Chiron’s Keyword Corner: Horse

© 2010
 by Joyce Mason
All Rights Reserved


Why was Chiron half horse rather than half goat, ram, llama or turtle?

Here’s one possible answer from a rich site on symbolism, The Horse Archetype in Poetry and Anthroposophy. In the poem, "Death of Myth-Making" Sylvia Plath associates the horse with human thinking. The horse is a swift airy vehicle, wafting thoughts instantaneously to the mind of the rider.

The Horse Archetype site further notes:

Reason and common sense allow us short-term security but force us to think in a chain of endless causes and effects. The capacity to think creatively with inspired awareness is lost and the direct cognition of the world of ideas, the source of all myth, is replaced by sense-bound thinking. The subject-object dichotomy separates us from the rest of the cosmos.

This paragraph speaks to one of the most prominent features of the Chiron archetype—a being that is both instinctual and intellectual. He is both-brained, able to think creatively and objectively. Chiron is a balanced being.

Psychiatrist Carl Jung associated the horse archetype with never giving up and called him the “enduring” horse:


[Horses] mirror, and help us recover, the beauty, power, and nobility of our own spirit, that elusive Presence so easily lost in the frenzy and disconnection of civilized life. Now that horses are no longer obliged to work in our fields and carry us to war, they’re free to do something arguably more important: work on us. – Way of the Horse: Equine Archetypes for Self Discovery – A Book and 40 Cards by Linda Kohanov illustrated by Kim McElvoy


Creative Mind + Never Give Up = Soldiers Making Lemonade

Considering just these two aspects of the horse—his airy connection to creative thinking and his never-give-up spirit, the horse lends to mythical Chiron the “juice” to soldier on despite his lingering pain as a wounded mentor, teacher and hero-maker. The Chironic spirit is best captured in the expression, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

Hope starts in the mind. My theme when celebrating this Autumn Equinox with my Solsisters was “Harvest of Hope.” With the Cardinal T-Square squeezing the last drop of change out of us like lemons in the juicer, we have to hold onto the idea that hope is at the end of all this disorientation and disconnection. Hope doesn’t come from the rational mind.

Hope is independent of the apparatus of logic. ~ Norman Cousins

Or to share yet another of my Harvest of Hope quotes:

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all. ~ Dale Carnegie

Chiron was wounded, shot accidentally by Hercules with an arrow dipped the poison of the many-headed Hydra. Since he was the son of Chronos, an immortal, he could not die. From where he stood with pain that never ended from the moment of the injury, it’s hard to fathom how Chiron had the optimism to face each new day. Chiron’s story is a testimony to the true grit of his horse half archetype. He lived on, soldiered on and taught on. Chiron never gave up on life and helping others, even without a suggestion of a cure or way out.

Ultimately, Chiron was willing to suffer for another, namely Prometheus. Because he stole fire from Zeus, Prometheus was doomed to nightly torture by an eagle that pecked out his liver. Every morning his liver grew back to ensure a continuous cycle of suffering. There they were; Chiron and Prometheus—both suffering without any hint of let-up.

Yet through creative thinking Chiron finally found his “out.” He offered to take the place of Prometheus. No skin off Chiron’s nose; he was suffering himself anyway. He figured why have two people suffer when one would do?

The gods were so impressed by this act of altruism, they released Chiron from the bonds of his immortality, allowed him to die and raised him to the heavens in the constellation Centaurus. (Some versions of the myth say it was the constellation Sagittarius.) When we’re willing to do for others, we find the most satisfactory resolution to our own life issues and often face the death of who we used to be—a chronically suffering soul without solutions.

The Horse-Goddess, Epona was a protector of horses, donkeys, and mules. In Celtic tradition she governs the life cycle of birth, death, the afterlife, and rebirth; thus, Horse medicine is often associated with these aspects. ~ The History, Legend and Symbolism of the Horse

Body and Spirit

The horse half of Chiron has often been associated with our instinctual nature; his human half with our spirit, the “reasoning” man separate from other beasts, closer in likeness to a god/God.

