The Jupiter-Chiron Cycle - Weaving the Ways of Wisdom

By Brian Clark

Two major ingresses occur in March 2023: Saturn enters Pisces March 7th, while Pluto enters Aquarius for the first time on the 23rd. Amidst these celestial thresholds, Jupiter and Chiron conjoin March 12th at 14Aries26, inaugurating their cycle that unfolds over the next 13 years. Their new cycle invites us to reconsider their archetypal bond and how, during these uncertain and divisive times, we may be more conscious of weaving their ways of wisdom together. Mythically, Jupiter and Chiron are contemporaries, existing in different dimensions and epochs, yet their conjunction brings them to the same intersection in time and space.

Chiron belongs to the primordial past. He lives in the cave regions of both nature and psyche, where animal spirits roam and all wildlife is sentient. Indigenous, rooted in ancestral soils, Chiron rekindles our connection to time before philosophy, to elemental life, to primordial presences that commune with nature spirits, attune with plants, revere the seasons and ensoul the starry heavens with image and story. Chiron is a keeper of the ancient ways. His name is derived from the Greek cheir, hand, embodying the wisdom of what is at hand through the instinctual knowing of the natural world.

Jupiter belongs to the developed world, the sphere of culture and progress, philosophy, speculation and education. Within Jupiter’s world are ethics, scholarship and the search for meaning, purposefulness and hope. Yet this ordering principle can become separative, closing off access to instinctual and sentient lifeforms, fanning the fires of inflation. Jupiter complements a new world order, emerging into prominence out of titanic chaos and disorder. These causal and conceptual ways of comprehending, accompanied by moral ways of being often eclipse instinctual knowing. In many ways Jupiter struggles with the primitive. It is through lived experience that Jupiter re-members and re-kindles the relationship with the nature spirits of his childhood.

Together Jupiter and Chiron honour the wisdom of instinctual and spiritual life, shapeshifting lived experiences into wisdom. Their union invites the conjunction of both ways of knowing - the instinctual and the intellectual.

Being new to the astrological pantheon, Chiron has been regarded as an interloper, a maverick to the systemic ways of order. Jupiter’s order (and disorder) is entrenched in the system, regarded as paramount. Hence Chiron’s presence is often overshadowed by Jupiter, discarded, marginal to the organizations that judge and regulate the system. Yet with Chiron’s discovery, his myth is reborn. How might we imagine the archetypal blend and brand of Jupiter and Chiron as they conjoin? Let’s enter the mythic where some archetypal images of their relationship might emerge.

Into the Mythic

While Jupiter and Chiron are both sons of Saturn, their fate is very different. Being the son of Titans, Jupiter is divine, yet born into an oppressive and fractured family system. Unlike his five elder siblings who had been devoured by their father, Jupiter escapes his father’s tyranny with the courageous help of his mother. The young god escapes his siblings’ fate of being interred in the infernal regions. Raised in the mountains of Crete by nature spirits, the she-goat Amaltheia and nymph Melissa, Jupiter’s destiny is to reclaim sovereignty of the sky.

Having lost his stranglehold on his new born, Saturn rages in search of his son Jupiter. In the wilds of Thessaly he encounters the nymph Philyra whom he pursues in the guise of a stallion and succeeds in impregnating her. From this wild union, Chiron is conceived. At his birth his mother panics at the sight of her son, a crossbreed of boy and horse, and abandons him in the wild. Unlike Jupiter, Chiron is motherless. As hybrid of animal and divine, his fate is to be marginal and vulnerable to the day world of the Olympians.

Of interest astronomically is that Jupiter is bound by the orbit of Saturn, while Chiron is not; its unconventional orbit crosses over Saturn’s. Chiron defies the conventions and gravitas of Saturn to access quantum realms beyond matter and mind.

Two sides of the mountain

Few sources link the myths of Jupiter and Chiron, even though they are half-brothers. One classical reference by Carl Kerenyi aligns the two gods, as each was honoured on Mount Pelion. (1) The story locates each god on contrasting sides of the mountain: Zeus/Jupiter on the southern slope, where his sanctuary was brightened by the light of the Sun, and Chiron in a cave on its northern shaded side. The image is metaphoric of these gods who have a contrasting, yet complimentary orientation to the world. But, in a culture where sanctuaries to the day world prevail, natural and instinctual ones are occulted and orphaned.

