Guest article by Alison, contact astroalison@gmail.com       

I first met Amanda and the herd at In Harmony with Horses in 2014 when my adopted son was referred for Equine Assisted Therapy as he was not coping in mainstream school. We clicked immediately. I’ve have a horse Sappho and greatly admired Amandas’s work having read many books on the subject such as The Tao of Equus by Linda Kohanov. As time went on we discovered we are both Virgos, single mums with boys, also enjoy sailing and work shamanically in our different fields. We decided to do a Chiron’s Way workshop integrating astrology with horse healing to see what would happen and were we blown away.

Chiron has, since I started studying astrology aged 26 years, been of great interest to me. In my early twenties I spent seven years in an underworld of depression and went on to run a holistic crisis house for a further seven years in my late twenties as an alternative to psychiatric hospital admission. The crisis house called Anam Cara meaning ‘soul friend’ was very successful and I travelled all over the world communicating that ‘being with’ people was far more effective than medicating them for recovery. Chiron as a ‘wounded healer’ archetype was one I immediately resonated with as do so many people I meet these days.

We have timed this workshop to coincide with a rare Chiron Elatus opposition on the Pisces Virgo axis (a previous blog goes into some detail about the first opposition on the 20th May). Elatus first came into my consciousness when I did a birth chart for Zan an American Quarter horse crossed with a Painted horse. Zan is only 3 years old and has one blue and one brown eye giving him a striking appearance. Zan as a youngster is quite boisterous, breaking boundaries all the time and is an Aries Fire Horse so not a boy to be trifled with. He ripped half his face off as a colt so he cannot be ridden with a bit and has not yet been ridden at all. Zan is very attached to Millie the matriarch of the herd and feels insecure without her presence. I was somewhat surprised given his scary demeanour to find that Zan had all the Goddess Asteroids very strongly placed in his chart and had a mysterious Centaur Elatus bang on his Midheaven (career path). On doing a bit of research I discovered Elatus is described as an ‘inner saboteur’ by Zane Stein and another website mentioned his archetype as similar to The Wizard of Earth Sea hero by Ursula LeGuin. Syncronistically a friend handed me a DVD of this same film later that day. The character is an interesting one who constantly sabotages himself due to guilt and low self esteem.

We have releasing ‘guilt’ as a central theme of this Chiron day which resonates with the group as something which is stopping them fulfill their potential and creating heaviness in the heart. Many of the mothers present carry guilt about their children, those who are not mothers feel guilty about animals in their care and partners who are struggling. The Chiron readings tend to help people giving meaning to painful experiences rather than wishing they never happened. Chiron asks us to now devote the gifts we have gleaned from these wounds and to feel compassion for others. Almost everybody present has had powerful experiences communicating and being healed by animals including horses, dogs and rabbits. At first they are almost afraid to say so, but as they realize they are in safe company the stories of these wonderful healing experiences with animals expand.

The other issue which also seems to arise with Chiron is the race issue and several of the workshop participants have lived and worked in Africa. Feeling guilty about the past misdemeanors of countries like Britain and South Africa simply keeps us all stuck. We need to move on together creating a new world of love, equality and unity. We talk about appropriately apportioning responsibility taking into account factors such as poverty and cultural ideologies we were born into or on the other hand wealth and privilege. When we own and take responsibility for our small slice of the pie we then allow others to do the same. Forgiveness of ourselves seems so important and that what ever we might have done we STILL have gifts to offer.

For the first session three horses are chosen at random by the group, Zan, Sappho and Millie. Sappho is my horse only recently joined the herd and I am curious if she will spontaneously join in the healing. The horses hold an energy field and sometimes beam energy, at other times they approach people and give healing through their faces directly into chakras. Sappho seems to know just what do and gives various people healing including one woman down the entire length of her spine which it turns out is injured. The horses also reflect to people issues which Amanda and myself later interpret in relation to their charts. I think this is the way humans are too, that when we join the quantum field of healing we know just what to do but our minds interfere comparing ourselves with others, doubting our abilities and feeling unworthy of such light and wonder. Sappho untroubled by such things gets into the swing. Millie who has had injured legs for most of her life, a very typical Chiron wound, is the most experienced of the three and seems quietly to be directing the younger, inexperienced horses. Zan enthusiastically licks the hands and chakras of a woman sitting cross legged and it brings to mind the constellation Alpha Centauri where Chiron approaches an altar with an offering. What we have to give in devotion to Spirit through our hands is the key which transforms the painful wound.

