In 1977, a new planet (actually a planetoid or cross between a planet and an asteroid) was discovered in the Solar System, which astronomers named after Chiron, the renowned, wise Centaur, physician, prophet, musician and mentor of Greek mythology. Overall the discovery of Chiron announced the surfacing of an ancient world-view, one that lay buried within the archetypal depths of the human psyche and one that many today have been called upon and challenged to embrace. Widespread interest in indigenous cosmologies and ancient sacred mythologies accompanied with numerous accounts of shamanic initiations published by westerners surfaced in the collective consciousness. And within the astrological community, Chiron soon began to be associated with the archetypal energies of the Inner Shaman, the Wounded Healer, the Mentor and the Maverick.

At this time, the 60's generation began to shift away from the spiritual philosophies and transcendent practices of Vedanta, Veda and Buddhism and began to embrace earth-oriented/body-centered teachings as an antidote to the spiritual bypass and dependency that the eastern systems and the gurus mistakenly fostered. It had become increasingly clear that the disowned irrational and instinctual elements within our psyche/soma had a life of their own and unless and until they were made conscious, tended to compulsively repeat themselves. While one may have enjoyed spiritual ecstasies in deepest meditation, in the everyday world of personal and interpersonal relationships, unresolved survival, sexual and social instincts undermined and rendered useless these otherwise valuable spiritual experiences.

In the Atman Project, Ken Wilber describes a mode of consciousness that he calls Centauric, which is relevant to the planet Chiron not just because of the name coincidentally chosen. It shows us clearly the difference between two entirely different modes of consciousness. Wilber clearly contrasts this more sophisticated Centauric mode with the older Typhonic mode, which is exclusively instinctually based. The infantile body-ego was a stage (Typhonic) wherein body and self or body and ego were undifferentiated. Wilber describes the Centauric Self as 'blissful state; cosmic love, reception of grace (higher energies), heightened bodily awareness (supersensory); highest function of bodily consciousness. The existential centaur, then, is not only the higher-order integration of ego, body, persona, and shadow, it is also the major transition towards the higher subtle and transpersonal realms of being'.

By combining the substance and meaning of the astrological Chiron and Wilber's Centaur, we can see that two ways of entering into the Centauric Self, into the realm of the Transpersonal Self are through bodywork and divination. Wilber shows us how this shift to the Centauric Self is to be accomplished namely 'by touching and re-owning our ignored bodies through bodywork. He later explains that 'There is preverbal (primary process), and there is verbal (secondary process) and above and beyond both, as a magic synthesis, there is transverbal: intentionality, high-phantasy, and the vision-image', the latter a perfect description of the archetypal mind of the astrologer. In my natal horoscope, Chiron is one of the most significant planets thus it should come as no great surprise that my livelihood in this world is through bodywork and divination.

Chiron comes from one of the oldest roots in the Greek language. So powerful was his influence on the legends and myths of the ancient world that today many of the names describing the ancient healing and divinatory arts have their etymological root in Chiron. Within the field of divination, Chiromancy means reading the hands or palmistry. Chiron in the Tarot deck is the Hierophant, which actually means 'revealer of the mysteries' or 'teacher of the mysteries' An initiate into the mysteries of the Hierophant was said to no longer fear death.

In the holistic healing vein, Chiral means the polarization of light from one hand to the other. Chiropractic is the healing of the joints and bones by means of manipulation. Chirothesia is the energy in the hands during sacred rites, while Chirotony is the extending of the hands in blessing during certain rituals. Bodywork then takes on the dimensions of alchemy as changes occur deep within the soma through such methods as healing with light and to the spinal structure and processes with chiropractic adjustments.

Familiar words, such as crisis, crossroads and crux are derived from Chiron, as are Christ, crucifixion and cross. These words help us to understand the function and purpose of Chiron. With life changing crises, such as the death of a partner, the loss of health, a job or a relationship, an entire way of life comes to an end. We come to the crossroads of our lives, to the crux of the matter, asking for a vision, a message or a sign that informs as to the purpose and direction of our lives. Through crisis, we are initiated into the shamanic journey of suffering, death, rebirth and return if we are willing and able to set foot upon that sacred path.

