of water, Neptune transiting your sign since the late 1990s has taken your logic for a swim, given it a bath, vaporized and condensed it a few times, and run it through the spray mist of a fire hydrant on a few hot days of summer. In short, your logic is not what it used to be; its papers are crinkled and its colors are running together. As a result, your prejudices are losing their grip, a fact of which I am sure you are grateful. But your intuition is much more vivid than it used to be, and if Aquarius is the sign of the water bearer, your pitcher is by this time pretty well full and you have plenty to share.
 
Different things matter to you today, things you never would have dreamed would change so profoundly. I would imagine some of your fighting spirit has mellowed, but you're not exactly a wimp; rather, you know there are different ways to penetrate the world than intellectually, and one by one you are learning them. Yet how long did it take to realize that a question was the thing driving you forward? It will continue to do so, though the form of the question is rapidly changing.
 
Chiron and Nessus in your sign, forming a long conjunction that actually started in Capricorn, tell much of your story astrologically, though apropos of who you are, this is a story that is rippling through the culture and of which you are somehow part. When planets move into our birth sign, we tend to identify with them, or perhaps it's more accurate to say that life is better when we do. Let's take these planets one at a time, and for background, they are Centaurs, discovered in 1977 and 1993 respectively. Centaurs are small planets that tend to have orbits that cross those of other planets, often Saturn. This orbit-crossing quality speaks to their ability to reach from normal consciousness into another level. Sometimes that level is crisis, or sometimes through intense learning, a portal opens up to another state of mind or energetic dimension. Often, this odd thing called power tends to condense or crystallize around Centaurs, though it usually comes after a crisis and confrontation with the shadow aspect self, that is, by confronting what we normally deny.
 
Chiron, in particular when crossing one's birth sign, crossing any angle of the horoscope, or when placed prominently like in the ascendant, can prompt a crisis over existence. I mean this literally; some people have massive health crises, while others just dive into their unexplored ability to question life, its meaning, and the meaning of their own existence. If Neptune in your sign left you for many years with the feeling that you may not quite exist, Chiron has pushed the issue to the forefront, insisting that you consciously feel how intense it is to exist, to fear that you might not really exist, to know you will not exist someday, and to face many different opinions from others about the fact that you are very much a factor in their existence.
 
Whether someone bestows upon you an honorary Ph.D. from Princeton University, or throws a tantrum and promptly runs out the door when you walk into the room, any response to your presence is indeed affirmation of your strength and awareness, though you may not see it that way. But I do recommend it. Chiron in your sign is an ongoing lesson not to take things personally -- maybe the most useful tool we have for living amongst others in society. Yet it's also a reminder that your personal experience of life is a testament to who you are; your perceptions are unique to you alone. And no matter what sub-species of Aquarius you are, whether you have an Aquarius Sun, Moon, ascendant, or another planet placed there that you identify with, this Aquarius factor provides a critical point of contact, a tangible nexus, with society.
 
With Chiron, the relationship is now highly energized. You are being drawn out of yourself, and compelled to integrate your reality with the world. I would say it's tense, but it's only as tense as your mind is not relaxed. Who you are is who you are in the moment -- the moment, that is, when you remember. The tension of Chiron in your sign is a little like having a transport beam following you around. Because you're human, you tend to forget it's there, being easily distracted by chocolate cake or checking the bus schedule. Then you remember, and suddenly you're a different person, because you're right there in the moment of your life, fully present. Then you drift off, but it seems to be doing the drifting. Again and again this happens, until eventually you remember you're able to step into a place of actual awareness wherein you can actually define yourself, program your existence in the form of clear choices, and direct the overwhelming energy that Chiron brings into any situation.
 
One thing you have helping you from overheating is Saturn in your 7th solar house, Leo. This is a big guardrail, with two main functions. One is that it keeps you looking at your reflection. Your ruling planet in your opposite house is a bit of the "mirror effect." However (as one who makes art principally with mirrors), I have a different view on this metaphor. Mirrors always present a mirror image; we see everything reversed laterally. In this respect, the image is never accurate. When people show up in the world and "show us our reflection," they are often showing us something different than ourselves. Yes, we may identify with it in some way, or despise it in some way -- but it is indeed different, and we can use the opportunity to choose.
 
