Chiron goes retrograde on July 15th, 2021 at 12° Aries. Chiron is retrograde until December 19th, 2021, and turns direct on December 20th, 2021 at 8° Aries.

If you have your natal Chiron in Aries, or if you have planets or angles between 8°-12° Aries, you want to especially pay attention to this transit.

Chiron is the Wounded Healer of the Zodiac. Chiron is a sensitive point in our chart – it is where we feel broken, ashamed and inadequate.

Now that Chiron is in Aries, these feelings of brokenness and inadequacy are about the very foundation of who we are (Aries is the sign of identity). Basically, with Chiron in Aries, we feel that something is wrong with us.

But Chiron is also where we have the opportunity to heal ourselves. These ‘Chiron’ feelings of woundedness, pain, and vulnerability are a symptom of a healing crisis. Something inside has cracked. Healing is about to happen.

Let’s say you have an infection on your leg and you take antibiotics treatment. After two or three days you start to feel sick. Why that? The antibiotic has killed the infection. Now your body deals with the toxins and dead pathogens.

Your body is temporarily overloaded – and that’s why you feel sick. This temporary sickness is, in fact, a sign that the treatment has succeeded, even if it doesn’t feel that way.

In the same way, you first have to bring whatever is ‘wrong’, repressed or unacceptable about yourself to the surface – so you can deal with it.

If you want to heal, there is no other way around. You have to face the pain.

What happens if you don’t deal with the pain?

If you bury these feelings inside, if you keep them away from your awareness, you start to dissociate from a part of yourself.

With time, the feelings and mental models things that are not “acceptable” only grow bigger and stronger. Much like cancer, they create a new living organism – your shadow. Soon, without even realizing, there will be two of you: the Acceptable You and the Unacceptable You.

There are two people sharing the same body, but not communicating with each other. At best, they will ignore each other. At worst, they will start to fight. There can be only one of you, right? This is what sickness – physical, emotional, spiritual – is. A split, a conflict between two ‘foreign’ entities.

Yes, you can take antibiotics and kill the ‘enemy’. But because you created that enemy in the first place, it’s only a matter of time until you create it again. That’s why many times we have remissions when the disease is chronic.

The disease comes back because THAT you are trying to kill with pills, with fasting or other treatments – is a part of YOU.

When we process pain, we, in fact, accept that pain is part of us, and ultimately, embrace that part of us we were trying to hide. That’s how we heal.

I’m not saying that pills, exercise, or healthy food are not good for you and are not going to heal you. But if you have a Chironic illness (and we all do), then trying to ‘cure’ what is ‘wrong’ with you, trying to ‘fight’ the enemy is not going to work.

The only way to heal from a Chironic illness is to accept yourself fully.

Chiron shows us what’s split inside us, and also what we need to do to bring these broken parts into a unified whole.

Just like Chiron was half-human, half-horse, half-mortal, half immortal, we too are a sum of broken parts. There are parts of us we accept and identify with, and parts of us we despise and reject.

When you feel shame, guilt, or inadequacy, ask yourself: which part of myself I am trying to hide, or to ‘fix’? That’s exactly that part of you that you must learn to love.

Chiron Retrograde – Become Your Own Medicine

When Chiron goes retrograde, this search for integration moves inwards.

When Chiron is direct we look for answers outside. We go to the doctor, to the shaman, to the spiritual guru, to the coach. We travel to faraway places. We find mentors and people who can teach us things we don’t know.

With Chiron retrograde, we look for answers inside. We become our own medicine. We become the Shaman.

When Chiron is retrograde we apply what we’ve learned while Chiron was direct, and we heal. Chiron retrograde is when we make sense of everything we’ve learned on our own terms.

Unlike Mercury for example, which is retrograde for only 3 weeks, Chiron spends almost half a year in retrograde motion (when in Pisces, Aries and Taurus). Chiron, as well as the other outer planets, take time to integrate. We need more time to process its energy.

From now until December (when Chiron goes direct again) you will dive into the healing waters of Chiron by diving inside. You will become your own medicine.

Chiron is a maverick. His knowledge goes beyond our limited Mercurial knowledge. When you’re ready, your inner Chiron will help you heal your physical, psychological, emotional, or spiritual illness.

When Chiron is retrograde, you are Chiron.

Bring all of your broken parts together, including those you are ashamed of the most. Make peace with ‘the enemy’. Accept yourself fully. When you own your shame, your inadequacy, your vulnerability, your shadow, this is when you become whole, this is when you heal.