Jason and His Teacher by Maxfield Parrish (1909)
Today Chiron stations and begins his retrograde until December 19. The Sun is at 23 Cancer opposite Pluto in Capricorn—shinning the full light of awareness on the emotional depths of the deep traumas on earth. Mercury is at the Galactic Edge in the early degrees of Cancer, surveying the perimeter of this whole situation.
The centaur Chiron is often referred to as a wounded healer. It reveals aspects of what is visible and what is invisible, what is conscious and what is unconscious. It orbits the sun every 50 years, so between ages 48-51 people have their “Chiron return" which marks a time to revisit the original wound of one’s overall life. Christian mystics often talk about the concept of “the wound is the way” based on Jesus’ teachings: to take up your cross and follow me. Chiron’s original wound was that his mother was raped by Saturn and he lived his life as an outcast in a cave. Because he was part god, when he was hit with a stray arrow, he did not die, but continued to feel the eternal wound. He is part Shaman, part god, part horse, part sea nymph (as his mother). He grew up to become a wise teacher who helped raise Achilles and guide other centaurs away from mad wild wars of raping and pillaging and into bodily mastery and focused wisdom.
Chiron is also called the rainbow bridge as it lies between the inner and the outer planets in the asteroid belt—which legends say is actually remnants of the ancient planet of Tiamat which was destroyed during the Galactic Wars. Where Chiron is located in your natal chart is where your work of making a bridge from your deepest wounds back to the celestial heavens happens for your own soul expansion. Where in your life does “an ancient hatred become a present love”? And just as the gods finally took pity on the endless suffering of Chiron, and lifted him up to the stars, we too can follow that way of facing our suffering consciously, (rather than distracting, disassociating, denying, projecting) and find true remedy in bearing our cross, hanging on the tree of life until wisdom comes to revive us and lift us up. The story of Chiron marks the significance of making our deep wounds and suffering conscious, not so we can wallow in shame or guilt or low vibe, but so that we can alchemize this energy—make the unconscious conscious—and so transform led to gold, and death into life.
Chiron’s wound holds the mysteries of secrets we must keep. The places where we are deeply wounded need to be protected in some way as we are working with making the wound conscious. In the tarot deck, the Strength card depicts a woman taming a lion (which is 8 or 11 depending on the deck) and points to mastery over the animal world, our personal instincts, and the power of love overcoming all (which was also Chiron’s work). The woman is often veiled or hiding under a hat the eternity symbol and her crown, pointing to a supreme mastery over what is eternal. It’s a strength that moves beyond will without wisdom, beyond those energies that force and threaten and coerce others into self betrayal in order to get results, beyond a sort of material rule that leads to slavery, and into the power of love simply unfolding at the root of all creation. The Strength card also reveals the power of Durga, the divine mother who rides the tiger, who’s gentle heart is enough to tame any beast. And yet it is this gentleness that is often hidden and masked lest it be mistaken for weakness or exploited by those with darker intentions. The true initiates know not to throw pearls before swine. Know when the cat must hold their tongue. Know the power of the silence, of the cave, of the wound.
Last weekend I was walking the streets of downtown Fargo and I realized I was suddenly surrounded by a group of men, possibly drunk and a little wild. I looked up and saw that there weren’t many other people on the street except for me and this group. My instincts were to stand as tall as I could and walk as deliberately and powerfully as I could. One man stood up and opened his arms and began walking towards me making cat calls as if to simply grab me. At that moment, the piece of information that I needed to hide was that I am so gentle, I don’t even kill bugs. And instead I used the energy of “Judo”. Judo know if I am a master self defense trainer with the skills to kick you in the balls and take out all fifteen of you. Judo know if I’ve got angels the size of sky scrapers that will take you out with a flash of lightning. Though I didn’t know what was about to happen or what I would actually do if this man put his hand on me, suddenly another guy jumped up between us and pulled that man off the sidewalk and said—hey man, leave her alone and I walked through that frenzied crowd unscathed.