Second, Saturn is helping you decide which relationships you want and which you do not. Everyone plays by different rules, and one of the ways you will decide who you want in your life is by the rules by which they play. Are their rules fair? Do you always come out the loser? Do their rules give you a chance to play and have fun? Do this person's rules add up to the fact that they are an asshole? Make up your mind. It's easy. Play with the people with whom you want to play. If somebody doesn't want to play with you, move on -- it may be personal, but don't take it personally.
 
Through this dance, the question of meaning is lingering in the atmosphere. What is the meaning of having this much awareness? What can I do with it? Why does it hurt so much sometimes? Why can't I go back to sleep?
 
Nessus, also transiting your birth sign, helps tell this story. However, as I am writing, I am remembering something that happened many years ago involving this strange and relatively new planet, which is that when Pluto transited from Scorpio to Sagittarius for the last time in the fall of 1995, beginning our current era in history, it was accompanied by Nessus.
 
The theme of Nessus, which we are now facing in spades as the Pluto in Sagittarius era builds to its climax, is that causes have effects, and effects have causes. Nessus is the point of consciousness where the two meet. Nessus is the point of awareness where the law of cause and effect cannot be denied: some call it karma. Chiron is the awareness that we must do the right thing at all times; some call that dharma. Now the two are close together, implying that they are factors that bear a close relationship: past and present; or choices made today based on lessons learned in the past.
 
What Nessus makes us aware of is what was done to us, and how it is that we came to be less than whole. What Chiron makes us aware of is what we must do, in order to be whole. Nessus is suggesting strongly that the mental patterns which shape your life were, in turn, shaped by certain acts of cruelty or negligence that were inflicted upon you, and that these things have taken up residence in your thought patterns. Nessus is reminding you that the buck must stop with you; that, at the least, it is your responsibility to take care of your needs and not pass on the damage that was done to you.
 
Chiron states the case more affirmatively: it is your job to heal, and to teach others how to heal. A Course in Miracles reminds us that "everyone teaches, and teaches all the time." Such words, attributed to Jesus, could have as easily been spoken by Chiron, whose life was indeed a lesson in teaching all the time. It is by the act of teaching that we ensure further learning, consolidate what we have learned in the past, create new knowledge, and at least attempt to extend the thread of consciousness to a new generation.
 
The Spiral Door opens in the charts of Aquarians on the cusp of the 11th and 12th houses. Consider that Aquarius is the 11th sign, and the 11th stage of this sign is Sagittarius. In other words, the way you express your Aquarius-ness is through Sagittarius; when you overlap the archetypes we have the feeling of your heart and soul, your ideas and your feelings, reaching into the wide, wide world, further than you ever imagined; yet we also have the feeling that you seek your true self along a journey that necessarily has you deeply invested as a member of society. For you, being an individual and being part of a group are the same idea -- this does not present a paradox. This is because a group is made of individuals.

And as Pluto has transited this house for more than a decade, you have had some intense, challenging or strange experiences along the way, including a radical change of direction in 2001 that in a shocking, stunning or alarming way, made you conscious of the direction in which you needed to take your life. I trust that you did. Other factors were at the time pushing you to become fully responsible for your creative gifts, your ideas, and your need to express them. That phase of your life still has a bearing on your decisions now.
 
The events of the coming four seasons illustrate a scenario of you breaking into the clear. It would appear you have grown tired of any vestige of the old ego shells you dragged around for so long and have become determined to exist in the world as what you know of as your soul: your infinite self, your most authentic self, and the self that has the gift of being able to not only create things and ideas, but also to create patterns in the community or society around you. This is leadership by pattern making; an unusual kind of leadership indeed, and I trust that not everyone reading this will be up for it or believe that it's possible, but the truth is, it happens anyway; we always partake in society in a way that creates society as we all go along.
 
It's just that your power is being turned up, your awareness turned on, and your empathic understanding of the experience taken deeper. Everyone teaches and teaches all the time; this is about the example you set being more effective than anything you could ever say, but the words you say counting for quite a bit.
 
