Wee beastie

I would like to state for the record that when I talk about energy and what it's probably going to do, I am not exempt from what I say. For example: the day I sent the email about sun-Pluto oppositions and being confronted by people/things, I found myself in a confrontation with a mentally ill person who was screaming at me at 5:30 in the morning outside my gym (the police got involved). There were other people present but he singled me out to yell at, specifically. I mentioned there would be a lot of communicating right about now that would die out relatively quickly, also right about now? I've been fielding media inquiries all week at work and anything I've been trying to do has been interrupted by media calls or emails. Venus is retrograde: love and money stuff is messed up? Money was literally disappearing from my bank account. I know the source; it's getting fixed. But you can't make this shit up and I'm not immune. In fact, a lot of the stuff I put out there actually happens...to me.

I could talk about the current sky, but we're kind of entering a quiet phase, unless you're fighting too hard about the fact that Venus is retrograde and Mercury is going retrograde. Repeat after me: you must chill! Yell that to others. What happens when you try too hard at a time you must chill? Injuries and illness: nature will force you to chill. Take this under advisement.

Right now I have Uranus transiting my natal Chiron, and in honor of that, let's talk Chironic wounds, shall we? A couple of years ago, I was whining that there weren't good sources about Chiron. Melanie Reinhart's book is okay, if long-winded. If you want a comprehensive source, I recommend Tom Jacobs, and I'm highly biased because he is my mentor and I love him a lot, but his take is the most straightforward and best I think you're going to find right now. Plus, if you give him money, he’ll make you a comprehensive report on your Chiron placement by sign, house, and aspect (if you know your birth time, that is). I’ve seen such a report and I mean it when I say it’s thorough.

Here's why there’s not a ton of good literature about it: Chiron is a planetoid discovered in 1977, so the collective "we" that is astrologers haven't had centuries upon centuries to observe cause and effect in the same way as most other celestial bodies. Its placement in your chart indicates where you're rough around the edges and you FEEL IT. If you want to use astrology for self-awareness and self-improvement, figure out your Pluto placement and aspects and your Chiron placement and aspects, read those definitions, and then observe yourself and your life to see how the themes discussed play out and which of your automatic reactions to various stimuli need to be addressed. It is possible to go from "why am I doing this?" to "oh, I see why I am doing this and there's a more evolved way to act/react." (Said another way: “Oh I don’t have to automatically turn into a demon every time this [certain thing] happens.”)

I have been surrounded by Chiron stories all week. What's a Chiron story? Well, Chiron the mythological creature was a centaur whose mother rejected him due to his half-beastliness. Later, he got shot with a poison arrow, but, being immortal (he was a grandson of a god), couldn't die, and couldn't heal the wound, but in *trying* to heal it, got really accomplished at healing things and became a mentor in the healing arts. So, Chiron stories have to do with dealing with people who are *rough* or centaur-like (this can be very literal, like people who don't brush their hair and knock things over a lot, or people who are misfits by societal definitions), they have to do with feeling rejected/rejectable and sensitive about it, and they have to do with being particularly sensitive in an area that you might not talk about or show others, but occasionally comes out into the open. Sometimes Chiron gets activated by transit and you can become more rough around the edges for a time, and sometimes Chiron gets activated and you feel like one big, exposed nerve ending (and sometimes both at once, honestly). It depends on what energies are activating your Chiron and what your natal placement is.

The #1 most grating interpretation of Chiron is "where you're wounded and can't heal." Yes, that's literally the story of Chiron, but that way of thinking is just going to perpetuate personal butthurt AND inspire you to give up on yourself. "Oop. Irreparably wounded. Guess I'll go do unhealthy shit and feel bad." First of all: no. Second of all: as with any astrological issue, the only way out is through, and avoidance makes things grow bigger and more unwieldy. When that happens, you still have to go through the pain, only it's much larger and more out of control. On the other side of the pain is acceptance and patience with yourself, so I recommend just facing it.

Having said that, this feels like a really dumb example, but I, the owner of a 2nd house Chiron (house of values, skill set, and money) have a problem with arbitrary learning. If I'm motivated to pick up knowledge, which is to say, if I have a *reason* to learn something, I'll do it. But if you tell me I need to know the capital of Belgium and can't give me a good reason why that information will be relevant, guess what's going to fall out of my head? This manifested through algebra: I didn't see the point of learning it. Why do I need to solve for x and graph lines? This is not fun, exciting, or relevant. I didn't get it; I didn't learn it. No one could explain it to me in a way that made sense in my brain, so I figured out that as long as I did my homework, I could do poorly on tests and still pass whatever class.

Welp, Uranus is conjunct my Chiron and guess who needs to study algebra again? I have to pass a test, and in order to do that, I need to study math. It's ba-ack. Here's what I'm learning: if I slow down and don't get angry and freak out (and go into beast mode) because I don't immediately understand the equation I'm staring at (why don't YOU solve for x?), it's actually somewhat calming, because I am usually surrounded by a cloud of other people's drama of some sort, and these math problems actually have solutions you can validate, and most of the problems I deal with daily are emotional problems that do not have solutions. So while x=3 in my graph paper notebook, I can't look someone in the eye and tell them "3" after they tell me some awful shit that happened 10 years ago and still bothers them. This is winding up as stupid redemption story: yes, I am mentally capable of learning algebra, but I'm not doing it for the joy of finally knowing the slope of a line (at last!!). I'm doing it because of someone else's requirement that I do so. Again. (That's also a 2nd house thing: what you feel is important vs. what other people think.)

Also, it's making me realize that I could have had a different academic trajectory if I hadn't given up on my ability to do math, and hadn't accepted my own narrative that "I can't do math." It just didn't come easily, and I couldn't make sense of it, and it wasn't very interesting, so I gave up. I am fortunate to have many abilities: this just wasn't one of them. It's bringing back memories of me sitting in the back of my math classes, crying, because this was something I felt I just *couldn't* do.

In this narrative, Chiron is the voice of "I can't do this" and Uranus is the voice of "you can and you must, so get over yourself." I'm working on it...while taking seemingly endless phone calls.