The Doctor is effective only when he himself is affected. Only the wounded Physician heals. But when the Doctor wears his Personality like a Coat of Armour, he has no effect.
– Carl Jung: Wounded Healer of the Soul.
One
of the deeper, underlying archetypal patterns which is being
constellated in the human psyche that is playing itself out collectively
on the world stage is the archetype of the “wounded healer.” To quote
Kerenyi, a colleague of Jung who elucidated this archetype, the wounded
healer refers psychologically to the capacity “to be at home in the
darkness of suffering and there to find germs of light and recovery with
which, as though by enchantment, to bring forth Asclepius,
the sun-like healer.” The archetype of the wounded healer reveals to us
that it is only by being willing to face, consciously experience and go
through our wound do we receive its blessing. To
go through our wound is to embrace, assent, and say “yes” to the
mysteriously painful new place in ourselves where the wound is leading
us. Going through our wound, we can allow ourselves to be re-created by
the wound. Our wound is not a static entity, but rather a continually
unfolding dynamic process that manifests, reveals and incarnates itself
through us, which is to say that our wound is teaching us something
about ourselves. Going through our wound means realizing we will never
again be the same when we get to the other side of this initiatory
process. Going through our wound is a genuine death experience, as our
old self “dies” in the process, while a new, more expansive and
empowered part of ourselves is potentially born.
Going
through and embracing our wound as a part of ourselves is radically
different than circumnavigating and going around (avoiding), or getting
stuck in and endlessly, obsessively recreating (being taken over by) our
wound. The event of our wounding is simultaneously catalysing a deeper
(potential) healing process which requires our active engagement, thus
“wedding” us to a deeper level of our being. Jung’s closest colleague,
Marie Louise Von Franz, said “the wounded healer IS the archetype of the
Self [our wholeness, the God within]Öand is at the bottom of all
genuine healing procedures.”
An
encounter with something greater than our limited ego, what Jung calls
the Self, is always a wounding experience for the ego. This is
symbolically represented when the mythic Jacob, after making it to
daybreak in his fight with the angel of God (who was clearly the more
powerful of the two), becomes wounded on the hip by the angel’s touch.
The event of our wounding is initiatory, as our wounding originated in
and potentially introduces us to “something greater than ourselves.” At
the same time that something greater than ourselves wounds us, something
greater than ourselves enters us as a result of our wounding, setting
in motion a deeper dynamic of psychic re-organization and potential
transformation. In the myth, the angel then changes Jacob’s name to
“Israel,” “he who has wrestled with God,” which symbolizes that Jacob’s
identity has been changed in the process of his encounter with the
numinosum. Our wounding is a “numinous” event, in that its source is
transpersonal and archetypal, which is to say that our wound is the very
way by which the divine is making contact with us. The origin of both
our wounding AND the healing that precipitates out of our wound comes
from beyond ourselves, as it is beyond our own personal contrivance. Our
wounding activates a deeper, transpersonal process of potential healing
and illumination that we could not have initiated by ourselves.
It
should be noted that Jacob was wrestling with the angel in the first
place because he would have been killed otherwise. The more powerful
archetypal forces that wound us and become activated in us through our
wounding literally challenge us to the core of our being to connect
with, become intimately acquainted with, and step into more empowered
aspects of ourselves, or else. Talking about his own personal experience
of living out this deeper, archetypal pattern, Jung said “I would
wrestle with the dark angel until he dislocated my hip. For he is also
the light and the blue sky which he withholds from me.” The dark angel
who wounds us is at the same time the Luciferian agent who is the
bringer of the light. There is a secret tie between the powers that
wound us by seemingly obstructing our true nature and the very true
nature that they appear to be obstructing.
Through
our wound we become introduced to the realization that we are
participating and playing a role in what Jung calls “a divine drama of
incarnation,” in which we step out of identifying ourselves in a
personal way that is separate from others, and we step into, as if
stepping into new clothes that are custom tailored just for us, a
“novel” role which requires a more all-embracing and expansive identity.
