Polyhymnia Direct

When I first saw this image it occurred to me what sculptors mean when they talk about
'liberating a form from a stone' ...the above being a photograph of August Rodan's 1901 work,
'La Pensee' (The Thinker), currently housed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
(photographer unknown)

In addition to waving a flag of reminder that Mercury will be leaving Scorpio (by retrograde) and re-entering Libra on the 11th at 5:28 in the afternoon (UT/+0 time), there’s also a little matter of asteroid Polyhymnia going direct.

When is it going direct? On October 11th (UT/+0) at 6:05 in the evening...which means its station 'allowance' began on the 9th and extends through October 13th.

As one of the Greek Muses, you might be thinking that Polyhymnia would be all sweetness, giggles and light. But if you were thinking that, you’d be wrong. Though attributed with all the standard 'muse-type' qualities of being poetic and creative, Polyhymnia is also always described as rather serious...even pensive. And these are qualities we see reflected in Polyhymnia in the natal chart and by transit, where it's combination of 'creativity' and 'serious nature' points to matters which we are taking seriously (or which we need to take seriously) which require something more of us than some boiler plate or stock-pat-well-rehearsed knee jerk answer.

This is not a moment for glossing over anything. Nor is it a time for being flip as Polyhymnia being on station is going to cause others to take you (or what you're putting out there) rather seriously even if you're only having a bit of fun.

Moreover, in going direct at 13 Pisces, Polyhymnia is going to be doing its ‘turnabout’ in a perfect conjunction with Chiron, symbolizing a theme concerning something we need to be or which we will be/become [Polyhymnia] creative with or about - be that by our own choice, or because something or someone has inspired us.

However... (you knew there was a catch, right?)... whatever it is we need to contend with is something we don’t know how to do - or at least that’s our feeling on the subject.

That’s the Chiron part of the thing. Chiron always tests our ability (and willingness) to ‘govern’ our Self instead of letting passions rule our attitude, choices and actions - and Chiron subjects are particularly ironic as they’re rather classically of the ‘do as I say, not as I do’ variety. Not out of lack of caring or some sort of arrogance, mind you, but because Chiron points to something we understand in someone else’s hands, but haven’t clue one about when left on our own with exactly the same challenge.

Chiron acts a bit like a mental blind spot. And yet we aren’t really blind in that department, we just don’t know how to do ‘it.’ And the strange thing about this is that the thing we lack - the knowing how to do - is exactly the point of any Chirotic exercise as the ‘solution’ to Chiron problems is found in the doing.

You know... doing that thing you don’t know how to do.

Now there is some chance that Polyhymnia going direct in absolute conjunction with Chiron will signal some serious reflection and from there, some tackling or taking on of worthwhile efforts. Given 13 Pisces is the ‘lens’ through which events/actions will tend/need to function, we are not alone in our efforts, either - which is not saying there’s any ‘partner’ or anything like that, though there may be. But more than that, there’s an aura of interactivity here which which it could refer to our dealing with some choice or consequence rooted in the past is probably far more importantly connected to something in present-day events and times.

Sholem Aleichem crater on Planet Mercury

(photo credit: NASA, Johns Hopkins University/Applied Physics lab,

Carnegie Institute of Washington, January 2008)

Already in retrograde, Mercury will have re-entered Libra about a day in advance of Polyhymnia's station, which makes the first part of the station period more Scorpionic, emotional and reflective of joined or joint values, which the naming of this year's Nobel Peace Prize winners certainly reflects as the award symbolizes what people jointly value in what others have done (which is essential Scorpio energy in action). And yes, the reasons why the award was given to the people it was given to also fits the Scorpio description, with the point being that once Mercury does retrograde back into Libra (on October 10th at 5:28 in the evening, UT/+0 time) whatever happens, whatever is reflected on in world/worldly affairs around us or in our life will be more Libran.

Libra reflects what we think of others, what others think of us, what thoughts, choices, actions and representations work or don't work. Libra is an air sign. Scorpio, being a water sign is about how we feel as we interact with deal with others and issues in our world. And what's interesting about these two signs is how interwoven they really are. This may be your Polyhymnia thought for the day (or not), but one of the premier tricks of the trade (astrological trade, that would be) with Libra and Scorpio is to remember how their 'solutions' are most easily found through using the attribute of the other.