Mountains and the shadows they cast are an enthralling image of Nature’s grandeur. Each of these deities has their own mountainous habitat: Jupiter’s is Olympus, the extensive estate of the Olympians; its peak being heaven itself. Chiron’s home is Mount Pelion, a region known as the ‘healing mountain’ because its slopes were prolific with medicinal and magical plants. The crystal-clear mountain streams nourish the carpet of herbs that cover Pelion: meadow saffron, hemlock, henbane, nightshade, mandrake, St. John’s wort, mullein, yarrow. These famous mountains, immortalized in many legends of ancient Greece are boundary stones for the wildness of Thessaly; Pelion being its southern border while Olympus guards its northern region. Both Jupiter and Chiron bookend the ways of the wild.

As an embodiment of suffering, of pain and mortality, Chiron confronts our compulsion to fix, to overcome and resolve. Chiron rewilds healing as a natural process. In the Thessalian wild, in Chiron’s cave, away from the domestication of medicine, we are called to the wisdom in the wound. In his cave, the instinct to fix it and feel better is held long enough for the soulful symbols in our symptoms to be appreciated as images of healing. In the glory of the new day with the efficacy of the machine, Chiron’s world is forgotten - Jupiter becomes the great benefic.

Two sides of Sagittarius

Chiron and Jupiter are interlinked zodiacally. Both are associated with the sign Sagittarius; Jupiter, its ruler and Chiron, commonly imaged as the constellation’s centaur. The Latin root for Sagittarius is Sagitta, meaning arrow, another constellation that features the symbol of the arrow. Time’s arrow has been used as an emblem for the forward direction of time.

It is an arrow that wounds Chiron, which is an ironic twist on the Sagittarian centaur whose arrows seem firmly focused in the direction of the divine and the expansion of the cosmos. Jupiter rules this Sagittarian quest for greater meaning and knowing of one’s universe, the cosmological arrow. Chiron serves as a mnemonic of the instinctual wound that underlies the upward mobility of spirit and progress and expansion. This centaur’s arrow is like a boomerang that returns to earth to open the wound that connects us to the invisible soul-realms.

The centaur of Sagittarius is a hybrid; hence the sign is often seen as dual, man and beast. This hybrid of spirit and animal is metaphoric of the relationship between Jupiter and Chiron; their union combines the ascent of the spirit with the descent of the soul, a rhythmic melody when Jupiter and Chiron are honoured as equal notes in the chords of life. When they meet, the spirited and spiritual are fused with the anima and the animistic, an image of wholeness.

The Wisdom Tradition

Both archetypal energies of Jupiter and Chiron represent modes of knowing. When honoured and bound together, natural and indigenous ways of knowing augment conceptual thinking to bring forth a deeper understanding of both inner and outer worlds. The ascent and descent, the future and the past, culture and primordiality, civilization and indigeneity - all integral parts of the whole. Chiron’s path to wholeness honours the deep wounds to the soul; Jupiter’s path widens the universe so we can see through to a deeper understanding. Each is revered on different sides of the same mountain. With their union we seek to repair, reconcile and redeem our indigenous nature.

On a personal level we are invited to question what familial and social beliefs, values and morals have been imposed upon our natural being that no longer sustain our psychic ecosystems. Through redeeming our inner natures, our relationship to the natural world becomes more intimate and dynamic

This planetary alignment also invites a collective renewal of how we imagine the future of our natural world.

Into the Temporal

The first conjunction of Jupiter and Chiron in the second millennium CE occurred on May 3, 1004; 973 years before Chiron’s astronomical discovery. During this 2nd millennium there were 64 conjunctions of Jupiter and Chiron, a cycle averaging 15+ years. Since Chiron has a strong elliptical orbit, it travels the zodiacal pathway at different speeds, spending different amounts of time in each sign. The extremes are reached in Aries, remaining 8 years, and Libra and Virgo where it spends less than 2 years. Hence, we would expect more Jupiter – Chiron conjunctions in the sign of Aries and less in the signs of Virgo and Libra.

Table 1 shows the number of conjunctions in the signs, based on the conjunctions from May 3, 1004 to June 27, 2239, a total of 1,235 years. There are 80 conjunctions - the average cycle is nearly 15 ½ years, ranging 13 to 19 years between conjunctions. Of the 80 conjunctions 16 occurred in a series of three between the planets, due to their retrograde period. The majority of these occur when Chiron is moving slower in these four signs: Aquarius, Pisces, Aries and Taurus.

In Table 1 are the eighty conjunctions for this period by sign.