We realize we are all sharing in and playing roles for each other in a
deeper, mythic, archetypal process that is revealing itself to us as it
acts itself out through us. We find ourselves instruments being moved by
a greater, invisible hand, as if something vast, with more volume than
our previously imagined selves is incarnating through us. To recognize
this is to have a more open-ended and expansive sense of who we think we
are, and who we imagine others are in relation to us. The wound is not
only a personal experience, but rather, it is a doorway, a
hyper-dimensional portal into the transpersonal/archetypal realm, which
is a higher order (in terms of freedom) of our being.
The
wounded healer only becomes able to heal and help others (which is to
simultaneously be healing and helping him/herself again and again in the
form of seeming “others”), when instead of being resentful, bitter and
feeling victimized by their wound, he or she recognizes their wound as a
numinous event, an archetypal moment that seeks to make them
participants in a divine, eternal happening.
OUR WOUND IS THE WOUND
Just
like a dream, the situation in our outer world is reflecting back to us
what is happening deep inside of us. There is a non-local correlation
between the violence that we see playing out in the outside world and
the wound that we feel inside of ourselves. This is a holographic
universe in the sense that, just like a hologram, every minute part of
the universe – such as ourselves – contains, reflects and expresses the
whole. The microcosm and the macrocosm are mirrored reflections of each
other, as if they are different dimensional, fractal-like iterations of
the same underlying dynamic. What we are suffering from individually
within ourselves is the doorway through which we can more deeply relate
to and become engaged with the suffering in the outer world in a way
that helps alleviate both the suffering in the outer world as well as
within ourselves.
There
is a transformative and healing effect when we recognize how our
individual suffering is a personalized reflection or instantiation of
the collective suffering that pervades the entire field of
consciousness. Our personal wound is, in condensed and crystallized
form, the footprint and signature of the collective wound in which we
all share and participate. It is liberating and healing to step out of
pathologizing ourselves and re-contextualize our personal conflicts,
problems and wounds as part of a wider transpersonal pattern enfolded
throughout the global field of human experience. The outer, personalized
guise of our wound is the particularized form in which the underlying,
eternal mythological motif incarnates itself in linear time and makes
itself felt in our personal life. We are like psychic organs who
individually “process” the unresolved, unconscious shadow and wound in
the collective field. We are each simultaneously reflecting, creating
and affected by what is happening in the very universe in which we are
embedded and of which we are an expression.
It
is important to note that this is not a linear, one-way process, but is
circular and reciprocally co-arising. The unconscious in the greater
body politic of the seemingly outer world affects us, stimulating a
resonant unconscious energy within ourselves, while at the same time,
our unconscious is contributing to and being non-locally expressed by
events in the seemingly outer world in a mutually reinforcing feedback
loop. The point is that we begin to see the true nature of the situation
we are in when we recognize that, just like a dream, there is a
synchronistic co-respondence and fundamental inseparability between what
is going on within our psyche and what is happening in the seemingly
outer world, as if they are mirrored reflex-ions of each other. This
recognition of what has always been the case is itself the very
expansion of consciousness which is required – make that demanded – for
us to be effective transformative, bodhisattvic agents of positive
change in our world.
To
realize that each one of us is uncannily embodying and acting out in
our personal process (with all of our problems, symptoms, relationship
conflicts, traumas, etc) what is at the same time playing out in the
outside world is to step out of identifying ourselves as isolated,
discrete entities who are separate from the universe. Contrary to being
“alien” to this universe, we find ourselves intimate expressions of it.
It should be noted, however, that the way to this realization is not
through by-passing the personal dimension of our experience and
artificially identifying with the mythic/archetypal level in a contrived
and fabricated way, but rather by entering the mythic/archetypal
dimension by fully incarnating, in a full-bodied way, our personal
process in our life. The deeper, mythic/archetypal dimension “clothes”
itself in our personal process, which is to say that our personal
process is the doorway which introduces us to the deeper archetypal
dimension of our being.
In
this expansion of consciousness, we step out of interpreting our
experience personally and reductively, based solely on cause and effect
and the past, and step into experiencing the myth-like, time-less
dimension of our situation. Interpreting our experience through a
personal and reductive lens is an expression of a naÔve, un-initiated,
and ego-centered consciousness that knows no psychic center other than
its own. Being linear and time-bound, it is a limited viewpoint that can
only lead to depression, despair, resignation, disillusionment and
meaningless and hopeless suffering, as our soul feels seemingly
destroyed in the process.
