Advent of the Centaurs

Part 1 – The Advent of Chiron

I have always held a fascination for the power and mythology associated with the different planets in the heavens. Surely one of the most mysterious and profound of these myths is the figure of Chiron, also known as the ‘wounded healer’. From my studies of the Human Design System I have seen how potent an archetype Chiron is when viewed in a Life Cycle birth chart. The mainstream astrology community have also adopted Chiron as an extremely potent herald of the many changes and shifts that are currently taking place across our planet. Since the planetoid Chiron (sometimes also spelled Kiron) takes 51 years to complete its orbit around the sun, its return in our natal chart is a very powerful time indeed, opening up a culmination of transformations that can release our highest potential into the world.

The discovery of Chiron in 1977 appears in many ways to have opened a portal to a new future. Since the discovery, a whole host of other extra-terrestrial objects and asteroids have also appeared and been named. It seems that a whole stream of mythology was unlocked with the rebirth of this Chiron archetype. If you take a trawl through the internet, you will find whole tribes of people discussing these new myths and their implications and ramifications.

Mythologically, Chiron was one of the Centaurs, a breed of creatures with the body of a horse and the torso of a man. Chiron himself is the best known of the centaurs, which are often represented as a wild and savage bunch of untamed beings. We will return to the figure of Chiron himself in due course. The centaurs themselves are an enigmatic group, which I think deserve further attention. The fact that the figure of man has been blended with the figure of a horse is extremely intriguing to me because the horse is one of mankind’s most ancient symbols of the Goddess or Divine feminine. In England alone over 24 huge chalk white horses have been found cut into the hillsides, and some of these have been dated to prehistoric times. It seems that various horse cults existed around the world, all connected with fertility and with the worship of the Feminine archetypes.

Wherever one finds a cult connected to a white figure, one also usually finds another cult, or the same cult connected to its black counterpart. There has been a great deal of exposure in recent years concerning the cult of the black Madonna, and the huge popularity of the Da Vinci Code also testifies to a powerful stream of energy emerging from these white and black archetypes in connection with the Goddess. The classic depiction of the centaurs as a wild, lustful bunch of beasts directs us to the darker face of the feminine archetype, where the sexual power of the horse is seen through the eyes of fear, and usually male, patriarchal fear. This dark face of the feminine is caught in so many wonderful mythic figures – Lillith, Kali, Hecate, Innana…Each of these archetypes invite us to embrace our earthy, animal nature before we can really touch our higher divine nature.

This is where the centaurs come in, because they represent the perfect synthesis of man and beast. As an archetype, the centaur is really due for an overhaul in understanding and deserves our full respect. If we fear that part of our nature that we seem unable to control, then we can never be whole. The only way to heaven is down, through the underworld that terrifies us. This is the whole ethos on which my approach is built and upon which my spectrum of consciousness is founded. It finds its first practical outlet through the Venus Sequence – a system which allows one to work deeply with these two archetypes – the dark feminine face of the 64 Shadow states and the white feminine face of the 64 Gifts and beyond them, the 64 Siddhis, the manifestations of enlightenment itself.

In the classical stories of the centaurs, and of Chiron, one of the resounding notes sounded is that of wounding. Chiron himself was wounded by a poisoned arrow, which never healed until he sacrificed his life for the sake of Prometheus, whereupon he is delivered from his torment and healed. Out of his wounding, all Chiron’s wisdom is born – he is represented as the mentor to many of the great heroes of Greek mythology, being an expert in medicine, healing, astrology, prophecy and the hermetic magical sciences. Chiron is thus the custodian of an ancient lineage of Divine energy and wisdom. But Chiron is much more than that, and this is really the core of my fascination with him – for me Chiron represents the esoteric Christ – a figure who takes into himself all the wounding, karma and ancestral pain of those who have misused esoteric wisdom down the ages. Chiron atones for Prometheus’ Divine sin of stealing fire from the gods, which really refers to an ancient lineage or fractal of beings that have used magickal knowledge to gain personal power or benefit – in other words, black magick.

In Chiron, white magick dies into black magick, in the same way that Obi Wan Kenobi allows Darth Vader to kill him in the film Star Wars. In my recent writing on the 28th Gift, which deeply concerns the mythology of the dark side, I discuss this absorption of the black into the white through the example of Christian mythology:

‘In Christian mythology, the embodiment of fear is expressed through the Antichrist, Lucifer, who also happens to be the embodiment of evil. Evil is simply everything about life that has not yet been accepted and embraced, as the etymology of the word itself suggests – the word ‘live’ and ‘evil’ are one and the same word. The destiny of Lucifer at a mythic level is to become one with the Godhead since Lucifer was favourite and strongest of God’s angels. This is why he was chosen to fall and forget his true nature. This is the higher mythic meaning behind all betrayal. This wonderful anthropomorphism contains the great secret of the meaning of evil and the dark side itself. The only misinterpretation of the old legends is seen in the battles between good and evil in which good triumphs. The ancient symbols and images of dragons being killed is a projection from the 28th Shadow. In the end, the archangel Michael, who represents good, must embrace Lucifer in his arms rather than killing him, thus he transmutes Lucifer’s true essence into a force even higher than himself, and Lucifer is revealed as God himself. That is how the Christian myth should really read! Many other more ancient myths from other cultures describe the very same dynamic.