Chiron’s duality speaks to me of grounded spirituality. We need to gallop the earth with our heads still in tune to the stars, to the energy and cycles of Spirit and the rhythms of the living Gaia. It’s our job to bring heaven to earth and earth to heaven, why we were given a big brain to work with and a spirit as free as a wild stallion.


Wild at Heart

Artist LBerry has this to say about the art illustrating this post:

As a child, I was told that like a wild horse, my spirit needed to be broken. Although I was wounded by those attempts, my spirit remained strong, and eventually I came to realize that it was the one part of me that could never be owned by another. A wild horse galloping in an endless field seems like an appropriate metaphor for freedom of mind and heart, along with a boundless spirit; hence the title, "Wild At Heart". This also goes along with my belief that God never tries to break our will. Instead he asks only that we willingly give ourselves over to the greater divine will.

Round-Up

Now that you’ve heard my thoughts on the subject, I’d love to hear your ideas on why Chiron had to be a centaur—half horse.

I suspect there’s a hint in those classic Westerns with a happy ending. The hero rides off into the sunset on a horse.

~~~


Photo Credit: “Wild at Heart” © June 1997 by LBerry. Prints available. Contact Joyce if interested.

Thanks to Janet Boyer who’s eclectic site—janetboyer.com--introduced me to the work of Linda Kohanov, author, speaker, riding instructor and horse trainer who has become an internationally- recognized innovator in the field of Equine Experiential Learning and a respected writer on the subject of Equine Facilitated Psychotherapy. Linda’s site, Epona Equestrian Services, explores the potential of human/horse relationships.

Chiron’s Keyword Corner: Halves and Composites

© 2010 by Joyce Mason

Chiron of mythology was a half-breed—half-human, half-horse. His top half represents our divine nature in human form, his bottom half our baser instincts. Many scenes in Chiron’s story contrast his gentle nature as a mentor of heroes to the wild centaurs that ran around raping and pillaging the Greek countryside. Those two types of centaurs represent the extremes of character in our human adventure.


We, too, are half-breeds as spirits in bodies, trying to realize the pains and pleasures of bringing heaven to earth. Chiron is a symbol of incarnation and how we do not leave our divinity behind when we inhabit a body. Sometimes we forget it’s there. Finding it means using our heads or upper halves. Many of us probably have had phases of our lives where we lived in our lower chakras or energy centers, where our drama involved pure survival, unrestrained sexuality, and/or fear.

For perspective, it’s good to remember that the Greeks had a flair for drama. After all, they invented it! Leave it to Greek mythology to make the point about coming to terms with our dualities by creating a giant, misfit—the outcast that got wounded at a Big Fat Greek Wedding. A wedding is another metaphor for a merger of two parts of a pair, the marriage of opposites where, with a little work and a lot of love and luck, the opposites morph into complements. Normally in ancient Greece, Chiron with his bizarre birth defect would have been left on a hillside to die. Fortunately, instead, he was saved and fostered by the Apollo and Artemis in the guise of the Sun and the Moon. When I was growing up, Chiron would have been forced to make a living as a circus freak. Thank heaven for our evolution toward accepting diversity.


Accepting Our Own Diversity

I was thrilled when Barack Obama was elected President of the United States. As mentioned in my recent Chiron in Pisces post, what a Chironic character and symbol of personal integration. He has one of the most prominent placements of Chiron in the 1st House. From a racial perspective, he is both black and white. Because his genes for dark skin dominate, people identify him as black—the first black President. However, he is just as white as he is black from an ethnic and cultural perspective, raised primarily by his white mother and her family.

One of President Obama’s biggest challenges in office parallels the blending of his own Chironic halves. Our bi-partisan political system (two halves of our body politic, Democrat and Republican) must be integrated to tackle the huge issues of the day. Who would know this better than someone who grew up bi-racial? Someone who had to learn to be comfortable in his own skin as a composite being?

