Jupiter square Chiron

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. 

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 […]