Francis X Caulfield

The Original Body of Life

We are " participating in one of the very greatest leaps of the human spirit to a knowledge
not only of outside nature, but also of our deep inward mystery"
Joseph Campbell

This is the first part of a two-part article. The second is entitled Chiron, Wilber and Centaur: the Body's Role in Personal and Planetary Transformaiton and is available at franciscaulfield.com/articles.html .

The main thrust of this article is that the human body contains a multi-dimensional intelligence and cosmic design that is accessed though bodywork and leads to the unfolding and development of the True Human. This body wisdom is awakened through bodywork and not necessarily though traditional spiritual practices that focus more on non-attachment and dis-identification and the impersonal life. There are massive personal and planetary transformations underway and bodywork, in all of its forms is a core factor underlying the shift. The reason why I wrote the article was simply to encourage you to receive bodywork and vibrational healing work on a regular basis, at least once a month, in order to participate and keep pace with the transformations that are occurring.

Remember that astrology is more than the exchange of information; it is the transmission of experience. The informing that takes place during a reading is one suggested by the Hermetic axiom, known by the ancient and shamanic worlds, ìAs it is above, so it is below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul.î A reading is an invocation of your life long tutelary deities and guardian angels. By aligning and attuning with these planetary agencies, celestial and terrestrial intelligences are invoked that inspire, inform and guide you along the Soulís path.

This article focuses on Chiron and on the astrological factors involved in this shift in the collective consciousness. A good place to begin is with the turbulent 60ís, which is when this shift first emerged, unless you happen to be a couple of thousands of years old, in which case you would recognize it to be a return of an archaic intelligence that once thrived on the planet and began to disappear or be destroyed with the death of the Sacred Feminine and the rise of Christianity.

Chiron is the planet (actually itís in between a planet and an asteroid, i.e., a planetoid) that most signifies healing, bodywork, mentoring and traditional medicine. Chiron is the Inner Shaman / Wounded Healer. The word Chiron derives from one of the oldest roots in the Greek language. So powerful was his influence on the legends and myths of the ancient world that today many of the names describing the ancient healing and divinatory arts have their etymological roots in Chiron. Within the field of divination, chiromancy means reading the hands or palmistry. Chiron in the Tarot deck is the Hierophant, which actually means ërevealer of the mysteriesí, or ëteacher of the mysteriesí. An initiate into the mysteries of the Hierophant was said to no longer fear death.

In the holistic healing vein, Chiral means the polarization of light from one hand to the other; Chiropractic is the healing of the joints and bones by means of manipulation; Chirothesia is the energy in the hands during sacred rites, while Chirotony is a blessing without hands. Familiar words, such as crisis, crossroads and crux are derived from Chiron, as are Christ, crucifixion and cross. All of them play a part in helping us to understand the function and purpose of Chiron. Through life changing crises, such as the death of a partner, the loss of health, a job or a relationship, an entire way of life comes to an end. We come to the crossroads of our lives, to the crux of the matter, asking for a vision, a message or a sign that informs as to the purpose and direction of our lives. Through crisis, we are initiated into the shamanic journey of suffering, death, rebirth and return, if we are willing and able to set foot upon that sacred path.

Carl Jung also recognized crisis as part of the individuation process as portrayed in both alchemy and shamanism: ëloss of soul, dismemberment, descent into a lower world, ascent into an upper world, and union with a spirit spouse.'. It is through crisis that we discover innate capacities and abilities and develop skills and talents that we never would have discovered unless our lives were thrown into crisis, unless we were pushed beyond ourselves inevitably uncovering within the crisis or the wound, the cure and the remedy. As this is no ordinary wound but a sacred one, we necessarily discover and develop archetypal and transpersonal resources in our own quest for self-healing and renewal. This means establishing contact with our own spirit guides and guardians, and trusting our instincts and intuition. As we are initiated into new ways of being and becoming in the world, we find that these newfound skills, abilities and resources serve a wider, cosmic purpose. Thus we come to serve as mentors, guardians and allies to others who are in crises and in the midst of a huge transition in their lives.

This path is the complete opposite from that suggested by the flippant mantra of our alienated, materialistic and narcissistic culture namely ëHe who dies with the most toys winsí. Actually he or she who dies with the most toys completely misses the entire purpose of existence. The open ended quest for true identity and the fulfillment of our fate deepens and matures until it ripens and unfolds into a life long Vision Quest, involving a constant communion with the spirit world for the revelation of our direction, guidance and purpose.

Some astrological history is pertinent here. Chiron was preeminent in the skies in the turbulent mid-60ís, along with Saturn (the government, authority, politics, conventional reality), Uranus (radical change, rebellion, revolution) and Pluto (the underworld, power over the masses, ruthless destruction through warfare), with a nice assist from Neptune (deception, drugs, escapism). The planetary picture was that of Chiron/Saturn in Pisces opposing Uranus/Pluto in Leo with Neptune in Scorpio trining Saturn/Chiron and sextiling Uranus/Pluto. Overall this is a highly turbulent planetary alignment. However even without looking to astrology, anyone can tell you that the 60's was an entirely disruptive time, one that saw the rise of ecological, feminist, and civil rights movements, the breakdown of racial barriers, distrust of the military, industrial establishment and the birth of the counter-culture.

