Chiron Exands its Meaning - Towards a Holistic View

by Manuel Ignacio Quiles

Introduction

The asteroid Chiron is increasingly important in the eyes of astrologers, and like Pluto, despite its size, its archetypal and cosmic strength is undoubted. As time passes since its discovery in 1977, its meaning deepens to unsuspected levels. When I started studying astrology, back in 1982, nobody talked about it, but nowadays it is the subject of increasingly interesting and profound debates and studies, and today it is contemplated by most astrologers just like one more planet for interpreting an astral chart, even if the other asteroids are not taken into account. However, I observe that the interpretation of this new celestial body is in practice very different from author to author -or very simplified-, so I think this essay is useful to try to expand, clarify and synthesize the field of meanings.

When it was discovered, there was no previous astrological information: no records in Arabic, Greek or Latin texts, no guide explaining how to deal with this "new planet". The first clue to the function of Chiron was given by the astronomer Dr. Brian Marsden, who called him "non-conformist" or "outsider" (Maverick) because he did not fit any scientific definition. Chiron was a hundred times larger than a conventional comet but not as big as Pluto, so it was not a planet according to the definitions existing at that time. This object – with the size of an asteroid, that is-, was located far beyond the belt of known asteroids and extended in an orbital period of 50 years (exceeding that of most asteroids whose orbits extend to 4 years); finally, it intercepted the orbits of Saturn and Uranus, that is, it broke all the rules.

The Myth Summarized to the Essential

Chiron is the son of Saturn and Philyra; Saturn harasses Philyra, and she, to escape from his attacks, disguises herself as a mare. Saturn realizes, so he turns himself into a horse, thus having sexual intercourse and leaving Philyra pregnant. Saturn flees and when she gives birth, a centaur is born, a child half human half horse. Horrified, she abandons him and prays to the heavens to spare her the displeasure and the role of parenting, so she is turned into a linden tree. The sun god Helios finds and adopts Chiron, teaching him all his knowledge, and when he grows up he thus becomes one of the few good centaurs, because his fellows were violent and lived in a herd at war with the civilized. Chiron lives in a cave on a hill, and is dedicated to teaching future heroes and sons of kings all knowledge, such as a university or college. He also disseminates and practices medicine and healing of the sick and wounded, having among his disciples Asclepius (Aesculapius) one of the great physicians of classical antiquity. In the war between the evil centaurs and the Lapitas, a civilized people, Chiron observes from afar without taking sides, but accidentally one of his disciples and friends, Hercules, wounds him in the knee with a poisoned arrow. Unable to cure himself of that unjust wound, he retreats to his cave full of pain that does not stop because he is immortal, until Hercules and the gods take pity on him proposing to exchange roles with Prometheus, who was chained paying the blame for having stolen the fire from the gods and delivered it to men. In that way Prometheus becomes immortal, and Chiron can finally die and so end his pain.

Consensual Meaning

Currently there is consensus: all astrologers agree in ascribing to Chiron the archetype of the "Wounded Healer", the one who becomes a healer, counselor or therapist who helps people to heal their wounds just because he has the same type of wounds, and has become a specialist in them because he suffers from the same in his flesh, affirming - the myth itself and the astrologers - that the wounds of the healer will never close completely except with death.

The basic linear interpretation is also that Chiron becomes a healer for resilience. This term means that the structure of his personality has not deteriorated or been ruined by the injuries and blows he has suffered, resilience that helps to know very well in himself the pain and suffering they cause. And since he cannot get rid of them because of his imperishable character - in the legend he was immortal - he sublimates and channels his pain in compassion, helping those who suffer from it with various healing techniques, from traditional medical therapies and psychotherapies, to the shamanic and the alternatives that spread on the planet when the asteroid Chiron was discovered in 1977. The wounds of the body and soul, resilience and the role of healer are thus the central themes of Chiron.

Barbara Hand Clow asks the readers of her book "Chiron" what happened in 1977 in their lives of importance with respect to the Chironian themes; most of his contemporaries declare that in that year they began their therapeutic career or that their technical arsenal or healing motivation changed radically; with me it was very punctual: I discovered in a neighborhood bookstore at the city of Joao Pessoa, Brazil, a dissemination collection of Transpersonal Psychology that had just gone on sale ... I discovered the very existence of Transpersonal Psychology!

In some astrological charts that basic meaning is literal, mainly when the asteroid makes a conjunction with the Sun or is in a very relevant position. The conjunction of the Sun with Chiron presents almost always cases of assumed therapists, some of them famous as Bert Hellinger. On the other hand, in other paradigmatic cases it marks the lives of people with some type of disability, impediment or incapacity very evident. And a mixture of the two aspects: central wounds in identity, and healing practice from resilience. But in the rest of the charts, that interpretation is ambiguous and random: Does Chiron only show the quality (sign), the area of life (house) or the psycho-somatic function (planets) where we suffer injuries that do not close? Or where do we exercise help in some way from resilience?

If we penetrate into the archetype and the complex symbol of myth, Chiron shows us other facets different from the two basic polarities of the wounded and the healer: the first is the shaman. The shaman is always an emblematic figure that is very different from the community in which he lives, therefore the asteroid - as we pointed out astronomically - also personifies the outsider, the outcast, the different, which is symbolized in the myth as much by his strange figure of centaur, as for his residence, which is a cave on a hill away from the city.

Finally, Chiron's fate also led him to fulfill the function of teacher, the wise who taught young people all the sciences of that moment, both of war and medicine, astrology, music, and so they would become heroes. Chiron also taught divination, massage, psychotherapy, palmistry (chiromancy) and chiropractic, so that he can also represent the guru, the teacher, the spiritual guide or the instructor, whether in spiritual paths or alternative knowledge.

The classic book by Melanie Reinhart on Chiron shows us that this planetary position can indicate both the wounded and the aggressor, the sick as well as the healer, the outcast or rejected as the savior or rescuer. To complete the list of basic meanings, let us also add the guide or teacher, and the hero in us who develops growing talents or special abilities, sometimes as a result of some "disabilities" that justify their appearance. And finally, Chiron also symbolizes the resilient, who overcomes the blows and channels energy for humanitarian, artistic, scientific aid to planet Earth, which is the basic mechanism, the underlying dynamic of the good centaur.

I think that all those basic meanings are more than valid, but they are punctual, linear, we would almost say descriptive, indicating an area or function that has been hurt and becomes a motivator to help others, but this consensual interpretation does not take into account all the emotional process that accompanies the wound and its subsequent transformation. To do this I will deploy an extension of its meaning using multiple concepts from several authors, but mainly from Liz Greene in her book "Barriers and Boundaries", and the psychosyntesis author John Firman’s "The Primal Wound", trying to integrate knowledge and thus obtaining a holistic vision.

More than the Healer, the Wounded

Liz Greene is the first to call attention to us by reminding us of the half-animal nature of the centaur, and the extreme emotional reaction we can have when we suffer "unjust, unexplainable and senseless wounds": the anger, the fury, the ferocious rage of the wounded animal in front of the blows of fate that the subject feels he does not deserve. This author has observed that emotional reaction of bitterness and injustice (which can lead to developing a very negative philosophy of life, blaming Life, the whole society or even God because he can not blame anyone in particular as would be the case with Saturn), occurs much more frequently than expected by a civilized or "resilient" planet. As she says it:

The works (about Chiron) are sometimes very innocent: everything has to do with the Wounded Healer, where Healer is the key word and Wounded is written in smaller print. But the clause hidden in our contract with Chiron is that the wound is permanent. Chiron is the healer, not the healed.

Taking into account this emphasis of Liz Greene was helpful in my understanding the case of a social worker very involved with the injustice of society in general and its transformation, who has  Sun conjunct Uranus in House X in opposition to Chiron in House IV. In her profession she assists poor families or families that mistreat their children. In the investigation she did of the secrets in her own family, she discovered several grandparents and uncles exerting sexual abuse to several women, from the grandmothers to the granddaughters. So the classic interpretation of Chiron is fulfilled in detail, but the special thing I want to emphasize is that she complains of being taken by very negative moods that lead her to complain bitterly about life and its injustices, ending up  taking floral remedies to fight such feelings that hurt her idealistic and humanitarian heart.

