Crafting a Future with the Centaur's Cosmic Sandpaper: 2020 Transits of Chiron, Pholus and Chariklo

by David Leskowitz

The third decade of this millennium begins with conjunctions between Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto. When Saturn and Pluto conjoin, not only do they close one 36 year cycle to start another, they serve to link our inner and outer spheres of experience. When Saturnian limitations are exploded by Plutonic force, who would you call but the Centaurs? It is these cosmic wanderers who traverse between the reality of Saturn and the transcendental realms of Uranus, Neptune and beyond. Astrologically they help us to fathom these great leaps out of our comfort zones that some call evolution.

The years 2019-2020 are conditioned by two major Centaur aspects: the square between Chiron and Pholus, and the conjunction of centaur Chariklo (Chiron’s wife) with Saturn-Pluto around 23-4° Capricorn. Saturn was recently dredged by a long dalliance with the Moon’s South Node: we approach the future feeling lighter, having already pressed the ‘release’ button on our waste hatch through this intensely karmic aspect. On January 10, the first Lunar Eclipse of 2020 (at 20° Cancer) will remind us of this process and help draw attention to the year’s stellium.

Centaurs in Myth

I like to approach the Centaurs as they are today, not only based on myths from when we met them long ago. Myths are a starting place, though. The daughter of Apollo, Chariklo is a naiad (fresh-water nymph) and wife of Chiron. In one of her myths she is a temple priestess of Vesta. Meaning “Graceful Spinner”, Chariklo relates to our sense of personal space, subtle body, and astral travel. Together with her partner Chiron, she guides us on the path of healing and awakening. An astrological keyword for Chariklo is charisma, or the bestowing of grace.

Astrological Pholus can give catharsis; Chiron’s skilled hand manages the healing process. Pholus is a cave-dwelling oracle who holds the divine ambrosia. His myth is brief, yet he plays a pivotal role in the stories of both Herakles and Chiron. In Pholus’ cave, Herakles’ heroic journey collides with his mentor, Chiron. The hero-on-a-journey expects to drink from the victory flask. When Pholus uncorks his ambrosia, nearby Centaurs take wind of the rare vintage, and cause a scuffle. Herakles shoots venomous arrows, killing many centaurs including Pholus, who stands in the way. Chiron’s skilled hands fail him as he inspects Pholus’ wound, injecting himself with Hydra’s venom. As “small cause, big effect” (von Heeren) Pholus thus causes his own demise and the ‘fatal’ wounding of immortal Chiron.

Mythical Pholus may have died at the end of an arrow, but I am sure that the wisdom-being inspiring that story lives today in his Aquarian realm. Master Teachers and Healers Chiron and Chariklo exist in a crystalline presence as accessible as any other dream-mentors.

The Chiron-Pholus Square

Over the last four years Pholus has dipped into Capricorn, only to travel again in Sagittarius, and back again. Through much of 2016 and 2017 Pholus skirted the edges of the Galactic Center, at 27° Sagittarius: “Sanding and sanding a sculptor is carefully modulating and refining a curve.” (Pleiadian Degrees, version of Sabians by John Sandbach). The symbol feels right for a centaur like Pholus. Imagine a cosmic sandpaper that grinds away at karmic rough spots: it hurts, yet we become smoother for having lived through it. What curves did life artfully, if gratingly, modulate for you through this period?

In 2019-2020, Chiron and Pholus reach the quarter phase of their cycle, first from mutable signs (Pisces/Sagittarius), and now in cardinal signs (Aries/Capricorn). Rather than acting antagonistically, these two are friends. They both want to help us reach spiritual healing. Blending their keywords gives us a process of “healing catharsis," which does not always feel nice, but moves toward relief and clarity.

In late 2019 we experienced a final cardinal Chiron-Pholus square, before the Saturn-Pluto conjunction of January 12, 2020. This grand astrological occurrence is part of an exquisite stellium of Pluto-Saturn-Ceres-Sun-Chariklo-Mercury, within a couple days. It’s an alignment of the largest asteroid (Ceres) with the largest centaur (Chariklo), with what we can call the first Plutoid (pairing well with the Ceres/Demeter myth, underworld Pluto), all conjoining the Lord of Time himself. A strong mood of reset and realignment will prevail, on the heels of the new Mercury synodic cycle. This may actually be kinder than the rumor-mills have us believe. As author Melanie Reinhart said here recently, once we get to know her, Chariklo can help us mitigate the crisis.

Recent History of the Chiron-Pholus Cycle

Centaurs are eccentric: they weave weird webs for our world. Their sense of time is not steady, like our even-keel around the solar zodiac in twelve segments. From our geocentric point of view, the Centaurs make paths that are both elliptical and off-center around the Sun. This makes their travels through the zodiac hard to track, especially when looking at the relationship between two centaurs like Pholus with Chiron.

Squares, like the waxing Chiron-Pholus phase that we find ourselves in now, are never easy. We can find perspective by seeing how this part fits the whole. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries happen to host especially weird centaur cycles. If we are trying to understand the current Chiron-Pholus cycle (healing ancestral karma), this is important to consider. Where did this cycle, which now reaches its opening square, begin? What kind of history does it trace?

Robert von Heeren’s research is an ideal start to learn the pedigree of this cycle. He’s plotted the paths of the centaurs at kentauren.info. What a funny plot Chiron and Pholus make.

We can see that historically, there have been many Chiron-Pholus squares (see those curves running through the 90° line.) In this 450-year plot, most squares were in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Check out the 180° line at top — so many years hit that point: these two centaurs spend a lot of time at odds, at opposite zodiacal poles.

