In prior posts, I’ve investigated several different ways of astrologically identifying your past and future karma using invaluable information gained by attending workshops/retreats lead by Judy Hall many years ago.
We’ve looked at the Sun, Moon, nodal axis, and karmic relationships (through synastry). Now, it’s time to look at the placement of Chiron in our charts, for this more than anything points directly at what Judy Hall calls ‘the wound of the soul’.
Chiron / the wound of the soul
Chiron is oft considered a minor astrological player, hiding away in the constellation of Sagittarius located between Saturn, his mythical father, and Uranus, his mythical grandfather.
Product of one an illicit union between Saturn and Philyra, daughter of Oceanus, the primeval deep, Chiron was half-mortal and half-immortal. He was raised by the god, Apollo, and as the result possessed amazing healing skills. But when accidently wounded in his leg, his mortal half, with the poison of the Hydra, he was unable to heal himself. Although the wound refused to heal, being half-immortal, Chiron could not die.
In karmic work, Chiron shows not only where the incarnating soul has been wounded but also suggests what must be done to find release from that pain. Like Chiron, who eventually found release in voluntarily taking up the burden of Prometheus, who having stolen fire from the god had been condemned to endlessly have his liver pecked out. The key here is voluntarily. To find release from his ‘wound of the soul’, the incarnated souls must freely release its hold on the world it has always and through ‘death’ (of sorts), hope that something greater may emerge.
In this sense, Chiron is a shaman that helps us move between levels of consciousness in order to embrace our pain before letting it go. Both house and sign placement give important clues to how this process is meant to play out:
| Sign/House | Karmic Challenge | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Aries / 1st House / Aspects with Mars | Wound to the ego, one’s self of self. | In prior lives, you may have been too egotistical or else, through some experience, completely lost your self of self. Either way, that sense of self must now be rebuilt on firmer ground in line with one’s eternal, indestructible essence. |
| Taurus/ 2nd House | Wound is in regards to resources (both external and internal) and personal security. | In prior lives you learned how to heal this wound but have forgotten. Now is the time to delve back into that past and find the resources you already have to integrate your body and soul and ‘ground’ your spiritual gifts. |
| Gemini / 3rd House | Wound in making yourself heard. | In prior lives, you may have been punished for misusing your gifts of communication – perhaps spreading gossip, mistruths, or informing on others. Now you must work past these earlier experiences and learn important lessons that will allow you in this life to speak your truth with perfect integrity. |
| Cancer / 4th House | Wound is emotional in relation to home environment and parenting | In prior lives, you learned that your home environment was not safe, often because parents were untruthful and/or unreliable. Now the challenge is rise above such experiences in order to parent yourself. You do not have rely on others. You came into the world alone and will also leave it alone. |
| Leo/ 5th House | Wound is in relation to one’s now creativity, which may or may not involved having children. | In prior lives, you may have experience destruction of your personal creations and have come away with sense they were unworthy or unappreciated. Healing comes from resolving this split between head and heart. When you create for the pure joy of creating, it matters not what others think. |
| Virgo / 6th House | Wound in constant self-criticism. | Pin prior lives, you may have been made to feel you were not good enough and as the result, constantly worried about being criticised. The healing now comes from learning that is not true and indeed, through being of service to others using your amazing healing powers, you develop faith in your ability to heal yourself. |
| Libra / 7th House | Wound is in regard to your relationships. | In previous lives, you may have learned to believe that you will always attract unsuitable relationships that are destined to fail. Healing comes when you realise that your relationships are nothing more of a mirror into your own should. Work on your relationship with yourself and watch your relationships with others prosper and grow. |
| Scorpio / 8th House | Would is in regard to the experience of death. | In prior lives you may have experienced severe pain as the result of untimely deaths of others and/or yourself which resulted in loosing of parts of your own soul. Healing comes from soul retrieval and integration, especially of those part of SELF that you’ previously chosen to disown. |
| Sagittarius / 9th House | Wound in old beliefs and attitudes, especially those of a religious/philosophical nature. | In prior lives, you might have held on to beliefs for which you were persecuted or punished. Healing comes from letting go of the need to cling to beliefs and learn how to be in the ‘here and now’ instead of the process of ‘becoming’. |
