These times of pain to live with and longing to help are not new in human experience. There are many myths, legends and stories that help us find inspiration and strength on our way.
(from: Library of Congress subject headings for this publication: Astrology and mythology)
The Greek myth of Chiron, the king of the centaurs whose incurable wound transformed him into a healer, is deeply relevant to our understanding of human suffering. The theme of the wounded healer-priest may be found in many cultures, and forms part of the training of the shaman in African and American Indian tribes. Yet nowhere is it so vividly portrayed as in the strange figure of Chiron. In myth, centaurs, half horse and half human, are images of the powerful forces of the instincts directed by human reason. Chiron, son of the earth god Saturn, was a denizen of forest and cave and a cunning hunter wise in plant and animal lore. He befriended the hero Hercules to his eventual misfortune, for Hercules accidently scratched him with the point of an arrow used to destroy the monster Hydra; this arrow was tainted with the monster’s blood, a corrosive poison for which there was no antidote. Despite his wisdom, the centaur could not find a way to ease his agony and heal his wound. This injury, caused by carelessness rather than any deliberate act of violence, transformed Chiron. Unable to release himself from pain, yet unable to die because he was immortal, he found meaning in his suffering through healing others.
When we are wounded by life’s unfairness, we are trapped in our suffering, and experience the need to find meaning in our pain. It may not take the pain away, but it can help us cope creatively with feelings which otherwise would poison us with unending bitterness.
But when life itself wounds us with its blind savagery — through the impact of wars, natural disasters, or an unfortunate genetic inheritance that is no single individual’s fault — then we are bewildered and frightened because it seems that life has no justice after all, and we face the dark impersonal forces of chaos. Simple religious faith may help some people to make peace with such experiences. But many individuals need more than the promise that God’s will is inscrutable and that the afterlife will be more pleasant.
Chiron reflects our need to stretch our understanding beyond collective social and religious precepts, for even Jupiter’s faith in a benign cosmos may at some point fail to satisfy our demand to know why life is sometimes so dreadfully hard. Psychological insight of the Plutonian kind may also fail us, when we face tragedies that have no deeper purpose than that which we make for ourselves out of the ruins. In his efforts to alleviate his pain, the mythic Chiron became a skilled healer of others, for eventually there was nothing about pain which he did not know. Thus Chiron within us can lead us beyond self-pity and blame into an increasing understanding of the endemic nature of human unhappiness, and of the means available to help others cope with it. From this is born compassion — a frequently misused word which comes from a Greek root meaning “to feel with.” We cannot experience compassion unless we have suffered. Avoiding the deeper challenges of life may allow us to feel a self-indulgent sentimentality in the face of human tragedy. But compassion as a living, healing force only springs from the experience of one’s own incurable wound. When we face those areas within ourselves which have been irrevocably and pointlessly damaged by life — and we all have them — we realize how hard it is to be human, and how much nobility there is in human nature to prompt so many to respond to misfortune with integrity and generosity.
Chiron may be difficult to express, because the child in us is challenged to grow up and face life as it is, rather than as we wish it could be. Because this inner child always hopes for a happy ending to the story, we may stubbornly cling to our instinct to blame someone or something, rather than allow Chiron’s hard-won wisdom to grow from stony ground. It is at the point where innocence is challenged by purposeless suffering that Chiron comes to meet us, for at such critical junctures our faith crumbles and we are at the mercy of life. Learning to carry our wounds without cynicism or self-pity can generate deep empathy and a profound capacity to share tine loneliness of being human. Strangely, such silent sharing of a fundamental human dilemma may be more healing than the strenuous efforts of tine professional do-gooder. Chiron’s recent discovery may also reflect the timely nature of this quality of compassion without sentimentality, for as a collective we need it badly. We are at present faced with the collapse of many old values and the disintegration of a world-view which can no longer explain what is happening around us. In desperation, many people have retreated into the rigid moral and religious attitudes of the past in an effort to find someone or something to blame. Yet we may one day discover wiser and more mature ways of coping with the chaos in which we find ourselves. As we face the real nature of the wounds we carry, Chiron points toward the emerging compassion of childhood’s end.