When
we expand our consciousness and interpret our experience
transpersonally however, we step out of linear time into synchronic
time, a dimension of our being in which the past, our wound, the world
and ourselves do not literally, concretely, and objectively exist in and
over time in the way we had previously imagined. Realizing the
impermanence and fluidity of our situation, we do not have to make our
wound “real” and grant it an unwarranted solidity or invest it with an
apparently substantial, independent existence. We can awaken to the fact
that the situation we find ourselves in is malleable, is fundamentally
characterized by open-ended potentiality, and is infinitely and
effortlessly creative if we simply allow it to be.
Talking
about this moment of recognizing that our wound is THE (archetypal)
wound, to quote Jung, is to see that our “suffering is archetypal and
collective, it can be taken as a sign that [we are] no longer suffering
from [ourselves], but rather from the spirit of the age.” Jung continues
that we are suffering from an “impersonal cause, from [our] collective
unconscious which [we have] in common with all [humanity]” [words in
brackets have been changed from singular, masculine to gender neutral].
If we are able to channel and creatively express the spirit of the age
from which we are suffering with consciousness, however, we become the
“medium” through which the spirit of the age reveals itself to us so as
to potentially transform itself, the world around us, as well as
ourselves.
As
wounded healers, we become transformed when we recognize that our wound
is completely personal and uniquely our own, while simultaneously being
a universal, impersonal process in which everyone is participating. It
is this shared felt sense that deeply connects us with each other. This
is the paradox: An experience of our wholeness, what Jung calls the
Self, is both personal and archetypal/transpersonal (beyond the
personal) at the same time. To experience this contradiction consciously
IS itself the expansion of consciousness which initiates a
transformation in ourselves, and by extension, the world around us. This
is to paradoxically step into being a genuinely autonomous, independent
being while at the same time realizing our interconnectedness,
interdependence, unity and ultimate inseparability from the world and
each other. The energetic expression of this realization is compassion.
The
fact that what is playing out in the world theatre is not separate
from, but is intimately correlated to, and an expression of what is
happening inside of ourselves, is significant in that it is revealing to
us that a way of gaining more traction in effectively dealing with the
pervasive destructiveness that is happening in the outside world is by
becoming intimately acquainted with what it constellates inside of us.
The unconscious, mad, violent, destructive, evil, wounded and wounding
energies in the outer world nonlocally reflect and activate, trigger and
express themselves in similar, resonant processes within ourselves. The
dynamic unfolding in the outer world “translates” itself through the
organ of our psyche, thereby giving shape and form to our subjective
experience of our wound, our world and ourselves.
Our
wound introduces and connects us with the transpersonal dimension of
our being, whose realization, amazingly enough, initiates the
transformation and potential healing of our wound. Simultaneously
containing both the pathology and its own medicine, our wound is a
higher-dimensional event which has manifested in the flat-land of our
third dimensional life. Symbolically encoded in the wound, uniquely
tailored to our exact sensibility and aesthetic, is both the seeming
“problem” and its own re-solution co-joined in a state of open-ended and
boundless, indwelling potentiality.
Our
wound is a genuine quantum phenomenon: Will it destroy us or wake us
up? Is it a wave or a particle? Answer: it depends upon how we dream it.
Our wound is not separate from the psyche that is experiencing it. This
means that the way we interpret our wound, the meaning we place on it,
and the story we tell ourselves about it, and thereby ourselves, has an
actual effect on how our wound, ourselves, and by extension the world
manifests in this very moment.
OUR WOUND IS INITIATORY
Through
our wound we become introduced to the part of ourselves that is not
wounded, just like we would never notice the mirror if it were not for
its reflections. The reflections are indistinguishable from the mirror
while simultaneously “not” being the mirror. Paradoxically, the
reflections in the mirror reveal what is not a reflection. Similarly,
our wound reveals to us the part of ourselves that is free of our wound.
The reflections in the mirror help us recognize the underlying mirror
which embraces, contains, and is fundamentally unaffected by whatever it
reflects. Our wound doesn't affect our mirror-like nature, just like a
mirage of water in the desert doesn't make the grains of sand wet. We
won’t notice the underlying mirror, however, if we become entranced by,
fixated on, absorbed into and identified with the reflections.