C.G. Jung, the eminent psychiatirst, also recognized crisis as part of the individuation process as portrayed in both alchemy and shamanism: 'loss of soul, dismemberment, descent into a lower world, ascent into an upper world, and union with a spirit spouse.' It is through crisis that we discover capacities and abilities and develop skills and t alents that we never would have unless our lives were thrown into crisis, unless we were pushed beyond ourselves and discovered within the crisis or the wound, the cure and the remedy. As this is no ordinary wound but a sacred one, we necessarily discover and develop archetypal and transpersonal resources, talents, skills and abilities in our own quest for self-healing and renewal. As we have seen this means establishing contact with our own spirit guides and guardians, with our instincts and intuition.

As we are initiated into new ways being and becoming in the world, we soon find that our new found skills, abilities and resources serve a wider, Kosmic purpose. Thus we come to serve as mentors and allies to others who are in crises and in the midst of a huge transition in their lives. This path is the complete opposite from that suggested by the flippant mantra of our alienated, materialistic and narcissistic culture namely 'He who dies with the most toys wins'. Actually he who dies with the most toys completely misses the entire purpose of existence. The questions of identity and fate can deepen and mature until they ripen and unfold into a life long Vision Quest, a constant communication with the spirit world for the revelation of direction and purpose. Ultimately the highest fate is that of gaining the freedom to be completely who you are.

As we can infer from Wilber's writings, astrological divination at its purest level would require highly developed cognitive capacities such as vision logic, familiarity with intuitive and intentional processes and the receptivity to transpersonal dimensions or archetypal realms of the imagination. I think we can also say that these would be of great benefit to a bodyworker as well, considering that a 'supersensory awareness or heightened bodily awareness', is part of the Chiron/Centaur consciousness. If we equate bodywork with alchemy than one can see again a direct relationship between divination and bodymind healing, namely that both stem from the deep layers of the archetypal psyche.

In many ancient cosmologies, it is recognized that within the physical body lies the Axis Mundi or Cosmic Axis, the proverbial Tree of Life, the cross of matter, representing the four cardinal directions as well as the upper, celestial realm, the middle Earth realm, and the lower, Infernal realms. Within each and every one of us lie the guidance, the direction and the wild medicine, which is needed in order to heal the lesion between mind and body, between our spiritual and animal selves thereby becoming authentically and fully human.

The horoscopic mandala is an emanation of the archetypal imagination of the cosmology of the Hellenistic period circa 325 BCE, one that was grounded in Sacred Geometry.

It is a metaphysical symbol of the Kosmos, a microcosm of the macrocosmic universe. According to Wilber, the original meaning of Kosmos was. 'the patterned nature or process of all domains of existence, from matter to mind to God, and not merely the physical universe'. Like the Spider's Web of Creation in Native American cosmology, whatever affects one part of the web affects the whole web of existence. All things are interconnected and interrelated. 'The infantile bodyego (Typhonic) can see only the present; the centaur can see all time from the present'. Ken Wilber Atman Project.

Like the Tree of Life in Shamanic mythologies, the horoscope is also composed of the four directions, as well as the upper, lower and middle worlds. Both forms of bodywork and divination are based on the same cosmological paradigm and are entwined within the same metaphysical reality, one that is native to the human being that Wilber described as a 'blissful state; cosmic love, reception of grace (higher energies), heightened bodily awareness (supersensory); highest function of bodily consciousness.'

It would stand to reason then that the deeper purposes of bodymind therapies and of astrological divination is to reclaim this field of intelligence for self healing and self direction only to transition to a higher, a truer, more ethical and more authentic way of being in the world. In the following pages I would like to present two worldviews that will further flesh this out more. The first is through the window of astrology brought to you courtesy of the Hellenistic period. The second is from the perspective of the body itself or more exactly from the viewpoint of an awakened body.

Organized systems of divination, such as the Tarot, the I Ching, and astrology, are paths of self initiation and self discovery, time honored ways of realizing the wisdom of one's True Self by way of an invisible teacher, who is the One Teacher of which every visible teacher is only a symbol. They are based on thousands of years of observation and the cultivation of a deep knowing of the metaphysical and natural worlds. Instead of asking the guru or the teacher what to do with one's life, one could now directly consult any number of oracles of systems of divination to contact the Invisible Teacher for personal guidance and direction.

