Chiron the Wounded Healer

Chiron the Wounded Healer

By Felina Lune Kavi

Chiron stations retrograde @ 2:09am CDT on 7-1-17 (Retrograde until 12-5-17)

Unlike the other centaurs, Chiron was born immortal.  He was son of the Titan, Chronos (associated with Saturn), and a nymph, Philyra. In his mythic storyline, both parents abandoned him…which was his original wound…but he became a great teacher and healer.  This is where he found the gift within his wound, in taking on a parental role for others and teaching them all he had learned from Apollo, God of Healing.  One such student, Hercules (Herakles), accidentally wounded Chiron in the knee with an arrow dipped in the blood of the Hydra.  This poisoned arrow caused an incurable wound in any it would hit.  And, since Chiron was immortal, the painful wound would have no end in death.  Chiron pleaded with Zeus to let him take the place of Prometheus and die.  Eventually, Zeus granted his wish to release his immortality from the Earth to the stars, where he became the constellation known as Sagittarius today.  This is a condensed version of Chiron’s mythic storyline, but it gives insight into how the energy of Chiron as a celestial body in our solar system plays out in our human nature on earth.  Chiron transits bring us to our oldest wounds to help us heal and feel whole again.

Interestingly, Chiron takes approximately 50 years to return to where it was in the zodiac when we were born.  Like the obvious transition we all experience as we approach age 30 when we have our first Saturn Return, the Chiron Return at age 50 is a significant shift in our lives.  Depending on where we are in our healing paths at age 50…we can either experience a profound healing that takes us into our “golden years” with a sense of wholeness and wisdom, or we can deny ourselves that healing by denying our deepest wounds…often resulting in a quicker deterioration during our aging process which adds on more and more wounds to deal with as we grow older.

Chiron’s position in the zodiac shows us where our sacred wound is, the path to healing it, and the healing gift we develop from that wound.  With a slow and erratic orbit, Chiron’s sign at the moment of our birth gives insight into the healing journey of our particular generation of healers…while the house position and aspects it makes to other celestial bodies can tell us more about the wounded healer within each individual.  Chiron’s sign, then, is the Tribe of Healers we are born into in this lifetime.  The house position expresses the area of focus, or the healer role within that tribe.  And the aspects to Chiron give us more definition in the mythic storyline of our healing path. 

For example, I was born while Chiron was in Taurus…and there is a large group of people born between 1976 and 1984 who can say the same (though Chiron retrograded back through Aries for a few months in ’76, and dipped into Gemini for a few months in ’83).  We share a generational wound that has to do with self-worth, often revolving around the physical body as our sacred wound.  But the house position of Chiron in Taurus more precisely pinpoints in what area of life that wounding plays out.  My natal placement of Chiron is in the 1^st House (House of Self), conjunct my Ascendant.  Essentially, this particular placement (especially when conjunct the Ascendant) shows that I embody the archetype of the Wounded Healer…it is who I have chosen to be in this life…and my woundedness follows patterns similar to Chiron’s mythic storyline (even in the quincunx, or ‘uncomfortable growth aspect’, between Chiron and Saturn that was present at my birth…as well as other aspects that bring up other parts of the storyline).

But, as another example, someone in this Chiron in Taurus tribe of healers may have Chiron in the 7^th House (the House of Primary Partnerships).  In that case, their wounding (as well as their healing path and healing gifts) are explored in their relationships with others.  Then the wound of self-worth plays out in the realm of relationships.  Or someone with Chiron in Taurus in the 12^th House (the House of Shadows) might struggle with their woundedness in the realm of the Unconscious, where their original wound might be deeply repressed into their shadow.   

Currently, all of us are experiencing the world wound (and its healing path) through the collective expression of Chiron in Pisces.  Especially this weekend, as Chiron stations retrograde in Pisces, the focus of the wounds of our planet and all life on Earth pools as Chiron pauses…then shifts inwardly during the retrograde.  Chiron in Pisces is essentially a wound of separation from Great Spirit, marked by a healing path in service to Spirit and a desire for Divine Love expressed through us (or, in its lower vibrational expression, a denial of Spirit and an exacerbation of the wound of that separation…the “There is no God” assertion).  The gift within that wound is a wellspring of unconditional, transpersonal, universal love that is our remembering of and reconnecting with the Divine within.  We’ve all been traveling through this Piscean planetary healing for the past several years…outwardly and inwardly as Chiron shifts between direct and retrograde motion.  How this Chiron transit interacts with our natal planets, and especially with our natal Chiron, reflects our personal storylines in our individual healing paths. 

The specific degree that Chiron stations in tomorrow is the 29^th degree of Pisces.  The sabian symbol for this degree is “light breaking into many colors as it passes through a prism”.  This process is symbolic of our own process of differentiation we go through in life.  We are, before conceived, unified with source light.  We are brought to Earth through the womb of our mother (the prism), and then shaped through that process into our individual expression (a rainbow of different colors, expressing different angles of deviation).  We do not lose the source light, but we reflect it in many different ways.  Essentially, there is no real separation from Great Spirit…only one of human perception.  We go from unity to multi-unity…where we express our Divine Spark in a multitude of ways. 

So as the focus upon woundedness, healing, and the gifts within the wounds is potent right now…allow yourself the freedom to explore what arises.  Hiding from, or trying to escape, our wounds only prolongs the healing process we all must go through to come to wholeness.  Painful as it can be, depending on where you are in your path, such shifts of energy are present as opportunities to heal ourselves in whatever way we most need at this time.  And in healing ourselves, we are healing our world.


For one of my favorite videos about the Chiron archetype, see The Wounded Healer.