Evolutionary astrologer Dena DeCastro returns to the show to teach us all about Chiron, Chiron Return, and what the move into Chiron in Aries means for each of us.

HOW TO FIND YOUR CHIRON SIGN:

Google the year you were born + Chiron example: “1969 Chiron”

or

visit Chiron Sign Tables at Cafe Astrology

Chiron Sign Tables Cafe Astrology

The National Chart of the United States interpretation

Actual Natal Chart of the USA

Chiron in Aries and You

Chiron in Aries: Fight for the Right to Be You

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Slade:

I love having a returning guest/in-house astrologer, and welcoming all other astrologers to come on the show too.

So one of the things that you and I have been doing in these sort of serial conversation is focusing on more evergreen kind of topics in astrology, not the day-to-day transits of what's going on. But the thing that's interesting about Chiron which we're talking about today is it kind of falls in the middle ground, right?

Because it's going to be an effect for this long period of time. It's shifting signs. It's going to be there for seven years so this is one of those things that I feel like we still want to discuss and it will be relevant for several years if people listen to this conversation, right?

Dena:

Yeah. It's right in that middle ground where this is, when the slower moving bodies, such as Uranus, Neptune or Pluto, which are the outer planets, and Chiron, which happens to orbit between Uranus and Saturn. When those things are moving into a new sign, it will be there for a long time, generally, Pluto being the longest where it could be 15 years-ish in a sign.

So yeah, we're not exactly Evergreen but it's a long time, right?

Slade:

Right.

Dena:

So for Chiron, it's going to be in total about eight years in Aries, and it dipped in last year, and it's gonna go through 2027, a little in and out at the end, you know, where it goes forward and backward, but...

Slade:

When was it last year that it dipped in? I'm just curious.

Dena:

Let's see. It was, I believe, April. I'm going to look at my notes on that, but yeah, I think it was April through September. Yes. Of 2018. And then it retrograded back into Pisces to finish up business there. We can talk a little about that.

And then it moved fully into Aries February of last month. I believe it was the 18th that it moved into Aries.

Slade:

So I just have to say really quickly, I really didn't know anything about Chiron until very recently. In the last few months when I started seeing all this press about the change into Aries, and people who had Chiron in Pisces were celebrating that something was going to change.

And I've had people talk to me about my chart since I was a little kid and this never came up.

So tell us, first of all, what IS Chiron? As an astronomical body and then astrologically what it is.

Dena:

So it was first classified as an asteroid and it's orbiting between the asteroid belt and the Kuiper belt is that final belt of objects beyond Pluto. And so it's orbit goes in and out between Uranus' orbit and Saturn's orbit. So it can go a little bit outside of Uranus and come back in and inside of Saturn's orbit and go back out. So it goes between them.

It doesn't have a completely round orbit. It's elliptical and irregular. Therefore it spends a longer time in some signs than others. And it happens to be that Aries and Libra are the two signs that it spends the longest amount of time in. So it's about an eight year time frame that it will be spending in those.

Now it's being classified as possibly a minor planet which could be a combination of, is it a comet or is it a dwarf planet? What is it? But it's basically a small body that regularly orbits the sun, which is now classified as centaur or minor planet. It was discovered in 1977 so it is very new in terms of what astrologers have been looking at and developing theories about and we're still continuing to develop a meaning for what Chiron is.

Slade:

That's so cool. We think of all this stuff as being so ancient, you know, like Greek astronomers gazing at the sky...

Dena:

Yeah.

Slade:

So the idea that modern astrologers are actually incorporating something new into the lexicon is really fascinating. So how does it happen and what do people think it's about and what do you know about it?

Dena:

Yeah, well like any of the planets that have been discovered in recent history, for example, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, are new basically to our astrological understanding, relatively speaking. We started with discovery of Uranus in the late 18th century, discovery of Neptune in the mid 19th century, and discovery of Pluto in about 1930.

So this is recent history in terms of the scheme of things.

And so astrologers work to develop some sense of, what does that planet's presence mean in a birth chart? Through experience. Through reality testing. Through looking at a person's chart and seeing how it plays out in their life. So it's a science in that we're correlating data. We're observing data and how it plays out in reality.

So we're doing the same with Chiron. I think it received the moniker, the archetype of the Wounded Healer, as it was named for Chiron, and the myth of Chiron is about a centaur that was born of the mating of Saturn, Kronus, and a nymph named Philyra. So that story is about a being who was born with a deformity, being rejected by his mother. You know, she split the scene when this baby was born. It's a very sad story in its beginnings, but then it works out well in the Greek myth for Chiron because he is adopted by Apollo who's really super cool.

Apollo shares with him all the skills that he has and he becomes then a master healer astrologer himself. Astrology is actually in the myth and a person who then mentors others and teaches others, or being who mentors and teaches others. So he's kind of this half-mortal, half not-mortal being who is brought into the world and has to figure out, like, how am I going to survive? But then he receives some help and mentoring from one of the gods.

So it's a pretty incredible story. And then what astrologers do is they take the synchronicity of that body being named for that Greek myth and say, how then does that shed light on the meaning of this body in a person's chart? And we've done that with all of the planets, from names of the Greek gods or the Roman gods.