My feeling is with Zan having done his chart is that he forces women to be in their power and set boundaries about what is comfortable. It is also interesting that Amanda had a whole male group on a heart opening workshop and Zan was the main horse reflecting their issues. This is one of the most powerful healings the horses give on this workshop, that it is ok to put down boundaries when we are feeling uncomfortable and not persist because of guilty feelings in overriding our instincts. We delay others spiritual growth when we refuse to allow them to take responsibility for their own healing. For the first time one of the collie dogs Luna also joins in actively healing one of the participants so the quantum leap it seems is infectious!

In the second horse healing Laddie the herd leader and Arko a gorgeous Halflinger are chosen. Laddie is a gypsy cob and when I once painted him (on his body) I felt moved to create a saddle made of diamonds, emeralds and rubies. Amanda told me afterwards in a heart drumming a few weeks previously Laddie had said he wanted jewels. As leader of this pioneering group of Cosmic Healing Horses he is a very great noble spirit of high equine spiritual leadership and yet in a very ordinary form. The two males move mirroring each other in the round pen before we enter arriving at a point together. I feel as if they are moving as Chiron and Elatus in opposition and then repolarising as they come together into harmonic resonance. This represents the point we understand the purpose of our own inner Elatus and turn our inner Chiron wounds outwardly to compassionate acts of giving. The most amazing aspect in these workshops is that the horses have often behaved like planetary bodies orbiting the round pen. Another round of healing opens and by the end we are all pretty much sitting round the other edge in a totally, relaxed and present state.

Guilt issues and Inner Saboteurs are impossible to face head on. Mindfulness and perhaps creative exercises with the unconscious part of the self are necessary to understand the purpose of an Inner Saboteur. The Buddhist exercise Tonglen is also a very powerful way to transform any negative emotion. Some people recoil at the idea of this but it is very heart opening.

Step 1. Breath in your negative emotion and breath out its solution e.g courage, lightness, forgiveness

Step 2. Bring to mind someone else’s experience you know about the same as yours and breath in their negative feeling into your heart and breath out the solution. This second step is good with someone you know and like.

Step 3. Bring to mind people in your country and spread out across the globe who you know have the same issue as you. Breath inall their negative experience and breath out the solution. I have underlined IN because this is the part most people will feel resistant too. If you try it in its fullness Tonglen will change your whole perspective from personal to collective which is the role that Chiron plays as the Rainbow Bridge.

Amanda has been researching her work with Leeds University and we may be the first people in the world to be doing astrology with horses but I hope this blog may spark others to see their horses and herds in a new light! I feel sure these horses have come from the stars to give us some special love and help in the evolution of our wonderful Living Planet. I believe that all horses, all animals and humans can step into this higher vibration of quantum light now. So if you are carrying a heavy burden of guilt let it go and allow yourself to believe you, me, we all have a special destiny awaiting no matter what we have done in the past. Apportion responsibility appropriately.

Amanda and I are expanding our work into Whispering with Whales and Dolphins in September 2015 where we will be enjoying the final Blood Moon eclipse and downloading the Sirius frequencies in the ocean between Tenerife and La Gomera and visiting both islands by yacht. Pilot whales live permanently in this channel and other whale species visit too. We will be visiting sacred sites (pyramids, volcanoes, Jurassic age forest and a Black Madonna) and swimming with turtles too. See the link below for full details and book your place soon if you feel moved to come along. This is a special trip by yacht, no noisy engines and spending as much time as is necessary with the Sirius Sea creatures. La Gomera has a special connection with America as it’s where Columbus set out from to discover the Americas. La Gomera is often recognised as one of he last islands of Atlantis.

http://www.inharmonywithhorses.co.uk/whale-whispering-astronomy-and-sacred-sites/

I specialise in Goddess Asteroid and Centaur chart readings which take you deeper into your spiritual purpose and open portals to these energies. Please contact me at astroalison@gmail.com for further information.