The
reflections in the mirror are the inseparable, indivisible, unmediated
expression of the mirror, as we never have reflections without a mirror,
or a mirror without reflections. Similarly, the wound is, in disguised
form, a manifestation of the part of us that is not wounded.
Until
we became wounded, however, we were unaware of the part of ourselves
that is invulnerable to being wounded, as we were unconsciously
identical with this part of ourselves, which is to say we were not
relating to it as an object of our knowledge, i.e., it wasn't conscious.
From the dreaming point of view – where the inner process of the
dreamer plays itself out in the seemingly outer theatre of the dream so
as to become conscious of itself – the deeper part of ourselves dreamed
up our wound so as to make us conscious of the part of ourselves that is
transcendent to the wound – i.e., “healed.” The wound itself is the
very instrument through which our intrinsic wholeness prior to our
wounding becomes consciously realized in time – the present moment – the
only “place” where our wholeness can be realized.
To
realize this is to have an expansion of consciousness, in which the
opposites such as being wounded and not being wounded lose their
previous sense of distinctive meaning relative to each other. Of course,
on the relative level of reality, being wounded is different than not
being wounded. To expand our consciousness, however, is to be introduced
to the absolute level of reality, a state which simultaneously includes
the relative, and yet embraces and transcends it in a higher synthesis.
It is only our conceptual mind which “thinks” of the opposites as being
separate. To recognize the relativity, and hence, identity of the
opposites is to realize what Jung calls the “Self” (which he described
as a union of opposites). One of the deeper meanings of the Buddhist
word “nirvana” is to be free from the opposites. In alchemy, the
philosophers stone is found and the “gold” (which is none other than an
expansion of consciousness) is made when the “greater coniunctio” is
accomplished, which is when the opposites are united.
To
recognize the union of opposites is to connect with and remember our
intrinsic wholeness, which is the ultimate healing, as we become “one
piece” with ourselves (and can create “one peace” with one another).
This is, “as though by enchantment, to bring forth Asclepius, the
sun-like healer,” who symbolizes the healing power and hidden theophany
latent in the wound that is invoked by the light of consciousness. When
enough of us recognize the healing that our wound is revealing to us,
the healing aspect of our wound becomes constellated collectively, writ
large on the world stage.
As
a wounded healer, we are continually deepening the healing of the
disassociation in our world. Healing our internal disassociation from
ourselves non-locally impacts and is correspondingly reflected back by
the seemingly outer world, as we re-associate with each other (the
powers-that-be’s worst nightmare), remembering who we are with regards
to both ourselves and one another. We can co-operatively help each other
to step out of a hierarchical universe based on fear, power and
separation, and step into our deeper, co-equal identities as wounded
healers and spiritual friends who ultimately depend, can count upon, and
care about one another. We are interdependent parts of a greater,
all-embracing whole and holy being. Realizing our interconnectedness, we
can collaboratively put our lucidity together, becoming empowered
agents of healing in the world.
It
could not be more crystal clear that it is only through an expansion of
consciousness that we will be able to transform our world crisis. Maybe
all that is needed in this moment is for any one of us to wake up, as
all the great enlightened teachers throughout the ages have said that
when any one person wakes up and realizes the union of the opposites
within their own selves, the entire universe wakes up with them.
From
this deeper, more expansive point of view, our wound, instead of
obstructing our wholeness, is actually an expression of it, as without
our wound we wouldn’t have been introduced to the part of us that is
free, healed, whole, liberated and awake. Our true nature can never be
obscured, just as the clouds in the sky seemingly obscure the sun, but
from the sun’s point of view, it is always radiantly shining, even on
the cloudiest of days.
A pioneer in the field of spiritual emergence, Paul Levy is a healer in private practice, assisting others who are also awakening to the dreamlike nature of reality. Paul is also a visionary artist and a spiritually-informed political activist. He is the author of The Madness of George Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis,which is available on his website www.awakeninthedream.com. (See the first chapter, The Madness of George W. Bush: A Reflection of our Collective Psychosis). Please feel free to pass this article along to a friend if you feel so inspired. You can contact Paul atpaul@awakeninthedream.com; he looks forward to your reflections. © Copyright 2010
and,from,;
The
invention of psychological archetypes was first put forth by Carl
Gustav Jung (1875-1961), the famous Swiss psychiatrist and originator of
such other concepts as the collective unconscious and synchronicity.
