The library · The other points and bodies

Chiron in Scorpio

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

What the tradition reads

Chiron's reading in Scorpio is modern, since the body was discovered only in 1977; the delineation followed here is Cafe Astrology's, written by the astrologer Annie. Her rule for Chiron by sign is that its sign marks the lessons a person knows better than most and struggles to take personally. Scorpio is fixed water, ruled by Mars in the classical scheme and by Pluto in the modern one. The page reads an exceptionally well developed awareness of attachment and loss, developed to the point of self limitation in relationships and in projects, and a keen understanding of power dynamics, personal psychology and motive, jealousy and intense feeling, which together make an authoritative guide and a powerful counsellor. Applying those perceptions to one's own life is named the greater difficulty, and embracing one's own feelings, attachments, and the working of loss and recovery is treated as a separate matter again. The reading also holds two things at once: a strong fear of losing the self, and an attraction to situations in which control or self might be lost. Cafe Astrology's general note applies, that the sensitivity here is the source of the wisdom rather than an obstacle to it.

The story

The centaur's death is the part of his myth that modern astrology leans on hardest. Wikipedia's account has him immortal as the son of Cronus and therefore unable to die of the poisoned wound, and has him willingly relinquish that immortality once the injury proved incurable, an act that allowed Zeus to release Prometheus from the punishment laid on him for giving fire to humankind. Heracles, whose arrow had caused the wound, negotiated the exchange with Zeus. The trade is the whole of the matter: what the centaur gave was not his life, which he could not lose, but the guarantee that he would never lose it, and what was bought with it was another's release. Cafe Astrology's ingress tables put Chiron in Scorpio from December 1996, settled after a retrograde return to Libra in September 1997, until January 1999, with a last retrograde return to Scorpio between June and September 1999, and before that from November 1946 to November 1948.

Written from

Corpus key point:Chiron:sign:Scorpio.