Chiron in 1st: My Connection with Terence McKenna and the Wounded Healer Archetype

Originally posted to Hiero on Thursday, Feb 11, 2021

Content warnings: Mentions of trauma

Tonight is the last night of the waning moon and my mind has been abuzz, and somehow yesterday I woke up after only a few hours' sleep, having been delving into my natal chart late into the night. The restlessness this close to the New Moon is, in fact, normal, especially since I've been ramping up my attunement to moon energies by reading "Moonology: Working with the Magic of Lunar Cycles" by Yasmin Boland, and using the accompanying Moonology oracle deck.

These two tools have facilitated a return and a deeper look at Astrology. While I had (more or less) given up months ago and relegated astrology to its own sort of side-hobby which I didn't really understand, having only gotten as far in as what each of my planets' corresponding signs are - tropical? Sidereal? Hadn't a clue - Yasmin Boland's simple introduction to moon astrology suddenly renewed my interest and commitment.

With the sudden burst of upcoming New Moon energy I received, I stayed up late into the night looking up every single sign on my natal chart, slept 4 hours, then promptly woke up with the thought in my mind to look up the chart of Terence McKenna.

Of course, I wouldn't be this far into my journey if it weren't for Terence McKenna. Unlike most practitioners, I'd had barely a scrap of magical inclination as a child - unless you count an imaginary friend and some sparks I thought I saw outside the window late at night when I was maybe 6 - nor had I taken an interest as a teenager, but 4 years ago when I acquired adult trauma, Terence McKenna appeared out of the ether among my YouTube recommendations. This strangely pretentious, nasally but ingenious and intriguing voice was rambling about philosophy, science, psychadelic plants, the downfall of Western society, the occult, history - while I would lay curled in my bathtub burning incense, trying to forget my loneliness and pain, slowly becoming aware of myself as being curled a fetal position in a symbolic return to the womb, and that I was in the becoming stage of a great divine mystery that had laid in wait for me my whole life.

The spirit of Terence McKenna has remained with me along the path. From his lectures I was led into Carl Jung, chaos magick, Finnegan's Wake, the Myers-Briggs, the concepts of the Shadow, the Animus/Anima, archetypes, shamanism; and of course, the magick of psychadelic plants, weaved through with self-referencing patterns and symbolism characteristic of the eclectic. My practice has changed over time but I can still trace the threads of it back to the man who started it all for me.

It all sounds a bit detached from reality now, but when you are too scarred to trust the living due to their craven motives, it is very trivial to choose the type of insanity that saves your soul - to regress to a childlike state, put an idol on a pedestal, and use them to ward off the suicidal thoughts.

Although I loathe to succumb to the label of "pop culture paganism", I established what I felt was a pure connection - the sad irony being that my need for that attachment flew in the face of one of the things that he taught, which was the non-reverence of pop culture idols, one of the necessary steps within his philosophy of "deprogramming" oneself from cultural conditioning. But this gentle American hippie replacement father figure, in contrast to my own traditional conservative gen X/Boomer parents, with his preaching about unconventional relationship structures, psychadelic plants and partnership societies, proved too charismatic not to himself serve as an inlet into the great divine mysteries. "Terry" - as I've nicknamed the entity or egregore I've been interacting with who is based upon him, to distinguish him from the real man who lived and died - became my Way-Opener. He is what I believe is the truest form of what the kids these days are calling "guides". He interacted with me in dreams, almost a dozen times now, showing himself as Butterfly and Octopus - two animals that had been of deep significance to McKenna in life, Terry co-opted as symbols to signal when he was with me in waking life.

My recent exploration of my natal chart happened in something of a feverish hyperfocus, and although he had not previously been especially on my mind for some time, it seemed only fitting that upon awakening I would look up the natal chart information of man who led me into alternative spirituality.

While there are many notable things about McKenna's chart I could discuss in depth - the multitude of planets in the first house in someone who wore his heart on his sleeve, had very public persona, Jupiter and Venus in particular underlining that he was filthy with charisma, generous with loving energy and midheaven in Virgo suggesting a down-to-earth, caring and compassionate, paternal energy - all things I had already sensed about him artfully rendered in the language of astrology - what I most want to draw attention to is his Chiron in the 1st house.

