The library · The other points and bodies

Chiron in Capricorn

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

What the tradition reads

The reading of Chiron in Capricorn is recent, the body having been found in 1977, and it is given here from Cafe Astrology, written by the astrologer Annie. Her rule for the placement is that the sign Chiron holds is the one whose lessons a person teaches best and receives worst. Capricorn is cardinal earth, ruled by Saturn. The delineation reads a strong sense of structure, direction, rules and boundaries, and genuine talent for helping others order their lives and hold to their goals, set against difficulty in applying any of it personally, which it puts down to hypersensitivity about calling, status, standing and responsibility. Both directions of overcompensation are read here: shying away from one's own potential and from taking a solid stand, or going hard at it and still never feeling responsible or accomplished enough. The page reads difficulty appreciating one's own contribution, a sense of responsibility carried past the point of usefulness, and expectations of the self that it calls far too high. Cafe Astrology's general resolution holds: the hypersensitivity is to be recognised and worked with, since it is also where the wisdom of the placement comes from.

The story

Capricorn's ruler and the centaur's father are the same figure under two names. Wikipedia's account of the myth makes Chiron the son of the Titan Cronus, and its article on Cronus records that the Romans conflated their own deity Saturn with him, so that the planet Saturn carries the name of Cronus's Roman variant. The body keeps the same company in the sky. Its perihelion lies just inside the orbit of Saturn and its aphelion just outside the perihelion of Uranus, which is why it is classed a Saturn and Uranus object, with its nearer end in Saturn's zone of control. Saturn has also handled it: a close pass around May 720 brought Chiron within about thirty million kilometres of the planet and pulled its semi major axis in from roughly 14.55 to 13.7 astronomical units. Centaur orbits are not stable, and the page holds that Chiron probably came from the Kuiper belt. Cafe Astrology's ingress tables put Chiron in Capricorn from December 2001 to February 2005, with a retrograde return between July and December of that year.

Written from

Corpus key point:Chiron:sign:Capricorn.