Chiron, however, was not discovered until 1977. At that time, divination, bodywork, healing, shamanic, transpersonal and humanistic therapies came to the forefront of the counter-culture community. The 60ís generation began to turn away from an exclusive orientation with the spiritual philosophies and transcendent practices of Hinduism and Buddhism (ruled by Neptune) and began to embrace earth-oriented/body-centered teachings (ruled by Chiron) as an antidote to the spiritual idealization, guru dependency, and disembodiment that the eastern systems and the gurus mistakenly fostered. By then, it had become increasingly clear that the disowned irrational and instinctual elements within our psyche/soma had a life of their own, and unless they were made conscious, tended to compulsively repeat themselves. While one may have enjoyed spiritual ecstasies in deepest meditation, in the everyday world of personal and interpersonal relationships, unresolved and disowned survival, sexual and social instincts and impulses undermined and rendered useless these otherwise valuable spiritual experiences.

Most of us in todayís world are disembodied, living in a culture where touch has been tabooed, inappropriate and oftentimes violent and abusive. As a result, we live in our heads and in our rationalized version of reality, which results in insanity and the desacralization of the earth. And for those of us who have engaged ourselves in the impersonal path, a spiritualized idealization of truth has supplanted and sanitized our emotional and instinctual truths, yet these truths and realities lie buried in our bodies and within our psyche. Ken Wilber, in his book No Boundary, lays out this problem clearly. ëIt is not exactly that man loses touch with his body. Rather, he loses touch with the unity of the body and mind, the unity of feeling and attention that is characteristic of the centaur . The whole clarity of feeling-attention becomes disrupted and distorted, and in its place is left compulsive thinking on the one hand, and the dissociated body on the other.í

In the Atman Project, Wilber describes a mode of consciousness that he calls ëCentauricí, which is relevant to the planet Chiron not just because of the name synchronously chosen. In Greek mythology, Chiron is a centaur!. It shows us clearly the difference between entirely different modes of consciousness. Wilber clearly contrasts this more sophisticated Centauric mode with the ëolderí Typhonic mode, which is exclusively instinctually based. The infantile body-ego was a stage (Typhonic) wherein body and self or body and ego were undifferentiated. Wilbur describes the Centauric Self as a ëblissful state; cosmic love, reception of grace (higher energies), heightened bodily awareness (supersensory); the highest function of bodily consciousness.

The existential centaur, then, is not only the higher-order integration of ego, body, persona, and shadow, it is also the major transition towards the higher subtle and transpersonal realms of being.. Wilber discusses us how this shift to the Centauric Self is to be accomplished namely ëby touching and re-owning our ignored bodies', a perfect description of bodywork. He later explains that ëThere is preverbal (primary process), and there is verbal (secondary process) and above and beyond both, as a magic synthesis, there is transverbal: intentionality, high-phantasy, and the vision-imageí. This satement is a perfect description of the role and function of the astrologer/diviner. By combining the substance and meaning of Chiron and the Centaur, we can see that two ways of entering into the Centauric Self, into the realm of the Transpersonal Self or the True Human, are through bodywork and divination.

Fortunately and not coincidentally, there are hundreds of thousands of bodyworkers/healers residing on the planet. Since the discovery of Chiron in the 70ís there has been an explosion of interest in bodywork, energy healing, mentoring, divination, and the unfolding of the Ture Human. The curriculums in massage schools and the offerings in the New Age market place reflect this growing interest and need with numerous practices from east and west, modern and ancient constantly emerging. The tribes are gathering and momentum is building. Invite your allies and guardians both in this world and in the spirit world, into your personal medicine circle and gather together with members of your extended community for the same purpose. Increasing numbers of people are engaging in vision questing rituals for the express purpose of initiation and participation in the emergence and embodiment of the archaic and transpersonal intelligence.

Whenever I see Chiron influential in the charts of my clients, I recommend that they seek out the services of Chironian healers, mentors and bodyworkers to assist them in reentering their bodies and their lives. Wherever Chiron is located in your natal chart signals areas and energies that will undergo crisis, ideally as opportunity for change and for initiation into the Centauric Self. In many instances Chiron is an overwhelming and overriding influence in the chart as the entire life is lived as a medicine path and vision quest, with healing and divination paramount. It should come as no surprise that Chiron is a major factor in my own chart. Thus I make my living in the world as an astrologer and practitioner of the intuitive healing arts.

The more individuals who attain the Christ/Chiron/Centaur Consciousness, the stronger and more noticeable the group Centaur/Chiron/Christ field is for everyone on the entire planet. In anchoring this field, we become the Rainbow Bridge that allows others who are in crisis to cross over from the old dying world into the new world through the journey of suffering, death, rebirth and return. This development has been happening since the 60ís and has increased in momentum and is reaching a point of culmination and release. New seeds of awareness are being sown to counteract the ignorance and stupidity of the world mind, which is actually destroying itself. The following quote from Joseph Campbell bears repeating. We are " participating in one of the very greatest leaps of the human spirit to a knowledge not only of outside nature, but also of our deep inward mystery".

Francis X Caulfield, a life-long student and practitioner of Astrology, offers a holistic vision to astrological divination and counseling. He reads the natal chart as a transformational blueprint of the Self, impeccably informed with celestial guidance and insight. He eloquently blends intuition with modern and ancient astrological expertise forming a multi-layered, comprehensive understanding of each client's distinct life purpose, potential, and direction.

Francis is a talented Vibrational Healer/Bodyworker with 20 years in private practice and 30 plus years of meditation practice. His work is an intuitive blend of Somatic, Energetic, and Shamanic bodyworks for Spiritual Awakening, Personal Transformation, and Holistic Healing.

He also conducts group and individual Remote Healings, Sacred Sound Ceremonies, Toning Workshops, and programs in Energy Medicine Circles and Vibrational Meditation , and presentations on the Illumination of the Body.

Francis X Caulfield
francis@franciscaulfield.com
970.769.1102