Chiron meets Mars. I’ve always thought that too much has been made of Chiron’s infamous wound, and not enough of his wisdom, his teaching, his mastery of the arts, his vast and wide-ranging knowledge, his ability to interact with the gods, and his crucial role as the maker of heroes. Chiron is also independent, a maverick who goes his own way, a solitary being who creates his own path and is proud of it. Undoubtedly, Chiron worked his own Mars quite well, trimming his excesses (he was a Centaur, after all) and putting his hard-won talents to action.

But Chiron is related to Mars through the cut–the symbol for Mars itself is arrow-shaped, a masculine symbol, a symbol of energy, strength and virility. Look at Chiron’s own symbol. It’s called a key. The point has literally been broken off of the arrow and has been turned inwards. The center, the circle, is askew.

Chiron, teacher, healer, scholar, and forger of heroes, began with a separation from his tribe. Chiron tells us that we must remove ourselves from the pack if we are to realize the god inside of us. We must retreat into our own particular darkness, so black sometimes that we cannot see our direction, so black that we cannot see our hand in front of our eyes. The famous Chiron ‘cave,’ the dwelling where his skills are honed, is not some magical hollow where if we only hide ourselves there for long enough, wisdom is our reward. We don’t retreat into a metaphorical egg, biding our time until we hatch out perfectly and brilliantly one day. Anyone who has been through a long and painful Chiron transit will tell you that there is as much suffering in confusion and uncertainty as there is in any kind of loss, grief, or physical pain, and the worst of it is that there is no compassion in this Western world, none at all, for confusion. We are not allowed to be uncertain, unsure, scared of the dark. We are not allowed to hesitate, or tremble at the brink.

And this is what happens when Chiron touches Mars, the symbol of physical and psychological virility.

Let’s go back to an aphorism I detest, which shows a loathsome elitism and a cleverness lacking heart which I suppose could naturally be attributed to someone as self-righteous as George Bernard Shaw. We’ve all heard this: those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. The actual phrase is “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.” and it’s from Shaw’s Man and Superman, a play about a revolutionary, Jack Tanner, who evades the pursuits of a woman, Donna Anna, whom he calls “The Life Force.” Based on Shaw’s notion that men would never choose to marry unless women forced them to. Now, I never thought much about Man and Superman (Nietzsche’s Ubermensch) much as a drama. The entire third act, Don Juan in Hell, is often performed separately. Don Juan in Hell is about the debate (Stay with me, I’m getting back to Chiron meets Mars in a minute.)

Now, I used to think that Shaw was a self-satisfied ****, as much as I admired most of his plays, and particularly detested the “Those who can…aphorism as the too-clever, masturbatory mouth music from someone who liked to hear himself talk. However, not only does the creator of this oft-misquoted phrase have a Sun/Venus conjunction directly opposite Chiron, the opposition falls between the third and ninth houses. Teach, indeed. Sometimes, if you happen to be caught in the audience of a bad production of Shaw, it feels like being lectured at by a professor who is not only a blowhard, but a bore. We all remember them, don’t we–those professors and teachers who may have been brilliant men, but who were and are renowned for their lack of skill in transferring their wisdom. Chiron, getting in the way between Shaw and greatness. (Heartbreak House is the one play where Shaw lets his defenses down; and it’s the one play that always succeeds.) Not only did Shaw have the Sun/Venus-Chiron opposition, he had an out-of-sign square between Chiron and Mars. When both of your masculine planets are driven by Chiron, no wonder you are writing plays about the way women pursue the hapless man. There is much to be learned from the fact that Chiron, essentially, is wounded by his own hand. He concocted the very poison that he cannot undo.

Notes:

• Can break down sexual lines. Difficulty with expressing sexual desires. Rawness in Chiron/Mars, openness.
• Chiron Mars in synastry.
  Sexual healing
• Can be capable of raw aggression, sex devoid of spirit. Animal nature of Chiron,
  Devastating humiliation; attack where it’s most vulnerable, Chiron meets  Mars, in particular, can cause a small death–the devastating wound, inflicted by another, from which one may never recover. Vicious. Cruel. Particularly in sexual terms.
• Sexual vulnerability. How open we are in sex, vulnerable. Element of trust involved, can be violated.