When I give an astrology reading, I inform my clients that the reading is more than an exchange of information, however useful that information may prove to be. Essentially, a reading is a transmission of experience tapping into and invoking archetypal and transpersonal energies that exist deep within the psyche beyond that of the personality, waiting to be seen, activated and brought into conscious expression. An astrological reading then goes beyond the limited view of the personality and encourages intuitions, insights, feelings and sensations that touch into the realm of the spirit and the sacred. As such, the client ideally undergoes a noticeable shift in awareness as a result of their connecting with and understanding the archetypal and transpersonal energies native to their natal horoscope.

The astrological horoscope is a portrait of a living cosmology, an archetypal mandala of the soul that reveals the blueprint of our lives and offers direct insight and guidance as to the character, the purpose and the destination of our Soul. While there are numerous varieties of divination, astrology is uniquely qualified to address the first of the Chironic questions i.e. 'Who am I?' as it presents a rich offering of psychological characteristics and transpersonal archetypal processes as descriptors of identity. It also addresses the second Chironic question 'Where am I going?' as astrology is founded on the view that character determines fate.

Ideally and potentially, through aligning one’s self with the horoscope in all its dimensions and directions, one realizes the existence of the Kosmos through Gnosis which is the direct revelatory experience of the Kosmos. A Gnostic would know intuitively and instinctively that planetary and stellar cycles and patterns (the above) have an influence the cycles and patterns for human beings (the below). In the Hellenistic worldview, the highest and truest fate was called pronoia. It was associated with divinity and was deemed providential. A lower former of fate was called agnoia, which meant ignorance and was the antithesis of pronoia or awareness. Here the soul is more or less oblivious of its own nature and that of Kosmos, 'the living Totality of matter, body, mind, soul, and spirit'.

The way out of agnoia or ignorance and into pronoia was through Logos. According to Greek scholar and astrologer Robert Schmidt, Logos is 'a revelatory sound that unconceals that which is hidden'. In Genesis we see 'In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God', whereas the original Greek translation is 'In the beginning was the logos and the logos was with God and the logos was God.' A more accurate translation would then be 'In the beginning was a revelatory sound that brought into manifestation that which was unmanifest or transcendent'. Logos then is a living language of creation of the archetypal Hellenistic mind. The antidote to our loss of true identity, our Kosmic amnesia is through logos, which can be seen as a retrieval of that which is hidden.

In Hellenistic thought, this awakening was called anamnesis, translated as the 'absence of forgetfulness' as elucidated by Pythogoras and Plato. It presupposes the everlasting memory of the immortal soul. Through Logos and the process of anamnesis we remember our true selves. Logos carries the meaning of an ordering principle. Astrology, logic, dialogue, mythology are all derived from logos as is the word, word. Astrology is an ordered system. One may believe or disbelieve astrology but no one can say it is illogical. An astrological example of Logos as a living language is that of the zoidion or zodiac, which has been translated to mean simply a sign. The original meaning is closer to a 'temple in the sky where the living image dwells'.

Just as the Olympion was the dwelling place of the gods and goddesses of Olympus, the Zoidion was the place where archetypal images of the collective unconscious dwelled. The Zoidion then was a Kosmic stage to systematically evoke and consciously experience the archetypal depths of the psyche for the attainment of Gnosis or communion with all of creation. Another example of Logos would be the Hermetic axiom, 'As it is above, so it is below, as it is within, so it is without, as the soul, so the universe'.

This is basic common sense to the Shamanic, Centauric, Chironian, or archetypal mindscapes. Human beings are the microcosm of the macrocosm. In the words of C. G. Jung, 'We are born at a given moment, in a given place, and like vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year and of the season in which we are born'. The highest purpose of ancient western astrology was and is to cultivate pronoia, a sense of providence as fate, through the direct revelatory knowing or Gnosis of the Kosmos. The next question would then be what would the role of the body be in supporting a connection with Logos, the living language of creation.

To a Chironic way of thinking, the bridge between the archetypal world of the psyche and the elemental world of the soma, between the Cross of Life within the Hellenistic horoscopic mandala and the Shamanic Axis of the Universe or Tree of Life within the physical body and is found in medieval Judaic mysticism in the Kabbalah. This ancient wisdom depicts a planetary tree of life that describes the descent of the Divine into the manifest world. Here and in other systems of alchemy such as the Taoists and Hindu systems, we see a relationship connecting the above with the below, the heavens with the earth and expressly astrology with alchemical bodywork.

