Chiron

Managing grief in a pandemic

art by Erisiar

Most of us thought we’d be out of here by now – the daily pressures of how to navigate this new world is getting kind of old. Is it safe to see our friends? What do I do about my job?  It looks like there is light at the end of the tunnel but the way is not yet clear.  Meanwhile we are still grieving losses, both old and new. Friendships that were broken. Spouses and other family members that have passed on.  Seven million humans who have died from Covid.

Sometimes feelings of grief appear to stem from events that occurred long ago.  A client who had mourned the loss of her mother that happened nine years ago.  Another who grieved the loss of her first marriage many years ago.  A widow who thought she had recovered from the death of a spouse is grappling again with the doubts about an uncertain future. Suddenly, after many years, the emotions welled up seemingly from nowhere to take over their lives.

Challenging astrological cycles do often coincide with painful events in our life, but whether the grief we feel is over a current loss or an old one, the feelings are the same.  Psychiatrists know that grief and emotional pain are stored in the psyche with the same intensity that they held during the original event. Chiron has been a great teacher and guide for astrologers’ understanding about the nature of grief, but Saturn and Pluto play a role as well.
Under Saturn transits we are painfully aware of our faults, our loneliness, and the blocks that keep us from our happiness.  Saturn is associated with depression which has a different tonal quality than grief.
Under Pluto […]
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By |2021-10-08T08:04:02-04:00October 8th, 2021|Health & Healing|1 Comment

Astrological forecast for the week of July 6, 2020

Here’s everything you need to know to get through the week.  In this week’s video I talk a fair amount about Chiron which turns retrograde, and Mercury turning direct.  The transcription is below the promo stuff, but I’m interested to know how many people are actually using the transcription.  It’s a fair amount of work to edit it, and I think a great deal is lost in the translation.  So let me know if you feel like you really need it, and if there aren’t many comments about it I’ll take that as a “no.” 😀 [update: lots of people read the transcriptions! So they will remain. ]


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Hey everybody, my name is Lynn Hayes. Welcome back to my channel. This week we’re going to talk about the astrological influences that are coming up for the week of July 6 2020.

So we’ve just come off the last of the series of three eclipses. Typically, eclipses come in anywhere from two to four events that all happen at the same time. During those times there can be a heightening or intensification of some of the planetary energies. Right now there’s so much going on in the sky with the Jupiter Pluto conjunction and all the retrogrades, and if this is all Greek to you, don’t worry, I’ll be explaining it in great depth as we go along.

I’d like to start out by just talking about the conjunction between Jupiter and Pluto and I’ve been talking about this.  It’s the second phase of what will be three alignments, following up on a conjunction of Saturn to […]

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By |2020-07-06T12:42:22-04:00July 6th, 2020|Planetary news this week|39 Comments

Chiron is different from anything else in the Universe

As we prepare for the upcoming square between Jupiter’s expansive optimism and Chiron’s pressure for healing old wounds, I thought it would be useful to repost some articles about Chiron that you may have missed. 

Chiron astrology art by James Mesple.  The mythological Chiron was a creature that was half man and half horse, so he is often lumped together with other Centaurs who share those physical attributes.  Astrologers sometimes classify him as an asteroid (his original astronomical classification), and astronomers sometimes describe him as a comet because he exhibits comet-like behavior.  You can read more about Chiron’s classification here in this earlier post.

The Centaurs of Greek mythology were actually tribes of beast-like men who roamed through Thessaly and the Pelopenessian peninsula in ancient times.  Although Chiron was similar in appearance, because he was half horse half man, he was of a different lineage entirely.  His father was Cronos (Saturn) and his mother was the nymph Philyra.  Chiron’s bestial shape was due to Cronos having shapeshifted into a stallion in order to overtake and mate with Philyra, the object of his great desire.   So while Chiron shares a similar imagery to the race of Centaurs, he is completely unrelated.

In the same way, Chiron is very different from the other astronomically classified Centaurs. Most important is the location of his orbit which generally lies between Saturn and Uranus although that orbit is elliptical and peculiar.  Barbara Hand Clow has called Chiron the “Rainbow Bridge” between the personal planets (the visible planets through Saturn) and the transpersonal planets (Uranus, Neptune and Pluto).  The personal planets represent personality, and the outer planets are transformational forces.  Chiron serves the role of facilitating transformation through the healing of […]

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By |2019-12-06T07:51:37-05:00December 6th, 2019|Chiron|6 Comments

The limits of positive thinking

positive thinkingWhile Pluto was in Sagittarius (1995-2008) optimism and positive thinking (Sagittarian traits) rose to an art form.  Pluto tends to bring a compulsive drive to any sign that it travels through, and while a certain degree of optimism and positivism is a good thing, the benefits of this kind of thinking end when other feelings are pushed into the underworld of the psyche.

Having worked a great deal to perfect my own positive thinking apparatus, I know very well how powerful changing your thought patterns can be.  When Pluto entered the more dour and practical sign of Capricorn in 2008 many found it difficult to maintain the habits of positive thinking and started to fall into fear and despair as the life they knew during the economic downturn began to spiral down along with the economy.

What I have learned in my own journey to transform my life is that along with changing our thought patterns we must honor and release the negative emotions that cloud our lives.  We can’t just ignore them or pray them away.  These old hurts and sadness and frustration and rage linger in the body until they can be processed through the psycho-emotional system and released.  These emotions and feelings are our teachers.  They are the debris that remain after painful experiences which we would just as soon forget so that we can more fully understand what happened to us.  This is the role of Chiron in the birthchart – to trigger these old feelings so that they can be processed and healed.  Chiron’s archetype is the mentor – the teacher who having undergone great trials gains great understanding and is able to impart wisdom to others.  These skills come after the healing of […]

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By |2018-06-11T12:18:15-04:00August 22nd, 2016|Life, Visioncrafting|0 Comments

New book on healing trauma is wrong!!

Chiron healingMany of you know that the process of healing trauma is the domain of Chiron and as such is an important part of the work I do with clients as well as an important focus in my own life.  When Chiron was first discovered we astrologers believed that Chiron represented the unhealable wound, but during 30 plus years of readings I realized that these wounds DO heal, but it’s not a simple process.  They don’t just magically go away but instead require a conscious embrace and welcome of the old feelings and emotions into a mindful release.

This kind of healing of trauma is now called Somatic healing.  One of the first practitioners to use this approach, and the first I heard of, was Peter Levine whose first book Waking the Tiger introduced a radical new approach to trauma therapy.  In this approach the patient is encouraged to awaken the fears that have been numbed by the body’s response to trauma so that these feelings can be processed and the trauma released, exactly as I have for years talked about the Chironic effect.  Somatic healing is now widespread and a valuable tool in the arsenal of therapists working with patients with PTSD.

So I was distressed to hear about David Morris’s book on his own PTSD experience (The Evil Hours: A Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) in which he states “There is no cure for trauma.  Once it enters the body it stays forever.”   Mr. Morris was an embedded journalist during the war in Iraq and having observed countless deaths and all manner of frightening events returned home with a severe case of PTSD.

I myself have been working to heal my own PTSD for most of my adult life.  It […]

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By |2019-12-06T07:46:39-05:00February 4th, 2015|Health & Healing|3 Comments