Here's what I could learn about Chiron in the 1st house: Because our first house contains the ascendant, it is the aspects of ourselves that are most "out there", readily evident for all to see.

In the Greek myth, Chiron is a centaur born from when Cronus took the form of a horse and mated with the nymph Philyra. He was orphaned raised by twins Artemis and Apollo, and unlike most centaurs which had a reputation for their beastly nature, Chiron was of an exceptionally gentle and sympathetic character. Chiron was an astrologer, a healer, and an oracle.

Chiron himself is perhaps the first representation of the "wounded healer" archetype - to be born of a race considered closer to animals than to gods or humans. To be orphaned at a young age, rejected by your birth parentage who are supposed to be the ones who love you unconditionally, inflicts a wound upon someone at a young age, which becomes pain they must bear for the rest of their life. To not only overcome that wound, but spend your life in service to others out of the compassion borne from self-healing - this is the journey of the wounded healer.

To have Chiron in the first house means to have your wound on display for all to see.

This is considered a challenging placement to have. Because the wound is so public, if you have this placement it often gets mixed up in your self-confidence, or your ability to create. It influences every other planet in the first house. It infects your self-esteem - you imagine the wound is so obvious that everyone can see it, maybe it's a literal part of your appearance, as something that cannot be ignored, or maybe it manifests as body dysmorphia.

Terence McKenna was an awkward guy with some strange ideas who lectured on weird subject matter. He was a controversial figure in life and remains a controversial figure in death. He didn't talk much about himself but briefly mentioned his upbringing as being "Catholic" and I think that's about all you needed to know about it, and in spite of the unconventionality of his ideas, he believed he really had something worth sharing with the world. I believe he wanted to teach us how to heal ourselves. His memory surviving, albeit in obscurity, in 2021 is an attestation to the right people having heard his ideas.

Of course, I share this placement with Terence McKenna. I didn't have to spend any time wondering at what Chiron in 1st could mean to me; as someone who was homeschooled for the entirety of my public school years - in the 90s, when homeschooling was excessively obscure and surely associated purely with extremely strict religious cults - and went on to eventually be diagnosed with ADHD, PTSD, and OCD alongside a chronic inflammatory skin condition.

Four years later, the renewal of this spiritual connection through this shared placement comes with a message. Part of healing means accepting yourself as you are. People who face trauma from a young age tend to feel chronically invalidated, and it can be inhibitive of one's ability to create - whether that means an artistic endeavour or the ability to create the life that one is envisioning for oneself. Those of us who have been wounded frequently doubt ourselves and may even become conscious that the effects are permanent in some undesirable way - that you'll never live up to your own exacting standards, and give up before we've given ourselves a real chance.

The message of the wounded healer is: If you feel nothing you create is good enough, create anyways. If you feel like you'll never heal quite as fully as you can envision yourself to how you want to feel to be leading your ideal life, heal anyways. You have been charged with living the fullest, most enriching and inspiring life that you can - according to YOUR standards, not anybody else's - regardless of your limitations or the circumstances. Too much of alternative spirituality places emphasis on visualization, belief, and willing yourself into an ideal scenario. It's not that those things aren't valuable, because they are, they can be amazingly empowering. But the message is if you get stuck on that part, don't give up. Keep going. The relationship between what you envision and what you manifest isn't borne out of a cosmic power structure but rather, those things exist within a reciprocal relationship.

As Terence McKenna used to say, nature loves courage.

The one misgiving I have about this "wounded healer" archetype is that it can create malformed relationships among people who fail to do their shadow work. The story of the codependent healer and the person in needing of healing, and how they systematically hold each other back because their relationship is based on their wounds, as one tries to force the other to heal and the one in need of healing self-sabotages and resists - this has become all too familiar to me in my life. I have great cognitive dissonance of how much I resonate with this archetype versus my personal oath to myself never to advertise myself as a healer. One person cannot heal another on a spiritual level, but I do believe every person is born with the innate ability to heal themselves spiritually, and along these journeys, we can make friends, and share the threads of wisdom we have gleaned by peeking beyond the veil.