The meaning of Chiron
In Greco-Roman art, Chiron is almost always shown carrying a child on his back. But despite this emblem of hope, the figure of the King of the Centaurs is a tragic one. It is worth reiterating the myth, which is often distorted or wrongly told because it is such a painful one.
In myth, Chiron did not become a healer because he was wounded. That is an optimistic reinterpretation which attempts to make sense of life's pain by assigning it a specific purpose and meaning - to develop the compassion and wisdom to heal others because of one's own pain. This reinterpretation of the myth is valid as a way of working with one's own wounds. But Chiron's pain serves no such noble purpose in the story. He is already a teacher and a healer, before he is wounded. It could be assumed that he is already wounded because he suffers isolation; although he is a Centaur, and therefore one of a tribe of creatures who symbolise natural instinctual powers, he is himself civilised, and has thus separated himself from his tribe. Chiron in this context represents the wise animal, a natural power which of its own volition has chosen to serve human evolution and consciousness, rather than remain blindly subject to the instinctual compulsions of the animal kingdom. Like the "helpful animal" in fairy tales, Chiron turns his back on the savagery of his instinctual nature, in order to serve the evolutionary pattern which he deems to be the way forward for the whole of life.
But Chiron is in the wrong place at the wrong time. He is caught between Herakles, the solar hero who personifies the strength of the human ego, and the wild, untamed Centaurs whom Chiron himself has left behind. While the battle rages, Chiron takes no part; he has sympathy for both. Perhaps because of this mediating role, which deprives him of his natural aggression, he is accidentally wounded by a poisoned arrow aimed at another Centaur, and the wound does not heal, no matter what healing methods he applies to it. Ultimately he retires to his cave howling in anguish, begging for death. Zeus and Prometheus take pity on him, and grant him the boon of mortality, allowing him to die in peace like any mortal, although once he was a god.
This terrible story implies a state of unfairness in life which is hard for any individual, and perhaps even harder for the idealistic individual involved in studies such as astrology, to countenance. We want to believe that life is fair, and that goodness is rewarded and evil punished, at least in some other incarnation if not in this one. Here is a good creature who suffers through no fault of his own, a victim of the inevitable battle between evolution and inertia, consciousness and blind instinctuality. Chiron is an image of that in us which has been wounded unfairly by life, and by inescapable conditions which reflect failings and flaws in a collective psyche which is unfailingly clumsy in its efforts to progress.
http://www.astro.com/astrology/in_wounding_e.htm