The abysmal difference between faith and those poisonous and corrosive feelings for the unfair wounds that life tips, and the great gap between the need to heal wounds (with the belief that we will find a key therapy one day and that everything can be healed), and the final result that denies a definitive closure of them, according to Liz Greene, is due to the fact that most astrologers and psychotherapists are part of the tradition of religious and spiritualist ideals of the West, which have - we have - the idea that everything finds an explanation in a great cosmic order, that God and Life in the background are just, and that astrology - and science in general - are part of a rational order that makes everything fit into a coherent explanation and a happy ending, besides the ideal that everything is reversible.

This observation of Liz Greene seems to me of an odd genius, to consider the animal half as suffering pains, "unspeakable" emotions and feelings, faced in the concrete practice of all of us with the empathic, compassionate, civilized and idealistic human half that seeks to explain and close the wounds. Both Greene and Reinhart see in Heracles (Hrcules) the prototype of the solar hero who opposes the chthonic, animal and instinctive and tries to control it, as representing the upper half of the good centaur, but I pay attention - more than to Hercules - to the presence of the sun god himself in the myth, Helios-Apollo, who is the one who adopts and teaches Chiron all civilized arts. Helios, the prototype of the Greek idealism of harmony, beauty, reason, balance and proportion, is the very same adoptive father of Chiron!

Let us make it clear then that the first reaction to the blows we feel unfair is a primitive emotional reaction of our mammalian and reptilian part, which goes from the expression of pain and fierce rage to the desire for revenge; I am currently calling this a reaction of "mortal hatred". And that these emotions are generally repressed by the civilized, humanistic, empathic and spiritual part, which considers them negative, self-centered, little mature and bad for everyone if expressed.

Revenge

Revenge is a very old institution, the first form of justice before the laws and codes of norms and prohibitions of civilized peoples appeared. This is what the encyclopedia tells us:

Revenge is a form of justice enacted in the absence or defiance of the norms of formal law and jurisprudence. Revenge is the retaliation against a person or group in response to a grievance or perceived bad action. Vengeance is interpreted as "balancing the balance", and this makes many aspects of revenge resemble the concept of justice, making the difference between revenge and justice seem diffuse.

Many believe that revenge is an act that causes pleasure to the person who performs it, although others do not regard it as pleasure but rather the feeling of reestablishing the health of the one who avenges, since revenge transfers the damage from the victim to the attacker, which causes the victim to be free of that "annoyance", an event which, when interpreted incorrectly, is called pleasure. Psychologists have discovered that the frustration of revenge can make the patient sick, leading to victimization, which leads some scholars to conclude that revenge is a natural element of man, and restricting it only denies the reality of his human condition, considering it unhealthy, since it prevents releasing the grudge that accumulates by the harmful act.

I believe that the identification and recognition of these "animal" or self-centered individual emotions are key to the understanding and elaboration of the Chironian experience (again the word "key" is imposed, whose etymology is just "code", and the letter K is the icon of the asteroid). And its repression for the sake of forgiveness, empathic understanding and possible subsequent resilience, is a sure source of physical or mental illness. Let us recapitulate underlining the new: the illness would not be a consequence only of the injuries suffered, but of the lack of an emotional reaction to them.

When I say to recognize those emotions, I am not saying necessarily acting-out or expressing them in a manifest way - especially revenge - because that abreactive or cathartic perspective can lead to a spiral of attacks and counterattacks that are the cause of many evils because it perpetuates the pain rather than resolving it, and because they go against the basic acceptance of what life brings us. I mean to identify, only to intimately recognize those emotions, to accept oneself as an individual human who suffers and who feels hurt and despised, and who - if he does not want evil for the other - can at least be happy if the other is not well. Only that recognition and inner acceptance is natural and healthy, an issue that those who are in an evolution of spiritual consciousness usually reject.

This is to revere the animal that we all are. Very idealistic and civilized people, or hypothetically spiritualized, get sick many times - with diseases that can lead to death - because they do not recognize and accept the emotions they consider negative, and they do not see that these emotions are nothing but the expression of the mammalian and reptilian brain, the centers of the midbrain like the amygdala - which records and process the basic emotions, and the centers of the brain's base, like the pituitary gland, that regulates the hormones.

Forgiveness

The mechanism of emotional repression is strongly reinforced by the moral and religious precept of the need for forgiveness. Forgiveness, one of the most advanced and high spiritual gestures, which is part of a vision of inclusive, synchronic and holistic life, the basic acceptance of the painful experiences of life because they have a purpose for human growth, it must not and cannot leave aside the contradictory and egocentric emotions of pain, anger, contempt and desire for revenge.

Robin Casarjian wrote a key book on healing called "Forgiveness - A Bold Choice for a Peaceful Heart". Of course, as the title suggests, she confesses in the prologue that "the mere motivation to teach forgiveness was to see, as a therapist, that this essential key to healing was very little understood and encouraged." But devote the entire 4th chapter to "Working with Rage: That Pain is really Pain"

Forgiveness is essential to heal and experience our integrity. But to achieve the  latter, it is necessary not to repress, deny or neglect any of our parts. Our totality includes great wisdom and an extraordinary capacity for love and affection, and also anger, resentment, hostility, shame, guilt and, in many cases, wrath. These emotions tend to remain hidden and, whether they are drowned or hurting atrociously under the surface, as long as we do not heal them they will charge their price in our capacity to be happy (...). Anyone who grew up in a home where they suffered physical or emotional abuse, or was rejected or abandoned, has to forgive to heal "totally". But first he has to embrace the pain he experienced, that is, to recognize and admit the truth. Once this is achieved, the pain of the past can become the wealth of life.

As Dane Rudhyar well reminds us, the words of Christ so misunderstood (and presumably poorly translated) "love your enemies", refer rather to agreeing, accepting, understanding the negative experiences that certain people bring to us from synchronic, holistic and spiritual understanding of life, because they always come to bring us self-knowledge and transformation. Christ does not tell us to have sympathy or affection for the aggressor, he does not exhort us to love in the personal sense the perpetrator of betrayals or wounds, nor to submit or repress the natural emotions of pain, sadness and anger, or the first reactions of injustice and unworthiness.

Two Types of Wounds

All the differences between the authors who speak to us about Chiron are precisely because they put into play somewhat different definitions of what "healing" and "wounds" means. Yes, the Healed-Healer-whose-Wounds-Never-Close-Definitely, but what is meant by healing? What are wounds, a term as vague as broad? And finally, in terms of current psychotherapy and all its resources, is it simply that Chironian-type injuries can never be closed?

The Chiron myth indicates answers to all these questions in a symbolic way, so I will underline some essential points: his father is Cronos-Saturn, who abandons him even before he was born, which speaks of a lack of total responsibility concerning paternity, just when that planet Saturn rules the responsibility and even more, paternal responsibility. His mother also rejected him for his physical form, as he was half horse and half human. Two rejections and initial abandonments, that of the father and the mother, two wounds that we will call "primals".

This original wound is very different from the other physical wound he receives as an adult, when Hercules accidentally wounds him in the knee with a dirty arrow of poisoned blood because of his work with the Hydra of seven heads (the work of Scorpio, by the way, in The Twelve Labors of Hercules,  see "Esoteric Astrology" by Alice Bailey).

We must remember that Hercules was in the war between Lapitas and the bad centaurs, and those evil mythic beings actually represent the Shadow of Chiron himself, because they act out the negative feelings of mortal rage, and it is not a coincidence that the wound inflicted by Hercules injures his knee, Saturn's body part (his father), and so it shows us precisely the difficulty of taking charge of these feelings.