The 28th Siddhi Of Immortality requires that the individual surrenders him or herself into his own deepest fears and in dying, he or she is reborn as consciousness itself. ‘

During our current transitional era, Chiron is a very prominent astrological figure. Since its discovery in 1977, Chiron has not yet fulfilled a complete revolution around the sun, which takes him about 51 years. The Chiron Return for Chiron himself falls on June 25 in the year 2027, which represents the completion of his initial mission – the purification of the bloodlines of all those who are drawn to or work with magick or divine wisdom. If you examine the archetypes present when Chiron was discovered, you can read all the keys written as clear as day.

Discovery of Chiron

Chiron’s 4 prime Gifts are represented by the 56th, 60th, 32nd and 42nd Gene Keys. The 32/42 axis represents the ending of a lineage in its current form and the transcendence into another sphere (the 42 brings endings and the 32 is about continuity) whilst the 56/60 axis really holds the essence. The 56th Shadow is called the Shadow of Distraction, and its higher aspects are the Gift of Enrichment and the Siddhi of Intoxication. This is about the drawing out of toxins in humanity, and the end of the age of false prophets. The false prophets are all those who use divine wisdom to distract others from their true healing – all those tricksters who use their knowledge to trap you instead of freeing you. The higher Siddhi of Intoxication is also a strong theme connected to the centaurs, and I will discuss it in more depth in my second article in this series, when I look at the hidden meaning behind the other main but lesser know centaur, Pholus.

The 60th Siddhi represents Divine Justice, which is about the discarding of the old self-serving elements of humanity and the retaining of the pure aspects. Chiron and the centaurs really represent a grafting of the old elemental forces with the new higher frequency forces that are coming into the world. As Chiron streams his influence into the world from now until 2027, he is really initiating this process wherein the black is fused into the white and a third transcendent element is being born among us. We will not really be able to see this new entity until Chiron has completed his passage in 2027, although surely we will have glimpses of what is to come.

To put this article into a practical context I would like to distil what I feel to be the central message emanating from the Chiron archetype as it moves among us. I do not see this energy applying to the mass consciousness, although it will do so indirectly. Chiron’s influence specifically targets human beings who are either manipulating others through the use of knowledge (for good or bad) or those who have an active interest in the world of esoteric knowledge. In other words, if you are reading this, Chiron is bearing down upon you as we speak. What Chiron is doing is urging us to go into our wounds and dark side so that we can unlock the true power of the sacred texts and systems. Chiron differentiates between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge alone is useless. Wisdom comes from the realm of the Divine Feminine and is all powerful. Wisdom is knowledge handled with love, for the service of the totality. We are now living in the time in which those who use knowledge without love are losing their power and those who are using wisdom are gaining it. When Chiron himself was discovered, his essence was seen through the 27th Gift – Selfishness – Altruism – Selflessness. That is the path of the rising stars, and those who do not move up that ladder – their stars are setting.

In conclusion then, one must be very careful during these times in our approach to these energy currents coming into the world. If one is handling knowledge, one must know one’s own Shadow side intimately, because then one has the true grounding needed to pass on that knowledge selflessly. If you find that you cannot handle your life at the moment, then you should put your knowledge down and look more deeply into your fears. Every element of your own life that you find disturbing is an aspect of your Shadow awaiting your embrace, and in it lies the counterbalance to your higher vision. It is all too easy at the moment to see the beauty of the future that is coming, but if one does not have that down-to-earth, sensual and sometimes naughty dark side, then one lacks the necessary anchor for the higher forces to operate through one. In the myth, most of the centaurs were killed by their own inability to handle the higher forces of the Divine toxin. Only Chiron, and in part Pholus, showed enough grit to earn the gifts of the gods.

Part 2 – Pholus – the Drunken Rebel and our future among the centaurs

‘In Wildness lies the preservation of the world’

Thoreau

In the first 2 weeks of June 1987 Bhagawan Shree Rajneesh, undoubtedly the most controversial spiritual teacher of the 20th century, gave a series of talks entitled ‘The Rebel’. Over these two weeks, Osho (as he was known to his disciples) outlined an extraordinary vision of a new kind of human being who would inherit our planet in the coming centuries. It was not that Osho was privileged to knowledge that the rest of humanity could somehow not access – many other great teachers have spoken on the very same subject – but what stands out from these discourses is the sheer sense of freedom and power that courses through his words as he describes our future potential. Calling us ‘the new rebel’ he clearly outlined our responsibilities:

‘ The new rebel is not going to conform to the establishment and its interests. He is absolutely unconcerned about his respectability, reputation, honour, worship; he is not in need of any of these things. The new rebel has no hypothetical God. He has a real human being. His effort is to clarify, to unburden the human heart, to raise human consciousness to its highest peaks.’