The alchemists saw the human body as a magical laboratory in which to work their transformation and believed the body's organs were vessels in which alchemical purification of matter took place to provide the psychospiritual essences needed for growth and health. The Taoists felt they were only 'borrowing' the physical body and its organs to cultivate 'the body beyond the body, or the immortal Philosopher's Stone. The Emerald Tablet by Dennis Hauck

To attain the Philosopher's Stone is, in this particular case, the attainment of enlightenment, which is the illumination of the aura or Soul of Nature with the Divine Light of Sol, and with this comes the power to illumine the world, which is the Divine Gold of the Spirit. Alchemy: The Black Art David Cherubim.

In alchemical astrology, there are seven distinct alchemical processes that correlate to the seven traditional planets, which in turn correspond to the seven major chakras, which in turn effect the processes and operations of the body or soma. The outer invisible planets, namely Chiron, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, represent archetypal, transpersonal energies and act as transmitters of energy from the Galaxy onto the earth via the seven traditional planets that also represent consensus, mainstream reality. While their modes of operation are different, what the outer planets have in common is to create a destabilizing effect on the status quo so that the energies from the archetypal dimensions can enter this world.

Most of my clients, besides being female, also have most if not all of these planets prominent in their charts. Needless to say my clients are not your typical Joe and Sally. Let's take a close but brief look at these planets and see what archetypal and transpersonal energies they reveal.

* Chiron: Transfiguration; Deep Nature Mysticism; the Shamanic realm; the vision quest; shape shifting; Wild Medicine, the World as Sacred; Initiation; Mentoring; the Wounded Healer
* Uranus: Transformation; Upper Dimensional Worlds; Light Body consciousness; radical awakening; telepathy; higher octave; multi-dimensional perception; quantum physics; UFO's; computer
* Neptune: Transcendence; Non-Dual Mysticism; empathy; the silent witness; visionary experiences; Oceanic Awareness; Timeless; Formless; the World as Maya.
* Pluto: Transmutation; Alchemy; the cosmic roto-rooter; cellular changes; Kundalini; hidden treasures, Soul Retrieval; Death and Rebirth; Underworld Journeys; the Shadow.

Now that we have gained some astrological and alchemical insight into a Centaur/Chiron worldview, let's look at the human body in all its Kosmic dimensions. Body workers, massage therapists, energy healers all fall under the aegis of Chiron as do herbalists and medical practitioners as Chiron taught medicine to Aesclepius, the Father of Greek Medicine. As such we'll be looking at both the diagnosis and the prognosis for the body.

By the late 70's, many meditation practitioners had come to realize that after years of intensive meditation practices, we were (as were many of the gurus!), not living a full, authentic life and had in fact practiced a form of spiritual bypass that left many
of our early wounds unrecognized and unaddressed and left many of us disembodied. While one may have enjoyed spiritual ecstasies in deepest meditation, in the everyday world of personal and interpersonal relationships, unconscious issues undermined and rendered useless these otherwise valuable spiritual experiences. One could be intimate with God but not with another or even with one's self.

The eastern systems of Self Realization with its emphasis on the world as illusion and on the denial of self and body took precedence over the western system of Self Actualization and its emphasis on the world as sacred and the embodied expression of the self with disastrous consequences. Many of us have been raised with either not enough nurturing touch and/or have been subjected to inappropriate and abusive touching. Herein lies the root of the split between mind and body. Most of us are starved for nurturing and nourishing touch. As a consequence of disowning our bodies, we live separated from a universal intelligence that underlies and permeates all of existence.

The result is the over reliance o thinking and less emphasis on direct knowing, on instinct and intuition causing the loss of Gnosis, of the Centauric Self or the unified body and mind. Ken Wilber in his book No Boundary lays out this problem clearly. 'It is not exactly that man loses touch with his body. Rather, he loses touch with the unity of the body and mind, the unity of feeling and attention that is characteristic of the centaur. The whole clarity of feelingattention becomes disrupted and distorted, and in its place is left compulsive thinking on the one hand, and the dissociated body on the other'.