Sometimes we must access the Judo. The secret. The unknown. Faith in things unseen. This is the more noble expression of the trickster energy. Sometimes the divine plays tricks. It must. I see this as the veils of reality. In the myth In the Book of Ra, it says that humans on this planet have thicker veils than humans on other planets where they can more easily recall their past lives and lessons. There are simply sides of reality we can’t fully see. And as Elisabeth Hiach points out in her book, Initiation: that longing we all have to overcome the puzzle pieces that just don’t fit perfectly, is simply the longing for God. If we were to finally reach that longed for state of unity, reality would cease to exist, as if it were going through a black hole. And so for this whole experience of embodied existence to play out—for the shattering of God until the final regathering of God—we live in this state of unresolvable angst—and we agree to live with a certain amount of friction, in order to have this human experience, in order for the soul to have the chance to grow. So suffering is a part of the way that we can be here, soul light enfleshed in human form, pieces of God experiencing other pieces of God, for the benefit of God’s wisdom.
The image of the veil has been prominent this week, as people in the disclosure movement are hoping for more and more reveals and clarity, while a millionaire is piercing the veils of space travel, while others are warning about transhumanism technology which would veil the human form and keep it from seeing it’s full potential by trading soul for a veil of AI. I also read this week a myth of a goddess’ lending her veil to a young god to disguise himself as a woman from Poseidon so he could swim safely across the sea. Issues of tender times when we still need the mother’s protection before we are strong enough to stand on our own and be fully seen. Issues that come to play in our deep unconscious driving fears: Would we prefer to be externally controlled because the burden of self expression and personal freedom is too great? Enter the saga of Saturn square Uranus as the main drama of 2021.
Chiron is currently in Aries, the sign of the Ram, and connected with the energies of the self. So we are reviewing wounds around our own right to have a self, to be a self, to have a place in the cosmos, to even be different than other selves. Chiron is presently at 9 degrees Aries and will move back to 8 Aries. The sabian symbols can give us some clues here to see what we are reviewing collectively:
Aries 9: A seer gazes intently into a crystal ball in front of them
Aries 8: A large hat with streamers flying, facing east.
Aries 9 has to do with focus. I personally have found it very difficult with all the dramas from the fall out of 2020, shifting schedules, cancelations, home school, new rules, to be incredibly difficult to focus. I used to sit and read. Now I find myself sitting for shorter amounts of time. I am still keeping up meditation practices, though I notice how more fears and worries are driving me rather than my soul passion and purpose. My worry basket just keeps getting new things put into it. So Chiron is reviewing where our attention is, what we are giving our power away to, wounds of the third eye, wounds of the “move the carrot” game, wounds of trauma which create soul fractures and fantasies to escape the inescapable. Chiron is asking us to find that original wound, the psychic split from our “first love” and refocus diligently to tame our own animal natures.
If you can’t meditate for one hour,
Then meditate for two.
Student: What is the greatest obstacle to enlightenment?
Master: Fear.
Student: What do we fear the most?
Master: Love.
Aries 8 reveals a focus on the head, as the word “corona” also does. This head is covered in a hat with streamers flying, facing east. This points to all of the new ideas that come from the east, the light where the sun rises, a taking in of lots of external information to activate the atman, or the truth of the soul light in communion with source light. This could also point to the activation of the pineal gland, the awakened human and the innate protection or spiritual veil that is provided by God for this tender growth period. This points to the place of soul growth, that edge between the known self and the undiscovered self. The hat with streamers may be a visual of the prenatal time of the enlightened being before one is suddenly streaming with internal conscious light—an activation of the crown chakra.
Often our socially approved world view denies that there is even an undiscovered self at play and holds out that everything is already known, and great mysteries are often reduced down into “nothing but” and living symbols are flattened into exacting signs. And here we find ourselves in the realm of the karma of Saturn’s raping where trauma compressed reality. Are we brave to let the light illuminate our deepest wounds, to stop the distraction fantasies, the running into artificial life, to sit still and face where it hurts, to stop where we are hurting others, to honor the mother principal again instead of raping her resources?
The unconscious rules, says Carl Jung. So only that which we shine the full light of awareness upon is what we can affect in the iceberg of the unknown. Taboos, phobias, shadowy sides of personality, fragmented selves from traumas, or even the actual experience of having to hide in a cave for survival (as legends say Mary did after Jesus’ crucifixion) bring up the soul’s need to shield the developing self from the King Herod’s who would murder the Christ child. Just as the womb protects until the baby is ready, life often conceals certain aspects and revelations until the soul is ready.