| Capricorn / 10th House | Wounds in regards to external worldly affairs, especially of a business or political nature. | In prior lives, you might have caved into the demands of others and done things against your conscious and/or stood by your conscious only to be used as the scapegoat to protect unscrupulous others. Healing comes from connecting with and staying true to your own inner authority regardless of what others do or say. |
| Aquarius / 11th House | Wounds relating to being an outcast, or outsider. | In prior lives you may have been punished for having clearly seen (and tried to fix) the wrongs of society. Healing comes with the realisation that one size does not fit all and what’s good for the goose, is not always good for the gander. |
| Pisces / 12th House | Wounds relating to loss of connection with own divinity. | In prior lives, you may have given yourself in order to heal the wounds of others. Healing comes from taking back your personal power and using it for the good of all involved, which includes both self as well as others. |
Times of healing
Chiron transits (i.e. current position of Chiron making a key aspect to your natal Chiron), are often immensely healing turning points. But because of the eccentric orbit of Chiron, these periods often prove hard to predict.
Your first Chiron square, which separates you from that which gives comfort from your pain, can occur anytime between 5 ½ years – 23 ½ years of age. Clearly there is a huge disparity here as to how emotionally capable you will be with dealing with this.
Next, comes your Chiron opposition, which intensifies your wound.
Finally, sometime usually sometime between age 49-51 years of age, you will have your Chiron return, which if you get it right and have been successful into integrating all the phases you’ve experienced to this point, can be an enormously healing time. So much depends on how you’ve dealt with your earlier Uranus opposition Uranus transit. However if, like too many, you fail to get this right, serious health issues are the usual result: men often have heart attacks and women, throat problems.
Example
My own Chiron is in Capricorn straddles my 6th and 7th houses.
This suggests that the wound in my soul not only has something to do with worldly affairs and becoming my own authority, but also regarding relationships gone wrong as well as the damage done by constant self-criticism. Healing should come through using my healing powers in service to others in such a way as to establish my person sense of authority, which in turn should also benefit my personal relationships with close others.
As my own Chiron return was due in the early spring of 2003, a visualization done during my summer 2002 retreat in Glastonbury should have proven useful: during that visualization, I saw the planes of war over the skies of England. My home and family were gone – now what? Churchill and important other world leaders of the time were the ‘new authority’ of the ‘new world order’ and I knew that I must join them; together we’d win the respect of the people lead them forwards to release themselves from the damage of war into a new and better future.
Although all the pieces of the puzzle as suggested by my natal chart were in that visualisation, I do not know if it accurately reflects a prior life. Neither or since have I had any suggestion that was a reality. But I do know that because my North node is in Capricorn (in the 7th house), that becoming an authority such as this is a goal for me in this lifetime. Although at the time of that visualization I didn’t know that a few months later I’d be made redundant after many years of working for Ernst & Young as an international tax lawyer, I’d have a new job in the same field with a smaller firm, where I’d have the opportunity to establish myself as that authority.
In hindsight, I cannot say that was all a huge success because it wasn’t. It’s true that I gained some ground in becoming an authority in my field of expertise, in this regard whilst at the same time developing some significant thyroid (i.e. throat) problems.
The lesson, I suppose, is never to underestimate the karmic challenges with which we find ourselves presented. As the result, we ought not to become too critical of ourselves when we fail to meet them full on in complete triumph. Another lesson is that there are so many threads of our karmic past to follow up during any lifetime, that sometimes they get hopelessly tangled. For example, it was pointed out to me by a fellow student during that retreat that with Uranus in Cancer in my 1st natal house close to my ascendant, that I’ve come into this life with an expectation of my home/family (Cancer) would come to an end by something like a war (Uranus) and who knows, but that this expectation coloured my visualisation as much as did past life karma.
(to be continued)
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