Chart Synthesis  ✦  Dawn Bodrogi  ✦  The Inner Wheel

In an episode of the TV series Angel, Fred is dying of a mystical disease brought in via an ancient sarcophagus. The boys — Angel, Spike, Wesley, and the culpable Gunn — follow their clues to a secret entrance, the tomb of The Old Ones, gods who once walked the earth. The guardian tells them that one of these ancients has escaped back into ordinary reality. It needs a body, a vehicle. That is why Fred is dying.

The boys are given a choice: let Fred die, or save her — the catch being that it would wreak havoc in the world, leaving millions of deaths in its wake. Fred is left to die. She is taken over by the god Illyria, who rails about being trapped in a feeble human body. The world disgusts her. She cannot breathe. Yet eventually, she becomes the key figure in Angel’s battle for good, and the strongest member. But not before she must sacrifice some of her power.

(Forgive me for mixing my mythologies. Everyone knows that proper references to rifts belong to Doctor Who.)

I was sorry that Angel ended when it did, when I read Joss Whedon’s future plans for Fred/Illyria. We would discover that Illyria did not completely destroy Fred from within, as we were told. One was to live within the other — Illyria to have her god-power, but Fred would have the equal power of her intelligence and humanity. I would have liked to see what Whedon envisioned, as Fred came to terms with the god within her and Illyria found her compassion and purpose. Sadly, we’ll never know.

The God Within

The story reminds me of our experience of Chiron. Fred, innocent and sweet, without knowing it, has messed with the gods. An Old One — read Uranus, Neptune, Pluto — has other plans for her. Once released, the god will not return underground. The genie will not go back into the bottle. Fred has to die to herself in order for the god to live.

One of the harder truths about Chiron is that, wherever it falls, no matter how good we are at learning our lessons, we continue to feel abandoned because we know more than we should. It is often a place where we press our noses against the glass of divinity and are allowed a glimpse of what god-like achievements we might be capable of. One of the crueller aspects of Chiron is that it taunts us with possibility. It gives us a sense of life beyond the ordinary, and then it pulls that life away.

The Demanding Teacher

Where Chiron resides we find a most demanding teacher. The hero-maker demands that we use our hard-won outer planet wisdom in the world. The centaur demands that we come to terms with the physical side of life. Chiron may initially represent what we long for and what we perceive we lack, but it also represents the struggle to use what we know.

Illyria, in human form, struggles with her earthly incarnation. In order to exist in this world she has to give up one of her most precious powers — her ability to transcend dimensions. Without that sacrifice, even as a god, she would die. Wherever Chiron resides, we have to make peace with our earth-bound selves.

Chiron, and the house it resides in, may not be a gateway to heaven so much as a hole in the Earth through which outer planetary energies can release into the material world. What we do with them belongs to Saturn’s realm. It is Saturn’s work to ground Chiron’s gathered skills and wisdom. Leaden Saturn, practical Saturn, boring Saturn — Saturn of the doing what I have to do but don’t want to do. Chiron is placed between Saturn and Uranus, between our greater ideas and the reality check of practical experience.

A Gate Opened Both Ways

The wound of Chiron may not be so much an inherent wound within us as an inability to ground our glorious vision in practical, real-life terms. Chiron conveys the wisdom, but Saturn must do the work. Then Saturn itself becomes suffused with divine purpose. (In mythology, Chiron is a child of Saturn.)

A gate, once opened, allows passage both ways. Practical use of our knowledge becomes easier with time, allowing us greater access to the power of the outer planets. It’s fascinating that the one gift Illyria must give up is her ability to transcend time and space. The god-energy must be limited to this physical plane in order to be useful. If we don’t focus our outer planet energies into the world — if we cling to our self-loathing and our solipsistic longing — we can become destructive to ourselves and others. If we concentrate on putting our hardest lessons to good use, we allow our lives to become a conduit for the gods.

See also: Beyond the Wound: A Brief Chiron Cookbook

Go deeper

The Foundations Book by Dawn Bodrogi

For a deeper understanding of how Chiron, Saturn, and the full architecture of chart synthesis work together — Dawn’s Foundations Book is the essential companion.

→ The Foundations Book — all ebook retailers

Wounds can be healed — but what is known cannot become un-known.