We are all composite beings, in one form or another. One form finds our spiritual and earthy halves competing for some semblance of balance and wholeness. We have other parts of us that are mixed bags, too—the opposites or differences within us that beg us to come to terms with them. (From an astrological perspective, it’s your oppositions and squares and other tense relationships between planets, representing parts of yourself that don’t blend easily—or at least not right off the bat.) Blending the competing parts of our selves is not much different from bringing Republicans and Democrats together to solve national health care or other significant issues. “I’ve gotta get it together” is a universal mantra. If we succeed at the personal level with this blending bit, maybe we can decide on a doctor, health care plan, or whether or not we should take a medicine that has a list of side-effects the length of an arm … or if we should go Chiron’s route of more holistic healing options. When you consider our personal struggles on this topic day to day, small wonder there has been lively debate on health care in Washington, before you even add the political and economic dimensions.


Exaggerate + Humor = Help

Humor is healing and very Chironic. Exaggeration can help a person visualize the patchwork of his or her competing parts to bring them into a tapestry of wholeness. I was e-mailing a friend recently, writing about my own ethnicity—half Greek, a fourth each Hungarian and Slovakian. I envisioned myself in goofy, archetypal terms as a plow woman in my great grandparents’ little village of Kista (Slovakia), pushing my plow in the field with a table in my teeth (à la Zorba the Greek in a drinking/dancing scene) while wearing a black Dracula type cape from my Hungarian roots near Transylvania. What a mental sight!

Have you ever noticed how often people of mixed heritage are exotic and beautiful? From a physical perspective, nature seems to have no issue with diversity. This is certainly not limited to humans. The most gorgeous cat I’ve ever had is a mixed breed. Who hasn’t had a “mutt” that’s not only good looking but has a better temperament than many dogs with a pedigree?

In my mind’s eye, my silly ethnic fantasy scenario represents my hard work/hard play opposition (ploughing fields and bringing the taverna and scent of ouzo with me). The touch of Dracula adds my love of mystery, both the cloak-and-dagger type (I was wearing a cloak in this thought bubble) and the bigger mysteries of life. Those life mysteries are what I always want to sink my teeth into—they’re my life’s blood, all puns intended.

You can as easily apply this concept to the planets in your chart or the issues they represent, and the more comical you make your mental images, the more insights you’ll likely mine from the experience toward integration. Maybe your Sun is in Aries but it’s in the 7th House—the ultimate Me planet in the consummate house of Us. What image would represent that daily dilemma? (I might create a batch of Me Clones so I’d have reinforcements to not lose myself in relationship with others. Safety in numbers!) Two of my friends have Grand Water Trines, and in the case of one of them, we refer to it as her Grand Whine. When she gets going to one of her own pity parties, she drowns her sorrows in a wave of misery and everyone else’s within a 10-mile radius. I picture Niagra Falls barreling out of her eyes, her loud moaning that sounds like an air-raid alarm, and people evacuating in life boats. It makes me laugh to myself when the strength of her emotional tsunami is sending me for the life boats myself.


Not Either/Or but Both/And

Chiron helps us see choices and life in shades of gray. Decisions and approaches to spirited living do not have to be either/or. The best of all worlds is both/and. This talent for alchemy and blending our mixed bags of energies, personality facets, and character traits (or flaws) is why Chiron was an herbalist, surgeon, and his discovery coincided with a surge in holistic or complementary healing, the latter term combining the blend of the best.

Only in the most radical circumstances of a severely diseased part do we “perform surgery” and cut off a part of ourselves. The rest of life is about putting ourselves in a mixing bowl and seeing what we can whip up with our own special blend of ingredients.

Happy Healing, and to quote that beloved kitchen character, Julia Child, bon appétit! Don’t forget to spice yourself up with some good medicinal/cooking herbs.

~~~


Photo Credit: CENTAUR © Esplendido... Dreamstime.com


Chiron’s Keyword Corner was a feature in the former Chironicles newsletter (1992-95). Most of the Keyword Corners from the original newsletters have already have been republished on The Radical Virgo. (Use the Search feature to locate others.) This is a new Keyword Corner. The feature lives on.

Queen of Synchronicity - Don’t miss my post on Hot Flashbacks, Cool Insights about how to court synchronicity and its role in staying in tune with the “divine symphony.” If the stars guide, synchronicity is cosmic feedback that you’re heading in the right direction.