I will touch on this briefly. The 3rd solar house of Aquarius is Aries, which means Eris in Aries. The 3rd is an intensely mental house, it has a powerful here-and-now property, and in it the primary means of expression is words. The presence of Eris suggests that you will address your insecurities most profoundly by relating to them in words. The beauty of written words involves the way they can be consciously shaped, sculpted, edited and refined; and a property that may seem opposite -- the fact that they can preserve the image of a contemporaneous state of mind and allow us to reflect on where we were in the past, days, weeks or months later. Words allow us to see what we believed in the past, and they also allow us to shape what we believe in the present.
 
Either or both can become excellent tools for identifying our shadow material: our fears, hidden beliefs, and the thought forms that are inherently self-limiting. As your role in society changes as you step through the Spiral Door, indeed, as you are transported through it, written words will be one of your most useful tools for grounding and for figuring out where you are at.
 
The discipline necessary for you to do this will only help your growth and help you raise awareness of the changes you need to make, and the many options you now have.
 
Aquarius Chiron Returns

Many readers of this essay, I reckon, have Chiron in Aquarius and will be experiencing their Chiron return, and I will touch upon that for a moment. Anyone between 49 and 52, broadly speaking, is in the process of their Chiron return. Chiron in Aquarius pushes the Uranian side of Aquarius to maximum voltage, and you are likely to feel highly energized, hyper-aware and at the same time, uncertain what to do to have maximum impact on the world. You may alternate between extremes of alienation and social acceptance, yet never fully identifying with either one.
 
The healthiest impact of your Chiron return will be to ground you in yourself. Chiron always does this one way or another, but I would suggest that Saturn in Aquarius is a good model for what you are reaching for now. The quality of this placement is a steadiness of energy and a quality of being impervious to the weather. There is something older than you that can teach you how to be you in a way that is at once absolutely unique and at the same time fits beautifully with the moment in which you are alive. Saturn in Aquarius is the fairness of a judge who has seen it all and who has learned compassion, who sees the need to assess cases individually, and who is aware that personal bias enters into every decision. Being aware of that bias, it is easier to reduce its negative impact and to emphasize the fairness aspect. In this situation, fair is not what everyone else says it is; fair is having the courage to accept that it's what you say it is, and being wiling to be wrong.
 
The mid-1950s, when you were born, were an extremely disturbing time in world history, a time verging on as dark as the current times in which we are living. The world was systematically being wired with nuclear bombs, and our nervous systems wired with paranoia. The mid-1950s are a particularly interesting era in the history of the chemical industry ("better living through chemistry"), which reveal that better came with an extreme cost, such as sick workers, poisoned food and a breakdown of integrity on a scale that few can imagine.
 
At the same time, a small group of people were breaking free from the prejudices of their society, the pressure to conform, and moreover from the illusion that there is just one correct way to live, depicted on Father Knows Best. This movement, who gave us the poets Allan Ginsberg, Gary Sneider, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane Di Prima and many others, was based on the idea that you had to speak your mind and your guts at the same time, and that each individual who was aware enough had a responsibility to wake up and stay awake.
 
As Chiron returns to the position of your birth, you get a choice for which side of the Aquarius coin you want to live on; which way of thought, action and in truth idealism you want to embrace. In a true sense, you get to relive many of your early examples, only this time, seeing what it's like to be alive in a time when there was never more freedom available, and never more false reasons in your face not to be free. You get to see what it feels like to make the choices of your parents and grandparents. You get to experiment, if you choose, with coming out of your comfort zone and daring to be an individual. In times like the ones we are in, it is easy to cower, and it will get easier.
 
But I suggest you wake up each day and remind yourself you're never going to pass this way again -- and that it's amazing you're even here.


AQUARIUS
For more information about your relationships, please see Leo. This will give you an idea what is happening for those closest to you, and how they may experience you. For more information about your career, please see Scorpio. You can consider this an alternative take on your professional life, as it's an assessment of your 10th house. For more information about the home and security angle of your chart, please see Taurus. This will give you greater detail on themes just covered in this horoscope that relate to home and security. For an explanation of the houses, please see this article.