Star Struck Style

After a weird couple of days, I’m feeling more like myself this morning. Mars’ opposition to my natal Neptune was an unsettling transit for me, and having the sun oppose my natal Mercury at the same time didn’t exactly help me calm down.

Anyway, I am feeling at peace with myself this morning as I await Chiron’s ingress into Taurus. The asteroid enters the sign of the bull later this afternoon, and it will remain there until its retrograde cycle takes it back into Aries this coming September. It won’t take up permanent residence in Taurus until April next year.

Feeling more at ease with ourselves should be a theme during this new phase. The daily forecast on “Café Astrology” includes this passage that makes me feel a lot better about my personal “comfort zone” and how I feel the need to be surrounded by nice things:

“While Chiron is in Taurus, we’ll be rebuilding our sense of self-worth. Sensitive points include our feelings about comfort, indulgence, money, personal belongings, and our values. We’ll learn to focus on our needs in healthy doses without feeling guilty.”

I do believe that I would wither away and die if it were not for the “healthy doses” of self-indulgence I regularly consume. Just a moment ago, I lit a beautiful Nest candle so that I can look at fancy clothes online in a room that smells like a Mediterranean olive grove. I don’t feel guilty about that. In fact, I feel lucky to be able to live such a privileged life. That is my normal state of being — outside of the occasional delusional episode that causes me to panic about my financial position (like Mars/Neptune episode earlier this week). I don’t believe that I have much more to learn about my penchant for decadence.

But I could be wrong! I guess that I’ll find out soon enough. From now until September, we’ll all get a sneak peek of how Chiron’s journey through Taurus will affect us. For me, half of this transit will take place in my seventh house, and half will take place in my eighth house. Will I pay the price for my indulgences during the latter part of this upcoming cycle, or will I continue to discover more about how my hedonistic tendencies help to feed my soul.

I do feel Chiron’s transits quite acutely, so I am expecting to learn some lessons in this new phase of my life. My Chiron return taught me to be a kinder, less-judgmental person when I thought that I had nothing left to learn. It’s shift into Aries afterward taught me to be less reactive with people: to “choose my battles,” as the saying goes. Its ingress into my seventh house showed me how to recognize my own needs in relationships, and that event was pivotal in my decision to quit my full-time job to focus upon my happiness. All of these episodes were profound, and more-obvious to me than most other outer-planet transits. That’s why I am intrigued by what might happen during Chiron’s transit through Taurus.

Of course, I was born during a near-exact opposition between Chiron and Pluto. It’s a highlight in the chart of my generation; maybe we all feel the transits of Chiron and Pluto more acutely than others. But since both of the heavenly bodies move so slowly through the zodiac, perhaps we haven’t really made that connection. I’m interested to hear what other sixty-year-olds might have to say about the subject. Let me know what you think in the comments section. I’d love to hear from you.

As for the rest of you, don’t be afraid to shift your focus to self-care as this new cycle begins. It might seem selfish at first, but you can’t take care of others if you don’t care for yourself. If Chiron teaches us anything, it is to attend to our own wounds. Over the next four months, you might be able to figure out what those wounds are as you indulge in behavior that helps you to heal them. Pay attention to how you make yourself feel better when you’re feeling down. Those revelations will come in handy when Chiron takes up residence in Taurus in 2027.