The bodymind is formed by our personal history. It is a sum total of all the habitual and unconscious patterns of our upbringing, including any and all injuries, insults or wounds to the developing self that today determine our character and personality.
The mental aspect of the bodymind is called the internal dialogue and is the part of the personality that never stops thinking or talking to itself and is constantly rehashing the past, planning for the future and interpreting and reinterpreting itself.

As long as we remain unconscious of the bodymind and the internal dialogue then weare driven to repeat disowned, unconscious behaviors and actions.We have seen that it is not through transcendence alone but especially through recognizing and healing the wounds that are stored in the body and through unifying body and mind that we will be made whole, complete and authentic. The trick is to shift the attention away from the internal dialogue and bring it into the body. The ancient practices of healing touch and deep bodywork offer powerful and profound techniques for spiritual awakening and personal growth through making the
unconscious conscious and basically waking up the body.

In Shamanic bodywork, this is accomplished by moving the assemblage point, the limited perceptual field of the
bodymind, onto that of the second attention where we access a self existing field of silent knowing and revelatory experience. Very few of us live in this state, so the question arises how do we drop the bodymind and reclaim 'the existential centaur, which is not only the higher-order integration of ego, body, persona, and shadow, but also the major transition towards the higher subtle and transpersonal realms of being'.Wilber

While meditation practices, psychotropic substances and shamanic rituals offer viable,useful and necessary practices or ways to move beyond the local identity into transpersonal, archetypal domains, the body itself is capable of naturally moving there through the alchemy of deep bodywork and through becoming completely relaxed. Once the attention is in the body it can attend to healing, to unifying the body and mind. The advantage to bodywork is that bypassing our wounds or going unconscious is not likely to happen when we are the hands of another's loving care and expertise. They will act as conscious guides and protectors as we move into us. The qualifier here is that the practitioner would have a heightened sense of touch and be familiar with these archetypal realms and alchemical processes and the client would be ready and willing to move deeply into these domains. The issue of trust is paramount.

Many mythologies that can be called Centauric, see the body as possessing a transdimensional physiology replete with energy vortices, energetic pathways and body centers that portray a subtle body consciousness that reaches far beyond the mere physical mapping rendered by current medical science.As one shifts the attention away from the localized, limited and contracted bodymind, the internal dialogue and their limited perceptual field, then one enters into an awareness of the subtle body called by various names in different traditions, such as the Alchemical Philosopher's Stone, the Sufi's Pearl of Great Price, the Shamanic Rainbow Warrior, the Buddhist Diamond Body, the Hellenistic Microcosm of the Macrocosm, the Hindu Brahman Consciousness, the Mystical Body of Christ or what I like to call the BodySelf. The BodySelf is the fully awake, aware and alive body, with a fully developed body, heart, will and mind.This view is in perfect accord with Aristotle's observation that the manifestation of the Soul is the perfect completion of the potential of the body. In other words, the Soul is the true essence of the material body.

Throughout this process, the body is seen as a Master Teacher, the advantages being that unlike the mind, the body will never tell a lie. If you listen the body will tell you what you need to knows
* the body knows how to heal itself. We can either augment the life of the body or diminish it.
* the body is fundamental to any teaching or path for the simple reason that if you did not have a human body then you would not be here.
* if you are not in your body or embodied, then the universe cannot find, recognize, contact and connect with you and neither can you or anybody else.
* conversely, if you have a highly organized and developed sense of body awareness then the universe and others can see, contact, connect and commune with you.

Francis Xavier Caulfield, a life-long student and practitioner of Astrology, offers a holistic vision to astrological divination and counseling. He reads the natal chart as a transformational blueprint of the Self, impeccably informed with celestial guidance and insight. He eloquently blends intuition with modern and ancient astrological expertise forming a multi-layered, comprehensive understanding of each client's distinct life purpose, potential, and direction. In professional practice since 1987.

Francis is a masterful Vibrational Healer/Bodyworker, His work is an intuitive blend of Somatic, Energetic, and Shamanic bodyworks for Spiritual Awakening, Personal Transformation, Self-Empowerment and Holistic Healing. He is also a life-long meditator and teacher of meditation since 1972.

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