Therefore, there would be two major types of injuries during life: the primal, which are caused by the non-empathic (or openly rejecting) attitudes of parents, caregivers or society in general during childhood; and those of adulthood, the traumatic wounds, the blows of life that feel unfair, such as accidents in which some body part or function is lost, serious losses, sudden deaths of very close people, abuse, betrayal, robbery, assaults, violations, participation in wars, or injustices and legal, institutional or political abuses, etc.

Between the primal wounds, which are chronic and caused early by attitudes of upbringing, and the traumatic wounds of an adult, there is an arc of eventualities that are confused and intermingled, as there are often sudden losses or traumatic abuses as a child, and wounds of the heart, affective pains of adults in relationships, subtle but deep. Traumas can occur at any age, and the sufferings of the heart by rejections, betrayals, infidelity or loss of love - even in friendships or work relationships - can also be suffered by the adult throughout his life.

The Primal Wound

The book "The Primal Wound" by John Firman, the most important American writer from the pychosyntesis approach, is of such depth that it not only describes clinically the wounds that we all carry for the kind of upbringing that did not take into account our authentic being, but also describes the spiritual growth of human beings, a milestone in the literature of Transpersonal Psychology.

John Firman tells us - coinciding with Winnicott - that the attitude of total acceptance of our being that forms the basis of our deep identity is transmitted through the eyes of our caregivers: a sustained, unconditional look, without projections. The lack of that kind of look inevitably perpetrates the primal wound. I have come to confirm this in practice, to meet the gaze of many children who look for my gaze, and to hold it calmly as long as the child also holds it. For me this is a proof of that primary need: that is precisely what they need, and they actively seek it.  I have come to confirm this in practice, when I find myself in the fixed gaze of some children who seek mine, and to support it without further ado, keeping as long as the child also holds it.

John Firman, along with authors such as Winnicott, Kohut, Janov and Bradshaw among others, establish what has been called the "primal theory" as fundamental for the development of the self. I will try to summarize it because it is essential to understand the primal wounds, I ask the reader for patience given its importance to support the concept of the primal wound.

The Primal Theory

The child has primary needs, which in addition to the body, are a set of psycho-emotional needs which serve the development of the self: support or containment, that is, parents or caregivers capable of understanding and supporting the process of individuation; empathic resonance and the emotional reflex: to be seen, considered, admired, valued and taken seriously for what one is, concluding that the fundamental psycho-spiritual need is to be, to exist, to build a subjective sense of being someone by right - distinct, authentic and original.

The parents or caregivers who raise us will frustrate, at least to some degree, the satisfaction of our primary needs, because they themselves did not grow up in ideal conditions, exhibiting unmet childʹs needs and projecting them onto the child, along with their fantasies and desires, expectations and ideals related to him.

Beyond parents or family members with mental problems, violent or abusive behaviors, there are the subtle - but very common - dysfunctions such as the denial of reality and feelings, rigidity, unclear limits and tendency to prosecution, arbitrariness and incoherence. More subtle are the attitudes and feelings of the mother towards her pregnancy and her baby that disturb her empathic capacity: chronic feelings of fear, insecurity, ambivalence, rejection, anxiety or rage about her motherhood, as well as rapid oscillations between mimes and hostility, negligence and overprotection, all constant sources of frustration of the primary needs of their children.

The satisfaction of bodily needs ends up being more important than psycho-emotional needs. Instead of seeing our individuality and uniqueness reflected in those early bonds, the expectations and early deficiencies of our parents produce empathic failures that lead us to be reflected in an image of how we should be, with which we identify. We may begin to experience ourselves more as objects than as people in their own right.
In summary: attitudes of rejection, indifference, abandonment, negligence, incoherence, projection, disenchantment, idealization, judgment, depression, fear, insecurity, obligatory sacrifice and anger, so common in the upbringing of the infant, make him experience a state of deprivation that generates great suffering and emotional pain: frustration, sadness, loneliness, fear panic and terror, mixed with early guilt and shame. All this is the primal wound.

The guilt is for the deadly hatred we feel for having suffered such wounds, but another basic emotion is the toxic shame, the feeling of being, in essence, defective and imperfect, and comes from the internalization of an implicit message: we are not good the way we are, there are aspects in us that are not acceptable. Some of the spontaneous vital expressions of the child were rejected and invalidated, therefore not coming in contact with their own hidden fears and pains. These actions disconnect us from our authenticity and make us distrust our inner self, giving rise to negative beliefs about ourselves and feelings of humiliation, inadequacy and insecurity. Unlike guilt, a feeling that depends on something that has been done or you feel like doing, shame is related to what one is, so it would not be accessible to repair.

The primal wound is a kind of internal "energy hole" that relentlessly demands to be satiated, and in its abysmal core we find intolerable sensations of mortal hatred, annihilation and total isolation. We handle suffering by interrupting the continuity of our being in a kind of disconnection making use of intrapsychic mechanisms of cleavage and repression so that we preserve a positive link with our attachment figures. The child must deny the idea that his father figures will never be able to satisfy his primal needs, idealizing them and tempting them unconsciously and continually pleasing them, acquiring behavior patterns and acting roles that are expected of us, even when they are in disagreement with our more intimate reality.

"I am not loved for what I am and there is no hope that I will ever be", "I am just like you. Will you accept me now?ʺ

It is then that emerges in our psyche what different authors have described as false self or protective self (Winnicott), false self (Laing), unreal self (Janov), second nature (Lowen), ‘as-if’ personality (Miller).

From the unreal self, our behavior is based on control, conformity and over-adaptation to circumstances, and tends to the indirect satisfaction of our needs. We develop a series of strategies in order to affect others so that they modify their behavior and we get what we want, such as demanding and requiring, manipulating, blaming, submitting, victimizing, begging and revenge.

To conclude, the authors of this theory affirm that, independent of the more or less conventional type of upbringing, the primal wound and the establishment of a false self are practically universal facts, and with respect to the healing, on one side, there are those who think that the ideal of health is the complete absence of a false self and its defensive strategies (Janov) and, on the other hand, there are those who consider that in a healthy person the true self is alive but protected by the false self, which would consist in social attitudes, the inevitable masks that are built for living together.

In an independent investigation, the French therapist Lise Bourbeau ("The Five Wounds of the Soul that Prevent Being One"), affirms that they are: 1) injustice, 2) rejection, 3) abandonment, 4) betrayal, and 5) humiliation. I add one more as indispensable: 6) indifference.

If we accept the opinion that primal wounds are inevitable, passed down from fathers to children since the beginning of time, Liz Greene's assertion that Chironian wounds are always collective, not individual, is reaffirmed. Here we find Lloyd DeMause and his "Psychohistory", which makes a review of attitudes regarding children and their upbringing throughout the history of the West, a true story of empathy. According to him, it went from infanticide (ritual sacrifices, patria potestas: the father who had given life had the right to remove it) to abandonment (give them away, sell them); from punishment (beatings, whipping, cold water) to abuse (child labor, use and abuse, sexual practices); from invasion or intrusion (authority, threats, punishments, humiliation, fear) to ambivalence and socialization (obligations, models, pedagogies, ideals), to finally arrive - well at the end of the 20th century and at present - to the attitude that respects the child and considers him as an independent human being with his own needs, without the massive projection that existed in all the history.

The pedagogy of Emmi Pikler that I recently found and that is spreading all over the world, is a revolutionary and natural attempt to raise children following their own guidelines: the child knows what he needs and manifests it, the child guides his own upbringing. I have observed children already raised with this type of pedagogy - theoretically without primal wounds – and all of them present a sharp and accurate sense of injustice in adult behaviors that do not respect them completely.

It is clear that all this "non-empathetic" history is still prolonged in the upbringing of all of us and is the basis of the primal wounds that I identify as Chironian. John Firman affirms that these wounds are always updated in the relationships of the adult: brothers, couples, children, friends, groups, societies, collectives;  he comes to absolutize and to say that any kind of relationship problem is a reopening of the primal wounds of childhood. Couples -mainly - unintentionally open one to another's wounds when they do not listen, do not look, do not take into account what the other says, compete or try to denigrate humiliating, which - we know - is the most common thing in the world in any dialogue and interaction in already advanced coexistence.

