Chiron Retrograde 2018: Find the power of the Wounded Healer

We have another cosmic body, Chiron, going retrograde July 4th. He'll join Pluto, Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune and Mars, spinning our energy inward as he spins backward. Chiron is a comet, known as the wounded healer. He’s small but mighty, and impacts our energy greatly. Chiron brings us our deepest healing, yes even deeper than the water signs. He brings out our triggers, our wounds and illuminates our perceived weaknesses. When retrograde, he slows us down and urges us to look into our tender areas to find their true source, which may be from another lifetime.

Legend has it Chiron was the wisest of the centaurs, whose tale is not a pleasant one. He was abandoned by both parents (his father was Saturn) only later to get struck by an arrow in a “wrong place, wrong time” scenario. The wound caused by the arrow, thrown by his friend Hercules, never healed. Chiron was forced to live with his wound and his pain. Being immortal, not even death could be his relief. Chiron was a silver lining type of guy though, and found ways to work around his wound. In learning to live with, and accept, his pain, he was able to teach others how to accept theirs. Generally, unless their pain came from Hercules' arrow, this acceptance healed them. This is why Chiron is known as the wounded healer, he had the power to heal those who were fortunate enough to cross his path. His journey ended when Hercules struck a deal with Zeus and Chiron was finally freed from his pain.

The moral of Chiron′s story is that he suffered great wounds in his life through no fault of his own. In many ways Chiron was a victim, but since he was a demigod he never allowed himself to play the victim role. He lived with strength, wounds and all. His energy teaches us to accept our trauma as part of us, a part that has made us the person we are, good or bad. As long as we like ourselves, the wounds can be healed. Furthermore by not becoming a victim, and falling pray to self-pity, we retain the power to heal ourselves. Healing is no one else's job but our own. Through this ownership, we can learn to find strength in our pain, and acknowledge it as part of our life plan - even the shitty stuff, which was no fault of our own. It all has made us the unique, amazing individual we are, and furthermore has given us wisdom to help others. 

With Chiron in retrograde, he brings the subconscious to light. The wounds and trauma we have buried deep within come out for acknowledgement. Although slightly uncomfortable, it’s a great opportunity to heal. Most of the issues tethered to Chiron have to do with abandonment and self worth. It’s important to embrace these feelings when they come up and find their root cause. This can feel like a treasure hunt in some ways. Often times our pain does not come from where we think it does. Some of it we may have carried over from a previous life. Some of it may not be ours to begin with, we’ve just taken it on from those around us. While some of our pain may be things we hold on to out of comfort, simply because it’s a familiar feeling. This pain is the most troublesome, because often we don’t who we would be without it. This is where courage comes in. We have to be courageous to let go of our pain. Just like anything we release, it frees up space and what will take its place is unknown. As we heal, we enable the energy to go somewhere else, and as scary as it may be, the unknown is better than the known in this case.

Spend time finding the source of your wounds, go into the deepest layers, and seek help if they are too daunting to traverse alone. We have some time with this retrograde, Chiron won’t move forward again until early December. Challenge yourself to accept your traumas as part of your journey. Through this acceptance, the pain may still be there but the suffering with subside. Wounds are funny like that, their memory remains but their charge, and their ability to trigger you, does dissolve. The goal in healing is not to eradicate the wound completely but to take away its power. The past shapes us, but it does not contain us. As we heal, we stop our pain from controlling us, and put ourselves in control. We gain our power back and become stronger from the experience. Remember we don’t heal to become the person we were before, we heal to become a new, stronger version of ourselves. We then can use our experience to heal others and like Chiron, put our pain to good use.