Nessus Conjunct the Sun: The Sins of the Fathers.

Today sees a conjunction between the centaur Nessus and the Sun at 20° Pisces. This pairing often highlights themes of generational trauma, toxicity and the breaking of generational abuse. Nessus is involved with issues of power misuse and betrayal. In relation to the Sun it is often, though not always, associated with the father and paternal figures.

In working with “Ancestral Astrology”, and particularly in working with ancestral trauma, certain astrological signatures are often present. One such signature is the centaur Nessus. Asteroids and centaurs add nuanced layers when building a picture of what has been passed down through the lineage.

This kind of exploration is not just an historical cultural account of events or the lives of the individuals involved, it is a journey to excavate the family soul.

Symbolic language, intuition, information from dreams, and repeated echoes in the charts all add to a richly textured tapestry of ancestral experience.

“The book says we may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us”.

When historical trauma remains unresolved it seeps through to the present no matter how hard we strive to dam our psychic reservoirs.

Epigenetics has shown that what was experienced by our grandparents, great grandparents, and beyond, are reactivated under certain conditions.

Many others and I have reflected on the effects of the witch trials of the early modern period. There are those of us who also consider the traumatic legacy of war, poverty, and other injuries to human life. These psychic fissures cannot be filled with the distractions and comforts of the modern world; they cannot be soldered with pharmaceutical fillers or held up with cultural scaffolding. They cannot be written out of history or sanitised by the clean functional language of AI.

Until the wounds of the past are acknowledged, until the archetype that is trying to be expressed through an ancestral lineage is made conscious, its influence persists.

It shows up in the individual, the family soul, the cultural soul, and the world soul.

Each of us are a microcosmic expression of greater patterns and cycles. Behind us stand our ancestors, their stories yet untold, or told only through carefully curated narratives.

Many stories are waiting to pierce through the increasingly flimsy constructs of our world to rewrite our history.

Astrology offers a language that can be understood by the soul.

In approaching material frozen in time, we can like Perseus, survive being turned to stone under Medusa’s petrifying gaze, by approaching slowly, indirectly, cautiously, patiently, and symbolically…through the looking glass. If our approach is correct, we can release inspiration and creativity that has been trapped in the unconscious for aeons.

The image I have used for my post is a “scold’s bridle”, designed to silence and humiliate “troublesome” women and those suspected of witchcraft.

I expect that in the coming years many stories will begin to unfurl from the repository of our collective psyche. This could depict a very different history from the one we have accepted.

If you would like to explore ancestral astrology with me, I offer focused sessions where we compare your chart with those of family members from the past. I also consider the cultural context and the times.

Not everybody has access to the astro data of their parents and grandparents, but it is still possible to begin to build a story based on what information we do have.

I generally recommend a few sessions to get the most out of this work. Journalling, recording dreams, and a bit of family research are also encouraged and brought into the sessions.

Author’s own image: Scold’s Bridle, National Museum of Scotland. Edinburgh, August 2024.

Karen Mullen Smith ©