In my first article in this series on the Centaurs and our future consciousness, I discussed the impact and meaning of Chiron, the first and best known of these legendary figures. In this current article I would like to consider another centaur, the far less well know Pholus, as an archetype of the complex transformations taking place within human beings today. Many people may wonder whether these old Greek legends really have any relevance or meaning in our contemporary world. To this I would respond that all myths tap into a common sacred source – the collective consciousness field that connects all human beings together as one. If we can successfully unlock the symbolism behind a mythical figure, then we have prised something deep out of the hidden world of archetypes. These old legends contain the storyline of our future evolution in seed form.

Let’s take the case of Pholus – He was one of the so-called ‘good’ centaurs and was custodian of the sacred wine of Dionysus. As a ‘brother centaur’ to Chiron, his story shares many traits to that of Chiron – for example, both were wounded by a toxic arrow. In Pholus’ story, in an exchange with Hercules, the chest containing the sacred wine was opened and such was its intoxicating power that it drew in all the other centaurs who went mad because of its scent and were slain by Hercules. Following this, Pholus then accidentally dropped one of Hercules’ poisoned arrows on his own foot and died. What really stands out as a symbol in this story is the repeated symbol of the wine and its intoxicating power as well as the poisoned arrow. The wine and the toxin have a close symbolic connection to Pholus, since he was the keeper of the wine of the Gods and died because of an intoxicating substance.

When I allow my own intuition to penetrate these centaur myths, here is what I see:

The centaurs, as we discussed in my article on Chiron, represent the future man – an integration of the wild spirit of Gaia and the highest wisdom of the human. As keeper of the wine, Pholus represents a genetic triggering mechanism in our blood that when activated leads to a chain reaction in which we are flooded by higher consciousness. This higher consciousness – represented by the intoxicating scent of the wine – literally kills off certain aspects of our lower nature. This notion of animals being driven mad by demons also connects us into Christ’s well-known exorcism of the spirit Legion in the New Testament. Indeed, the higher consciousness is synonymous with Christ consciousness. That both Chiron and Pholus were accidentally wounded and killed by the poisoned arrows dipped in the Hydra’s blood also speaks volumes. The Hydra’s blood is an alchemical symbol for the highest expression of the Divine feminine (also known as ‘shakti’), which destroys the human ego and gives birth to a new and unified consciousness.

These centaur stories and their astrological counterparts conceal, I believe, some very, very deep truths about our future. The centaur is a perfect symbol for the union of man and the Divine. The wild but purified lower nature strives upwards to meet the heady Divine currents pouring down. The balance of these two natures – the wild, carefree, freedom loving spirit of Gaia and the intoxicating beauty and silence of the higher realms is what will give birth to the ‘new rebel’ – a human being who is both rooted in our love of the earth and simultaneously intoxicated by our higher nature. Whenever these two forces do not meet inside us, we create an imbalance. The refined essences of the spiritual realms must be brought into the world rather than cultivated outside the world. The new rebel cannot try and escape from society. We must challenge society armed with our ecstasy! If we focus too much on higher consciousness and try and escape the toxins of the lower planes, we cannot interface with the world, and if we cannot be human then we cannot wake humans up.

The world as it is is absolutely asleep. The last thing it wants or expects is the rebel. Everyone is too content. When Pholus opens up the Dionysian chest, then we had better be real. In the New Age there are a great deal of people who are simply self-obsessed, going round and round and never actually coming to grips with their deepest fears. Pholus unleashes a whirlwind, as do all the centaurs in their own way, but of them all, Pholus holds the keys to the most out-of-control energies in existence. He challenges us to let go of trying to control our lower nature. He urges us to use the rebellious fervour of our lower nature to challenge society’s complacency. Pholus challenges science, he challenges religion and he especially challenges education. The aromas unleashed from the sacred wine tear down our structures and systems – they force us to laugh and dance or go mad trying to resist. For these reasons, astrologers see Pholus as an agent that unleashes chain reactions, and they have cited many examples since its discovery in 1992.

However, the centaurs are allied to the dark outer planets, and particularly to Pluto, Neptune and Uranus, whose orbits they cut across. Chiron we already know – he urges us to look into our wounds, and Pholus – he is the hidden one – the most dangerous of them all. When Pholus opens up his chest full of wines, then a chain reaction will overtake humanity and it will not change us from the outside, but from the inside – from within our very blood and genes. Beware Pholus and the wine of Divine Intoxication!