I apologise for the long absence from writing articles, I have been putting the majority of my energy into writing my book, which is progressing well. Today, due to popular demand, I am going to start looking at the principles of Chiron in Taurus through the houses, which will form a total of four separate articles.
In the most earthy of the signs, Chiron represents the pain of insecurity which manifests into woundedness about the material aspect of Venus. Money, possessions, body image, food, comfort and good living are all configured in this placement. The emphasis in any case is upon all these matters as they affect the sense of being safe in the world, being able to trust the Universe and feel loved in the context of a physical life. Taurus is intractable too, so clinging on to people, situations and possessions is a key trait of this placement, out of fear of losing the security that has been accrued through them. An unquestioning adherence to tradition is another factor, even though with time and self-development, it answers the conundrum of Chiron less and less, until those rituals become empty and effectively meaningless. The hallmark of a struggling Chiron in Taurus is a gradually encroaching suspicion that the material cannot provide the security that is required by the human heart. On a very mundane level, Chiron in Taurus worries about money even when there is plenty of it available.
1st House: Here the appearance becomes tied into themes of security, and it might manifest as an obsession with being too stout or an over-reliance on wearing clothes of sufficient quality and value. Designer labels are an easy out for Chiron in Taurus here, since they intimate these characteristics which soothes the ‘wound of image’. Another manifestation might be a requirement to adhere to, or alternately to reject, traditional clothing styles. An example of this latter embodiment of Chiron would be Serena Williams who is renowned both for her unconventional fashion choices during tennis tournaments and who also has her own designer clothes brand ‘Anares’. With Chiron rising in Taurus, the effects are easy to isolate, but the cause is – as always – a sense of deep insecurity: about body image or financial security.
At another level entirely, consider the nativityof Che Guevara, who grew up in a privileged middle-class household in Rosario, Argentina. When he ventured out into the wider world of South America, he was dismayed and motivated by the crushing poverty he witnessed in the remote rural areas of Peru, where peasant farmers worked small plots of land owned by wealthy landlords. The journey became a formative factor in his burgeoning Marxist philosophy which he told to compelling effect in The Motorcycle Diaries. He visited a leper colony during the course of this odyssey and remarked that “the highest forms of human solidarity and loyalty arise among such lonely and desperate people” and this became a major component of his subsequent life philosophy; through his travels of Latin America, he came in “close contact with poverty, hunger and disease” along with the “inability to treat a child because of lack of money” and “stupefaction provoked by the continual hunger and punishment” that leads a father to “accept the loss of a son as an unimportant accident.” The pain of poverty might well be a higher-octave expression of this placement. Guevara was killed by a gunshot wound to the throat, aged 39.
2nd House: This is a double dose of Taurus energy, so the effect of Chiron allied with Venus ought to be especially compelling. The pain of materialism and security is here most relevant and no better example can be found than Johnny Cash, a man who, despite selling over 50 million records during his long and stratospherically successful career, never forgot that he was the son of poor cotton farmers, and these early experiences coloured his outlook irrevocably. In 1944, His older brother, Jack, was pulled into a whirling table saw in the mill where he worked, and cut almost in two. He suffered for over a week before he died. Cash often spoke of the horrible guilt he felt over this incident. According to Cash: The Autobiography, his father was away that morning, but he and his mother, and Jack himself, all had premonitions or a sense of foreboding about that day, causing his mother to urge Jack to skip work and go fishing with his brother. Jack insisted on working, as the family needed the money.Consider also the lyrics to A Satisfied Mind, which ought to be an anthem for Chiron in Taurus and the potential for transforming the wound of Chiron into a gift:
How many times have
You heard someone say
If I had his money
I could do things my way
But little they know
That it’s so hard to find
One rich man in ten
With a satisfied mind
Once I was waitin’
In fortune and fame
Everything that I dreamed for
To get a start in life’s game
Then suddenly it happened
I lost every dime
But I’m richer by far
With a satisfied mind
Money can’t buy back
Your youth when you’re old
Or a friend when you’re lonely
Or a love that’s grown cold
The wealthiest person
Is a pauper at times
Compared to the man
With a satisfied mind
When my life has ended
And my time has run out
My friends and my loved ones
I’ll leave there’s no doubt
But one thing’s for certain
When it comes my time
I’ll leave this old world
With a satisfied mind
How many times have
You heard someone say
If I had his money
I could do things my way
But little they know
That it’s so hard to find
One rich man in ten
With a satisfied mind
When invited to perform at the White House for the first time in 1972, President Richard Nixon’s office requested that he play “Welfare Cadillac” (a Guy Drake song that derides the integrity of welfare recipients) and it was reported that Cash refused to play the song because he apparently considered its standpoint to be morally reprehensible.
3rd House: Here is a placement that suggests one’s intellect, education and learning path was crimped, restricted or failed to reach its proper potential due to material constraints. A person whose working class background denied them access to a good standard of education would be typical of this placement, or somebody who was forced to leave school early because of the need to go out and get a job. With the 3rd house, siblings may have used up the family resources and I have known people with this placement who endured a “brighter” brother or sister being sent to a private school while they had to endure the less exacting (and free) alternative. More broadly, it can also represent an ongoing state of insecurity about one’s mental capability, effectiveness in communication, speech, literacy, numeracy and so forth. Alicia Silverstone who has this placement for example, did not complete her high school studies and gained no formal qualifications. It’s an odds-on bet that she’s sensitive about the issue too. The Plain English Campaign awarded her the annual Foot in Mouth Award in 2000 for her ‘baffling verbal statement’, “I think that Clueless was very deep. I think it was deep in the way that it was very light. I think lightness has to come from a very deep place if it is true lightness,” and at the same time she evidently does have insecurity (Ch/Ta) about her communication (3rd); she once said: “My boyfriend calls me ‘princess’, but I think of myself more along the lines of ‘monkey’ and ‘retard’” Intriguingly, she is a fluent French speaker also. Alicia left school to pursue a lucrative acting career…
To be continued…