Secrets are for initiates. In the Bible in the book of Luke it says: “what was once hidden in secret will be announced from the rooftops!” So there is a mystery here too in the sort of secret seeds we each are tending. What will the fruits be? There are womb secrets too that hold the mysteries of the divine mother as the ultimate programmer, (which is why our wombs have been targeted since the fall of the Goddess cult). There are secrets that for reasons of national security, trauma based population control via generational sexual abuse will not be discussed in our highest courts (see Cathy O’Brien’s testimony—one of the first DC sex slave whistleblowers). Here I see the karma of Saturn’s rape still playing out in our country and around the world. The resistance to facing the wounds still strong, but shifting as more do the brave work to admit their suffering and give voice to the collective so it can be transformed.
What wounds are coming up for us personally in the past few days that we will be reviewing? Just before Chiron retrograde, Carol P. Christ, a force in resurrecting Goddess consciousness passed away.
Religions centered on the worship of a male God create “moods” and “motivations” that keep women in a state of psychological dependence on men and male authority, while at the same time legitimating the political and social authority of fathers and sons in the institutions of society.”
Because religion has such a compelling hold on the deep psyches of so many people, feminists cannot afford to leave it in the hands of the fathers. When people who no longer “believe in God” or participate in the institutional structure of patriarchal religion still may not be free of the power of the symbolism of God the Father… religion fulfills deep psychic needs by providing symbols and rituals that enable people to cope with limit situations (death, evil. suffering) and to pass through life’s important transitions (birth, sexuality, death).
-Carol P. Christ
Goddess asteroids Hecate (representing the ancient triple goddess as Mother, Maiden Crone), and Lilith (ancient rage of the Goddess at Gilgamesh cutting down of the life tree) both recently crossed over Chiron. So in his retrograde review, you can bet that this ancient potent Goddess wounding will also be up for reevaluation in our human consciousness.
Other prophetic female voices I value recently expressing the wounds on Facebook:
Trauma-healing
will never happen if you’re still domesticated by colonization.-Ashley Aurora
And
Don't think for one second I don't see the layers of reality that are disturbing..
That I don't know what NATO is doing in Libya..
That I don't know about the human trafficking crisis..
The threat of corporate elite government take over
And the many other atrocities I witness on going and playing out..
I see it..
I also see a lot of incredible things happening,
Human beings coming to terms with our vulnerability, our interdependence, our toxic dependency and wanting to purify the relationships we have with our inner and outer environments.
As consciousness is literally blooming inside many humans it is shedding light and putting pressure on all the unchecked areas that have been syphoning permission and power away from unsuspecting beings.
The level of awareness coming through many is creating a generation of leaders that will diligently and actively work together to rectify the over stepping toxic function of many aspects of our reality.
-Kandice Ko
Issues of healthy boundaries were coming up huge last week in many of my conversations with family and clients. How much of myself must I hide to please the other? What is the line between keeping the peace and self betrayal? How can I enter win-win relationships that are helping build communities of greater human flourishing? What happens if I say no? Can I survive the rejection if people don’t like me when I stand up for who I am? Or will I be publicly destroyed or cancelled?
This brave facing of wounds, is not always at the ready of our socially culturally approved matrix— or the collective public mind with it’s many yet unintegrated shadows. I’m reminded that there are souls who share different galactic histories and may not remember (or feel deep in their bones as I do) the take out of the grandmother’s wisdom, the attacks on the herbalists and the homeopathic practitioners, and before that, natives, Druids, and the denigration of the belief in magic so that it could be repackaged and sold back to us in safe sterilized religious structures where the wild earth goddess was scrubbed out.
Brave facing of wounds for me also includes: integrating the karmas from “witches” who were burned and betrayed (many for simply being women or holding different views than the state approved religion); wounds stemming as far back as the banning of priestesses to channel the earth or the Pleiadean dove mothers; wounds from the fall of Merlin into stasis by a mighty enchantress; wounds from the Piscean age where we fawned our public religion to fit in, and secretly held other beliefs; wounds from inquisition times where we were forced to deny the Old Ways, the earth based religions, in order to abide by religions that were state approved; wounds from Big Business approved narratives imposing too flat, too concrete, too non living symbols that are sucking us into the void of nihilism and the hungry ghosts of consumerism living out of balance with the earth (the US consumes ~70% of the worlds resources); wounds held in the scary fairytales as the rise of reason and the scientific method chopped up all that was unseen (like feelings and love and wombs) as it took front stage over the mytho-poetic truths. Wounds from denial of the shamanic invisible realms, denial and loss of the truths of dream time, awareness of ancestral karmas, and psychic chords, to name just a few.
