Dear Friend and Reader:
At the end of a recent astrological session, I handed my client a copy of the book Chiron and the Healing Journey by Melanie Reinhart.
The session had focused on the client’s Chiron return, an event-of-passage that happens to people when they reach about 51 years old.
Holding the book in her hands, looking at the cover, she suddenly began to cry.
I sat with her and waited until she settled herself, and then asked her what was up. She told me this story. A few years earlier, she had been called to Manhattan to tend to the last days’ care of a dying friend. Late one night, she heard a horse galloping in the streets of the city.
It seemed unusual for a horse to be moving so quickly along the streets, and so audibly that she could hear it inside a brownstone, but she didn’t think much of it at the time, given the other circumstances of her life. The next night, she heard the hoof beats of the same horse, only it was moving more slowly, at a trot.
On the third night, from the kitchen, she heard the horse slow to a stop very close to the apartment. She walked out to the main room, and experienced a vision of what she described as a 40-foot-tall centaur — a creature that is half-human, half-horse — standing before her.
The human part of the figure was bald and without clothing, and joined at the waist by the horse’s body. She had no idea what she was looking at, and while the creature did not seem malicious, she was struck by what she described as its awesome power, and was quite shaken at the sight of the huge, unworldly being standing in front of her. Her friend died that night.
She said the illustration on the cover of Melanie’s book was unmistakably of this creature: Chiron, the first centaur, and astrologically, the namesake of the first centaur planet, which was discovered in 1977. We had just spent the better part of the evening discussing the effects of Chiron in her life, tracking her development through various passages that culminated with the Chiron return she was now experiencing.
Seeing the image, the circle was complete — she recognized Chiron and understood more fully what she had experienced. For me, a different circle was complete: the knowledge that Chiron can manifest anywhere in very bold ways, whether there’s an “astrological” basis for it or not.
Chiron was the master healer of Greek mythology. His disciplines included herbalism, surgery, chiropractic, battlefield medicine, ethics, music, and divination. He was a devoted teacher of these skills, and his students, many of the great heroes of ancient Greece, included Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine. Chiron’s influences on Western language and culture have been wide and deep, and most Greek words and concepts involving the hands or healing with the hands derive from his name.
One of the greatest mysteries among astrologers is how astrology works; any astrologer seriously making the inquiry would benefit from closely looking at Chiron’s process in their life and those of their clients, and check your Chiron transits at the time you decided to become an astrologer or begin your studies.
The location and aspecting of Chiron in an astrological chart speaks to the process of wounding and healing that we all go through on the way to becoming whole, integrated people. Chiron’s process is akin to what we now understand as “shamanic wounding,” a process through which the most powerful teachers and visionaries of the tribe are initiated into their seemingly higher — in reality multidimensional — consciousness. Recognition of the fact of Chiron makes it clear that shamanic wounding is a process that all humans partake in.
Through Chiron, we learn that we are not just here to suffer, but rather to grow through our struggles and experience ourselves beyond the role of victim. We learn to see through the veils of illusion that separate us from God (which is my word for essential existence). Major passages of Chiron in the lifetime indicate trigger points for transition into power, consciousness, and very often, into the desire and ability to heal ourselves and facilitate healing for others through our compassion and our use of trained skills and technologies.
Adding Chiron to astrology compels us to rethink astrology, including its purpose, why it works, and the most effective ways to practice the craft. Essentially, considering Chiron puts astrologers in the position of needing to understand that people come to them primarily for healing, and therefore, whether we like it or not, whether we think we are suited for it or not, facilitating the healing process is the purpose we serve. People believe astrologers have a special cosmic connection, and come to us honoring that perception. Responding to this calling takes astrologers out of the realm of magicians, fortune tellers, “psychics,” and prognosticators (readers of the future) and casts us in a far more serious role.
Considering Chiron grounds astrologers solidly in the reality that our craft is legitimate, necessary and time-honored; that it’s part of a much broader spectrum of healing arts; and that it can be both used and abused in a wide variety of ways. What has the power to heal also has the power to wound.
Astrologers who want to work with Chiron need to invest a lot of energy into their own growth process, which turns astrology into a whole-life art. Striving for balance, clarity, honesty and a genuine state of holistic health are vital parts of the process of existing in the role of assisting others. Gone are the days of overweight, smoking, wheezing psychics giving health advice.
Rethinking the use of astrology as a predictive tool is a vital part of honoring Chiron as well. Through Chiron’s astrological lens, the future is merely an effect of the present. In other words, the future, which does not exist yet, is caused by something, and that something is happening now.
It may be an attitude, a belief, an idea, a set of circumstances, a relationship or a desire. Very often, the future as it unfolds is caused by an astrological reading because the reading is a creative process initiated by “two or more people” gathering in the name of truth, and the process gets results. So more than understanding or decoding the future, which it’s not really possible to understand, it’s the job of astrologers and astrology students to understand what is happening now and see the opportunities of the present for what they are and how they would impact the future.
This means that it’s the job of astrologers to do more listening than talking, and to ask a lot more questions than they provide answers. Astrology through the eyes of Chiron, for example, does not assume that the reader knows the client when he or she knows their chart; it’s up to the astrologer to let the client explain his or her chart by asking a series of questions based on the chart. In this listening process, a pattern to the events of the life will start to emerge.
This will begin to create a picture of the cause of what is happening now, and astrology will serve as a means of focusing and clarifying the information as it comes in, and guiding the astrologer about what subjects and time periods to ask about. Astrology is a lot better for asking questions than it is for creating answers, though we need them both in the same place.
Cause and effect are never separate, but in order to make real changes, the cause must change first. This sounds obvious, but it is not the way most astrology is currently practiced.
Once the cause of a situation is discovered, then healing is possible.
Healing from what? From our carefully cultivated self-hatred. From our boredom with ourselves and our partners. From our sexual guilt and frustration. From our isolation from God and fear of death. From our sense of having no options. From our rage and depression and our badly wounded ability to express joy and passion. From the belief that our lives are little and meaningless.
And most important, the freedom from healing itself. Life is a creative process, and what we call healing is just the first step on the way to a lot more.
With love,
Your faithful astrologer,
Note to Readers — This article was retrieved for a project called The Chironian, a compilation of 30 years of my writing about Chiron. You can get that here, with an accompanying video on the Chiron-Eris conjunction. Use the discount code!
