Chiron

that you who are so incessantly drunk would soon vomit up your owner to a young man who was complaining of the number of people who sought his acquaintance he said do not make such a parade of your vanity having been in a very dirty bath he said i wonder where the people who bathe here clean themselves when all the company was blaming an indifferent harp-player he alone praised him and being asked why he did so he said because though he is such as he is he plays the harp and does not steal when saluted a harp-player who was always left alone by his hearers with good morning cock and when the man asked him why so he said because you when you sing make every one get up when a young man was one day making a display of himself he having filled the bosom of his robe with lupins began to eat them and when the multitude looked at him he said that he marvelled at their leaving the young man to look at him and when a man who was very superstitious said to him with one blow i will break your head and i he replied with one sneeze will make you tremble when hegesias entreated him to lend him one of his books he said you are a silly fellow hegesias for you will not take painted figs but real ones and yet you overlook the genuine practice of virtue and seek for what is merely written a man once reproached him with his banishment and his answer was you wretched man that is what made me a philosopher and when on another occasion some one said to him the people of sinope condemned you to banishment he replied and i condemned them to remain where they were once he saw a man who had been a victor at the olympic games feeding nemoonta sheep and he said to him you have soon come across my friend from the olympic games to nemean when when he was asked why athletes are insensible to pain he said because they are built up of pork and beef he once asked for a statue and being questioned as to his reason for doing so he replied i am practising disappointment once he was begging of some one for he did this at first out of actual want he said if you have given to any one else give also to me and if you have never given to any one then begin with me on one occasion he was asked by the tyrant what sort of brass was the best for a statue and he replied that of which the statues of harmodius and aristogiton are made when he was asked how dionysus treats his friends he said like bags those which are full he hangs up and those which are empty he throws away a man who was lately married put an inscription on his house hercules callinicus the son of jupiter lives here let no evil enter and so diogenes wrote in addition an alliance is made after the war is over he used to say that covetousness was the metropolis of all evils seeing on one occasion a profligate man in an inn eating olives he said if you had dined thus you would not have supped thus one of his apothegms was that the good men were the images of the gods another that love was the business of those who had nothing to do he was asked what was miserable in life he answered an indignant old man and when the question was put to him what beast inflicts the worst bite he said of wild beasts the sycophant and of tame animals the flatterer on one occasion he saw two centres very badly painted he said which of the two is the worst There is a pun here.

Chiron is the word used for verse.

Chiron was also the most celebrated of the centaurs, the tutor of Achilles.

End of footnote.

He used to say that a speech, the object of which was solely to please, was a honeyed halter.

And he said to him, They would have been much more numerous if those who were lost had offered them instead of those who were saved.

But some attribute this speech to Diogorus, the Thalian.

Once he saw an handsome youth going to a banquet and said to him, You will come back worse, Chiron.

I hope you're doing well.

In the spirit of being fully in the Venus opposite Chiron transit, and even more than that, as I'm recording this, we are in a T-square involving Chiron, Venus, Mars, and Pluto.

And in order to embody and attune with that energy, I want to share with you why I am teaching a course on Chiron.

My course on Chiron is, our first class is this Sunday.

And I'm so excited and I have so much energy around this.

And I have had conflicted angsty feelings about Chiron and, you know, to some extent I still do, which is why I'm teaching this course.

And I wanted to share with you a bit of my process.

And I think this is important because as we're studying astrology and I think we're never done as we're studying ourselves.

He lived in a cavern and had the body and legs of a white horse with the head and shoulders of a man.

His name was Chiron, and in spite of his odd appearance, he was a very excellent teacher and had several scholars who afterwards did him credit by making a great figure in the world.

The famous Hercules was one, so was Achilles, and Philoctetes likewise, and Aesculapius, who acquired immense repute as a doctor.

The good Chiron taught his pupils how to play upon the harp, and how to cure diseases, and how to use the sword and shield, together with various other branches of education in which the lads of those days used to be instructed instead of writing in arithmetic.

I have sometimes suspected that Master Chiron was not really very different from the other people, but that being a kind-hearted and merry old fellow, he was in the habit of making believe that he was a horse, and scrambling about the schoolroom on all fours, and letting the little boys ride upon his back.

And so, when his scholars had grown up, and grown old, and were trotting their grandchildren on their knees, they told him about the sports of their school days, and these young folks took the idea that their grandfathers had been taught their letters by a centaur, half man, half horse.

Little children, not quite understanding what is said to them, often get such absurd notions into their head, you know.

Be that as it may, it has always been told for a fact, and always will be told, as long as the world lasts, that Chiron was the head of a schoolmaster, had the body and legs of a horse.

But tell me what I must call you, my kind deliverer, and what chance brought you here.

And then I, in turn, will tell you who I am and all my unhappy story." "Call me Chiron," said the centaur, "but ask not, Peleus, what chance sent me hither, for it was no chance, but the providence of Zeus.

In your hour of temptation, did you not call upon his name? Yes, his all-seeing eye marked that you were true to his law.

And those who honor him in secret, my son, he rewards openly.

Believe me, he has great things in store for you which I may not speak of now.

But as for Acastus, know that his wife brought a lying tale to him, feigning that you had sought to do him that very wrong which she would have bribed you to commit." Greatly did Peleus marvel how the centaur could know all this, for he had said no word to anyone of the queen's wickedness, not only because he knew that she would utterly deny it and none would believe him, but because a brave man will tell no tales of a woman, however bad she may be.

Chiron smiled as though he guessed his thoughts and took him gently by the hand.

"Come, prince," he said, "you see that you need tell me nothing.

[chimes ringing] Hello, dear listener, and welcome to Wishcrafting.

Today, we are taking a slight veer off course from our regular style episodes, and we're gonna spend the whole episode in the cosmic cauldron and focusing in on what I believe may be one of the most important astrological transits of the year, and perhaps even the decade, which is Chiron moving into Taurus.

We're gonna learn about Chiron, both who he was in mythology and what he is to astrology today, and then we're gonna learn sign by sign what this shift might look like for us.

Though this might be a little bit of a different style episode, we're gonna be back to our regular format with the next episode.

So that being said, the cauldron has just started to bubble, so let's go dive in.

[water bubbling] Back in June this year, on June 19th, Chiron left Aries and entered into Taurus for the first time.

This wasn't a permanent move because on September 18th, Chiron is gonna retrograde back into Aries, where it's gonna stay until April 14th, 2027, so next year.

Then it's going to return back to Taurus and stay there until July of 2033.