Ancestral Astrology: Patterns and Cycles in Trauma and Healing

Over the past few months, in my personal astrology practice, I have been looking deeper into Ancestral Astrology and discovering that with a bit of patience and detective work, the chart, or charts, can reveal valuable information on these themes. Ancestral astrology is particularly helpful when understanding patterns and cycles of trauma, abuse, and healing. Working with a constellation of planets, points, asteroids, and particularly the centaurs, a story emerges. By following the thread and bringing the light of consciousness to the shadows, one has the potential to see things from a wider, or higher perspective than the story bite we may be stuck in.

Nessus, Pholus, Chiron, the nodes of the moon, the Child asteroid, and asteroid Dejanira are excellent story tellers when it comes to revealing the patterns of abuse and how it cycles through the generations.

Nessus has an orbit of 122 years and 4 months, approx. 5 or 6 generations, while Pholus has an orbit 91 years and 9 months, approx. 4, or 5 generations. Chiron is more immediate in our own lifetime with a highly elliptical orbit of around 50 years and 7 months.

The mythology of the centaurs offers a tremendous amount of symbolism when working with ancestral themes, their invisible workings, and karmic influences. In the mythology of how Chiron received a wound to the leg, for example, all hell lets loose when Pholus uncorks a skin of wine that was given to the Centaur race by Dionysus with the proviso that it was not to be opened for 4 generations. That the skirmish involved Heracles, the solar hero, who inspired the opening of the wine, points to the light of consciousness that is ready to receive what has been buried in the depths.

Dejanira, the Calydonian princess whose name translates as “destroyer’ is duped by Nessus and is tricked into giving her husband, Heracles, a shirt covered with poisonous blood from the Hydra, the serpentine monster with nine heads… slay one another pops up. The “Shirt of Nessus” speaks of the bad blood of feuds that passes from generation to generation.

The Nessus- Heracles- Dejanira triad points to how the cycles of abuse shift from victim to abuser in a legacy of trauma where no one ever truly wins.

Redemption comes through Chiron who teaches us that despite the ancestral or karmic wounds that we may have inherited, we can learn to transmute the poison into gold. Redemption also comes in the form of the Child, the one who through the innocence and light of the Divine Child can transcend the darkness of the world and recognise herself for the divine being that she is.

I am working quite intensively on these themes in my own astro- family- constellation in the aftermath of my mother’s death and a need to understand dynamics that have underpinned my life as it relates to ancestral patterns, particularly through the mother-line.

If you would like to explore these themes in your own chart, I would be honoured to offer you an astrology session. You can find out more by contacting me at karenmullensmith@gmail.com