His archetype of ‘The Wounded Healer’ originated with the Greek myth of
Chiron who in the process of overcoming the pain of his own wounds came
to be known to us in modern times as the compassionate master teacher of
the arts of healing and medicine, privy to the secrets of life and
death. Chiron is not listed as a Dying God Archetype presumably because
he was not a god himself but merely an immortal. We may soon be tempted
to count him among the Dying Gods anyway.
Chiron
was the oldest, wisest and best of the Centaurs. He was the son of
Cronos (the Titan god of time & the ages, ruler of the cosmos) and
Philyra (one of the Oceanides nymphs or nature spirits of the clouds).
Because the Titans were immortal, Chiron was born immortal. A great
healer, hunter, astrologer, and respected oracle, Chiron was revered as a
teacher and tutor. Among his pupils were many culture heroes:
Asclepius, Aristaeus, Ajax, Aeneas, Actaeon, Caeneus, Theseus, Achilles,
Jason, Peleus, Telamon, Heracles, Oileus, Phoenix, and in some stories,
Dionysus.
Chiron
is considered a wounded healer because he healed himself by trading his
immortality for the ability to die as an antidote to the eternal
suffering of unbearable pain. But there is another wound he bore that I
haven’t observed anyone talking about as a function of the ‘wounded
healer’ archetype, and this wound of which I speak is what
unquestionably qualified Chiron above all others to raise and tutor
Asclepius after Apollo killed his mother and bade Hermes take his infant
son to Chiron.
The
story of Chiron’s deepest wounding probably begins with the moment of
his conception when Cronus, in the act of coupling with the nymph
Philyra, transformed himself into a horse to avoid being caught by his
wife Rhea who had suddenly come upon the scene.
As
a consequence of the form change, Chiron was born half man-half horse
which so horrified Philyra that she rejected her newborn on the spot.
How Chiron grew up to be intelligent, wise and compassionate instead of
wild and savage like the other centaurs we are not told directly
although as the story goes Apollo adopted and schooled Chiron thoroughly
in the arts of hunting, healing, medicine, all branches of science, and
the mysteries, giving him the tools to rise above his beast nature (and
psychological issues too no doubt).
In
fairness, the references do say the other centaurs were the product of
the unions of one or more of the cloud spirit nymphs and Ixion the King
of the Lapiths1 whom
Zeus judged as evil and sentenced to be bound to a wheel set to turn
and burn forever over a spit in Tartarus. However to conclude Chiron had
greater spiritual potential on account of his parentage would be to
make a dangerous assumption. Studies show as a practical matter there is
no telling from whence issues the criminal mind. Bad people come out of
good families every day, and vice versa. Evil wouldn’t be evil if it
were predictable.
The defining difference between Chiron and the rest of the centaurs in behavior and disposition, then, ceteris paribus (all
other things being equal) is apparent, i.e., Chiron was raised and
tutored by Apollo specifically to overcome his animal nature. Picking up
where the mythographers leave off, then, we now change voices and wax
poetic starting with the telltale clue …
… we are told in ancient Greek literature that Chiron lived alone in a cave…After
that day, according to myth and legend, Chiron met and married a nymph
he had admired named Chariklo who went on to become the foster mother of
many of the great heroes of Greece, among them Asclepius, son of
Apollo. Chiron also had three or four daughters by Chariklo, depending
on which version of the myth you consult. The only daughter of Chariklo
who came to misfortune was the one not sired by Chiron. But that is
another story.
The essence of Chiron’s heroic death story which originally earned him Wounded Healer Archetype status
begins with his flesh being pierced by Heracles’ arrow which had been
treated with the poisonous blood of the Hydra.The fatal blood of the
Hydra mingling with his immortal blood and body, the wise master teacher
of the healing arts who knew the secrets of life and death ironically
could not heal himself nor being immortal could he die. Fortunately,
Chiron was able to strike a bargain with Zeus to exchange his
immortality for the life of Prometheus who had been chained to a rock
and left to die for his transgressions.This act would later result in
the gift of fire being transmitted to humanity.
