Chiron In Mythology
Now let’s take a look at how mythology presents Chiron as the archetypal wounded healer. Not surprisingly, there are different versions of the legend that surrounds him. Born half-human and half-horse, he was the result of a union between Saturn and Philyra. Repulsed by the look of her child, Philyra rejected it at birth and begged the Gods to take it away. They took Chiron and instructed him in warfare and the healing arts, music and ethics as well as astrology. He grew up into a wise teacher and mentor, healer and prophet. Later in life, Chiron was wounded in the knee by an arrow.
The wound would not heal although Chiron spent all his time searching for a cure. In spite of being an accomplished healer, he could not heal himself and because he was an immortal, not even death could release him from his wound. In his desperation he eventually swopped places with Prometheus, the Earth Titan, who had been banished to the underworld for stealing the fire of the Gods. Prometheus returned to earthly life as an immortal in exchange for Chiron’s ability to die, so he could find the much longed for freedom from pain.
In the course of many thousands of years, every so often the Angels introduced new legends and myths to our world. Each one of them was part of the great plan of life and designed to bring us a bit closer to understanding God’s true nature and our own. In aid of the development of the masculine aspect of life, its energies and the way they express themselves in human life, with the passing of time the worship of the Goddess and the feminine were substituted by tales that portrayed men as the all-conquering heroes. This continued until in the end the masculine’s only purpose in life was to take possession of and dominate the feminine and her world. With the invention of ever bigger and more powerful war machinery and the increase in warfare this brought, humankind’s healing requirements grew. In the past the healing arts had been women’s realm, but this too was soon seized by the patriarchy, as the Chiron legend of Greek mythology clearly shows.
For us as aspiring healers and lightworkers the legend of Chiron, the wounded healer is of particular significance. I have been unable to establish when it came into being. All I could find was that Homer, the Greek poet, mentioned centaurs in ‘The Iliad’. Homer is thought to have lived sometime between the 12th and 8th centuries BC and possibly originated from somewhere along the coast of Asia Minor. He is famous for the epic poems ‘The Iliad’ and ‘The Odyssey’. Both have had an enormous effect on Western culture, but very little is known about their alleged author. Homer’s importance to the ancient Greeks is described in Plato’s Republic, where he is referred to as the protos didaskalos ‘first teacher’ of tragedy, the hegemon paideias, ‘leader of learning’.
Back to the tales surrounding the centaur Chiron. He had been born into a breed of beings that were half human and half horse. They were known to be raucous and overly indulgent but although he was one of them, when Chiron grew into adulthood he became known as an intelligent and civilised being, a noted astrologer, a healer as well as an oracle. In one of the legends Chiron sacrificed his earthly life so that humankind could obtain the use of fire. However, having been born as son of Cronus, one of the Titans, Chiron was the son of a God and therefore immortal. There are varying accounts of how he got wounded, but all of them state that it was an arrow that had been poisoned with the blood of the Hydra. When in the end it turned out that Chiron was unable to heal himself, he willingly gave up his life. For this sacrifice the Gods honoured him with a place in the sky as the constellation Centaurus.
Chiron’s father Cronus was the Titan who fathered all Greek Gods. As his wife Rhea gave birth to them, Cronus swallowed each one because of a prophecy that he would be overthrown by one of his children. Cronus was afraid that unless he disposed of his children, the oracle’s words would come true. Zeus, who grew up to become the father of Gods, was Rhea’s last child. She hid him from Cronus and it was he who eventually forced his father to disgorge his siblings. Cronus and the rest of the Titans were then defeated by the Gods and exiled.
The Lernaean Hydra was the offspring of Typhon and Echidna, both of whom were known as the Earth Goddess Gaia’s troublesome children. The creature was serpent-like with reptilian traits and numerous heads. No matter how many heads anyone tried to cut off, for each lost one two more grew. The Hydra’s breath was poisonous and its blood so powerful that even the tracks it left behind were deadly. In spite of this, Hercules killed it in the second of his twelve labours. The monster’s lair was the lake of Lerna in the Argolid. Beneath the waters was the entrance to the underworld, which was guarded by the Hydra.
With the coming of the patriarchy new myths were introduced that told people about the utter superiority of the masculine over the feminine, so that this false belief could penetrate ever deeper into the consciousness of our race. By the time the Chiron myth appeared, it was well established. In the new legends everything feminine was presented as an increasingly fear-inducing and loathsome aspect of life that threatened the masculine part of the population. The feminine in general and women in particular were something that had to be dominated, controlled and suppressed by the males of our species, who more and more thought of themselves as the rulers of the Universe. The Chiron legend goes as far as showing the feminine as a monster that had to be slain in order to get at the wisdom of the masculine Gods. The fact that this always has been and forever will be the Goddess’s domain in the end was forgotten.
In Greek mythology Chronos or Chronus is the personification of time itself. The word means time and is the root of chronology and other modern words, but originally it was only used in a purely poetic sense. There is no God or Goddess directly associated with time per se in the annals of Greek mythology, but there may have been a Titan of Time. Roman mythology adopted him as Saturn. Referred to as Cronus or Kronos, he was their deity of time as well as an ancient Italian corn God known as the Sower. Saturn’s weapon, as the male ruler of the Roman Gods prior to Jupiter, was a scythe or sickle. Astrologically, Saturn stands for old Father Time, who teaches each one of us through their own life’s experiences. By patiently enduring the endless delays and frustrations of the Saturnian influence, our skills eventually improve so much that in the end Saturn turns from the teacher into the rewarder.
Recommended Reading:
• ‘Chiron – The Wounded Healer’
• ‘The Homecoming’
• ‘All About Saturn’
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This article is a chapter from ‘War And Peace Between Nations.
If it has whetted your appetite to read more, please follow the link below:
‘War And Peace Between Nations’
