The library · The other points and bodies

Chiron in Aquarius

Chiron (2060 Chiron) in tropical Aquarius, read in the modern Western manner

What the tradition reads

Chiron in Aquarius is read only in modern practice, the body having been discovered in 1977; the delineation here is Cafe Astrology's, by the astrologer Annie. Her rule is that the sign Chiron occupies carries the lessons a person preaches with conviction and applies to the self with difficulty. Aquarius is fixed air, ruled by Saturn in the classical scheme and by Uranus in the modern one. The page reads belief in people and in the power of the group, a genuine humanitarian streak, a championing of individuality, and real skill at encouraging others to keep their own step. Against that it sets a frequent sense of being disconnected or self conscious among friends or in a group, as though belonging were never quite established, and a marked sensitivity to one's place in a community. The same source says the wisdom of this placement lives exactly there, in the sensitivity, alongside the feeling of never doing enough, and reads the release as coming from trusting oneself and easing off the search for where one belongs rather than from finishing it.

The story

Aquarius answers to Saturn in the older scheme and to Uranus in the newer, and those are the two planets whose orbits Chiron travels between. Zane Stein builds his central keyword on that position: maverick, which he is careful to distinguish from rebel, meaning one who takes a stand apart from his associates, who carries neither the herd's brand nor the banner of protest against it. The body earned the word. When Kowal found it in 1977 it was so unlike anything then known in such an orbit that a new category had to be invented to hold it, and the category had no name until company arrived in the early 1990s: Pholus first, then Nessus, Hylonome, Asbolus and Chariklo among others, at which point the class was called the centaurs. Chiron is also both a minor planet and a comet at once, which is an awkward membership of two groups rather than a clean one of either. Cafe Astrology's ingress tables put Chiron in Aquarius from February 2005 to April 2010, and before that from January 1955 to March 1960.

Written from

Corpus key point:Chiron:sign:Aquarius.