In other words, wherever interactions promote or provoke Scorpio emotionality, its exactly the kind of coolly rational thinking Libra is so known for which assists in making all those important choices. And in Libra - the rational air sign that it is - thinking emotionally and thinking about emotionality on both (or all sides) of any situation is essential and the more 'equal' you can be about it, the better.

Mind you, Libra's 'equal' does not mean 'identical.' With any of the signs from the 3rd quadrant (Libra, Scorpio and Sagittarius) assuming that values or notions or aims or needs-desires-longings are identical nearly always brings about a defeat or other kind of setback or delay. So just as Libra stands for the appreciation or outrage we associate with whether someone else thinks about our feelings and aims (etc.) is natural - and generally classed by us as necessary - so too do we have to think about others in any and all Libra situations.

Apart from Mercury's retrograding back into Libra as a force for considering, reconsidering, investigating and negotiating, two other things will be happening as Polyhymnia makes its turn. The first concerns the Sun, which at 19 Libra is conjuncting the lunar North Node, spelling a day of weighing  options which in the end (either on this date or down the line) lead to the sorts of choices which necessarily come with a 'price tag' of effort and dedication of a particularly focused type. Plus, since the North Node always stresses a 'needed or necessary relationship,' these days are unlikely to be unaffected by others.

The other transit-of-the-moment concerns Venus (in Libra) and Uranus (in Aries) coming into opposition in respective signs. Often simply regarded as an indicator of fancy, fad, flings and frivolousness, we don't often think of anything permanent coming from a combination like this, though certainly the effects of Uranian 'break through' energies and the Venus drive to create/bring things into being which provide benefit (with the selfishness/selflessness of such aim/s being defined by sign-placement-aspect of natal Venus) may play out over some time to come.

Venus/Uranus tends towards sudden, impulsive actions. Sometimes that can open a door, though with Mercury in retrograde any door which opens will benefit from thorough understanding and a healthy side helping of patience with an eye to dealing with problems, challenges and efforts creatively.

Against that however, are we even capable of patient perseverance at this time? Is there some valid need to (Venus/Uranus) raise a flag, pitch a fit or otherwise abandon normalcy in the name of who we are or aren't to others and thus (Libra) who they are or aren't to us? Reflecting on just this much may well be worthwhile providing we are willing to be creative with our thinking and how we approach the Polyhymnia-Chiron challenge to stop 'knowing' what's wrong with someone else (and how they go about doing/not doing things) in favor of dealing with a highly similar (Chirotic) challenge in our own life.

The solar eclipse of March 29, 2006 (at 8 Aries) as photographed from near Manavgat, Turkey

(photo credit: Michael Zapf, 2006)

Are we willing to move beyond our own comfort zone? Considering the proximity of this Chiron/Polyhymnia station to the October 23rd Scorpio solar eclipse in a moment when Chiron/Polyhymnia is in sextile with Scorpio's 'outcome ruler' (Pluto, which is in this moment positioned at 11 Capricorn)... we are in a position from which we can see...or sense at least part of our future.

The problem is we don't like it very much. Some of us don't like that future because it will take so much effort to get there. Some of us won't like that future (even though we've had a hunch on just this topic for some time now) because it requires letting go of or 'updating' some facet, factor or operational standard from the past.

Either way, is that any reason to not create the inevitable with a trace of our input in the mix?
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Chiron’s Station: Check Point Critical

 Shivering Girl with a Blue Ring by Jozself Rippi-Ronai (1916, pastel on paper)

I got into an email conversation about Chiron just the other day. Here’s an excerpt…

Chiron (at it’s basic process level) is about mastering our own instincts, good, ill, selfish and altruistic. And the thing to remember is that the centaur’s body joins the human genitalia to the horses heart. (At least until they got Disney-zied in “Fantasia”.) So here’s the question: will we rise above our ‘animal instincts’ which so ‘beat’ within us as a force of life? Or not?

The optimal with Chiron is to understand how to combine our animal (instinctive) skill and strength with our mind in harnessing ourselves and our life and our abilities to the service of some truth. That we know from Chiron having been the student of Apollo (enlightenment – the light which comes from the Sun/life). Apollo was the god of truth, enlightenment, music, art and medicine. Of these, he taught Chiron – his first protégé - only medicine. That says something about Chiron (and all centaurs – mythic and in the chart) too. Apollo, in making this choice, prioritized the healing of our divisions...the reality and the projection, which brings us to the saying ‘healer, heal thyself.’