One of the deeper wounds that is coming up for me personally are the wounds of Hypatia who’s asteroid is presently in the beginning degrees of Libra. As the rise of “trust the science” is emerging in our collective conversations, let’s also remember the history of what happened to scientific women such as Hypatia, who was publicly ripped limb from limb.
According to contemporary sources, Hypatia was murdered by a Christian mob after being accused of exacerbating a conflict between two prominent figures in Alexandria: the governor Orestes and the Bishop of Alexandria. Kathleen Wider proposes that the murder of Hypatia marked the end of Classical antiquity, and Stephen Greenblatt observes that her murder "effectively marked the downfall of Alexandrian intellectual life".
-Wikipedia
If you’re interested in going deeper into the myth of Hypatia, check out this Galactic Shaman Astrologer’s chat on the topic of female dismemberment:
The death of the Muse, Hypatia. Rome will fall. The library of Alexandria. The record of death for an oracle. This is what is in the deep unconscious of why... it is difficult to STAND UP. Asking us to kiss the holy JAB>>> if we wish for our life. "The mutilated body... flung into flames." WHAT DO WE FEAR... remember and then move forward. This is deep in the psyche and some family members may be pushing you to kiss the jab because they fear you will be slayed for your sovereignty. It’s definitely time to be free. First published January 2020.
-Lalita Karoli, Galactic Shaman Astrologer
Hypatia’s story gives me great pause as to whether the current leaders in the cult of science in bed with big pharma and big business have faced, and have made amends and rectified the karmas of Hypatia. In other words, is the era of the take out of Alexandrian intellectual life over? Or is humanity still oppressed under the same ancient visible and invisible forces of tyranny? If the scientific method is king (Shadow Saturn/Dark Father), then all that is invisible and unmeasurable—things like feelings and love—are still left out of this reality, the Queen is left out, the sacred heart.
The idea that we chose our wounds is an interesting one as well. It frees us from the victim consciousness that can keep us stuck in feeling powerless, as if the evil in the world only exists “out there” and instead we can kiss that place within us that is most tender in ourselves, we can accept and love that which we may instinctually hate or want to project on others. Mother wounds, father wounds, childhood wounds, past life wounds, the masters teach that the samsara of suffering keeps repeating until finally someone is able to make the patterns conscious. Or as Carl Jung taught: the unconscious suffering of wounds lead to neurosis, suffering consciously leads to healing; bearing one’s cross may not alleviate suffering entirely, but it will invite you to become fully human, which is the ultimate path to divinity: love for this fragile human form, this mysterious wonder of it all.
The wound has the potential to become your greatest gift. The wound is the place from which comes your greatest medicine. So as it may be socially acceptable to pretend that we are invincibly strong, the deeper truth is that our weaknesses and our vulnerabilities are actually our greatest strengths.
When Chiron finishes his retrograde on December 19, the moon will be in the sign of Cancer the mother. Ceres/Demeter asteroid will be at our North Node of human destiny at the Pleaides. The Sun will be at the Galactic Center at the last degrees of Sagittarius (The Centaur) directly opposite of where Mercury began this initiation in early Cancer at the Galactic Edge. And Venus, Goddess of beauty and love will be conjunct Pluto Lord of the Underworld in Capricorn wrapping up the depths of our journey of conscious awareness of the wounds with her Persephone ability to rule and even rise as a queen and a phoenix from the underworld. All of this just days before the final exact square between Uranus and Saturn on December 24, where Chiron’s wound wisdom has the potential to balance this Aquarian air structure tension with earthy Taurus wild genius.
The cracks are how the light gets in.
-Leonard Cohen
At it’s root Chiron asks us to consider: how does one bridge the opposites? How do I gracefully hold compassion for the opposite in a world that doesn’t always have room for different voices, different family histories, and different paths of healing?
If anyone can help bridge our present challenges and redirect our focus to the highest spiritual truths at this time, it is Chiron.
If you’d like to schedule a personal astrology reading with me to see where Chiron is located in your natal chart and get some guidance on how the current planetary transits are influencing the facets of your life, you may visit my services page: https://www.taraloma.com/new-products/hand-drawn-natal-chart-amp-intro-to-your-personal-astrology