Chiron has recently entered Aries (and later today the Sun will semi-sextile it from 00 Taurus, offering a solid, real-world glimpse of Chiron in action in your life). A change of sign for Chiron is like a change of sign for any other body: there’s the slightest shift to related energies in the air, but nothing changes for natal placements in Aries (or by hard contact to other Cardinal placements) until Chiron is within aspect orb, and of course, it doesn’t assert itself in general until there is contact between the asteroid (or is it a comet?) and other bodies. There, I’ve said it. Quit hyperventilating about how a body changes sign and the angels sing and fire falls from the sky and everyone gets a kitten–they don’t, it doesn’t, and we have to go out and find that kitten like every other time we’ve gotten one.

So what changes? Every time Chiron aspects some other transiting body, or is aspected by one, we have the chance to see Chiron in Aries in action–and that might be quite literal, in this Fire sign–so that we may notice how our own actions, or the aggressive choices of others, have caused wounds or healed them. The emphasis is on the individual responsibility for hurting and healing. During the transit of Chiron through this sign, we are bound to discover our own role in things, as well as the best actions we can take to make use of our Chirotic skills (indicated by Chiron’s position and contacts at birth). This may also foster expectations that alone we can move mountains–we may feel the hurt of trying to remedy something on our own, without assistance–but that is likely an illusion, created by too much attention to our own wounds. Handling this transit well requires enough humility to see that others are wounded, too, and that being responsible sometimes means recognizing the validity of others’ injuries, stepping out of the Aries box that says, ‘I, I, I, me, me, me’ and recognizing our likeness to and ability to partner with others (the reciprocity of opposing sign Libra).

Will this affect relationships? Yes! Especially early in the transit, before Chiron has made many contacts to other bodies or to individual natal ones, we may be prone to see ourselves as more separate than is real, to laundry list the ways others have hurt us–but perspective on our own role in things should be the goal, and when achieved will work wonders to illuminate all that’s right about what we and others do.

A Life Lesson in Astrology

You can skip this unless you’re a practicing astrologer or want to get the most out of your astrologer in your role as client–and even then, you have a choice 🙂

I once consulted for a corporation that was entering delicate negotiations; understandably, they wanted guidance that would result in them attaining their goals (yes, I’m being unusually vague here–though it happened almost twenty years ago, I still believe discretion is required). They filled me in on what they thought I needed to know, which resulted in a delay in understanding the charts, as I had to ask them multiple questions in order to sort it all out. So, lesson #1: astrologers, like physicians and lawyers, need to know the truth (or at least the actual conditions), if they’re going to be most effective in helping you.

Once I received answers what was showing in the chart became clear, and I provided a detailed assessment of the situation with the other side, and how to approach things in order to get the desired result. They went into the negotiations, came out three hours later, and immediately contacted me: they had chosen not to follow my recommendations, instead taking a radically different tack, and had not gotten their desired results–could I tell them what to do to get what they wanted now?

Dutifully I set about outlining conditions responsive to the present negotiation point. Things had ‘narrowed’, so to speak; by taking the actions they had, they had lost some of the options open to them initially, and I made that clear: the approaches they’d chosen in-the-moment had shut down certain options the opposing entity had originally been open to, meaning that the opposing side had seen demands and an attitude they didn’t like, right off the bat, and my clients were paying the price for that now. I did emphasize that it could all be saved, if they followed ‘x, y, and z’.

Negotiations resumed the next day, and my client contacted me at lunchtime. They hadn’t really liked what I’d recommended, had followed their own inclinations, and now wanted to know: could I tell them what to do at this point to get what they wanted? I understand that it can be tough to accept that someone many miles away has given you a battle plan that doesn’t seem the right thing to do when you’re in the room hashing it all out. Clients get spooked all the time, unable to believe that the advice they’ve paid for might actually see something they don’t, but that’s exactly it: if their own perspective was completely effective, they wouldn’t need someone else to weigh in, to provide guidance.

Of course, I outlined the present options, noting that several previous potentials had now been actively eliminated by the opposition (it seemed to me they were becoming more and more untrusting of the very aggressive and demanding tack my clients had taken and continued to take). Yet, there were still possibilities, and the whole thing could be salvaged, and I told them to the best of my ability how that could be accomplished–but they chose not to follow my recommendation, and when they showed up the next day to resume negotiations they found that the other side had terminated the interaction.

My client berated me: why didn’t I know they wouldn’t continue negotiations? If they’d known that they would’ve approached them in the evening, hoping to forestall a shutdown to talks. I apologized, saying there’d been no indication at our last point of contact that they would refuse to continue negotiations–and then it came out that my client had contacted them in the evening, and that’s what blew the whole thing up!

So here’s the point of this shaggy dog story: What you do with the information you receive from an astrologer (or any other individual offering life advice) is entirely up to you, and it should be–my judgment isn’t meant to replace yours, it’s meant to enhance it, to inform it with another viewpoint, to reinforce what’s working and minimize (hopefully) the effect of contrary forces. And as an individual, I don’t care what you choose to do–I can’t care, because if I did that would enmesh me emotionally in a way that would make my advice far less effective, as it would be far less objective.

But, and this is a massive one, to repeatedly return to a source for advice and repeatedly to then ignore that advice just doesn’t make sense; it instead suggests some kind of magical thinking is going on. Maybe there is a belief that simply contracting for services guarantees you get what you want–and then when you ignore the advice and don’t get what you want, you blame the astrologer, reasoning that they would’ve given you some kind of magic recipe or formula, or invested in persuading you, if they had been any good! Or you don’t blame the astrologer, but then feel justified in continuing a ‘poor me’ scenario, or maybe one of ‘confusion’, telling yourself, ‘Well, I tried to fix it’. Or maybe it’s the kind of thinking that can’t or won’t admit that current reasoning isn’t cutting it; a vanity that so distrusts contradictory input is bound to lead the individual astray, because that mind can’t learn. Or maybe it’s this: that in the end, each of us believes soundly that we know best for ourselves, and we do–but that works to our benefit only when we are honest enough to see that where we are is because of how we think and the decisions we’ve made, so that asking for help becomes genuinely looking for assistance by exposure to another point of view, not looking for a reason to continue a reckless and Self-indulgent ride.

See the answer to the Aspect article and see more ‘What You’re Asking’ here, and have a lovely day!