One could probably make a pretty good argument that the hallmark of humans as a species is not our opposable thumbs, our ability to build and invent, or our capacity for language — it is our inherent cruelty to each other, both in groups and as individuals. For all the years I’ve studied the natural world, I don’t recall once ever seeing a penguin beat its mate because of pressures on the job. Not once have I encountered a squirrel abusing its children because of personal issues.
Yet here we are, we humans with our glorious brains, and as a result of those brains we seem to be capable of committing terrible acts against those we supposedly love (and ourselves) because of our past experience. If there is one body in the Solar System that astrologically denotes this, surely it has to be Chiron.
Chiron is beginning its run through the last five degrees of Pisces now, and it is triggering any important placements you have in the later degrees of the mutable signs (Gemini Virgo Sagittarius or Pisces). Also: If you were born in 1950 to mid 1952, or the last three years of the 60s, or mid 1987 to mid 1988, you are now experiencing either your Chiron Return or your Chiron Square, and there could well be some Terrible Things crawling up from your subconscious that are trying to ruin your hopes for actual happiness. No matter what else is observably happening in your life, even if on the face of things things are pretty good overall, your life is likely tinged with a certain sharp pain that you may not even be entirely aware of, or where it came from. Or, you might be so aware of that pain that you’re having a hard time seeing anything else.
(This is one of the reasons why I personally have an ongoing grudge with Chiron. Don’t get me wrong: I accept its gifts wholeheartedly, but Chiron has a particular knack for delivering its lessons in a hurtful matter. Even when Chiron ends up giving you a present, the wrapping paper is usually ugly and unpleasant.)
Anesthetizing yourself won’t last long. Building a wall between yourself and others will only contain your suffering and prevent its escape. Maybe the first way to deal with a Chiron transit is to recognize that it exists, and accept (at least intellectually, at first) the possibility that things can get better.
So, before you curl up in a ball from the hurt, I ask you to first consider an important life lesson from a room full of fruit flies in Japan.
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Since 1954 researchers at the University of Kyoto have raised fruit flies in conditions of absolute darkness. The idea behind the experiment was pretty simple: change the environment and see how life adapts to it. And sure enough there were physical changes in these flies. The fruit flies develop traits that made them both more sensitive to smell, and in fact became smellier themselves so that others could detect them. They developed longer hairs in order to sense vibrations around them.
But here, for us, is perhaps the most important lesson: even after more than 1500 generations of unyielding darkness, these fruit flies raised in the dark still had the same visual acuity, and they still responded to the light the same way that regular fruit flies do.
Their eyes have never seen light, but they were still drawn to it when it presented itself.
If this can be true of fruit flies in a laboratory experiment, it can be true with you. Consider this in your days filled with long shadows. You may have been exposed to the darkness, but it isn’t where you belong — and it’s not where you need to be any more. Your suffering is not required. Step into the light without it.
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