Today the Sun is conjunct the discovery degree of Chiron. That is to say, on Nov. 1, 1977, when an astronomer named Charles Kowal, noticed Chiron in a photograph using something called a blink microsocope (Chiron was discovered under a microscope, looking at photographic plates made using a telescope) Chiron was in the 4th degree of Taurus. And that is where the Sun is today.
The Sabian symbol of this degree is “The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,” which symbolizes the link between the mundane and the celestial order. This degree was given a touch of literary immortality in the title of Barbara Hand Clow’s book about Chiron, which has the subtitle “Rainbow bridge between the inner and outer planets.”
In 1977, Chiron was given the minor planet number 2060. Today the catalogue goes up to about 150,000 or so. That is a lot of discoveries in 32 years, particularly considering that the first one, Ceres, was discovered in 1801. So for the first 176 years there were 2060 asteroids and minor planets discovered, of which Chiron was by far the strangest; and between 1977 and today, we actually know of well over 200,000 — orbiting our own Sun — if you include the ones that have not been given permanent catalog numbers.
This being said, Chiron remains the one to watch if you want to understand how a small planet works. As Barbara, one of my old teachers, mentions in her book, Chiron provides a connecting point between the difficult to grasp energy of the outer planets, and the easier to understand but generally less meaningful energy of the inner planets. Out in the middle are Jupiter and Saturn (and a heck of a lot of new centaurs), and these two are what were called (starting in the 70s) the transpersonal planets, because they give us components in the psychological model known as astrology that help us bridge the inner world with the collective world.
Where Chiron fits in is giving all the planets, from Jupiter out through Pluto, a way we can observe, see and use them; or use them in different ways than we learned in the past. For example, Chiron gives us a way to go through the at times solid barrier of Saturn, and to use its structuring power to create a boundary. It can help us ground the energy of Uranus, which often feels too strange to grasp. It can lighten the energy of Pluto and make it useful, whereas otherwise it might just feel relentless.
The aspect we are in now is a triple conjunction between Jupiter, Chiron and Neptune. This is really three different conjunctions (Jupiter-Chiron, Chiron-Neptune, Jupiter-Neptune) and with all conjunctions it helps spending some time sorting out the energies involved. I will skip that exercise for now, and point out again that Chiron is focusing and helping us penetrate the veil of what has been an extremely challenging transit — Neptune in Aquarius.
It is difficult to see mass delusion because so many people are zonked out on the same lies, the same trends, the same fundamentally warped values. It is difficult to see through the thick fog of not knowing whether something happened inside a video game or whether it happened in reality. It can be done, however, and Chiron is here to gently show us what the problem is; what the addictive pattern is; what the thing we believe because everyone else believes it is.
This will call on some of us to make decisions about what exactly we’re going to do. Let’s not wait for 2012. I will say that I am seeing a lot fewer people stand there like deer in headlights as the necessity to participate in their own life comes at them. That is a violent metaphor, but to witness so many intelligent, soulful people stare hypnotized into oncoming lights has been distressing. Confusion may be an excuse, but it’s not a particularly good one. Con-fuse means to take apart; and what Chiron is helping us focus and reassemble is the sensitive nature of our psychic awareness, our perception and our ability to focus and apply wisdom. Not a day too soon, of course, and we can see signs of it many places, if we look…yet what we may soon be asking Chiron is what to do if most of us wake up too late.
be, condolences on your kitty. My twins are 17 this year and still hangin in. They are inside outside cats, utilizing a series of small dog doors I installed when they first arrived many long years ago.
Now with in out kitties, well, they like to bring things in. I live in a 125 year old farm house. It has a central room with seven doors to other rooms, except to the kitchen which is doorless. So the kits brought in a bat one summer’s eve. The strategy I developed to getting the flying animals out of the house before they commit suicide flying into windows is to open the two doors to the exterior and herd them with a broom. Well, damn if I couldn’t locate that bat. It was late so I went to bed and closed the bedroom door so the bat couldn’t get in there. I’m laying in bed and there in the corner ceiling was the bat.
The other weird one was laying down to sleep and seeing a baltimore oriole in the hanging plant. That only took a towel wrap and a fling out the door to set loose.
The most challenging gift they delivered was a chipmunk. I herded him into the bathroom which is a very small add on. He moved so fast. He ran around the walls and up the shower curtain. Even the slipperness of the bathtub didn’t slow him down. I finally got him towelled and out the door.
As the kits get older, they do less trapping. Much more sleeping.
And chiron, I don’t really get it all: soupy. But I do know it was a big and much needed release to reinstate my well being (my gauge). And the important thing is that I understand how I sabotage myself. And in that the details don’t really seem all that important. But there is behaviour that is happening in the next generation, that I could not bear to see. It was time to break the chain. As I cleared, so did my young counterpart. Another of life’s mysteries, or not. The subtleties . . .
Stay well.
victoria, so glad to hear from you; it has been a while and I’ve really needed some of your clever humor these past few weeks. As for how nuts your brain is, I’d say quite the contrary. Your virgo instinct to gather info and process it into useful material (as in “clues”) shows a still functional brain despite what appears to be some emotional and/or psychic pain.
Not having multiple siblings myself, your experience in losing two of them in succession was very moving. What a trauma for a youngster to bear, especially since it was not talked about by your family. Everybody dealt with the loss privately, in their own way. Even as young as you were though,you preserved parts of them within you as a foundation for your own values. Now it seems, from what you wrote, that the painfulness that was suppressed at their death is haunting you, but also making you aware of truths about family (attitudes? behavior?) which had not been understood before. Not easy to think of loving Chiron at this stage of a healing process. . . not when there is so much pain to experience. However, from my own experience, and that of other folks I’ve talked with, the grief gradually subsides and eventually a normalcy returns. At that point, you begin to realize that the painful experience has left you with knowledge (wisdom) that you can use to help others who suffer. That’s the whole reason for virgos baby!