The four signs from Aquarius to Taurus (Table 2) host 2/3 of the total conjunctions. Might this tell us a story about elemental qualities and virtues most in need of the wisdom of Jupiter and Chiron?

Since the end of WWII there have been five conjunctions. Table 3 lists their dates along with some world events that happened concurrently.

Events serve as archetypal images, psychic symbols embedded in our outer world. Planetary passages are measured in temporal time, but planetary time is symbolic, not causal. Rather, the resonant images connecting planetary time with outer events are synchronistic. Undoubtedly, when the instincts underpinning the planet’s archetypal nature are unconscious, then the force of the archetype is likely to repeat in a compulsive and fixed manner. Astrology considers the nature of the moment; identifying the instinctual and archetypal energies intensified in the moment. In this way, astrology offers an ability to move forward in temporal time to contemplate the planetary energies that shape our times through archetypal images. Respecting these energies allows a participation in time.

Jupiter: Beliefs and Values

The archetypal principle of Jupiter is hinged on its urge for growth and expansion. Jupiter encourages us to see beyond the rational and literal levels of mind into a wider perception and quantum comprehension of reality. Its archetypal nature facilitates understanding to give meaning to life by honoring the journey, not towards a fixed ideal or goal, but as an ever-developing process of understanding the majesty of life.

Jupiter honours the virtue of Hope and the advantage of Opportunity. Classically we think of Jupiter as travel in both body and mind as well as the principles, morals and tolerance that promote a bright and optimistic outlook. Philosophical, culturally-orientated and conceptual, Jupiter promotes education as a right. But Jupiterian teaching is not training - it is a classical education that inspires meaning, broadens the vision and reflects on values. Its wisdom is not in schooling, but in the distillation of life experience into knowledge. The internalization of this knowing into a philosophy of life is Jupiter’s way of wisdom. But inflation, extravagance and arrogance lie in its shadow. Jupiter’s unreflective region is expressed collectively through greed, prejudice, religious intolerance, inflation and moral certainty.

These are some ways Jupiter is seen in the literal world:

• shared beliefs, cultural customs, ethics, morals, human values and ideals
• the religious instinct and racial tolerance of the people, clergy, religious sects, cults
• the beliefs and faith of the people
• foreign policies
• law and justice, the courts, judicial inquiries, human rights
• education, colleges, university, improvement and deterioration in systems of education
• publishing and dissemination of ideas
• marketing and media
• prosperity and increase

Chiron: Refugees and Refuges

Chiron’s discovery stimulates our felt experience of the painful split between spirit and matter. Understanding dis-ease psychologically and spiritually, Chiron identifies that the division between nature and psyche leaves its scars upon the soul. Its archetypal presence brings awareness to the rupture between body and soul, letting nature restore the balance. Chiron’s ways of wisdom bring the natural relationship between wounding and healing to consciousness. The Centaur reminds us of the danger when nature’s wild and powerful instincts are repressed by our domesticated and civilized culture. Therefore, in mundane astrology we might consider Chiron as a personification of how the tension between nature and nation manifests in the collective, especially when considering the friction between organic and mechanized medicine.

Astronomically Chiron’s orbit does not follow the herd; hence he is labelled a maverick, one who does not run with pack; therefore one who is vulnerable to being marginalized. Hence I have often experienced disenfranchisement connected with Chiron in these ways: dislocation and emigration, refugees, global migration, collective atrocities, indigenous rights and the treatment of aboriginal peoples. These wounds of alienation and suppression are often felt experiences of the past, displaced ancestral ghosts wandering the psychic landscape in need of atonement and healing.

I believe that Chiron will be helpful in amplifying these following motifs in Mundane Astrology:

• The role of the outsider in the community, agencies and issues that concern the marginalized and disenfranchised, the homeless, the disabled, the traumatized and the displaced
• Refugees, ‘boat people’, and the attitudes and policies towards migrants, the dispossessed and the dislocated. Movements of large amounts or people due to political unrest, upheavals and natural disasters
• Attitudes towards outsiders in the community due to race, gender, sexual orientation, appearance or disability
• Attitudes towards healing, preventative and natural medicine
• The interface of biomedicine and natural remedies; policies and attitudes concerning medical treatment and procedures, prescription drug vs. natural remedies
• Medical practitioners including naturopaths, herbalists, chiropractors, acupuncturists, homeopaths
• The shifting attitudes towards spiritual and other healing alternatives including lifestyle changes that incorporate the nonmaterial dimensions
• Acknowledgement of repressed collective illness, including racial, ancestral and generational trauma, as essential to healing and fundamental to mental wellbeing

Jupiter and Chiron: Understanding Nature’s Ways of Wisdom

As mentioned at the outset, we cannot isolate this new cycle from other cosmological cycles, continuances and initiations.

