According to the Yahoo astrologer, Chiron has been retrograde since June 8, but today it will halt its retrograde motion at 3:15 pm (in California) and pause for a moment overhead before starting forward in Pisces where it will resume its forward motion until June 11, 2012.

The characters for Chiron’s story are:

The maverick, a shape-shifting oracle who holds the keys that open doors to higher consciousness and twilight zones of strange awareness;

The wounded healer and her praxis of holistic healing, alternative medicine, herbalism, and folk medicine; and

The shaman, a catalyst who builds bridges between the spiritual and material planes.

These three send healing thoughts and prayers to dear ones, friends, associates, and kingdoms of nature.

The Yahoo astrologer says Chiron is a “comet-like celestial body,” while  Wikipedia says Chiron is “the most significant of the ‘centaur’ asteroids.”

Looking deeper into Wikipedia, Chiron the Shapeshifter is maybe an asteroid or a perhaps a planetoid orbiting the  Sun between Mars and Jupiter, not to be confused with Centaurs or Trans-Neptunian Objects.

In astrology, Chiron is associated with incurable trauma and wounds that may be worked with on their own terms and transformed into great strengths (Peacock Neutralizes Poison).

More Wikipedia: 2060 Chiron is the true name of the celestial body which is maybe a “minor planet in the outer Solar System.” It was discovered on October 18, 1977, and classified as the tenth planet at first. Or it could be an asteroid, and it sometimes behaves like a comet (occasionally develops a tail), and when it’s a comet it’s known as 95P/Chiron. Oh, and it has a highly eccentric orbit (why am I not surprised).

According to Wikipedia, “Chiron is probably a refugee from the Kuiper belt and  will probably become a short-period comet in about a million years.”

In Greek mythology, Chiron was a very special Centaur. Centaurs in general were born of sun and raincloud, were wild and lusty, overly indulgent drinkers and carousers, given to violence when intoxicated, and generally uncultured delinquents (this is for you Stephen). Chiron, on the other hand, was intelligent, peaceful, civilized and kind. Apollo and Artemis were his teachers, and he turned out to be a great healer and teacher and a respected oracle.

There’s a lost book, Precepts of Chiron, thought to be the work of Hesiod, from which only fragments survive. One of the fragments:

“A chattering crow lives out nine generations of aged men, but a stag’s life is four times  a crow’s, and a raven’s life makes three stags old, while the phoenix outlives nine ravens, but we, the rich-haired Nymphs, daughters of Zeus, the aegis-holder, outlive ten phoenixes.”

As the son of Cronus, a Titan, Chiron was immortal, but Heracles made a bargain with Zeus, trading Chiron’s immortailty for the life of Prometheus. Chiron was betrayed by one of his students and killed with a poison arrow, although the details are controversial.

It all happened a long time ago.