I have observed the case of many people in which the primal Chironian wound opened by adult events, is by antonomasia the betrayal by infidelity, because it is precisely the one we love most (like our parents) that inflicts a cruel wound, for which we feel rejected, abused, deceived and neglected. And the first reaction in the face of infidelity is also always mortal hatred and desire of revenge.
That type of Chironian wounds will be indicated in the astrological chart by Chiron's position in personal and interpersonal signs, houses and planets. And the other type of wounds, the traumatic, much more impersonal and collective, will be indicated precisely by collective and transpersonal signs, houses and planets.

The Chironian Traumatic Wounds

The most interesting thing is that the term trauma, the word, its etymology, comes from a Greek concept that means "wound". It is a physical injury generated by an external agent, or an emotional blow that generates a persistent damage in the unconscious emotional life. It is any strong, painful or distressing event for which the subject was not prepared, and had no possibility of reaction, either for social reasons, repression or even surprise. Observe the element of the definition that accentuates the lack of emotional reaction...

The clinical definition also tells us that the first reaction is one of confusion, anguish, paralysis and stupor, which today we can see as a negation ("this can not be happening to me"). Sometimes there are agitated reactions of screams, weeping or raging gestures, but is always ensued by a blockage of the self, and symptoms of repetition: evoke the trauma scene in the smallest details again and again, whether in thoughts, memories, dreams or nightmares, and a need to relate the event to the whole world. Freudian psychoanalysis interpreted this last behavior as an attempt to link the event to oneʹs conscious life, to elaborate it, because the trauma has provoked a split.

It is clear that not all trauma is Chironian. For it to be, it must be felt as very unfair, as an injustice of fate, of society, of history, of God or of anyone who can’t be personally blamed for it. Recently I received inquiries from a mother and her daughter, who needed to see the meaning of amyotrophic paralysis in the young woman, the whole family feeling this as a great injustice of God.

What is observed as an astrologer, is that these traumatic adult wounds, are not only aroused by the transits of Chiron, but are associated with the transits of the transpersonal planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, which bring traumatic experiences when the individual is not aware of those energies so powerful and mysterious, and "destiny" brings them from the outside, either in the form of accidents, diseases, abuse, assaults or terrible collective events such as wars, famines, embezzlement, fraud, failures or generalized public deceptions.

In this way, I have a different position to most astrologers that sees Chiron as intertwining only Saturn and Uranus, given its astronomical orbit between them. Chiron has to do with Uranus in the collective character of the wound, the instantaneity of certain types of accidents that feel very unfair, and alternative healing techniques. Some astrologers, such as Alejandro Lodi, also involve Jupiter and Pluto in the Chironian dimension, given their need for meaning and their type of forceful but transformative pain. But nobody includes Neptune and the other planets. For me, the connection between Chiron and Neptune is very visible in its compassionate character with the pain of others, or in the other role, because of its masochistic and victimization tendency.

I see that Chiron connects all the personal planets - Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn - with the transpersonal Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, precisely because he is in that border orbit. All with all, or everyone with everyone of two fields, a true bridge or key between our individual nature bound to the body, and our collective, transcendent, cosmic, galactic, spiritual nature. The determination of between which planet or personal sign and which planet or transpersonal sign will be Chiron acting as bridge or as key, is a qualitative determination to be made in each astrological chart. We can also use the term "linker" to indicate that function of articulating a personal planet with another transpersonal one. Chiron is then a bridge, a key, a linker or an articulator between planets, but especially between all those that reflect our personal being and all those that reflect our transpersonal being.

The Importance of Centaurs for the Greeks

In Greek mythology we will observe that dichotomy - which is the main mark of Chiron's interpretation - in the struggle between the Centaurs and Lapitas.

The Centaurs are well known for the struggle they had with Lapitas, the quarrel being a metaphor for the conflict between low instincts and civilized behavior in humanity, the struggle between civilization and barbarism. These mythical scenes of the battle between the Lapitas and the Centaurs are so important in Greek imagination, that they were sculpted in bas-reliefs in the frieze of the Parthenon, which was dedicated to the patroness of Athens. The general character of the centaurs is that of being wild, without laws or hospitality, slaves of animal passions. Two exceptions to this rule are Pholus and Chiron, who expressed their "good" nature, being wise and kind centaurs (...) who often looked to the sky to determine their destinies. They were great astrologers and very fond of divination. (Wikipedia).

It is necessary to highlight here: in the salient frieze of the Partenon, which represents the founding core myth of Athens, there were 32 pieces or sculptural scenes (fifteen of which are preserved in the British Museum) that symbolized the Centauromaquia, the struggle between the centaurs and the Lapitas…

Civilization and barbarism: that dichotomy between "civilizing" colonialism and the American, African and Asian native cultures, or between the imperial cultures and the peripheral people to be dominated, that dichotomy is the one that is in our inner world between the biological nature, individual, emotional and instinctive, and nature adapted to society, empathy and cultural values.

Of course that "civilized" part is independent of ideologies, or better, it represents all of them: whether leftist or conservative, religious or atheist, scientific, liberal or spiritualist, it is the social, idealistic or "elevated" part that opposes naturally to the egocentric, physical and emotional part that one feels everything in individual terms. Chiron represents that essential duality of the human being, that conflict and cleavage that go along with the experience of wounds received from the outside, from the reality that can not be controlled.

The Domestication of Horses

Some anthropological sources speculate with the idea that centaurs come from the first reaction of a culture that did not know equestrianism, such as the Minoan Aegean world, towards nomads who did ride horses. The theory points out that such riders would look like half men half horses. I think that was also the first interpretation of the Incas, Mayas or Aztecs, and of all the American aborigines when they saw Spanish, Portuguese or English conquerors arriving on horseback.

If we inform ourselves by history, the domestication of horses arose first in the steppes of the south of Central Asia, present Kazakhstan, 4000 years BC - that is, 6,000 years ago - for transport, commerce, field work or war, all these roles associated with the development of first great civilizations. From Kazakhstan to the east, it passed to India, to China, to the Mongols and to Japan; and to the west, to Sumeria, Persia and Babylon, Egypt, Greece and Rome, in all of them performing the main civilizing role.

For all the experts, the domestication of horses -along with the wheel- is an essential element for the European and Asian civilizations, the establishment of the "empires" of Toynbee. At that time we are in the Age of Gemini: besides writing and the wheel, the horse was therefore essential. This time was also the same in which all the mythologies of the ancient world were forged, especially the Greek and the Hindu, that have the centaur as a character.

If we are going to consider the time in which horses were domesticated, we must compare it to the time when the other two great companions of humanity were domesticated: dogs and cats. The domestication of dogs happened between 12.000 and 14.000 years ago, the dog accompanying hunter-gatherers. And the cat was domesticated only 3000 years ago, in Egypt and China, all great civilizations in full swing. This data reinforces the idea that the horse and the beginning of civilization are synchronous.

The great seer and esoteric Rudolf Steiner tells us that the spirit of the horse (he calls it the "Great Horse") accompanies the development of the intelligence of man, when it takes a qualitative leap, and is graphed in the fact that at the beginning only kings climbed on a horse, king in the sense of the maximum and most important capacity that makes men their humanity: his intelligence. He also says that there are two types of intelligence, an earthly one and a superior one, and these two intelligences are represented by the two types of horse: the percheron that accompanies the tasks of the earth, and the agile fuegian horse, which jumps, runs and accompanies man in civilizing conquests, including wars.

With a horse you could work larger areas of land, and you could overcome great distances. For this, there were more wars and empires could emerge. A small town had a dominant Lord or a regional king, but it didn’t form an empire. (...) Without the horse there would never have been empires, and without these empires the evolution of the individual self would never have been possible. Without this evolution the human being could not have been individualized, and this leads to the fact that nowadays every human being has his steel steed parked in the garage. Because intelligence is related to the being of the horse, and intelligence has built this world.
(Conversing with Animals: The Beings of Animals tell us about their Essence, Wolfgang Weirauch, Anthroposophic, 2011, Buenos Aires).

