Astrology with Alice: Healing with Chiron

After a splashy month of dramatic eclipses, we’re going to enjoy a lull in big cosmic activity this month. So, instead of talking about what to expect this month in particular, let’s talk about a celestial object that I always bring up when reading the charts of people of color, folks from immigrant families, and anyone from a group that’s experienced displacement.

Let’s talk about Chiron. Not many outside of the astrological community know about this small icy celestial body, but it speaks to intergenerational wounding. Understanding the meaning of Chiron is especially important for marginalized groups because it provides insight on intergenerational trauma—something that minority people and immigrants often experience on a magnified level as a result of uprooting and (sometimes) poverty.

(Note: This, of course, is not to say that intergenerational trauma doesn’t happen outside of these groups. Regardless of race and gender, we all experience intergenerational trauma, and it’s often unintentional. The point of Chiron is not to attribute blame, but to facilitate healing.)

First, what is Chiron?

Chiron was initially thought to be an asteroid, until we realized that it has a comet-like center. Now, we classify it as a centaur, which is a group of asteroid-esque, comet-y objects that orbit in the space between Jupiter and Neptune. Chiron was discovered in 1977 and has since taken the astrological world by storm because of the deep insights it provides regarding issues of mental health and trauma.

Chiron’s nickname among astrologers is “the wounded healer.” To understand Chiron, it helps to know the mythological backstory: In Greek mythology, Chiron was an immortal centaur (half horse, half man) who was a master of the healing arts. Chiron accidentally suffered a severe injury, retreated into a cave to try to heal himself, and eventually was granted the ability to die by Zeus, king of the gods, who subsequently honored him by placing Chiron’s soul in the heavens as the constellation Centaurus.

From Chiron’s story, it’s important to extrapolate one important point: Chiron’s injuries were done to him and inflicted upon him. He didn’t invite punishment. Greek mythology is riddled with cautionary tales warning against hubris and human folly, but Chiron’s story isn’t one of them. He was a wise teacher who didn’t let the awful things that happened to him make him hard and brittle. Legendary heroes such as Jason, Achilles, and Hercules were among his students. And yet, despite his wisdom, he is wounded again and again by circumstances. This reflects a key characteristic of astrological Chiron, which is that it represents hurts that were done to us—usually in childhood.

Ultimately, Chiron tells us how we can turn pain into wisdom by being our own therapist and healer instead of waiting for someone else to fix us.

Ultimately, Chiron tells us how we can turn pain into wisdom by being our own therapist and healer instead of waiting for someone else to fix us. Indeed, another characteristic of Chiron in the birth chart is that it identifies the wound that only we ourselves can heal.

Chiron and intergenerational healing

Chiron was a key factor in understanding my own intergenerational trauma. Like so many Asian American kids, knowing how much my parents suffered to bring me to the United States and how hard they worked to provide us with a living manifests in a whole lot of guilt. My mother has four planets in Taurus, so she’s extremely frugal, even for an Asian. Therefore, I grew up in an environment dominated by a strong scarcity mindset, which I absolutely inherited and internalized.

I decided a few years ago to address this scarcity mindset because it was affecting my mental health and my business. Many people are uncomfortable with money, but I experience above-average anxiety whenever people start talking about interest rates, credit scores, retirement plans, etc.

It wasn’t until I sat down with my chart, however, that I realized that I wasn’t dealing with a simple mindset issue that could be fixed by a simple change of outlook. I looked at my Chiron, and I realized that I was dealing with intergenerational trauma. My Chiron is in the sign of Taurus, which rules wealth, material assets, food, land, and security. Taurus is a sign concerned with having enough, and my Chiron in Taurus indicated inherited trauma around enough-ness.

Now armed with this realization, I recalled stories of how my grandfather lost a lot of money when he traded his Japanese yen for the New Taiwan dollar when the Japanese occupation ended in Taiwan. My mother, being a new immigrant to a country that didn’t acknowledge her degree, went from being a corporate executive to waiting tables for pennies in the United States. My intergenerational trauma was also their trauma, and in true Chiron fashion, it isn’t my fault just as it wasn’t their fault. Life happened to them. Thus, framing my scarcity mindset to my Chiron wound freed me from the need to blame, which released me from shame.

The healing of inherited patterns and intergenerational wounds never ends—it’s an ongoing process that’s meant to awaken our sensitivity, softness, and empathy.

Understanding my Chiron wound also made me stop putting undue pressure on myself to conquer my scarcity mindset. My instinct as an Aries is always to fight and try to win, and that wasn’t going to work here, because just as mythological Chiron couldn’t heal his own wound, we never finish healing ours. The healing of inherited patterns and intergenerational wounds never ends—it’s an ongoing process that’s meant to awaken our sensitivity, softness, and empathy. And it’s in those qualities that we find the medicine to ease our own hurts.

Chiron gives us permission to hurt and heal in our own way and in our own time. We explore our tender hurts on our own Chironic journey as a way to awaken our compassion and kindness.

Want to know what your Chiron sign says about your healing journey? Find your Chiron sign using this free birth chart calculator and find the description below!