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Chiron in Aries

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

What the tradition reads

Every reading of Chiron by sign is recent work. The body was discovered in 1977, and the delineations gathered here were written by a working astrologer of the present century rather than handed down. Cafe Astrology's rule for the placement is that the sign Chiron occupies marks what a person knows better than most and will champion or preach to others, while having trouble absorbing the same lesson and applying it to their own life. In Aries, the zodiac's first sign, cardinal fire, ruled by Mars, the lesson is worth and precedence. The page reads a champion of the underdog, always ready to remind others how special and important they are, and slow to take the reminder: years can pass in the work of believing that one counts, and that prioritising oneself is sometimes what makes a person whole, a thing known in the head and hard to practise. Helping others express their strengths is named a real knack, applied to its owner's own life only with time. The same source separates this from Saturn, where the sore spot is defended and denied, whereas Chiron is read as hypersensitive and self honest about it, given to overcompensation rather than concealment.

The story

Aries is ruled by Mars in both the classical and the modern scheme, and the myth behind this body's name turns on a weapon. Wikipedia's account has Chiron wounded during Heracles's visit to the cave of Pholus on Mount Pelion, in the course of the fourth labour. Wine held in trust by the centaurs was opened, its vapour drew the wild ones outside, they attacked with stones and fir trees, and Heracles drove them back with arrows poisoned by the blood of the Hydra. One of those arrows struck Chiron in the thigh. He was the master of the healing arts and could not heal himself, and as the son of Cronus he could not die of it either, so the wound stood open rather than closing or killing. Ovid's Fasti tells a quieter version, in which an arrow dipped in Lernaean hydra venom falls on Chiron's left foot while he handles the hero's weapons in his own house, with the child Achilles looking on. Cafe Astrology's ingress tables put Chiron in Aries from April 1968 to May 1976, and again from April 2018 to June 2026, close to eight years each time, the longest passage the tables record.

Written from

Corpus key point:Chiron:sign:Aries.