The most interesting thing is to note that all the current horse populations retain the ability to return to a wild state, and that all the current wild horses descend from ancestors that escaped when they were captive. Civilization or barbarism, until today.

Of all the animals that were domesticated - dog, cat, cow, goat and sheep - Greeks take the horse as representing the animality bordering to man. I speculate that the Greeks did not know monkeys at first hand, and that this mythological adjudication of a half animal and half human species refers to evolution, that is, that humanity develops from animality, and a recognition and remembrance that the human body is after all animal.

If we reflect on the zodiac and its symbols, we will find that some signs are represented by animals, mammals or reptiles: ram, bull, crab, lion, scorpion (snake and eagle), goat and fish; others, by humans or cultural symbols: twins, virgin, balance, water bearer; it is very striking that there is only one sign that is half animal and half human, that is the archer - centaur, by Sagittarius, who represents the high ideals, philosophy, wisdom, but who reminds us that we are animals too.

Liz Greene, whenever she talks about Sagittarius, reminds us of the paradox in that sign of living aspiring to the highest and having to accept the limitations of the individual body. And in another genius idea, she replaces in the Mythical Tarot cards, the symbol of the Pope or the High Priest of the classic tarots, precisely by Chiron, the wise centaur and healer:

However, Chiron does not represent any orthodox religious system. It is a wild creature, half man and half animal, and its temple is not made by man but by nature, a cave in the mountain. That is why the spiritual law that it transmits is not a collective fact derived from a dogma, but an individual fact that can only be found by coming into contact with the priest or the inner master". (...). "The true master or priest is open to the world suffering because he himself suffers. The figure of Chiron reminds us of the value of the innumerable limitations of the wounds that we carry inside, that although they cause us suffering in our daily life, somehow they lead us to question and open the way to a greater understanding of the highest laws of life. This paradox is suggested by the form of the centaur himself, because being half god and half horse, he participates at the same time in instinct and spirit, containing the duality that is proper to our human condition.

The myths resolve in the imagination the contradictions and ambivalence of human being:

We appeal to the myth to resolve emotional conflicts, we need a story, an adventure, a character that reconciles our strange ideas and opposing feelings. With that we reconcile with ourselves, we become the person that we will be.
(Tim Burton in an interview with Rolling Stones).

Ambivalence

When the wounds are inflicted by close, beloved and idealized people, whom we often depend on - which we call primal wounds here - an emotional ambivalence is automatically constituted, too toxic: on one side, there is a natural reaction of anger, hate and desire of revenge - the individual and animal part - and on the other side, it’s about understanding ("he - or she - were also hurt", "they do the best they can"), acceptance, forgiveness, and many times it’s related by extreme dependence, because there is no other option. The metaphor of the "poisoned dessert" by Ronald Fairbairn is accurate: the child perceives that the dessert that the mother gives him is in some degree poisoned, but he cannot stop eating it, because it is the only food he receives and it is the only thing that the mother knows how to do.

When feeling ambivalence, one feels at the same time attraction and repulsion towards a person. One justification is that you love the person, but you hate certain attitudes that he or she has. In such a situation one may want to talk and not talk at the same time, or want to act and at the same time remain passive or paralyzed.

Of course one cannot live with that extreme emotional ambivalence. The logical (and here logical is used it in its literal meaning: one thing is one thing and cannot be another at the same time) is to repress one of the two reactions and take on the one that remains in consciousness. People with personal, individual, emotional and hormonal predominance will be impregnated by the negative reaction and will separate from the aggressor, living in a chronic rebellion and vindication of justice, or in a vengeful attitude toward everything and everyone. And people where the social, ethical, empathic, civilized, rational or spiritual predominates, will forgive in an automatic way, submitting or continuing a normal coexistence. When ambivalence is extreme - and repression the subsequent mechanism - toxicity will corrode the inner world of the person, but it is also possible that they can access resilient behavior, sublimating the instinctive, and this is what allows them to help those who have been injured in a similar way.

Here the difference between sublimation and repression is key: in repression, there is no channeling of the instinctive and emotional, the energy is dammed and stagnates at the unconscious level; in sublimation, there is channeling, energy is deviated for humanitarian purposes and through empathic or humanitarian action, and so it is derived and discharged successfully.

The Stages in the Development of the Chironian Process

Liz Greene says:

There are many stages in the process that Chiron represents, beginning with his wounds and ending with his transformation into a mortal being and the relief of his suffering. These stages contain rage and fury, the desire to hurt others, bitter resignation, self-pity, feeling of victimization, and finally, the emergence of the desire to understand the universal patterns that lie beyond personal pain.

I argue that the "process" of the Chironian wound, whether primal or traumatic, can present all those types of manifestation and many others, which are the fixations in the stages or positions of the whole process, which I present here in detail:

1. The first emotional reaction of feeling a lot of pain, followed by anger, which can reach mortal hatred. The pain can pass or become permanent suffering, definitely fixed.
2. The feeling of deep injustice and the constant vindication of justice: rebelcharacter as a direct manifestation of chronic rage, or the justice giver character as a sublimation of those feelings.
3. The desire for revenge, in two versions: that is just felt and wants to be recognized or that would be realized, or acted out in some way.
4. The active perpetration of the wound: the wounded becomes the one that hurts, as a chronic attitude: the avenging or damned character.
5. The denial, repression or cleavage of all "negative" feelings of the physical, individual or instinctive animal. These unconscious psychic poisons sometimes manifest themselves in diseases that usually affect the auto-immune system (lupus, cancer, fibromyalgia)
6. The possible construction of a False Self: the greater the wound and repression, the bigger and stronger is the false self, which constitutes a false resilience.
7. Victimization: to be and feel that you are genuinely a victim, with need of understanding, support and containment, and / or the chronic role of victim, others feel pity.
8. The compulsive repetition of the wound: seek to be hurt again and again, as a means of elaborating the trauma, or with the purpose of a masochistic satisfaction.
9. Masochistic satisfaction or attitude of permanent low self-esteem that the own chironian rejection provokes or had provoked. Guilt and shame are feelings that usually accompany this state of mind, especially if you continue to love the perpetrator and it is socially disapproved.
10. Forgiveness, whatever genuine or bound by religious moral, sometimes in inextricable mixture.
11. Human understanding of the perpetrator through the exercise of empathy and compassion, or the comprehension of the collective hurtful situation through reflection, research and study.
12. Understanding of the meaning and sense of the wound (here appears  astrology or any philosophy, metaphysics, religious beliefs or higher values).
13. Resilience, true empowerment and self-healing through helping those who suffer the same type of injury by practicing some type of therapeutic healing, or sublimation in some kind of social action.

The Chironian Prototypes

We have thus first the justice givers, those Chironians with whom the feeling of injustice of life predominates, those who are outraged by the injustices towards the human being, in its several modes: against gender violence, against traitors or corrupts, against mistreatment of children or animals, against abuse or discrimination, or against the entire planet Earth. We find here many revolutionaries, reformists, feminists, ecologists, militants of any cause, or simply - and mainly - the "rebels without a cause", an attitude of rebellion against everything and everyone. The planetary signature which reveals the unconscious Chironian motivation of all "justice givers" or chronic rebels, is its radical character and the feeling that injustice was always like this on earth and will always remain so. In this type of people, Chiron is seen in aspect with Aquarius, Uranus or the XIth House.

Then we have the "damned" (in the words of one of them), those who assume themselves to be vengeful or abusers "for sport". They may be normal people with black humor, ironic, with negative attitudes that denigrate and despise or make small maneuvers to spoil others, but never get revenge in a violent way; or people who do reach psychopathy, right-handed aggressors, violent by definition. Beyond that difference, this astrological perspective of Chiron allows us to always see, always, the "hurt child" behind any aggressive or violent behavior, and to understand that, whenever reacted with aggression, there is a primal wound like a reason. At this level, we find Chiron aspected with Mars-Aries-Ist House and / or with Pluto-Scorpio-VIIIth House.