On your experience of the honking geese in the middle of the night, I will add that to my collection of unusual “bird” stories that happen at crucial periods in life. Most recent for me was when a baby bat had managed to get inside my home (through an open window with no screen) but didn’t make himself known until late at night when all were asleep. He circled my bedroom at low altitude (seemed like an hour!) while I crouched on the floor, half asleep, wondering what the f….. to do. Eventually, he lit and I was able to toss the basket, with bat attached, out the window (with no screen). In less than a week my ailing kittty had to be put to sleep. The morning I took her to the vet to have her put to sleep, she dragged herself to the sliding glass door to watch the birds feeding. I opened it for her to be closer to the action (amazing how they keep those instincts right up to the end) and within two hours, she was finally at peace. After I returned home, totally distraught from the experience, I no sooner sat down then a baby bird started flying back and forth from the kitchen to the living room. Holy shit . . now what! Long story short, I coaxed the birdy back outside, but those 2 experiences left me with no doubt that the bird family has close ties to the spirit world.
As to the gal pal with the same birthday as your sister; more testimony to the power of healing, the power of love, and the awesomeness of astrology. Much peace and love to you on your healing journey victoria. Stay in touch.
be, am glad to know that chiron is lovable. I kinduv forgot to put the word easily in my request to be through my chiron return, and uh, questions are kinduv being answered more quickly now and manifesting more immediately for me now. Kinduv like the “dark side” phrase that was reverberating in my brain. Ask a question, get an answer. So uh, I kinduv catapulted into a new space last evening and I am not really sure where I am.
The awareness I reached is kinduv all encompassing soup and the pointers in culminating events around me are scattered but sharp in comparison. The “in my face” factor is how the two events stared at me my whole life and I never really got the effect on me. Of course, I was young, very young, too young to even fathom the deaths of my two older siblings, even though I sometimes found myself longing for them.
I remember reading an obituary in the newspaper a few years ago. The father of one of my grade school classmates had died. He was survived by his eight children. And I thought, wow, there are families where children did not die. It was incomprehensible to me.
I should have known something was up when I heard geese honking overhead in the middle of the night. How unusual and I felt like they were flying over the pea patch and I heard the scrawling of a pen on paper and I thought of the article on grieving.
Do you see how nuts my brain is in tagging onto information I need. I feel like I have accumulated 10,000 clues and all that goes with it to get to this point.
I cannot see mass chironic effect at this time. All I know is that there was death. It was weird. It was not talked about. I have been feeling the missing bridge in the two in succession that left and that it’s the reason there is a chasm between the two factions in the bio family. As young as I was, I hung onto them in what I valued about them and that is what shaped my values. What a great reminder to my siblings, huh? And what a great demand on my relationships as I still searched for them in others. But what I really ended up with is knowing alot of dead people. More grief. Some kind of confusion. This is new, it will pan out.
Tonite I go to a play with a gal pal I met in a weird way a year or so ago. I knew something was up when I found out her birthdate was the same day as the sister who left. Weird shit, huh? What a journey. I pinch myself and feel that I am still here. The road goes on.
My love of Chiron started at my Chiron return and my understanding of him came through your writings over the last 5 years. The most focused phrase you used that stuck with me was “in your face” in describing his method of raising consciousness.
While sorting out the energies of the Neptune/Jupiter/Chiron conjunction as it conjuncts the U.S. Moon, I believe that the rainbow bridge phrase describes Chiron’s role most succintly in this position. Yes, that veil of Neptune needs to be penetrated and Chiron is the guy to do it. To me it seems he is the bridge between Neptune (and the rented veil) and Jupiter’s ability to see the big picture and understand. Most specifically, for the citizens of the U.S. And yes, there is and will be the wounding that is associated with Chiron and facing painful truths.
For two years I wondered why there had to be three planets coming together like this, and what would happen. Look no further than the daily (the relentless in-your-face) news about the U.S. torture business; painful for the prisoners and painful for the people who love their country and wanted to believe that it would never stoop to such methods.
There will be more to face as the conjunction lingers on, but healing will follow as myth and experience (with Chiron) tells us. Thank you Eric; for me personally in allowing me to start connecting the “dots” of this huge aspect, and for staying in-our-faces about this Chiron guy. . .you old maverick you!
My thoughts of waking up.
Meadows of splendid floral walked upon well worn paths.
Tropical dewiness hangs in the air with the sounds of waves crashing against the shore.
A complete awareness of nature’s bounty with visions of eternal beauty,
To be shared with all who happen upon this journey.
It’s a place where the soul can rest and sit to ponder their individual fate.
While Jonathan Seagull soars so high, we can watch in stirring wonder.
There is no lacking, in this cherished spot, a deep and abiding grace.
An array of balance found under the sun that slowly warms the heart.
If perchance our eyes should meet under this vast sky,
Let this meeting be found in the presence of our grandest smile.
For each moment is so precious when we contemplate upon our essence
To be seen in perfect harmony an acceptance within ourselves.
As we decide to take the time to walk upon this path,
Let the earth hold us while the mist enfolds us in perfect harmony.
The waves that crash along the seashore is timeless and everlasting,
An experience to be seen and felt of this wondrous crossing.