Chiron: The Bridge

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The Outer Planets (Uranus, Neptune and Pluto) represent the archetypal bedrock we all share. They are the Collective Unconscious. When they form multiple close aspects with personal planets in your natal chart, it creates an imperative to understand and integrate these destabilizing forces. So, for example, if Pluto is square to your Sun, you won’t be able to develop your Sun fully without dealing with the Pluto archetype – raw sexuality and power, and the urge to tear things down to make way for something truer and deeper.

This work, eventually, gives one insight into what makes the collective tick. You can see behind the veil, see what motivates people, see the sweep of history, see what truly matters. Ironically, this window onto the Anima Mundi, the soul of the world, leaves us alienated, as most humans are unconscious of these forces and have no desire to understand them, content to let themselves be moved about like pieces in a board game. Hubris could be a problem here too – feeling special about your special knowledge – but you realize you never really had much choice, because the alternative to dealing with the Outer Planets is to court self destruction.

Chiron’s role in this meeting of the personal and collective planets is as a bridge – his eccentric orbit brings him inside Saturn, and takes him way out past Uranus. This Centaur, the wounded healer, is therefore the connector between the Saturn bounded world of conventional reality and the Outer Planet realms beyond. Fittingly, it’s usually a wound or trauma of some kind that pushes us to seek answers in the dark, to delve into the unknown, to go on the quest through the dark forest. Chiron was wounded by Hercules by accident in a brawl, but his original wound was being born a freak and being abandoned by his parents. Half animal, half man, half mortal, half god, he embodies the liminal space between worlds, the day world of human concerns, and the vast, empty night of pure potentiality, of cosmic forces beyond our understanding. Chiron chose to live apart from society in the forest, practicing the healing arts, and mentoring those who sought wisdom. So Chiron’s placement in the natal chart is not only about the wound that is the door to higher realities, but about how you take what you learned there and offer it back to the world. The bridge goes in both directions, and the wound that led you to seek the lost treasure becomes a blessing for the world.