In the middle of the Chironian process we observe the cases where the memories and emotions of the wound have been completely repressed: they are the over-adapted people, those who build a false self: in this way nothing is recognized about the hurtful situation, there is a complete denial. The attitude and the message is "nothing happened here", exactly as children saying after a beating - "it did not hurt" - holding back tears and fury: they appear as strong, but their gestures are overdrawn, there are behaviors of speaking in a very loud tone, constantly repeating in their communication phrases, greetings or jokes used collectively. If this construction of false strength predominates, the Chironian process stops, freezes, and does not present any other manifestations. In this group the aspect between Chiron and Saturn-Capricorn prevails widely, or rather, Saturn unfolds its repressive action over personal planets, and all this has a link with Chiron.

Then we find the group of those who feel constantly hurt, every human situation hurts them, sometimes showing their wounds to inspire compassion or rejection. They are those who have a victim attitude because they feel damaged in certain aspects, sometimes leading to active or passive self-aggression: here we find those who are constantly injured, those who live experiencing negative situations, or those who have diseases, typical psychosomatic ones such as those that affect the auto-immune system (arthritis, lupus, diabetes and multiple sclerosis), fibromyalgia and some types of cancer. Finally we also have in this group those who look for situations in which the opening of the wound is repeated: they get involved with people who at some time (or always) will despise, reject or abandon them. They do not realize their masochistic motivation that unconsciously repeats primitively the primal wound. In this group the configuration between Chiron and Neptune-Pisces-House XII stands out, also associated with Mars, which invertsthe energy of self-affirmation against itself, and with Venus, for lack of self-esteem.

At this point, it is good to make a discernment between really being a victim and victimization: the first is an objective fact, the person who suffers blows, mistreatment or abuse and needs emotional support and containment; and the second is the tendency of a person to consider himself a victim or to pose as a victim without an objective motive: I raise the question that in practice both realities merge, their boundaries often being very imprecise or unfair from the point of view of the need for containment. And that there should be no automatic judgment of any victimized person, whether reality factors or subjective ones predominate.

The point of view that I am proposing to understand these people is that of the primal wound, and thus understanding that the victimized, surely and certainly was very assaulted in his upbringing. And so in those disorders like types of beaters and beaten women where the boundary between being a victim and victimization is in fact imprecise. Pure primal wound, in both.

Finally we find the group of idealists, those who understand and comprehend all the other groups, the passive or active Chironians that we have described so far: they can be religious, spiritualistic or humanistic people who forgive the victimizers as a basic attitude, or who assist and accompany the victims; or directly the healers, the counselors, the therapists who help humanity in one way or another, this Chironian core often being the main motive of their mission, their vocation and their place in the world. Of course, here we find Chiron aspected by "higher" Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, and also by Jupiter-Sagittarius and IXth House.

The possible Healing

And going back to the subject of healing: is this possible? Will the wounds never, never close? Is there no remedy? Can they be completely or partially closed? And if they can be closed, what kind of therapy makes it possible? I argue that as the myth tells us, and accurate observation proves it, the central wound will never completely closed in the psychological function or the affected area, unless with the end of existence. But, similar to Saturn that through time and conscious life work on the specific problem will produce a pearl, the Chironian wounds through time will lose their suffering and toxic character, will be accepted, and thus their message can be understood, and so its cosmic lesson for this present existence (and its prolongation in the next). As usually happens with all planets, the problems of life are a way of maturing and learning. Or as Freud and Jung say, the symptoms are the way to the unconscious, they are the door to self-knowledge.

Acceptance, this is the keyword. The healing attitude always passes through the unconditional acceptance of any position, accepting the offended, accepting the angry, accepting the vengeful, accepting the damned, accepting the rebel with or without a cause, accepting the masochist, accepting the victim and who victimize himself. Accepting oneself and accepting the other unconditionally without wanting to change anything is healing because it just breaks with the hurtful attitude – however ideally or technically correct  -which is not recognizing, imposing, projecting, desiring anything else , the attitude that caused the primal wound at its origin.

The therapist, with the best intention, using any diagnosis or characterization of personality, deducing an unconscious dynamism, or wanting to implement a method, a technique, however deep or spiritualized these tools might be, is not looking and accepting the patient as he is here and now, objectifies him somehow and so opens the primal wound. The therapist does not just look at him, he does not listen to him literally, he does not accept him unconditionally as he is.

And this also applies to himself, the person of the therapist who is in a continuous process of self-understanding, to be accepted without further ado, without psychological or spiritual concepts, without judgment or evaluation, to accept himself globally and in the last corner of his person without any intention to change. Only then can the primal wounds be partially closed.

When the patient feels absolutely accepted even in the most problematic traits, without any shadow of assessment or judgment, analytical attitude or technical intervention, then he will be able to accept himself. Of course, the process of change will go on to deeper levels over time, and the therapist may, in the future, make use of psychodynamic concepts, transcendent values, and adjuvant techniques to promote, precipitate and consolidate any progress.

There are therapeutic currents that have that basic attitude, like that of Carl Rogers, that of Abraham Maslow and the Positive Psychology of Martín Seligman. But it is John Firman who devotes several chapters of his book The Primal Wound, and a whole book, A Psychotherapy of Love, to specific and technical topics of this type of approach to the treatment of the primal wound itself, and to the handling of the transference and the inevitable counter-transference.

The issue of transference and counter-transference is not inquired by the other authors cited above, and it is precisely there where their weak point lies and where they are most criticized, with certain reason. Only John Firman is the one who develops and clarifies it.

The karmic origin of Chironian wounds

In her endeavor to avoid idealization when interpreting Chiron's wounds, Liz Greene also rejects a karmic explanation, past lives or reincarnation reasons to the apparent injustice of the kind of wounds this asteroid tends to open. She says that such injustice must be attributed to human life in general, to the human condition which is just the way it is.

I argue that this eagerness goes too far in that way, because the entire natal chart - and not only the planet Chiron - can not be considered outside of a karmic vision of life, even of the collective karma of which individual history is a part. All our spiritual past is implicit in planets like Saturn, Moon, Pluto; in the squares and in the South Node; anyway, in all the vision of destiny that a natal chart implies. What could be differentiated in principle is the personal karma represented mainly by Saturn and Moon, and collective karma represented mainly by transpersonal planets, the asteroid Chiron having a linking role between one and the other.

The spiritual past of people can be traced in two ways: one is in the genealogical tree of ancestors, a work that is masterfully executed in the therapy of the Family Constellations; the other, a systematic regression to past lives, a previous series of them until reaching the life before the present one. The first analysis is collective, the second is individual, but the person who has been able to do so, can access the transpersonal understanding of the origin of their suffering on Earth, and the mission that follows from it. It’s not theory, it’s not invention, it’s not justification or defense for not facing the emotions or the necessary healing; on the contrary, it is a powerful therapeutic weapon in the path of deep self-knowledge, a weapon that will unfold a holistic vision of the long life of everyone on Earth, and that will be reflected in the planetsʹ position of the birth chart, especially those that indicate work to do in order to learn, mature and heal.

The opening of the Akashic Records is also in this direction, but for me that method does not have the forcefulness of seeing the past lives with one's own eyes like it’s in regression. The fact that another person tells you about your past (even if it is the same as what is seen in regressions), does not have the therapeutic value that the latter has.

In my own personal research, I found a direct history of the Chironian-type injuries in which it was (as proposed by the psychologist who facilitated the regression) the first life of mine on Earth, and of course, in the last life before it, life that is not easily accessed but through a long detour after knowing many lives, because it is so traumatic that it usually, and revealing as it is, is the root and at the same time the result that will give rise to our actual life. Antecedents of the primal wound and traumatic wounds of this life, were an inextricable mixture between terrible and uncontrollable collective factors - World War II - and irresponsible and hurtful individual behaviors to others.

