The library · The other points and bodies

Chiron in Gemini

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

What the tradition reads

Chiron entered astrology only after 1977, and its reading by sign belongs to the decades since; the delineation here is Cafe Astrology's, written by the astrologer Annie. The rule she applies is that the sign Chiron holds is the one whose lessons a person champions and preaches while finding them hard to take in. Gemini is mutable air, ruled by Mercury, and the delineation turns on speech, learning and exchange. The reading accordingly gives a firm belief in the power of the mind, in mind over matter, and in conversation and unapologetic self expression, held alongside a practice that does not match it: speech that comes out as too much or too little, more often swinging between the two, never quite comfortable, with guilt attached to both excess and silence and a lingering question about whether the account given was accurate. The same page reads real speed and skill in helping others with information and advice, and calls the wish to help genuine rather than performed. The general Chiron note applies: the sensitivity is not to be got over but recognised, and the expectations held here tend to be unreasonable.

The story

The centaur was taught before he taught. Wikipedia's account has Apollo find the abandoned child and school him in medicine, herbs, music, the lyre, archery and prophecy, with Artemis training him in archery and hunting, and credits that education with raising him above his beastly nature; it also credits him with the discovery of botany and pharmacy. His own pupils were many, among them Asclepius, Aristaeus, Actaeon, Achilles, Jason and Medus, and the article glosses his Greek name, Kheiron, as hand. The body named after him answers to two names at once, which suits the sign of the twins by accident rather than design: it was called an asteroid first and numbered 2060, then found in 1989 to behave like a comet, and it is now officially both a minor planet and a comet, 95P/Chiron. Cafe Astrology's ingress tables put Chiron in Gemini from June 1983, with a retrograde return to Taurus that winter and the passage settled from April 1984, until June 1988, and again from July 2033.

Written from

Corpus key point:Chiron:sign:Gemini.