Chiron in Love: The Astrology of Envy, Rage, Compassion and Wisdom

Liz Greene needs no introduction. This book returns us to her earlier style of publications based on seminars. One seminar Chiron in Love was facilitated in 2005; the other, in 2020, during the Covid pandemic when collective Chironic motifs penetrated into the felt present of our relationships with each other. I think it is fair to say her books are always engaging, provocative, psychologically astute, and in depth. Her work challenges us to consider the other side, dig deep, reflect from a different perspective, and this book follows suit. The paradoxical title suggests that we will be invited to explore the enigmatic human domain of pain and love. Greene says, “Chiron’s story is most clearly and poignantly enacted, not on the global stage by armies, health organisations, politicians and politically motivated groups, but in our most personal exchanges with the people closest to us.” (p.5) This is a cue for the motif of the book which focuses on Chiron in synastry, both adult and family relationships, using chart comparisons and composite charts. Part 1, The Nature of Chiron, explores Chiron’s iconography and myth, which evoked in me an internal questioning about the way I respond, accept and participate, or not, with the pain of life. For as she says, “being human means being hurt” (p. 63).

Being a hybrid, Chiron is an amalgam of human and animal, a symbolic bridge between divine and instinctual worlds, soul and body, imagination and reality, the hunter and the healer. And since this hybrid nature exists within us, Greene intimates that “we possess the innate capacity to intuit a potential bridge between these two aspects of ourselves” (p. 39). Liz Greene has the acute ability to introject the astrological symbol into personal, creative and meaningful ways of being. From this position she guides us through Chiron’s story, his relationships, attachments, wounding and relinquishment of immortality in a way that enhances the archetypal meaning of the mythic narrative, especially from the perspective of human relationship. This context seems to reflect her later statement “Chiron in love is also Chiron in pain”(p. 235), a prelude to the next four parts which delve into the astrology of Chiron from a relational perspective.

Part 2 is the largest section of the book and explores Chiron inter-aspects in synastry with planets and angles. As Liz Greene says, “Great expectations and their inevitable disappointment lie at the heart of Chiron’s story” (p.15). This is demonstrated through using horoscopes of public couples such as King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, Johnny Depp and Amber Heard & Princess Margaret and Anthony Armstrong-Jones. Along the way generation groups of Chiron in the signs, an unaspected Chiron and Chiron’s interconnectivity with the outer planets are explored. The chapter ends with the reminder that while wounding and suffering are part of the human condition, Chiron exemplifies the creative call to heal when our personal awareness of suffering ignites “something creative that heals rather than destroys” (p. 184).

The final three parts offer more astrological examples. Part 3, Chiron in the Family, demonstrates a family pattern of Chiron-Sun aspects in the royal family. Timely, as newly crowned King Charles III has Chiron conjunct the Sun in Scorpio. He inherits this aspect and the throne from his mother Queen Elizabeth II who also has Chiron conjunct the Sun. Needless to say the predominance of the aspect in the royal family is fascinating. Greene amplifies this image of king and queen in context of the archetypal priest-healer.

Part 4 Chiron in the Composite Chart utilizes the composite chart of Elvis Presley and Colonel Tom Parker to focus on the wounds and the healing possibilities in close relationships. Part 5 Chiron and the Scapegoat is only a few pages, but highlights how Chiron’s placement may be where we feel scapegoated.

To finish, I return to the Introduction where Liz says, “this is the difficult mythic theme that forms the focus of the book” (p.5). After reading the book, I understood the ‘difficult’ mythic theme to be our temporal experience of suffering and pain being intertwined with our vocational and relational dreams. Liz Greene invites us to explore a deeper understanding of this “paradoxical and challenging astrological symbol” of Chiron in Love and in Life. I sense we will all recognize parts of ourselves in the text, but Greene helps us to makes sense of and instill meaning into our personal experience of suffering, pain, love and life.

Brian Clark for the FAA Journal

There may be readers out there who are not familiar with Liz Greene’s contribution to astrology. A professional astrologer for nearly 60 years, she is a Jungian analyst with doctorates in psychology and history. Her many previous books create a rich library of psychological astrology, which has set a course for many practitioners since the 1970s.

In recent decades, astrologers’ tools have been upended by the influx of newly available translations of texts from antiquity, but this new work by Liz Greene brings her gifts back into focus. While some practitioners may eschew considering an astrology that is informed by 19th- and 20th-century thinkers (e.g., Freud and Jung), astrologers who meet with clients will — perhaps inadvertently? — almost certainly be tangling with their clients’ fears, insecurities, and complicated interior lives.

