Prometheus stole fire (consciousness) from the gods and gave it to humans. Zeus was angered by this, so he had Hephaestus create a woman out of clay and each god(dess) gave her a gift. Then Zeus gave this woman a treasure box, named her Pandora (Pan-all and dora-gift) and offered her to Prometheus' brother, Epimetheus.
Prometheus (whose name means foresight) knew his gift of fire to (wo)man had angered Zeus, so he warned his brother, Epimetheus (whose name means hindsight) not to take any gifts from Zeus. But upon seeing the beautiful Pandora, Ephimetheus forgot about his brother's warning and gladly accepted Pandora as his wife.
Once settled, Pandora opened her box of treasures and out sprung sorrow and misfortune, grief and anxiety, among other such tormented feelings (that stem from having consciousness). But Zeus was not done with his revenge. He ordained that Prometheus should die and had Prometheus tied to a mountain where by day an eagle swooped down and ate at his liver and by night his liver would heal. It would be a slow agonizing death but he would eventually die (and humans would lose the gift of foresight).
But then the story takes a twist as Chiron (the wounded healer-always sacrificing himself for the greater cause) steps forward and offers himself to Death in place of Prometheus. He argued that he was tormented by an earlier wound accidentally inflicted on him by Hercules and would be glad to meet with Death to rid himself of his constant pain. Zeus allowed the exchange of fate between Chiron and Prometheus, and Chiron was allowed to die (the wounded healer, always sacrificing retreats to the unconscious realms and our sacrifices become unconscious to us).
This is where the story of Chiron ends, but here in the new millennium, we find ourselves picking the story up once more and continuing with the saga. As we entered the year 2000, the new millennium, Chiron and Pluto were together forming a conjunction in Sagittarius. Chiron has met with the Lord of the Underworld, the Lord of Death-Hades (Pluto) and the telling of the tale continues in the unfolding of the new millennium.
The planetoid Chiron was not discovered until 1977 and is believed to be a visiting body because it did not exist in our solar system before this time. It can be found between Saturn and Uranus. This has led astrologers to subtitle Chiron with the name "The Rainbow Bridge" because Saturn is the last of the inner personal planets, and Uranus is the first of the outer transpersonal collective planets. It is very appropriate for Chiron to appear as we are about to enter the New Age, for Aquarius is about forming a collective consciousness between all life and Chiron is assisting by acting as a bridge between the personal and collective.
However, Chiron must pick up where he left off, and that is in the underworld. What would Chiron be doing in the underworld? We know Chiron was a teacher and healer. He trained the great warrior Achilles and taught Actaeon the skills of hunting. He also taught the great healer Aesculapius about medicine. Chiron has always been available to help those in need. He was known as the wounded healer because he could not heal himself of the wound inflicted by Hercules. With Hercules being the enactment of the personality in myth, psychologists have come to recognize the wound inflicted upon Chiron to be symbolic of the initial wound received upon birth and is more commonly referred to as separation anxiety: greater still, the separation from spirit in the coming to earth. And this wound is acted out by the personality-Hercules.
We know from myth that Hades (Pluto) is the Lord of the Underworld, the unconscious. We also know from astrology that the planet Pluto reflects aspects of the unconscious that have been oppressed, repressed, and/or forgotten. It becomes an easy deduction that Chiron is down in the underworld working, as the healer he is, on an unconscious level with the unconscious material we have forgotten or repressed. However, the conjunction between Pluto and Chiron is in the third house, which is the house of concrete consciousness. So for the next millennium, we will become conscious of the workings between Chiron and Hades, the healing of the personal unconscious, those aspects of us that have been rejected and denied as Chiron sends these now healed aspects back up into conscious concrete reality (third house).
This is very befitting for the times to come, for the Aquarian Age will bring to us a collective consciousness. If we are to achieve this, we need to clean the personal unconscious of its debris.
And for those people now questioning about the arrival of the Aquarian age may be a bit surprised to find out that it does not arrive until the year 2160. The Ages are determined by what constellation is behind the Sun at sunrise on Spring Equinox and currently that is Pisces. Surprised? Thought it was Aries? Well it isn't. Every year, as the Earth rotates around the Sun, it does not complete a full circle. At the beginning of each new-year, our planet is lagging behind 57 seconds of its full evolution around the sun. Year after year, this begins to add up and after awhile it becomes obvious that at the beginning of each year, the planet is not in the same location it was this time last year, 10 years ago, 100 years ago, etc. This is why the Ages go backwards from Pisces, to Aquarius. Yes we are still on the cusp. And for those people born on the cusp between two signs, this is a good time to take note and see how the energies are being pulled here at the passing of an Age because you too are pulled by the energies of the two signs you find yourself between.
Another interesting astrological phenomenon that is taking place within the millennium chart is a T-Square involving a second house Scorpio Moon and an eighth house Taurus Saturn opposition with the T-Square coming in through the fifth house's Aquarius Uranus.
