Chiron

Chiron was discovered in 1977 and has since found a firm place in modern astrology. Anyone working with it should know what it is astronomically — that explains most of the arguments surrounding it.

What it is

A centaur: a body on an unstable orbit between Jupiter and Neptune, with the properties of an asteroid and of a comet at once. Its orbit is markedly eccentric — it comes closer to the Sun than Saturn does and travels further out than Uranus.

Something practical follows from that: the time it spends in the signs is very uneven. In Aries it stays a few years, in Libra up to eight. One full circuit takes about fifty years.

What that means for interpretation

Chiron rules no sign. It has no exaltation, no triplicity, no term and no face — the five dignities on which the classical system rests are shared out among seven planets and fully assigned.

That is no objection to using it, but it does set a limit. Without dignity its condition cannot be established; there is no saying whether a Chiron is “strong” or “weak”. What remains is its position by sign and house, and the aspects.

The assignment to Virgo or to Sagittarius that is sometimes given is a proposal made by individual authors in the 1980s, not something handed down.

The common interpretation

Chiron is usually read as the “wounded healer” — after the figure from Greek myth, the centaur who taught the art of healing and himself bore a wound that would not close. The interpretation follows from that: a place where someone is permanently vulnerable, and at the same time the place where that person has something to give others.

The idea is appealing. Two qualifications are worth knowing:

• The interpretation is young. It arose in the years after the discovery, in a particular therapeutic setting, and did not grow out of the observation of many charts.
• The name came first. The body was named after the figure from the myth, and the interpretation was derived from the name. That is a procedure which would yield an equally coherent result for any name at all.

A practical suggestion

Anyone who wants to use Chiron should not call on it to explain what the rest of the chart does not yield. That is the role newly admitted factors regularly fall into — and in that role every one of them is confirmed every time.

See also: the planets and the question of why classical astrology stops at seven.