The orbital cycle of Chiron

The return of Chiron to its natal position marks a key age in the individual evolution of the human being, the age of fifty years. Everyone knows that this age - the turn of a decade - is vital and critical, resonating like an adult graduation, leaving aside what is not important and taking on truly important things in life. And now we add more meaning to it: it is the age of seriously dealing with healing at all levels: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual, just when we see the time passing to direct us towards the end, showing the body the first signals of decline.

Barbara Hand Clow instructs us about the 50-51 years cycle of Chiron through a very revealing graph of its orbit, extremely elliptical, seeing how its passage is uneven by the sequence of signs: Chiron always remains from Aquarius to Taurus (four signs) for many more years - about 29 - than from Gemini to Capricorn (eight signs), about 21 years. Chiron in Aquarius, Chiron in Pisces, Chiron in Aries and Chiron in Taurus can get to be 6 to 8 years in each sign, while in the rest of the signs (from Gemini to Capricorn) only an average of two years in each one.

Another deduction of such an unequal cycle between the signs, is that in many opportunities, Chiron synchronizes his speed with Uranus, which takes 7 years in each sign, so they usually remain aspected - especially opposition - for many years. The Chiron-Uranus opposition is so frequent that it cannot be considered a personal - but indeed a collective aspect, in which the only important matter is the position by houses and other planetary aspects associated. For example Clow cites the case of exact Chiron-Uranus opposition 41 times from 1952 to 1989.

Looking at that time, I am considering that the Chiron-Uranus opposition could mean the possibility of generational-type primal wounds linked to the estrangement of women from household functions, the distance inside home caused by technology and the distant and cold relationships that the industrial society encouraged, from radical free love to the cool climates within the family or couples where freedom and affective distance encouraged the coldest and impersonal child-rearing, at the same time as the possibility of abortion as a normal attitude.

Also the possibility of traumatic injuries caused by the same technology, since the atomic radiation to all the environmental contamination, in its versions: air, water, sound and earth. And of course, contamination through mass media and means of transport, with the massification of cars and highways and their prototypical accidents.

But it also means the healing possibilities that these generations have, using the full arsenal of techniques and psychotherapies, especially alternative, available to them from those years. All Transpersonal Psychology and Psychological Astrology grew and spread in those years, so shamanic, stones, crystals, flowers, therapies etc., etc. Generalizing this, the whole concept of health changed in those years, from physical to mental and spiritual. I continue to reflect on all this and am awaiting observations and points of view from readers about this generational Uranus-Chiron opposition, which most of us have in our natal charts.

The current moment of Chiron

The reason that Chiron is currently very powerful is that he is on 0 ° degree of Aries, that is, in the vernal point of the sky, the beginning of the zodiac. We know that this point is the Ascendant of the Zodiac, that is, it is the sky ascendant for the whole planet, the beginning of the entire astrological cycle.

And when we know Chiron's particular orbit just as we have seen above, that 0 ° degree of Aries is just the middle of the two signs where it delays a lot. Chiron takes longer, about 8 years, just on the two signs Pisces and Aries, therefore the 0 ° degree of Aries is the main point, the average degree in the aphelion of its orbit, where it is the furthest position from the Sun. Chiron, therefore, overlaps the vernal point, which is the Ascendant of the sky for the entire planet, with this middle and main degree of its orbit. What a powerful coincidence!

Summary and Conclusions

I did a review of Chiron’s basic meanings in which all the authors are more or less in agreement, like a personality area where wounds are received and are considered unjust; and then I tried to expand that meaning taking into account a long emotional process towards resilience from the beginning to the end.

Following Liz Greene, I enlarged the first reaction of hatred and desire for revenge just as natural, characteristic of the human animal that we all are; the negative consequences for health if such a reaction is repressed, and the consequent need of recognizing such feelings in order to achieve health. And along with it, I also analyzed this tendency to repress negative feelings as belonging to the great division between the animal body and the idealism of the civilized human being, a division represented by the mythic centaur.

To understand the emergence of that mythological symbol, I researched the historical process of horses domestication, which accompanies and promotes the establishment of the first human civilizations. I tried to arrange a symbolic correspondence link between Centaurs => Domesticated horse => Division between the animal being / civilized and idealistic human being.

I discerned in the myth two great types of wounds, the primal and the traumatic ones; for the first, I developed the ideas of John Firman and another authors about the Primal Wound, which is received unfailingly in the process of upbringing by our parents and caregivers, which establishes an energy hole in the core of our being due to the lack of a view without projections, conditions or judgments. And I described the strategies to defend oneself against such annihilating emotions, one of which is the construction of a false self and a false resilience.

I looked at the clinical definition of traumatic wounds, and reflected on the injustice that is felt on Chironian wounds. I concluded reflecting on the collective karmic character of such wounds, seeing the differences of such point of view with Liz Greene’s opinion.

I ended up developing a track left by Liz Greene, about the steps, stages or positions of the whole Chironian process, from the wound’s reception to its transformation through resilience, which goes through pain, hatred, desire for revenge, feelings of injustice, repression, compulsive repetition of the wound, feelings of inferiority, forgiveness, the search for understanding and meaning, and resilient compassion.

I went around the notion of healing that is associated with Chiron's wounds, about its real possibility and / or its imperishable character, and about the main attitude of certain therapeutic lines that I believe to be able to slow repairing the suffering: radical acceptance without judgments, analysis or conditions, and without diagnostic or technical attempts to change anything.

To finish all this, I raised astronomical and astrological data about the cycle and the return of Chiron, and the importance of the current moment indicated by actual transit of Chiron in the vernal point, the 0° degree of Aries.

An Exemplary Case

Already closing this investigation, I was directed to the largest bookstore in my city to buy a favorite author of science fiction books. There was none. When I went out to the street, I said to myself: "I'm not going to leave this bookstore with empty hands, I'm going to buy a book, I want to read something." I went back inside, and the first book - among thousands exposed - to which I directed my gaze was the book "Stronger than Hate" by Tim Guénard. I think it is the best book in the world on a case of exemplary resilience, a literal incarnation of Chiron with all its process.

In this book whose subtitle is "How to Escape Fatal Destiny and Become a Happy Man in spite of Disgrace", Tim tells his life that is a display of terrible, violent and unfair situations from childhood to adulthood, and how he was overcoming hatred and the desire for revenge to become a loving being that helps children and young people who go through similar situations. Exemplary here I take it in two meanings of the word: as a paradigm and prototype of the primal and traumatic wounds, and as a virtuous example of the healing process of resilience and compassion.

Tim was born in the French countryside from a 16-year-old mother, who leaves him at 3 years old, tied to an electricity pole in a forest where he spends all night alone. His father gives himself to alcoholism for that abandonment (by another man), and offloads all his violence onto the child. At age 5, after a visit from a social worker who is warned that the father hit him, he gives him a spanking session that breaks his legs and nose, bursts one ear and one eye disfiguring his face. He spends 3 days in coma and wakes up in a hospital where he will stay for two and a half years without receiving a single visit. He recovers slowly thanks to his iron will, which in order to exercise his legs he crawls to the bathroom every night in silence and looks at the cellophane paper (from a gift received by another child that he had stolen surreptitiously), where small colored stars come out, fantasy pets and a little bear that greets. "That greeting was the only gesture of love that I received during those years." From the age of 7 they allocate him to substitute homes and to an orphanage suffering from institutional abuse, and nobody adopts him because of his disfigured face. He has an island of love with a family from the countryside who does adopt him, but the fatality occurs again: playing with another half-relative child, they build a straw house in the barn, and light a candle that burns everything: of course he is the only one blamed, returning to orphanages and then to reformatories and correctional facilities, developing aggressive self-defense behaviors, because otherwise the other orphans and then the arrested youngsters would have eaten him alive.

