posted February 07, 2006 12:09 PM              

The Sun and Chiron in direct aspect

Those with the Sun in direct aspect to Chiron may know on a profound level how the unfairness of life can damage the spirit; and if they are able to take on the challenge of this combination of planets, they may also dedicate their considerable energy and strength toward leaving the world a much better place than it was when they entered it. There are many examples of "famous" people with Sun-Chiron aspects who illustrate this point; any compendium of birth charts, such as Taeger's Internationales Horoskope Lexikon, is worth perusing to this end. But rather than dwelling on the famous, I would like to briefly mention two people personally known to me, both chart clients, and both with the Sun conjunct Chiron, who exemplify the very particular kind of pain Sun-Chiron may suffer. One of these also exemplifies the kind of creative resolution which is possible.
The first, a woman with the Sun conjunct Chiron in Capricorn in the 9th house, experienced Chiron's wounding first in the religious sphere (as might be expected with this 9th house placement), by being born into an orthodox Jewish family many of whose members had died in the Holocaust. She had inherited a profound bitterness and distrust of people and life, based only partly on her own experience, but also on an inherited perception of being a scapegoat in a hostile world. This wound also encompassed a prevalent orthodox Jewish attitude about the inferiority of women, exhibited in certain taboos about the body. An amalgamation of experiences highlighting life's unfairness had created in this woman a deep poison and cynicism, and an apparently immovable conviction that she was worth nothing. As a result, she victimised herself, through compulsive eating and a chain of destructive relationships. Identification with the scapegoat, the oppression of a ferocious inner persecutor, and the sense of a flawed and inferior body, were the chief areas in which she worked in psychotherapy over several years, occasionally "reporting back" to me for a chart update. It took a very long time before she could fight her way out from under Chiron's injury, and experience the self-respect and self-love of the Sun. Yet, clinging to the experience of victimisation can sometimes be a way of feeling special. It is the mute language of a secret, unacknowledged, unconscious Sun - which, if expressed in more honest ways, can not only provide healing for one's own own wounds, but can also generate a deep recognition of the blindness and pain of a collective which turns on another collective to alleviate its own sense of woundedness. This lady has travelled a long road, and her innate grit, toughness, and lack of sentimentality about life have turned out to be not only among her greatest resources, but also one of the great strengths she has begun to offer others suffering from eating disorders, similar to that she herself once suffered from.
The second example is a failed writer, a man who has all his life dreamed of publishing novels yet who invariably "shoots himself in the foot" by producing unpublishable work. He has the Sun conjunct Chiron in Leo in the 5th house. His writing style is very fine, and he has no discernible block in expressing his gift; but everything he produces is always too long, too short, too dense, or too incomprehensible, or the themes he chooses to write about are in some way politically incorrect and offensive to some specific group the publisher has reason to fear. Behind these failures in the outer world lies self-sabotage, and behind the self-sabotage lies a deep conviction that he is worth nothing, that he is stupid and inarticulate, and that if ever he does get a work into print it will be mocked, criticised, and dismissed as worthless. To date, he has not been able to utilise the insights a chart can offer, and has not fully recognised the real nature of his wound. The divine child within him was wounded by an early social and educational environment that perceived his vivid imagination as threatening and his intense self-preoccupation and self-expressiveness as selfish. His parents, so far as I can see, cannot not be held particularly culpable; all parents blunder in one way or another, and these were no worse than most and better than many. But the educational system in which he was raised did its best to turn the divine child into a socially acceptable automaton. Many people experience such pressures and frustrations. But those with Sun-Chiron in Leo may be particularly attuned to, and more readily injured by, the narrowness and fear of originality so often found in collective educational institutions, which may unwittingly destroy the very creative spirit they profess to encourage. Life, as Chiron knows well, can be very unfair.
Aspects between the Sun and Chiron are not guaranteed to offer a solution on a plate. Many individuals do not find their way through. Yet, although profoundly challenging, these contacts may also convey a special sense of how to bring wounds into consciousness, and how to teach this consciousness to others. Hard aspects between the two no doubt helped to drive Jung (Sun in Leo out-of-sign square Chiron in Aries) into formulating a psychology of the collective, and perhaps also helped to drive Dane Rudhyar (Sun in Aries opposition Chiron in Libra) into making astrology human-centred, and a tool for insight and enlightenment, rather than mere prognostication. No doubt both these men suffered, and both, on occasion, exhibited the less attractive sides of the wounded Centaur; I would not have liked to have been married to either of them. But they turned their wounds into creative power, and partook of the mythic Centaur's gift for teaching and healing. How did they get there? How do we avoid becoming a mini-Milosevic, and choose instead the path which favours the will to live?

The Centaur Chiron instructing the young Achilles. Wall painting from the basilica of Herculaneum Larousse
How do we get there?