• Saturn’s ingress into Pisces reaffirms the familiar themes between what is real and ideal, exposing misunderstood gaps between the temporal and mythic worlds. This ingress also intensifies the balsamic phase of Saturn’s 36-year cycle with Neptune, as they prepare for a new beginning in February 2026 at 0Aries45; a cycle that echoes the dissolution of despotic systems and a rebirth of collectively significant images.
• Pluto’s ingress into Aquarius is metaphoric of social and political reform and its first major aspect after its inaugural entrance is to square Jupiter, as the planet enters Taurus. In April 2024 Jupiter conjoins Uranus in Taurus, commencing its new 14-year cycle. In context of the times, the image conjures up the Promethean spirit of rebellion, mobilizing new approaches to cooperate with Nature, with Gaia and with Taurus’s natural landscapes.

Reflecting on Jupiter’s and Chiron’s archetypal domains and interests, we can begin to imagine what might be on the agenda when these two planetary powers meet at their next summit.

Archetypes are images shaped in the instinctual forge of human experience. Their embodied and literal form in the outer world remains in potentia – held in the hands of our collective ability to be reflective and introspective. Both energies honour the ways of wisdom. It is through the integration of philosophical and religious traditions with indigenous and natural rituals that there is hope for the future in some of these areas:

Educational Changes

Chiron, in company with Jupiter, challenges educational systems that are based on the sovereignty of causality, scientism and technology. Their union cultivates the presence of psyche in education, and the integration of both nature and spirit, intellect and emotion, as well as history and myth into the syllabi offered in the classrooms of life.

Medicinal Wisdom

In the wake of the pandemic, questions arise about the efficacy of our medical methods that are solely reliant on pharmacological, corporate and governmental systems, which only treat the symptom, not the cause; networks, concerned about economics, not healing. The merger of Jupiter and Chiron symbolizes the wisdom of healing by returning to the source of the wound and its primal cause.

Indigenous Reconciliation

With this conjunction the Jupiterian justice system engages the Chironian spirit of place. What are the customs of the country, not those imposed through concepts or ideals, but those of nature. How can the culture of Jupiter forge an alliance with communal traditions and indigenous cultures recognized by Chiron?

Sanctuary for the Displaced

The rise of the homeless on our streets, in our parks, and under our bridges of our hometowns is microcosmic of the displaced and dispossessed in the wider human community. What are the social and psychic wounds that needs attention?

Natural and Psychic Wilderness

Environmental decline is not just ecological and political; it is also emotional and psychological. Psychic ecosystems collapse under the weight of unreflective, binary, rational, plastic and artificial ways of being. Ideologies that are no longer sustaining or nourishing become embedded and rigid beliefs. They ossify into unconscious reflexes that inhibit reflection. These ways need innovative narratives to reintroduce the collective back to the wilderness where primordial, natural and elemental life flourishes.

Together Jupiter and Chiron honour the wisdom of instinctual and spiritual life. Their conjunction invites both ways of knowing - the instinctual and the intellectual – on personal, social and collective levels. The synergy between these ways of wisdom begins with us.

Endnotes:
Carl Kerenyi, Asklepios Archetypal Image of the Physician’s Existence, Thames and Hudson, London: 1960, p.98.
James Hillman, “Puer Wounds and Ulysses’ Scars”, Puer Papers (Ed. James Hillman), Spring, Dallas, TX: 1994, p. 103.
Pindar, The Odes of Pindar (Pythian VI: III), translated by C.M. Bowra, Penguin, London: 1969, p.26-7.

First published in: FAA Journal, March 2023.

Author:
Brian Clark has been a consulting astrologer and educator for most of his adult life. He has been honoured with Life Membership in the Australian astrological associations for his contributions to the discipline of astrology. He has his BA (Hons) and MA in Classics and Archaeology from the University of Melbourne. Brian is the author of numerous articles, books, computer reports and student publications which have been translated into French, German, Italian, Mandarin, Japanese and Spanish. His recent books are: Astrological Time: Cycles of the Soul; Soul, Symbol and Imagination: The Artistry of Astrology and From the Moment we Met: The Astrology of Adult Relationships.
Website: www.astrosynthesis.com.au

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