Broadly, we can see that much of our ‘Medieval’ and early modern history is colored by the Chiron-Pholus opposition. More recently, they opposed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries several times. In a 500 year period they can reach opposition a dozen times, while conjoining only half as often. The conjunction then, marks a mini-epoch in human history. For all the weirdness, their total cycle is of a (near-) regular 100 years: they meet every century, give or take a couple years, and do the whirly-gig dance of healing from then on out.
On the graph, we see the regular 100-year dip marking the centennial conjunctions of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, each with quick returns up the scale toward an opposition.

Chiron & Pholus Influence in the 20th Century

Here is one 100-year section, from the mid-twentieth to mid-twenty-first century. One reliable conjunction, in 1956 (Aquarius); then in the 1990s there was a close-but-no-centaur conjunction, before they stretched way up toward opposition in a short few decades:
•1939 Opposition, mid-Cancer/Capricorn
•1956 conjunction in Aquarius, before which they spanned 180 degrees in a few years;
•1956-(1992)-2019, waxing into the slower opening square we find ourselves in today (with a first part of phase concluding in near-conjunction).

If Chiron-Pholus together ‘process our stuff’, then the decades between 1954 and 1990 were more dense than average with work to be done. The opening salvo to an Aquarian Age. As the quicker of the pair, Chiron began to move ahead of his friend only to return to a near conjunction in 1991. The years of 1992-1994 were colored by this long-lasting but never-perfecting conjunction, always within a few degrees (in Leo and Virgo).

A Future Foretold by Centaurs

Pholus moves quickly in the signs of Leo and Virgo, with about a three years transit, versus a solid slog of 20 years in Capricorn, where every 92 years he reaches aphelion at 24° Capricorn. Through the 2040s, Pholus will live out the stay in Capricorn which he just now began. This exit won’t happen without lots of action, though, in the form of reaching two phases in his synodic cycle with Chiron: Chiron and Pholus wax to opposition by 2041, in the last degrees of the Cancer/Capricorn axis (Aug 2041). Then, by late August 2048, Pholus and Chiron quickly reach the waning square of this cycle.

The present Chiron-Pholus cycle concludes in 2060, at the end of Aquarius. This centauric Age of Aquarius begins and ends in the sign of the Water Bearer, a worthy symbol for Pholus, holder of visionary ambrosia. This Centaur’s function in both myth and in life is to safeguard what is most potent and valuable, for when the time comes to pop the cork on that emergency bottle and drink deep from life’s mysteries. These are times of sudden initiation, breakthrough, and spiritual crisis.

It is significant how our present cycle began in the ’50s, when the Aquarian Generation of Baby Boomers took birth. The Gen-Xers, Millenials and Gen-Z’s have inherited a crisis, as all next generations do. Today’s waxing square is the deep work of ancestral healing—even healing those ‘ancestors’ who still live. We heal the part that is in us: in our genes, habits, thought patterns, actions. It’s the ‘Harmony is Strife’ phase of the cycle, as told by Heraclitus.

Chariklo, Cosmic medicine-woman & The Stellium of 2020

When the infamous Saturn-Pluto conjunction strikes, Chariklo is there to lead the way forward as natural guide of boundaries. As a Centaur who orbits beyond Saturn and in resonance with Uranus, Chariklo represents the expansion of self that can follow the process of individuation. Through her 62 year cycle, from the Neptunian state before birth, to the Saturn Return and individuation — she leads us again toward Neptune, via Uranus.

The Saturn-Neptune process is itself mediated by Pholus, as weaver of orbits and holder (Saturn) of precious elixirs (Neptune). While Chiron and family traverse only the Uranian sphere, Pholus reaches Neptune’s more distant realm at his place of aphelion, farthest from the Sun.

This year finds Chariklo transiting Pholus’ aphelion at 24° Capricorn, where her healing infusion conjoins our innate ability to hold power (Pholus). Pholus’ aphelion marks a crisis of bravery, where we are distanced from solar potency and must rely on inner soul power to plumb our solar system’s far reaches.

During the present dynamic tension between Chiron and Pholus, in 2020 Chariklo sweeps in and inhabits the zone where Pholus regularly stretches out to his most frigid. Pholus was there in 1946 and will return in 2038 (to aphelion). That’s just a few years before his present cycle with Chiron reaches the opposition (2041).

That culmination of this present Centaur cycle will align with the planetary Nodes of both Pholus and Chariklo. These happen to stand a degree apart, across the cusp of Capricorn-Aquarius: Pholus’ South Node in the last degree of Capricorn, Chariklo’s North Node in the first of Aquarius. The transits of 2041 will activate their evolutionary potentials together, since their nodal axes align.

The times we find ourselves working through together begin something important and rare, and maybe wonderful. We can see, through the cycles of Centaurs in relationship to the outer planets, how the changing of the guard, designated by the Saturn-Pluto cycle, can prepare us to integrate what we now consider transcendental.

Image sources:
Pompeii statue: Image by Murat ilgarlar from Pixabay
Sand sculpture: Image by Erik Lyngsøe from Pixabay
Chiron orbit animation: frankuitaalst from the Gravity Simulator message board. / GPL (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html); Saturn is the white (stationary) dot at 10 o'clock. Jupiter's orbit is blue.
Chiron/Pholus paths: with kind permission from Robert von Heeren, kentauren.info
Centaur teacher: Image by Dimitris Vetsikas from Pixabay
Chart of planetary nodes provided by the author

Published in: The Career Astrologer, December 2019.

Author:
David Leskowitz has worked with the Centaurs ever since he started learning astrology ten years ago. Researching their role in visionary and spiritual breakthroughs across history, he found unique ways to work with them in astrology, astral magic, and in healing. Now he leads events which open us to their energy and guidance. He offers healing sessions and astrological consulting in the Pioneer Valley of Western MA. Find his work at www.centaurs.space

© 2019/20 - David Leskowitz - The Career Astrologer

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