This configuration starts out with difficulty but as we work through it, we will come to see that it is part of our evolutionary path. First we have a Scorpio Moon in the second house. The Moon generally likes things to be smooth sailing but Scorpio will have none of that. Scorpio has to go investigating. And as soon as Scorpio sniffs out a problem or issue, he obsesses on it until it is totally uncovered and understood. Being in the second house means we are going to be addressing self-worth issues and how we may attach material possessions to our self-worth. Then with Taurus Saturn over in the eighth house, we can expect to have our trust buttons pushed. Issues over trusting our involvement with other people, commitments, merging households, funds, etc. will come to the forefront. What a dilemma: an opposition involving self-esteem and trusting others. And then the whole thing gets expressed through the fifth house Aquarius Uranus. Uranus is already explosive by itself, but sitting on this tension…Yet the square is happening in the fifth house, which challenges us to express this tension creatively. With the energy being highly Aquarian yet the fifth house being naturally Leo oriented, we are being asked to express the collective (Uranus) within our individuality (the fifth): a difficult but possible juggling act. When we look at the bigger picture, the whole picture, we can see that we are preparing for the Aquarian collective integration that will take place in the New Age. We will have to work through self-esteem and trust issues to successfully unite.
Another sensitive point to a T-Square is the empty space, which will be opposite to the square. In this case we are referring to the opposite of Aquarius Uranus in the fifth, which will be the eleventh house. The empty space (in this case the eleventh house) will be an area where we are lacking, that needs much development because it is the point of kickback from the dynamics of the T-Square. Much like firing a gun, the T-Square has a kickback similar to how a gun jerks up or a rifle jerks back against the shoulder. And this is an area that is undeveloped. In the case of this millennium, the undeveloped area is the eleventh house ruled by Leo, which is telling us we need to learn how to express the individual within the collective.
In summary, the evolutionary struggle for this millennium is to define self-worth outside of possessions and to take trust to a deeper level beyond what people say and/or do. Then we must balance this by expressing ourselves as a collective within our individuality and learn to express ourselves as individuals within the collective. Those are two very important keys that must be understood. There are two avenues of expression here. We will naturally express ourselves as a collective whole within our individuality. Which means each individual will be able to express the collective. Our challenge, the kickback, the empty space, is in our ability to express our individuality within the collective. See the difference? We can express the collective through the individual but how do we express the individual through the collective?
Fortunately, we have been given an answer. Sitting over in the empty space is the asteroid Pallas. Because Pallas is an asteroid and not a planet, she does not create a "real" (relative) Grand Cross, so we use her to channel the energy of the T-Square's (kickback) empty space. This works perfectly. Pallas is Athena. Everyone knows the story of Athena's birth, but I will need to summarize it to explain how she will help us develop the skills needed to express the individual within the collective.
We know how the arrival of the patriarchal nomadic tribes influences the telling of history. As with the arrival of the Olympian gods merged with the local gods of the region, the local gods became mortals and were integrated into the Olympian stories. Many local goddesses were termed as mortal women that Zeus pursued and mated with and this allowed the Olympian infiltration into local tribes. As was the story of Athena's birth.
Athena's mother was Metis. She and Zeus coupled, thus Athena was conceived. Zeus was told that the child Metis carried would be wiser than he. Not wanting anyone wiser than himself, Zeus went to destroy Metis. However, Metis changed forms and fled from Zeus. Zeus, too, changed forms and continued in his pursuit of Metis. He caught up with her when she turned herself into a fly and he swallowed her. Sometime later, Zeus gave birth to Athena, through the splitting of his head, done by Hephaestus, to alleviate his headache. Athena came forth, full-grown. And to this day, she is known as the Goddess of Wisdom, Craft, and War. Athena's story tells us about how the Goddess and women everywhere were repressed by patriarchy. They retreated to the underworld, the unconscious. However, in time, the pain inflicted by such oppression overtook all sensibility and they were released from their confines in the underworld. And Athena coming from the head of Zeus is symbolic of having been oppressed by "Man" and overcoming it by successfully integrating the masculine and feminine within herself. Thus she springs from Zeus' head with the wisdom of the goddess inherent in her and the god wisdom that was put upon her. She chose to make the most of her situation and she grew from it and integrated.
This makes her the most appropriate of gods or goddesses to help us achieve integration for she has already integrated. So actually our integration comes with the arrival of the goddesses, in the form of the asteroids in astrology, led by Athena.
Just in passing, I would also like to announce the arrival of other such goddesses in the form of asteroids first discovered in the 1800's that over time have been identified and named. Some of the goddesses who have arrived on the scene and are ushering in the new millennium and new age are: Ceres (Demeter), Pallas Athena, Juno (Hera), Vesta (Hestia), Pandora, Uranis, Psyche, Sappho, Lilith, and Diana. Welcome.
So, in summary, with the arrival of the new millennium, we have a Sagittarius Chiron-Pluto conjunction, with Chiron continuing to do his healing work in the underworld and bringing the healed aspects back into our consciousness through the third house. And a T-Square involving Scorpio second house Moon opposing Taurus eighth house Saturn with the square happening at Aquarius fifth house Uranus, and the kickback directly on Leo Pallas Athena in the eleventh house. Here we are working through self-esteem issues being related to possessions and trust being related to actions. We are dropping the superficiality of the material to prepare for the new age where we need to integrate the individual within the collective. We will more easily manifest the collective within the individual and we will be learning through the help of the goddess, Athena in particular, how to express the individual within the collective.
Donna M. Pinkston MA
Mental Health Counselor, Astrologer, Tarot Consultant
PinkstonDM@Juno.Com
360-793-1869
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