Chiron is familiarly thought of as the “wounded healer” in astrology. Liz Greene introduces her work by including the “original” (i.e., preclassical) version of Chiron’s myth, wherein he is “a healer already, and the incurable injury destroys both his calling and his future.” Pholus, Herakles, Zeus, Prometheus, and the wild centaurs are all part of his myth, and she includes them all as “dimensions of Chiron.” She makes a point to remind us that just as Chiron taught Achilles to play the lyre and is often depicted with a child in his role as teacher, he is also shown in many ancient images instructing “his pupil[s] in the art of the hunt,” and has “a predilection for the chase and the kill.”

Among the themes that Greene investigates are victimhood, “our own ambivalent relationship with our instincts,” lost innocence, “the relinquishing of immortality,“ and “the enticing inebriation of mass movements.”

The book is transcribed from a previously unpublished 2005 seminar, with additional material from online webinars in 2020 and the author’s current thoughts. Greene analyzes Chiron in relationship using examples such as the synastry of the British royal family (including Meghan and Harry), C. G. Jung and Sigmund Freud, and Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. Always known for her skill in identifying themes alive in the collective, Greene’s observation of “bewilderment, anxiety and anger” unleashed during the Covid pandemic spoke to her of Chiron’s presence and became an impetus to publish her thoughts.

In Chiron in Love: The Astrology of Envy, Rage, Compassion and Wisdom, Liz Greene offers a profound view into the painful global phenomena of blaming and scapegoating. She suggests that our ability to make a difference in the world begins “in the hidden part of our own back garden or the alcove in the basement that no one ever sees.”

Mary Plumb The Mountain Astrologer Cap Sol 2023

Liz Greene’s timing could not have been better for the publication of Chiron in Love: The Astrology of Envy, Rage, Compassion, and Wisdom. Greene combined a Chiron seminar originally transcribed in 2005 with three online seminars she did in 2020 as the Covid pandemic was in full swing. Her impetus for publishing the book was seeing “the global outpourings of helplessness, fear, rage, polarization, and an apparently obsessive determination to find scapegoats…tracks of the mythic Centaur’s responses to his unmerited poisoned wound” (p.2) On first glance at the book I did have some doubts about the seminar format, but my interest in Chiron and familiarity with Greene’s Saturn, A New Look at an Old Devil won out. Any reservations immediately disappeared as I began to read. Other than the questions from the audience, the book reads like many other astrology books, along with chart examples of famous couples. Anyone who is looking for a cookbook though will be disappointed.
Greene makes clear from the beginning that she does not believe the wound represented by Chiron can be entirely healed, but makes the case for partial healing, with a tremendous amount of inner work. What I loved the most about this book is the deep dive Greene does into the nature of Chiron in Part One. The surprise, for me was in Chiron’s ancestral lineage and the added meaning it brings to his story. Usually astrologers cover Chiron’s father Saturn, but not Chiron’s mother, Philyra, her father was Okeanos, “the great cosmic stream that surrounds and supports the universe…out of which everything emerges…Chiron combines Okeanos realm of endless fluid possibilities and the Saturnian world of law, structure, form, and mortality” (p.23). Chiron bridges these two seemingly irreconcilable opposites, Saturn and Okeanos, outer and inner, conscious, and unconscious. After reading this part of the book, I could understand much better why some astrologers have associated Chiron with the individuation process.
With the added level of meaning on the nature of Chiron, it made it much easier to comprehend how these dynamics work in relationships. The level to which two people in a relationship have worked with integrating conscious and unconscious aspects of themselves, determines the level to which they will encounter unconscious issues in their relationships. If each person works on their individual issues, the result is “mutual compassion… and the wisdom to recognize suffering as an inevitable dimension of human life and a potential stage in the process of individuation”(p.72). If not, unconscious aspects can be projected upon the partner “through the unleashing of envy, anger, resentment, self-pity, feelings of inadequacy and, at its worst, emotional, and physical abuse”(p.72)  The old saying ‘wherever you go, there you are’ comes to mind.
It is not often that I can read an astrology book from cover to cover in a very short period, but this one was not a struggle in the least. Liz Greene goes deep into her exploration of Chiron and its meaning, which is what is required of the individual if one is to consciously work with Chiron. It confirmed for me much of my journey thus far. I highly recommend Chiron in Love: The Astrology of Envy, Rage, Compassion and Wisdom for anyone wanting to understand their own journey, or even wanting to understand the times we are living in a little better, but if you’re an astrologer this book is a must.
Debra Trninich for AstroBookClub.com

