Chiron: Station/Direct in Pisces

 The Tetons and the Snake River by Ansel Adams (1942)

It's to be suspected that there are at least two very different perspectives from which we can view Chiron’s transit through Pisces.

As a sign, Pisces is all about our need to confront not just what we feel about things….but how we feel about feeling about them as we do.

And Chiron is that thing we have to learn before we can really be effective in this world (and in our lives)…but which we are likely to forget about now and again. And when we do, we take a hard hit for having done so.

So together, they spell soul-prodding times. Emotionally trying, even painful times. Situations are going to set us off. We’re going to get confounded, disappointed and frustrated. People are going to do things which cause us to confront our vulnerabilities, hurts and ego-glitches.

And apparently it’s all just part of the natural process. Of course you’re going to feel those provocations most of all in whatever sign your natal Chiron is posited in. (And yes, the house and aspects to your native Chiron count to.)

But this isn’t all bad news. Not by a long shot! Ever hear the expression ‘healer, heal thyself’? When Chiron times are trying times, that’s when we get maximally confronted by our own feelings.

And that’s when we learn the most about our Self – if we don’t just do that Pisces denial-avoidance-rose-colored-glasses thing, that is.

So to my thinking, Chiron in Pisces is (yes, I’m going all Dickensian now…) the very best of times…the very worst of times.

If we face why we feel the way we do and where those feelings come from and maybe even discard the stuff which has been ‘ruling’ our psyche without our even having consciously signed off on it, then we can clear our mental decks of things which end up wounding our feelings. We can heal a bit and be more successful because we’re in a better place with ourselves – we’re being more about who we are when we’re not being driven by compulsions we’re trying to run away from by doing or saying or trying to believe X-Y-Z.

 In this painting called 'Dickens Dream' by Robert William Buss, Dickens is depicted as sitting at his desk surrounded by the haunting images of his characters (1875)

But in the meantime? Yes, Chiron’s passage through Pisces can be a mucho giant headache.

(And yes, you can choose a different body part if it seems more fitting. I’ll leave that up to you.)

So Chiron is going direct at 4 Pisces on November 15th at 8:35 in the evening UT/+0 time….which among other things means it’s going direct on my Sun. Part of me can’t wait to see Chiron be off and about its way. Then again, I’m also highly aware that this is a time to find those places in my (Sun) life and consciousness where I'm afraid to really feel. Through finding those things, through requiring of myself that I brave my own vulnerabilities and whatever fears I may have, through being willing to BE me more thoroughly, Chiron says I will find my higher, better, more fulfilling human path. 

That brings me to a problem with blogging about astrology. Chiron is going direct on November 15th. And we know that planets and asteroids and such deserve ‘station allowances’ which we’ve “shorthanded” to two days prior and two days after the event. During this time, the precepts of the stationing point (in this case, Chiron) will be particularly strong. But that doesn’t mean that you reach the station and the Chiron switch gets flipped. Especially since this station is occurring within a couple of days of a solar eclipse, the eclipse’s six-to-eight week ‘breakdown’ period prior to the eclipse will have been making us ripe for Chiron’s station. In fact, many of us will have been doing a lot of our Chiron work during this time.

Those who have been doing their Chiron-in-Pisces work will, come station time, begin recognizing a change and reaping the benefits. Those who don’t will begin feeling Chirotic circumstances arising in their life and through their relationships.

So…does this mean I should have said something like this two months ago? That’s the blog problem I was alluding to – there’s no way to say everything you might want to say as an astrologer, and have it seem pertinent to someone tuning in to the blog.

I used to post blog data on the date of a celestial event. Then I got prodded by some worthy soul (whose email I can’t dig up at the moment, sorry!) who pointed out how useful it would be to get notifications of events prior to their occurrence.

But how far in advance should I go? If Chiron is going direct here in November, would anyone really take it seriously for me to talk about it in mid-September? And for those who just check in now and again, wanting to see ‘the latest news’ know to look back at a September post in November?

You understand the challenge, no doubt.

I’ve settled on something nearer to the mark – the actual date, that is. But that doesn’t mean I’m not aware that many people (including myself) got a definite ‘Chiron note’ in daily doings-ville ever since the eclipse window opened.

Or maybe even before.

In going direct at 4 Pisces, Chiron evokes the essence of Sabian Symbol 335: A CHURCH BAZAAR, which Marc Edmund Jones refers to as The value of giving a spiritual or transcendent sanction to even the most commonplace interchanges between social persons and individual minds. 

Now that you know my Sun is at 4 Pisces, my belief that all is connected and that all gives rise to all else probably makes sense. Astrologer Dane Rudhyar regards this degree as one which “stresses the possibility of the ‘Presence of God’ in even the most material human activities”…with its influence being where societal ‘wholeness’ is achieved by treating that society as ‘holy.’

The mundane as sacred. If anything is important, all is important. If anything counts, everything counts.
.
As Chiron is going direct, it is doing so in a perfect trine to Saturn at 4 Scorpio, a degree imaged as A MASSIVE ROCKY SHORE RESISTS THE POUNDING OF THE SEA. This representation of a Scorpio degree as a ‘rocky shore’ is particularly interesting as in the water (emotional) triumvirate, Scorpio is the sign of fixed water.

The three water signs are Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces. Cancer is of the cardinal modality: Cancer acts and learns from the results. Pisces is mutable: it tries, learns from that effort, adjusts its aim and tries again or a bit more.

Of the three, Scorpio is fixed. And like any fixed sign, Scorpio strives to know all before it makes a move. We thus delight in intimacy just as we are afraid of baring our soul.