Chiron failed this test. When push came to shove he gave in to his animalistic instincts and was killed. The lesson for us is that when we know better, we should do better and hold ourselves to that.

This wonderful sculpture of Chiron instructing Achilles by Rinaldo Rinaldi (c 1817 housed in Venice, Italy) shows the original centaur construct - the human body being merged with that of the horse's power at the horse's heart and the human's genitals. (How much more poignant than that does it get?)

The 'centaurs' out there in our solar system (and thus in astrology) are all variations on comets. Comets like Comet Halley and Thatcher take anywhere between 75 and 415 years to go once through their cycles. But the centaurs all originate from a place which is far closer in towards the Sun - and even more interesting than that (at least to this brain) is the fact that centaur orbits aren't precisely governed by the Sun - they're governed by planets. So when we talk about centaurs, in metaphysical terms we need to think not in terms of 'life' as a whole ('life' is symbolized by our Sun), but rather in terms of the planets the centaur metaphorically 'connects' as a cyclic facet which is specifically representative of the combination of planets which affect (govern) that centaur's orbit.

At the outermost point in its orbit, Chiron plays something close to solar sytemic footsie with Uranus. So we know that Chiron 'brings' to us - or represents - some change, need for change, some sort of breakthrough...or the urge to cut and run. With Uranus, many of the changes and discoveries timed out by transits are sudden and startling, whether they're devastating or delightful.

But unlike comets like Halley (which come all the way into the inner solar system) Chiron only comes 'in' to around 8 AU - which when you consider that Mars' outermost orbital point is at around 1.6 astronomical units (AUs) isn't all that close. In point of fact, Chiron only comes to a point just inside the orbit of Saturn - meaning it doesn't come in as far as Jupiter.

So are we surprised that Chiron is known as something we need to do (Saturn = effort) without really 'knowing' (Jupiter) how to do it until we do it?

Chiron forces us to go just beyond the very edge of what we conceive of (Jupiter) knowing. And in doing so, it teaches us what we are capable of (Saturn) achieving - which for many a person is a huge discovery.

And yes, maybe a relief. When we realize we can get through and achieve without having 'known' how to do it going in, we feel strangely (Uranus) liberated and freed in some way which isn't connected to all the 'should's and long term planning.

In other words, we have willed ourselves to undertake and (Saturn) master the task presented without guide rails, hand book or training.

That is utterly Saturn-Uranus. And the willing ourselves part is entirely in keeping with the mythic centaurs, who all had a problem with keeping themselves under control. Thus in parallel, the challenge with any centaur, be it Chiron, Pholus, Asbolus, Nessus, Typhon or whichever, involves using the energy knowingly for a good purpose.

The enemy of a centaur was their impulsiveness, occasional disastrous carelessness and their tendency to be completely driven by overblown emotional urges.

Could that possibly be (ahem!) true of us too? 

(I'm thinking yes. Alas, but yes.)

  This diagram is just a little misleading in that it appears that Chiron's outer orbital reach

 goes beyond Uranus, where in reality, while Chiron does come fully inside Saturn's closest

approach to the Sun, Chiron's outermost reach (it's 'aphelion point') is within the inner-and-outer

(perihelion and aphelion) orbital range of Uranus.

So what does this mean for us as Chiron goes retrograde at 13 Pisces come 9:17 in the morning on June 16th? Pisces being the sign all about our internal ability (read: willingness) to adapt to realities – as opposed to the ‘what we’d like to be true’ parts of life, Chiron’s turn to retrograde suggests that we’ll be experiencing less external prodding which provokes our Piscean debates and more reasons to be a bit more challenged by why we adapt… or why we don’t adapt… and what it is in us (or our belief system) which keeps us from accepting life’s realities simply for what they are.

So many folks have such a hard time dealing with life. Those having a hard time rail about not knowing how to fix things while those for whom things are pretty good don’t want to ‘see’ anything which would cause them to feel much that they’ve tried to protect themselves (or their families) against.

Who are we really afraid of? Probably our Self - and all our Self needs to feel and understand and accept in order to grow into a fuller, most human if universal form. 

Neptune’s years-long passage through Pisces is going to erode whatever defenses we try to put up. And that – in time – is probably going to force us...singularly and by family, by community, by profession, by nation...to recognize how much more we all have in common with others (even those we think are ‘not like us’) than not.

Thinking through how our solar system is organized (as every smaller concentric orbital rings) there is both the idea that our life – the Sun at the center of our ‘life system’ – grows outward. And as we do that, forces from beyond our personal life reach (as represented by Saturn, that being the last planet we can see with our unaided eyes)…those forces shape the world around us – that which we have to work with, and the challenges that we face.

So here we are. Mercury is heading towards a station on June 26th in Cancer, which elevates our emotional sensitivity, to some degree our reactivity, and the need to think plans through as we begin to construct more of the life we want to have. We know that the days leading up to any Mercury station tend to feel a bit rushed. Some things end naturally. Some things move on to a ‘next phase’ which will take some time to work out. Plus there’s a marked tendency to feel frustrated with whatever isn’t coming to fruition as quickly as we’d like. Or as we might have anticipatedon some pre-established schedule.

In honor of Cancer (today's Mercury and a soon-to-be tomorrow's Jupiter ingress) here's a

grand sort of photo of the Crab Nebula as taken by the Chandra Telescope in x-ray, radio and infrared

(photo credit: NASA, JPL Chandra, February 2006)

MakeMake has just moved into direct motion, so not only do we have some feeling that we need to ‘make things happen’ but life is bringing new things to the surface - in life and in our consciousness. And while all this is happening, expansive and ‘expansionary’ Jupiter is moving through the last degrees of Gemini. As this post goes up on the 15th, Chiron is already on station as Jupiter enters 27 Gemini – the degree which in opposition to the Galactic Center stirs up a lot of issues having to do with our relationship to the world around us. The “GC” (as the Galactic Center is known generally among astrologers) is a point which represents where we ‘contribute to the process.’ Sagittarius being about ‘how well things work’ (“application of information” and “viability of choices” seem two apt ways to put it) Jupiter at the opposition point can either represent the sinkhole or the jackpot, whether that’s mental, financial or experiential.

Before another week passes, Jupiter will have reached 29 Gemini. And that’s not just a really quick transit for such a massive planet (in our solar system Jupiter is second only to the Sun in size) but we can expect that to represent quick moving events, and things which ‘blow up’ quickly. Literally or figuratively, whether exciting or dismaying, this doesn’t seem to portend a settled time.

Chiron going retrograde on June 16th with Jupiter sitting in opposition to the GC in the zodiac’s chief sign of mentality may well manifest as a moment of critique – hence my calling this post “Check Point Critical.” Whether we’re doing due diligence as a matter of course or being ‘given notice’ of some problem or gap in our plans, it would be natural to take things either too seriously or not seriously enough.

Oppositions always represent balance points. And to have Chiron’s station occurring as Jupiter and the Galactic Center ask us to ‘balance’ what we’re doing, what we’re aiming at, how we’re going about living our life and all such suggests that many of us will find that we’ve either failed to ‘rise above’ our more base or basic instincts (or instinctual allegiance to something we’ve been taught) or that we’ve been all mind and not enough heart.

But while we’re doing that, it may be useful to think through what we know about 13 Pisces. The Sabian for this degree is ‘a lady wrapped in a large stole of fox fur’ which astrologer Dane Rudhyar has a very interesting interpretation of. Rudhyar points out that the symbol is about fox fur, and that foxes have long been regarded as clever and cunning creatures. To ‘wrap’ ourselves, he says, in a ‘fox fur’ is to try to garb ourselves or adopt a mask which is – again – animalistic and thus instinctive, and here used to protect the lady’s ‘soft’ flesh.

An orbital diagram of Chiron as of June 15, 2013

(courtesy of JPL) 

So given that this is Chiron we’re talking about, is this a restatement of the Jupiter opposition to the Galactic Center ‘framed’ so as to point out that the issue is really our willingness to feel vulnerable without some Gemini, Sagittarian or Piscean ‘mask’?

All three of these signs are mutable, which is to say they represent a process of learning which is incremental – an idea which in itself can be seen as an ‘echo’ (of sorts) of the native Piscean strength, that of eternal adaptability, in the form of a vulnerability?

This brings us to what may be the ultimate Piscean quandary. If there’s one thing people aren’t good at, it’s not knowing. By and large we’d rather believe a lie than not know – or to have some basic concept of how life works be proven invalid.

Yet ultimately, the Piscean lesson is to accept. This is not about accepting what we are ‘handed,’ it’s about accepting that we are who we are supposed to be, give or take our willingness to balance mind against heart, instinct against intellect and to create light through metaphorical fusion, not metaphysical fission as the difference between self-destruction and becoming a vessel of light.
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