Meaning
2060 Chiron was found by Charles Kowal at Palomar on plates taken on 18 October 1977, and the discovery was announced on 1 November. It was the first known centaur, a small icy body on an eccentric orbit that crosses Saturn's and reaches almost to Uranus, and it is also catalogued as a comet, 95P/Chiron.
Its period is about 50.7 years, but the orbit is so stretched that it lingers for years in Aries and Pisces and passes through Libra quickly, so its sign is shared by people born years apart.
A modern reading
Astrologers took Chiron up in the 1980s and read it from the Greek myth of the centaur who taught healing and could not heal his own wound: a tender place in a person that, understood, can become a source of empathy and wisdom. That reading is modern lore, about forty years old, not part of the tradition; the old texts could not know the body. Our keywords are "tender spot, healing, wisdom", meant in that inner sense and never as a word about the body.
In our chart
Chiron is shown on the wheel by default, with the glyph ⚷, a key that is also a K for Kowal. Our aspect policy treats it as a point: it takes aspects from the ten planets at half their orbs and makes none with the nodes or the angles. Its position comes from a two-day sample of the JPL Horizons orbit for 1850 to 2150, within about 0.015 arc second of the source. We show no other small body.
In our readings
Our chart's own line for Chiron reads: "Chiron represents a tender place in the psyche that, once understood, can become a source of empathy and wisdom." The chart gives Chiron no reading by sign or house of its own: it shows the position, the keywords and the aspects, and leaves the fuller readings to the planets. These are EsoTerrier's words, written in 2026.
Correspondences
Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.
- Discovery
- 1 November 1977, Charles Kowal, Palomar sourced
- Wounded-healer reading
- Modern, from the 1980s, after the myth of the centaur sourced
- An ancient part of astrology
- No: found in 1977, taken up in the 1980s disputed
- Glyph
- A key that is also a K, for Kowal sourced
- Our keywords
- "tender spot, healing, wisdom" our construction
How the schools read it
- Modern Western (from the 1980s)
- A tender place that, understood, can become empathy and wisdom; after the centaur who could not heal his own wound.
- Traditional revival
- Not used; sometimes not shown at all.
- Jyotisha
- Not used.
- EsoTerrier
- Shown on the wheel, labelled modern, at half orbs; keywords "tender spot, healing, wisdom" in the inner sense.
Claims about it
-
Chiron, the wounded healer, is an ancient part of astrology.
falseWhat the record shows: Chiron was announced on 1 November 1977, and astrologers took it up in the 1980s. The reading comes from the Greek myth of the centaur.