To put this more physically, what is water when it’s ‘fixed’ in real life? We call that ice, right?

There’s a saying in astrology…if you find a chart which has no planet positioned in an earth sign, look for planets in Scorpio.

The reasoning there is that ice can bear weight. Think about the polar ice caps. True, ice can be deceptively thin. And when it’s thin, it can be dangerous.

 A brave little fox talks on a frozen lake by Melton Hall

(Matt Buck, February 2012)

But so is the Scorpio nature and Scorpio risk. I have come to think that those who seek control the most, those who demand, threaten or are the most abrasive or abusive…they’re probably just trying not to fall through thin ice.

It can be darn cold inside that there psyche, y’know?

Water has been said to be the strongest element of all: it can put out fire, when mixed with air it can obscure…and it can wear down the tallest mountain, which brings me back to the Sabian Symbol for Saturn’s position at the time of Chiron’s station (4 Scorpio). That ‘massive rocky shore’ and the pounding wave are both part of that degree.

They’re both part of us.

Saturn being at 4 Scorpio therefore suggests that this Chiron station – and the period around it – are times when reality (Saturn) ‘hits home.’ Or maybe when we stand strong against a pounding. Or what we learn about ourselves (Chiron in Pisces) because we can deal with that disappointment, that hurt, that betrayal, that abandonment, that loss.

Because Niobe is with Chiron at 4 Pisces, this may be the time to take some personal pride in your ability to have faith – most of all in your Self and its ability to grow, cope and evolve. The caution would, of course, be not to fall afoul to the self-defeating sort of pride which brought the mythical Niobe to emotional ruin. She dared brag that her children were more beautiful and more talented than those of Leto – Apollo and Artemis. Niobe also bragged that the sheer number of children she had borne (she had seven sons and seven daughters) made her a better mother than Leto.

Apollo and Artemis slaying the children of Niobe

by Abarahm Bloemaert (1591, oil on canvas)

.
In essence, Niobe made the assertion of quantity over quality while setting her very mortal self up to be the equivalent of the Sun and Moon and that which had made them – that which in today’s world we would call Eternity, Divinity, Existence, God…

In the myth, Niobe’s children and all shot down to teach her that sternest of lessons, that we are not made to measure ourselves by external trappings, but by the essence of who we are and how we go about doing what we do.

And yes, I could sit here and say my Sun is at 4 Pisces. I could sit here and say I have seem many things in my life which bear out these ideas. I think we all have.

And that is really the point. The history of humanity, the tale of society, it all tells us that quality trumps quantity. That’s why money doesn’t buy (or guarantee) happiness. That’s why when people feel empty on the inside they so often try to cover that pain up with work or sex or money or drugs or shopping or alcohol or religion or….

…Or simple denial.

If there is an inference to be drawn from Chiron turning direct not but a couple of days after the first of a series of Scorpio solar eclipses we’re going to have, it would seem to lie in this direction.

Above all, we need to be honest with ourselves about who we are. Not who we think we ‘should’ be…not who our parents dreamed we might be…who we are.

Chiron will be in Pisces until April 2018, when it starts transitioning into Aries – a shift which will not be complete until February 18, 2019. And it’s worth noting (particularly because we’re going to be spending the next couple of years going through solar eclipses in Taurus and Scorpio) that Uranus will be shifting into Taurus in May of 2018 – just under a month after Chiron first crosses into Aries.

If you have not done your Pisces work, the combination of Uranus in Taurus and Chiron in Aries will manifest as events and circumstances which rattle your security. If you have done your Chiron-in-Pisces (and Uranus in Aires) work, you will arrive at that time having done the difficult task of freeing yourself from projections, personal misconceptions and emotional evasion, deflection, denial (etcetera) in favor of accepting who you really are.

You know…that You which exists deep down in your soul. That You which frets in the dark of night and when you think nobody’s looking.

That this really can happen to everyone on the planet all at once is brought home to us by knowing that Chiron takes around 50.5 years to go once around the Sun and Uranus takes 84 years to complete one solar circuit. So nobody under 84 years old has even been through Uranus in Aries yet. And those over 84 years old? Well, may you live 84 more years, but you were but young’uns the last time Uranus transited Aries.

The point here is that the last time Uranus was in Aries was the end of the 1920s. A world which wanted to live the bon vivant life…(and who could blame them, what with the world having just survived WWI)…that world stumbled and fell into the Great Depression.

Sound at all familiar?

Crowd gathered for free food outside the McWhirters' building in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane

(Qld) on Christmas Day 1933 (Daily Standard, December 27, 1933 p. 5)

Those people learned a huge and devastating lesson about money and what’s truly valuable in life. As we are learning now. They went on to become a group known today in America as ‘the Greatest Generation.”

Is this what difficulties make of us as people?

Maybe.

As for Chiron, the last time Chiron was in Pisces was back in the 1960s. There was a lot of soul searching and a lot of people looking for ways to ‘find themselves’…and just as many looking to escape any semblance of same.

In short, it’s a choice. One we all make once or twice (or a half dozen times).

Where I stand with myself is merely me. What matters to you is where you stand with that You that you may not yet even know how to be.

As Chiron goes direct, the level of self-questioning will go down and the prompting will become more external. With Chiron having gone retrograde back in June of this year (between the lunar and solar eclipses, while Venus was still retrograde), we’ve had about four months to reflect and – more or less – be on our own.

Now we re-engage with external forces. Or more likely, they return to take us on precisely in those areas which we find most difficult to face.
.
.
.