This week the astrological love omens are on high alert, given that the gracious planet Venus is catching up with expansive Jupiter in the evening sky. We could just say that their meeting on Thursday, March 2, 2023 will make for a great date night, and leave it at that, but I’m interested in the longer narrative.
Last year at the beginning of March, Venus was escorted through the morning sky by her beloved Mars, and the two of them came conjunct Pluto, intense lord of the underworld. By contrast, this year, Venus is attending Jupiter in encounter with Chiron in the evening sky. Chiron? Who’s that? In ancient Greek Mythology, Chiron was a centaur, not your typical lascivious centaur, but a wise and great healer, an astrologer, and a respected oracle. Chiron trained many famous heroes and it was believed in the ancient world that without him, there would be no art of healing.
Astrologically, Chiron brings the impulse of the wounded healer.
In astronomy, Chiron is classified as a small solar system object, orbiting between Saturn and Uranus. With its 50-year orbital rhythm, Chiron plays the long game, sticking around to see a process all the way through. We can’t see Chiron in the sky, but we can know it’s there, bringing depth Thursday’s encounter between Venus and Jupiter.
With these three together this week, the picture for me is one of not just personal love that can be consumed by passionate possession, nor even of a higher love that has an element of selflessness in it, but of a true love, one that endures, the way it’s expressed in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116, a love that is not time’s fool nor that alters with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom.