Jeffrey: Venus entered Pisces on March 27, and it conjoined Chiron the wounded healer on Tuesday, March 29. Since you are the Chiron expert, you want to break that down for us?
Michelle: Well, sure. Let’s talk about Chiron then for a moment. Chiron is known as the wounded healer. The reason being, he was an immortal being. He had his father’s blood in him. So he was partly divine. One day, his rowdy friends got into the Centaur wine and Chiron was accidentally shot with a poison arrow. (Oh those crazy Centaurs!) Chiron—being immortal—couldn’t die from the wound. But he certainly felt the pain. While Chiron was able to heal all kinds of people that came to him, he certainly couldn’t do anything for himself. So it brings up this idea of, for each of us, where Chiron touches us is that place where we feel completely inept to take care of that which is hurting us and yet we are somehow positioned to help other people that are in the same boat as us. So when Venus and Chiron get together, we can look at it as, there’s potential there for healing relationships, because Venus is the planet that governs relationships. Now there’s also the potential to become incredibly insensitive, too. Right? Since its a wound. So we have to sort of take care which side of Chiron we’re going to access. That’s the point of astrology. We want to try to access the higher powers of each of these planets rather than letting them ride us.
Jeffrey: So you’re saying we can inadvertently approach our partnerships from a wounded place rather than with a healing intention, if we’re not conscious?
Michelle: Exactly. That’s right. Whenever we get Chiron energy triggered, there is this potential to unconsciously hurt people. It doesn’t even have to be intentional. We might be brash in the way we come across, for instance. Anything is possible. But if you really think about healing potential and mending fences, then when Venus and Chiron get together, it can be a really beautiful thing. I think it might be helpful to ask, “What, if any, relationship would you mend if you knew you could?” Because Venus is exalted in Pisces. She adores being in the sign of Pisces, and she is able to function at her best in this mystic and compassionate sign. So whenever Venus gets into Pisces, she takes your ideas of whatever constitutes love, and she raises that vibration and opens us to love something greater than the individual. So Venus in Pisces can be rather epic and sweeping and poetic or even devotional in love. Not even necessarily to a person, though that’s by far the normal course when we’re talking about Venus. We’re usually talking about romantic love. But when Venus moves into Pisces, that romantic love can actually be raised to a love of an idea, love of a spiritual principle, or love of artistic expression. The idea is that, you move into this non-linear kind of non-material state when we have Venus and Pisces together. Now when we add the vibration of Chiron into the mix, Chiron offers the chance for healing on a very deep level.
Jeffrey: Do you think that the conjunction between Chiron and Venus can also enable us to see our own wounds by virtue of our connection with another person?
Michelle: I think so in the sense that the people in our lives are reflections of ourselves. They tend to reflect the current condition of ourselves and of our lives. So if you have this wonderful reflection staring back at you in the form of a person, a lover for instance, then the way that they behave gives you a really good clue of something that’s going on inside you, even if you haven’t really been able to see that up until now. So if somebody is acting out, it gives you a chance to see that maybe they’re actually touching some of the unresolved wounds or pains that you’re carrying around. They’re somehow accessing that for you, and bringing it up.
Jeffrey: It can also be the case that our wounds come out in relation to other people. We don’t exist in a vacuum. It’s when someone triggers our own material—our old childhood gunk—that it comes out and the ugly parts of ourselves come to the surface.
Michelle: Yes, exactly. But the thing about that is—that ugly stuff that we don’t like about ourselves—somebody else can come along and say, “You know what, I love you exactly as you are and I don’t see those things about you as being ugly. I see them as being gifted or I see them as being tender.” And all kinds of things. So people are able to reveal a more beautiful side of ourselves that we perhaps push away and perceive as really, really unattractive and that needs to be hidden.
Jeffrey: It sounds like the gentle compassionate energy of Venus and Pisces is a bit like a balm over Chiron.
Michelle: It is very much like a balm. So actually when you say that, I sort of get this image of Chiron—this shaman and healer—rubbing this Venus-type of ointment on somebody’s pain and wound. And calling it into a higher vibration. It is really only when we get stuck in our “gunk,” as you call it, that we don’t know what to do with it. But it’s actually more like clay that can be molded into something new that is useable for yourself and for other people. It doesn’t have to be just the dregs at the bottom of a river.
Jeffrey: Speaking of gunk and dregs, Venus also moves into a sextile—a pretty beneficent 60-degree angle—to Pluto, the god of the underworld and the unconscious. Yet, you combine Venus and Pluto and there often does tend to be an element of bringing up our own garbage and being somewhat compulsively driven in love. Do you think that because it’s a sextile, it’s not going to be too jarring?
Michelle: In astrology, the sextile represents opportunity. It means that you really have to want to work the energy. It’s a very flowing energy and we can sometimes take flowing energy for granted. We’re not really aware that it’s there because—unlike 90 degree angles which feel like spurs on our side and force us to make some kind of a shift—a sextile is really easy to go with the flow of it and almost ignore. It’s like a very pleasant background song. So you have to want to work the energy with Venus sextile Pluto. But if you are aware that there’s something in you that needs some healing, then calling on that energy, even just sort of putting it out there to the universe that you want to access Venus sextile Pluto, actually does a lot. You’re invoking a type of healing and that can come through the agency of a healer or a counselor. Some people like to do their healing solo, that’s fine. But the important thing about Venus sextlie Pluto is, whatever the remedy is, it isn’t just going to fall into your lap. But if you work for it, you can find that blocks dissolve miraculously where they wouldn’t budge before.