He escapes once from a very violent correctional institution, and runs away to Paris, where he knows freedom but also hunger, loneliness and persecution, since he does not have an identification document. He steals, fights, rapes and prostitutes himself, finally arriving at boxing as a sport where he channels his hatred and his desire for revenge towards his father and society. They capture him again, and again he escapes, reaching diverse judges who pay attention to his saying ("I'm going to escape again, you'll see") and so they expel him from all reformatories for that "feat". A humanitarian judge stares him in the eyes and listens to him, believes him (finally) and gives him the opportunity to be an apprentice in a gargoyle sculptor's trade. He graduates, works, and also continues boxing, becoming famous (with 23 nose fractures, 4 of which he had from his father).
Then he begins to meet and get together with humanitarian and charitable, spiritual and religious people who begin to transform him internally. Disabled children who like him openly, finally open his heart to love. He ends up marrying a young woman who declares her love, she also helps disabled people. Both move to Lourdes in the south-east of France, and have four children. Tim is dedicated to apiculture, and travels around the world sharing his story. Finally, he finds his mother and father, whom he forgives but they do not accept that gesture, being as hard as they were at the beginning.

Tim was born on August 9, 1958; we don't have Tim's birth time but I think that in his natal chart with appointed houses, Chiron must go to stand on the Ascendant or on the Midheaven, given the importance it has in his life.

Tim has the Sun conjunct Uranus in Leo, both opposed to Chiron in Aquarius, forming a T-square or "performance triangle" (Huber) with Mars in Taurus. Chiron is also trine to Jupiter - partile conjunct the North Node - in Libra, and quincunxes Venus in Cancer, shaping the "dominant triangle" figure whose characteristics developed by the Huber’s describe in detail the psychology and life of Tim Guénard: creativity, positive solutions of his problems, irradiation in his place, for that "dominant" trait. Finally, Chiron is also sextile to Saturn in Sagittarius, which in turn is trine to the Sun-Uranus forming the "triangle of ambivalence" figure (Huber), whose blue angle - in this case Saturn - marks the transmutation or the good control for the opposition's management of red energies and squares.

Apart from the fact that Saturn is in Sagittarius, the central aspect I think is that trine between Chiron and Jupiter with the North Node, which gives him faith and the ability to find meaning in everything that happens to him. The most remarkable thing here is this possibility of working with his Sun - leonine and martial will (that he himself speaks), and encounters with special people (first his grandmother, his aunt, a beggar who teaches him a lot, a special judge, then a priest, the disabled people, a girlfriend, even Mother Teresa of Calcutta!), who goes transforming his life and enabling an admirable resilience.

Listen to the introduction, observing the specific Chironian symbols:

"My name is Philippe, and they call me Tim because my Iroquois name is Timidy: it means "Lord of the horses." My wounded memory was harder to tame than a savage stallion. Guénard could be interpreted as "firm in hope". I have always believed in miracles. That hope that I have never lacked, even in the darkest of the night, I wish to the whole world today”.

“My life is as bruised as my face. The most violent blows I received from those who should have taken me by the hand and say "I love you". I have survived thanks to three dreams: getting me expelled from the correctional - a feat never consummated until then; become a gang leader; kill my father”.

“I have realized these dreams. Except the third. But for years, the flame of revenge made me feel alive. In my hatred prison, people inhabited by Love visited me and made me kneel in my heart. I owe my life to those that society rejects, to sickly people, the cripples, to the disabled, to the "abnormal" ones. I dedicate this book to them”.

“Man is free to completely alter his destiny for the best or for the worst: I, the son of an alcoholic, an abandoned child, have made knocking the blow of fatality. I've made lies to the genetics. That is my pride”.

“To be a man you need balls. To be a man of love you have to have them even bigger. After years of combat, I buried the hatchet with my father, with myself and with my past”.

“Sometimes I take the wheel of my old truck and I go where they ask me, to tell a little of my chaotic life. I go around or further away, in France or abroad, to schools and prisons, to churches and courts, to stadiums and public squares...”

“I attest that forgiveness is the most difficult act to pose: manʹs most worthy affair, my most beautiful combat. Love is my final fist. From now on I walk the path of love.ʺ

But let's see what he says in the book’s conclusion about forgiveness, that slow healing process, and about primal and traumatic wounds reopening:

"Forgiveness is not a magic wand. There is a will to forgive and a power to forgive, sometimes you want to forgive but you cannot. When it is possible, when at last head and heart end up agreeing, memories remain, those painful things that rise to the surface, that disturb and revive hatred. It is the forgiveness of memory. It is not the simplest one. It takes a lot of time”.

“For ten years I've been asking Martine: 'Do you love me?' I could not believe in her love. My healing process has taken place in over a long time. Yes, it takes time. I have been lucky to meet authentic people. They have loved me, accepting my past traces. They dared to admit my difference, my startles of a wounded man. They listened to my suffering, and they continued to love me after the storms. Now I am aware of what I have received”.

“The past wakes up because of a sound, a word, an odor, a noise, a gesture, a place glimpsed from afar... a trifle is enough for memories to arise. They shake me, they harrow me. They remind me that I still have hypersensitivity. It still hurts me. Maybe I will never calm down at all. I will undoubtedly have to renew my forgiveness, again and again. Is this the 'seventy seven times seven' that Jesus means?”

“Forgiving is not forgetting. It is accepting to live in peace with the offense. It is difficult when the wound has pierced the entire being branding the body as a lethal tattoo. Recently I had to suffer a leg surgery: my father's blows caused some irreparable physical damage. Pain wakes up frequently, and with it, the memories”.

“To forgive, you have to remember. It is not necessary to hide the wound, to bury it, but, on the contrary, to expose to the air, to the light of day. A hidden wound becomes infected and distills its poison. It is necessary to see it, to be heard, in order to become a source of life”.

“I testify that there is no wound that can’t go slowly healing thanks to love."

And in the last part of the book we will observe how the primal wounds open up to the end, always, eternally, renewing the poison as the legend of Chiron says. But also how he goes healing them:

"Until the age of 16, I dreamed furiously that my mother was coming back to pick me up. Then I accepted the intolerable idea of having been abandoned by one who carried me in her womb. Thereby I decided it would be better if I would never see her again”.

“However, it happened. Suddenly. It was after my wedding. An aunt had invited me to a family meeting without telling me that I would meet my mother there. I suddenly found myself facing a brunette, young and beautiful woman”.

“She did not make a single gesture when he saw me. Not even a grimace”

“I approached her and said: - My only dream is you giving me a kiss...”
-She pulled back imperceptibly.

“…or your hand on my shoulder, if you prefer. Only one gesture, that will be enough...” -She kept her distance and answered: “-You are like your father...  Honor, nothing but honor! –“

“I waited a few seconds for a gesture that would not come. I left there. I was going to leave when my mother took me on the landing. She asked me:
“Have you forgiven to your father?-“
“Yes, I have forgiven him”.

“She locked herself in. Her face was tight, hard. No doubt, she could not accept that I had forgiven the man who had broken my body. She did not admit that I could put them both on the same plane of forgiveness. So she flings these words at me:
“Yes, you're like your father. You will be a bad husband and a bad father...”

“There are words more violent than punching. The words of the poison of despair, of fatality. My mother did not measure the extent of her assertion”.

“It took another woman, Martine, my wife, to be able to purge this deadly poison. She took care of me with an angel's patience, day after day”.

“Thanks to Martine, today I can say this, what seems unthinkable: the happiness I receive from our four children, I also owe it to my mother. She is the one who gave me life, that inestimable treasure”.

“Today I fight to be a good father, a good husband and a good son ... of God Father”.

“My children have become my roots. Next to them, the wounded man that I am has obtained healing. When they call me daddy, I feel a delicious chill running down my spine. It is an exquisite emotion. I do not want to get used to be called daddy. It is the most beautiful thing in the world. I remember all those "daddies" that I missed. I give thanks, and I entrust to God Father all children who do not have anyone to say "daddy" to.ʺ

Image sources:
Title: collage provided by the author
Chiron and Achilles statue: I, Sailko, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Sad child: Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay
Primal wound: Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay
Lapitae: Sebastiano Ricci, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Rebellion: Image by Suzanne Morris from Pixabay
Healing: Image by Cindy Barth from Pixabay
Chiron's cycle: provided by Manuel Quiles
Tim Guénard's chart: data via https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Gu%C3%A9nard