The Chiron Return: The Renaissance Decade begins, naturally, with the Chiron return at age 50.   Like everything else in astrology, how you experience this return has to do with what’s in the natal chart and the choices that you’ve made previously, particularly during the times when Chiron squared and opposed itself.  Did you open up and listen to the calling of other realms, other planes, of a world, or worlds, you could feel but could not fathom?  Or did you shut it all out and tell yourself that you were making it all up, that life is what we’re told it is and that’s that?  This reaction to Chiron’s calling will make a great impact on how you live through your Chiron return.  Did you declare you would live your life your own way, according to your own experience of the truth?  Or did you shut down to anything that wasn’t ‘safe’?  Did your ego cling to the wound and your isolation, or did you find a way to get beyond it?   As with all returns, it is usually a bit of a mixed bag–we can pat ourselves on the back for some things, utterly fail in others, and give the leftovers a C+.  If you have Chiron involved with an important planet in the chart, that planet will be in focus.  We may be compelled to use that planet’s energy in a new, more evolved way.  We may feel compelled to develop it to its fullest expression, as if our life depended on it.

In a way, it does.   Not our physical life, but our interior life.  At this point in our lives, we have bumped our heads on any number of walls and tripped over our own feet enough times that we have some way of negotiating the world.  Chiron’s first trip around the chart is about learning to deal with the famous ‘wound’ and then, how to get beyond it.  At this point in our lives, we should have some idea.  We should know through experience that our greatest wisdom resides in our greatest suffering.  Suffering becomes pointless if nothing is to be gained from it.  It’s meant to crack us down, to break us, to get us to the tender, vulnerable point where we are at one with the world.  This is where Chiron resides.  As an immortal being exiled on the Earth, he used the circumstances of his exile and his abandonment to enlighten and enrich the world.  He created Heros.  At our Chiron return, the Hero he is trying to create is our highest expression of Self.  A Self without the burdens of an isolated ego.

How does Chiron do this?  By passing on his wisdom.  Above and beyond anything else, Chiron is a teacher and a healer, the maker of heroes, those beings who would save the world.  The wound is but an incident in the Chiron story, a plot device to get us to the final pages.  (The wound is all important when we’re young and full of ourselves (in other words, ego) but as the years go by it seems more like, “Wound?  Wound Schmound.”)   Because, if we’ve learn anything from Chiron, we learn that the wound is actually the key to the end of our earthly suffering.

Wisdom is nothing without compassion.  Universal compassion IS wisdom.  Very much a Piscean concept.  Very much to do with the 12th house, where we are delivered through our suffering to something greater than the ego/I.  There is a lot of debate about what sign Chiron belongs to.  Some argue for Sag, because of the Jupiter connection and teaching.  Some argue for Virgo, because of the Mercury rulership and the emphasis on balance and healing.  But I don’t think Chiron belongs to either of these, or any sign.  What I do see is that Chiron represents the entire story of the mutable modality, which also includes Gemini and Pisces.  The mutable modality represents the way we evolve consciousness, the way we process what we learn.  It begins with the gathering of information in Gemini; in Virgo, it tests that information, sorts out what is useful from what is not, and information becomes knowledge; in Sag, that knowledge is disseminated and commuted to understanding.  The move from Sag to Pisces has to do with transcending the personal to arrive at the universal; mere understanding becomes compassion.  The wisdom of Pisces is the knowledge that, inspite of the light and the darkness, in spite of duality, we are all One.

It’s Chiron’s compassion that causes him to sacrifice his immortality for Prometheus, not his suffering.  Think about it.  These two had a lot in common.  Prometheus was chained to a rock and had his liver eaten out by an eagle every day for bringing fire to mankind.  Prometheus saw man physically suffering and cold; Chiron saw suffering in ignorance.  Brothers in arms.  Chiron fully expected to die for Prometheus.  We forget that part of the story.

Our Chiron returns should be about the awakening of our compassion and the beginning of the end of self-centered behaviour.  We should be focusing away from the small self towards the greater Self–to the use of our gifts and what we will leave behind us of our time on Earth.  We should be focused on our legacy.  That’s a big word, legacy.  It sounds lofty and refined.  It needn’t be.  We don’t need to reorganize the world to make a mark.  We may teach children how to knit, or paint, or play the guitar, especially if Chiron in the fifth made it painful for us to tap into our own creative expression.  If we have Chiron in the 8th, we may help others learn to share their talents.  With Chiron in the 9th, we may inspire others to see that life is bigger than the small realm of our local environment, and dare people to dream.

With so much to do, what a waste to stay trapped and limited by the wound.   Next, the second progressed lunar return and the third Nodal return.