Chiron’s saintly aura as the wounded healer, selflessly dispensing compassion for others, has its shadow side of rage, envy, vindictive spite, self-pity and resentment laid bare in Liz Greene’s latest book Chiron in Love.
What tends to get forgotten – we know it but it gets blithely skipped over – is that the centaur’s wound is poisoned and can never heal, a point she hammers home again and again. Only by giving up his divine immortality (and ultimately dying) can Chiron ever be released from his unending pain.
‘Repetition and cyclical return to the place of suffering are characteristic of the inner world of Chiron.’
The mythological background to Chiron is covered extensively. As son of earthy Kronos (Saturn) and grandson of the sky god Ouranus, he bridges worlds, standing between the instinctual and the divine.  Abandoned as a baby he was brought up by Apollo and was already a healer when he was wounded by accident.
Crime and punishment, blame and the victim culture belong in Saturn’s realm as the giver of laws. But there is no culpability in Chiron’s domain which is a difficult concept to grapple with. ‘Life is unfair, humans are fallible and imperfect.’  ‘A just verdict in the outer world won’t heal the wound in the inner world.’ The victimizer can often have been victimized themselves.
It is a harsh, nihilistic view of a random universe (shit happens) and human evil, not likely to sit comfortably with a happy-clappy, everything-happens-for-a-good-reason outlook. We need, Greene thinks, to move beyond the endless self-pity party to discover how difficult it is to be human. This is the beginning of compassion.
The chapter on synastry suggests that relationships where there are Chiron crossovers offer a chance of change but often end badly. ‘Great expectations and their inevitable disappointment lie at the heart of Chiron’s story.’
As cases in point –  King Charles’ Chiron squared Princess Diana’s Moon and Meghan’s Chiron is conjunct Harry’s Moon – in both cases hinting at the high hopes of the Chiron individual for the Moon person to provide endless warmth and unconditional support since they have not learned to nourish their own emotional needs.
Chiron sparring with the other’s Mars can begin with sexual excitement and not surprisingly ends badly – with Johnny Depp (Mars) and Amber Heard (Chiron) as well as Princess Margaret (Chiron) and Anthony Armstrong Jones (Mars) as prime examples. Mars wants to conquer and win; and challenge can be an aphrodisiac. But pushy Mars hitting Chiron’s defensiveness can trigger violence as the wounded Chiron lashes out.
Chiron on the other’s Mercury makes the Chiron person feel unintelligent. A Venus cross over makes the Chiron individual feel unloveable. She points to both Marilyn Monroe and Michael Jackson who both had Chiron Neptune aspects natally.
Chiron close to the Sun natally – King Charles, Greta Thunberg, Carl Jung – brings loneliness, a chronic sense of being an outsider, a painful and enduring sense of isolation and low-self-esteem. ‘Often people with with a strong natal Sun Chiron aspect feel both damaged and chosen.’ ‘Jung wrote at length about the loneliness of increased consciousness and the suffering of the outsider burdened with being able to see too much yet unable to communicate it to those who did not comprehend it.’
The book is an amalgam of various seminars from 2005 and more recently in 2020 as the victim-culture got into full swing which perhaps explains her repeated emphasis on a no-one-to-blame Chiron. It is in no way an Astro-cook book with easy-to-find lists of interpretations of Chiron aspects. But it is thought-provoking and adds a darker, deeper dimension to Chiron which is generally overlooked and will prompt me to look more closely in future at the wandering centaur’s hoof prints.
[One jarring note for me, though not on the astrology, came with a sideswipe at the Cleveland Child Abuse ‘scandal’ which Greene wrote off as a ‘creating-victims-where-none-existed’ scenario. A little research would have shown that independent experts under the guidance of the Department of Health later found that at least 70 per cent of the diagnoses made by the much-criticised paediatricians had been correct. The experts report added that this was “contrary to general public understanding of the accuracy of the diagnoses”. Butler-Sloss who wrote the original report (think Lord Hutton on David Kelly and Robert Mueller on Trump) did nothing later to disabuse the public. In Saturn’s realm it was a botch up.]
Marjorie Orr www.star4cast.com