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Chiron in the twelfth house

Chiron (2060 Chiron) in the twelfth house, read in the modern Western manner

What the tradition reads

Chiron in the twelfth house is read only in modern astrology, the body having been found in 1977; the delineation here is Cafe Astrology's, written by the astrologer Annie. Alan Leo, in a textbook first published in 1903, gives the twelfth house the occult tendencies, calls it the house of confinement and of self undoing, and reads its matters as rooted in the fourth, springing out of parentage, inheritance and the unseen affairs of the inner or psychic life. Cafe Astrology reads Chiron there as an instinct to withdraw from the world when wounded, with a rich inner life and strongly developed empathy on one side and a struggle with avoidance on the other, and it asks that the retreat be examined for which of the two it is, restoration or evasion of something the imagination has enlarged. It reads a soft and compassionate side kept private, a readiness to credit other people with histories before judging them, and forgiveness offered so quickly that it can keep its giver attached to what would be better set down. The page reads considerable capacity to help others, held back for fear of being drained, guilt taken on without always knowing its cause, a fear of being seen and a simultaneous fear of confinement, and an excellent counsellor who gives more than is received and falls behind on their own care.

The story

This body spent a long time in plain sight without being seen. Wikipedia records that after the discovery of 1 November 1977 Chiron was found on earlier images going back to 1895, which allowed its orbit to be worked out accurately; it had passed perihelion in 1945 unnoticed, because few searches were being made then and those that were made were not sensitive to slow moving objects, while the Lowell Observatory survey of the 1930s did not reach faint enough and in the 1940s did not cover the right part of the sky. The April 1895 image was taken one month after that year's perihelion. Its cometary nature was hidden for another decade after the discovery, since it was near aphelion in 1977 and the coma was seen only as it came inward, brightening in 1988 and showing a coma in 1989. Alan Leo classes the twelfth house cadent, the last of the twelve in his numbering and one of the six he counts above the horizon, and records that it is generally supposed the house of sorrow, enemies, imprisonment and misfortune, a reputation he puts down to its standing as the cadent house of the psychic trinity. He adds that it may be fortunate or unfortunate like any other house, that it is the house of the voluntary recluse as much as of the prisoner, and that it is the most mysterious of the twelve.

Written from

• Cafe Astrology, Chiron in the Houses of the Natal Chart
• Alan Leo, How to Judge a Nativity (first edition 1903), Chapter I, The Twelve Houses of the Horoscope, pp. 7 to 9, and Chapter XIX, The Twelfth House, the House of Self-Undoing
• Wikipedia, 2060 Chiron

Corpus key point:Chiron:house:12.