So yeah, I mean, and then it's a process, right? It's a process of looking at this over and over again in people's charts. And to be honest, I didn't use Chiron for probably the first 10 years of practicing astrology. And I've been doing it for about 20. And what led me to really looking at it myself and practicing with it in charts is, in my own chart, I saw how it had been and seemed to shed light on my story. And it is prominent on my chart.

And so I think that's a factor too. If it's prominent in a person's chart, then it will have more of an impact as this asteroid or minor body. But as astrologers, we can only really work from experiential, experience and data, to figure out what does this actually mean?

Slade:

So what's the theme then? What does it bring to our chart or is there a certain part of our life experience that it impacts? Talk a little bit about that.

Dena:

I believe it has to do with inner child issues, things that happened to us when we were children, that continue to affect us throughout our life. And we may be very aware of those things. But it's like the thing that keeps hanging us up. That insecurity, that feeling of lack, that feeling of less than, that we all carry around, that stems from something in the childhood. Some of us have more or less awareness of what is that, what is that wound? What happened there?

Let's say, for example, someone, one of their parents left when they were a child. Going right back to the Chiron story, they might have abandonment issues, right? And they might be very aware of the cause of that. "My father left when I was three and so therefore I have daddy issues or abandonment issues."

What Chiron can help with is then pointing in a chart to - can you find the healing for that? What is its medicine, by it's sign and house placement? What do you need to go into? What do you need to embrace? What qualities do you need to embody in order to heal from that particular childhood issue. And then use that healing in service. That is part of the healing too. Using that awareness of your own childhood wound in service in some way to others in your life on a broader scale.

Slade:

Okay, so this is bringing together a lot of threads of stories for me personally, which we'll come back to later on when we talk about the Chiron return. Let's make sure and tell everybody since, for instance, I don't think when you do your chart on astro.com that it lists Chiron as one of the planets and tells you what sign it's in. So if you want to look this up and just find out what your Chiron sign is, how do you find out that information?

Dena:

Well, for any asteroid or minor body, you can usually find it by typing in that planetary body's name plus the word "ephemeris" or "ephemerides". That will bring up a list of different resources, either to find a table that shows when the planet was where. Or it will go to an ephemeris that shows that. And some people cannot read an ephemeris, so that's a tricky thing.

I do happen to know with Chiron, CafeAstrology has a good signs table for Chiron which is easy to read. It says, here's the date and here's the date it entered Cancer for example and here's the date that it left Cancer and entered Leo. And so you can find, within that list of dates, where your natal Chiron is. So that's fairly easy. You'll put a link to that in the notes.

Slade:

Absolutely. We'll have links to all these resources so you can look this stuff up, and links to some of your resources as well.

Well this is really interesting because I do kind of see this theme emerging around the whole wounded healer, wounded child archetype stuff. I also had an epiphany about the centaurs in Harry Potter and the magicians.

Dena:

Oh, the magicians!

Slade:

Yes! Which are famously healers who studied the stars as well and I assume that that came from mythology but you just tied it all together for me.

I get my mythology through fantasy most of the time.

Dena:

Me too.

Slade:

So what has... for instance, one of the things that brought this to my awareness were all the people who recently were posting on Facebook that they were Chiron in Pisces people and that this was nearing a shift for them. And it seemed as if they were like glad to see this change coming. What is that story about?

Dena:

Well, and I don't tend to look at things as wholly positive or negative, right? You know that about me by now. As an evolutionary astrologer, I don't think, as my teacher Steve puts it, don't just plug your nose through the transit of something and say, "Oh phew, that's done!"

Slade:

Yeah.

Dena:

To work with it consciously and with intention would be the aim, right? I'm not shaming those people because believe me, I've definitely been like, PHEW! after a few Pluto transits in my life. "Glad that's done!"

But Chiron can bring definitely a hyper awareness of that childhood stuff that still haunts us. And if Chiron's in Pisces, then those people who are going through Pisces return in the past several years, right? Which means they were turning 50 at some point in there.

50 is, I would say, already an interesting birthday right, in this culture? I mean, you and I are both turning 50 this year, so we're coming up on Chiron return and we'll talk more about that.

But for those people with Chiron in Pisces, that have just gone through it, maybe there were other challenges in their life as well surrounding turning 50, surrounding all the things that go with being middle aged in this culture.

Slade:

Plus it was a water sign.

Dena:

It was a water sign, yeah.

With Pisces, there is already a feeling of heightened sensitivity, vulnerability, deep empathy and perhaps the challenges of Chiron return in Pisces were about feeling things even more deeply which, the past few years would've been a very challenging place to be, for sure. Everything that's going on in this country, lots of processing of deep and intense emotions in general, and then having that heightened awareness of everything that's going on around you, and feeling everybody's feelings, I would guess that that was a challenging sign to have Chiron return in.

Slade:

And I'm observing that conversation from our peers, people who are already intuitives or spiritual teachers. They're very much involved in their spirituality and healing things, their personal issues. As you said, turning that into something that they do for other people. And predominantly a lot of women in our community.

So I was seeing all this back and forth and I was like, "Gosh, you guys, I'm so sorry. What happened?"

It sounded really intense but it also makes sense why they are kind of having a voice within our community at large, right? Why they're on these Facebook groups talking about the things that they're talking about, it did make a kind of sense.

And I was kind of exci