The
story about Chiron “healing himself” by trading his immortality in for
the ability to die, I suppose, teaches us something about hard choices,
but I’m not sure I get what Chiron did with that result after the fact
that would qualify him as a wounded healer on that account.Surely now we
can see Chiron’s choosing to trade his immortality for the right to die
speaks to a different albeit related dynamic. Yes, he cured himself of
excruciating pain, but what sort of self-healing does the right-to-die
represent? I submit this question also needs to be re-examined in the
context of life-death-rebirth. Chiron should be given due consideration
as a Dying God on the basis of his heroic gesture and contribution to
humanity followed by death and re-entry into modern day society as an
ascended master possessed of a celestial body/form (Centaur Object 2060
Chiron).
To
honor his heroic self-sacrifice, Chiron was placed in the sky after he
died as constellation Sagittarius, Ophiuchus’s zodiac neighbor to the
West but somewhere along the line Chiron’s constellation was changed to
the Archer. Today Chiron’s constellation Centaurus can be seen walking
along the Galactic Equator in the Southern Hemisphere.Chiron the Wounded
Healer RevisitedNow that we have finished looking at both halves of
Chiron’s story, it’s time to reevaluate the evidence that unfolded when
we reread the myth from head to tail and from a new angle. The
unabridged version of Chiron’s life story presents my argument with
authority. It’s the story of a rejected and abandoned half boy-half colt
raised by Apollo to transcend his heart-and-soul wounding, overcome his
limitations, and become the peerless wise master teacher, healer and
sage enabling the self-healed Chiron to step in and perform the same
service later for Apollo in the raising of his son Asclepius. I just
want to point that out.
Return of the Centaurs
Orbit of 2060 Chiron
In
1977 astronomers observed a minor planet exhibiting both asteroid and
comet characteristics and behavior between the orbits of Saturn and
Uranus. Chiron was the second object of its type to be discovered by
astronomers so they created a new classification, “centaur”, and they
named their latest discovered centaur “Chiron”.2060 Chiron is a
planetoid in the outer Solar System. Discovered on November 1, 1977 by
Charles Kowal from images taken two weeks earlier at the Mount Palomar
Observatory (precovery images have been found as far back as 1895), it
was the first known member of a new class of objects now known as
centaurs, with an orbit between those of Saturn and Uranus. Although it
was initially classified as an asteroid, it was later found to exhibit
behaviour typical of a comet. Today it is classified as both, and
accordingly it is also known by the cometary designation 95P/Chiron.
Chiron is named after the centaur Chiron in Greek mythology. Original
source of facts: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2060_Chiron. See also http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/chiron.html
The
generic definition of a centaur is a small body that orbits the Sun
between Jupiter and Neptune and crosses the orbits of one or more of the
giant planets. Subsequent to the discovery of Chiron in 1977, other
“cross-listed asteroid-comet” (centaur) objects were sighted. The
largest centaur so identified to date is 10199 Charliko. In December
2005 a cometary coma was detected on Centaur 60558 Echeclus originally
discovered in 2000 and studied in 2001 (no tail was previously
detected).The astrologers, of course, took the baton passed to them by
the astronomers and ran all the way with it. Following the Harmonic
Convergence in 1987, Chiron the Centaur brightened in 1988, developed a
cometary coma in 1989, and grew a tail in 1993.Since 1987 Chiron has
become one of the most important small planets to add to a birth chart,
arguably more essential to include than any of the asteroids popularly
plotted. But we will not cover that ground here except to note for the
record that on November 1, 1977, the date of Chiron’s discovery, NASA’s
JPL Online Ephemeris Generator recorded Chiron’s position as transiting
constellation Aries (zodiac sign of birth) in retrograde motion,
occultly suggesting REbirth for Chiron since at the top of the list of
retrograde motion affects are reversal, renewing, and redoing.
Chiron as Dying & Resurrected God
Chiron’s
heroic, transformative death in ancient Greek mythology followed by a
metamorphic, modern day rebirthing into physical form as a space rock
and resurrection by astronomers and astrologers ironically working as a
team despite their being, like Chiron, two halves of one cosmic body,
more than qualify Chiron to be considered one of the Dying and
Resurrection Gods. Chiron is serving humanity today in a number of
capacities but the disciplines that relate to our subject matter here is
as a Master Astronomy-Astrologer and Divine Wisdom Teacher. If you want
to know how to interface with him personally, one way would be consult a
New Age Astronomy-Astrologer. Or you could just go within and ask in
your Heart to speak to Chiron.
Chiron the Centaur, Hand of the Gods
The
closest Chiron could get to the feeling of ever having had a mother was
to live in a womb shaped cave he’d found one day at the foot of Mount
Pelion. He had been dropped on top of the mountain as a newborn by one
of the fluffy white clouds who then suddenly turned dark and began to
rain like mad, washing him away down the mountain in a disorienting
torrent like so much flotsam and jetsam.
It
was no coincidence that Apollo, God of Healing and Light, was standing
at the foot of Mount Pelion at the very moment Chiron came tumbling down
it. He’d had an oracular vision in which it came to Apollo a great
teacher was coming to Thessaly and it would be up to the God of Light to
make sure the future wise one was provided for. Apollo chuckled at the
sight of the future great teacher sprawled out at his feet. He could see
his work was cut out for him.
Apollo
saw to all of Chiron’s immediate needs and, after ensuring the halfling
was safely and securely settled in to his new environment, the God of
Light slipped away at dusk saying he would return the following day at
daybreak and every day with the rising Sun for a season he called the
Spring of Life when all things learn and grow and seek the light. And
this he did on every fair and sunny day but always on days marked by the
gods for ritual and sacrifice, no matter what.
The
hours of the days when Apollo came to tutor or hunt with Chiron were
alight with the sunshine of the spirit. But those times seemed fleeting
to the immortal-born. Whenever Apollo departed, always with the last
rays of the setting Sun, Chiron would repair to the darkness and
solitude of his cave.
With
nothing to distract him and time without end on his hands, young Chiron
was his own worst enemy. His mind was the battleground for a world of
conflicting thoughts and feelings about everything (you have only to
imagine). He was, after all, half animal, and the animal half of him
that caused his mother to reject him at birth made up the lion’s share
of his body by weight and was driven by herd instinct in a world where
there was no herd, for he was the first of his kind. It confused him to
think both halves of him were not equally good and valuable and that one
needed to be brought under submission to the other. So Chiron would
alternately wrestle with dark thoughts about his man-half, the half
Apollo was trying to teach and enlighten, and his animal nature.
One
day Chiron had a lucid dream as he was staring at his reflection in the
glassy obsidian wall of his womb cave. In a flash he understood why he
had been placed by the gods in the life that they chose for him—the one
with Apollo in it as his foster father and mentor. The gods had a Plan
for the world and there was a particular role in it that only Chiron
could fill.
He
saw that as part of this Plan Apollo would in the future be blessed
with the coming of a son and that both father and son would suffer
rejection, each in his own way, denying them the same comforts and
pleasures of home and family relations that had eluded and
psychologically wounded Chiron. The thought of someone dear to him—or
indeed anyone—suffering what Chiron had suffered went straight to his
Heart like a knife. And as Chiron recoiled from the painful memory of
his own wounding as a foal-child he saw the Big Picture very clearly.
Apollo
would need a foster family to raise and tutor his son who was destined
go on to become saviour of the whole world (or the revolutionary new
Archetype Master Physician, whichever came first). It was then Chiron
accepted he was a special creation of the Gods sent to Earth in an
uncommon form earmarking him to follow a narrow path. He would become
the right hand of Apollo, God of Light and the Sun, and raise Apollo’s
son Asclepius just as Apollo had raised Chiron. Hence the spiritual
significance of the name ‘Chiron’ which means ‘hand’ [of the Gods].
Chiron
emerged from the womb cave the next morning even before the Sun rose
and he waited for it. He was beast no more except in appearance and
really only that from a certain point of view (which all goes to
illustrate the oft-quoted words of wisdom still good to this day, never
judge a book by its cover).
Off
in the distance, just behind the Day Star, strode Apollo toward him
carrying something. It was a rite of passage gift from foster father to
foster son—a special bow and quiver of arrows. And with the gift
Chiron’s beloved teacher announced it was time for Chiron to learn the
first of the secrets of life and death, about poisons and antidotes and
about openings in the flesh and how to make them go away.
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