The
Centaur Pholus has a very elliptical orbit which takes him from the
realm of Saturn to that of Pluto, crossing the orbits of Uranus and
Neptune as he goes. So he covers a lot of territory and has contact
with several of planets on the way.
Melanie
Reinhart uses the phrase 'the lid comes off' for Pholus. That
relates to him being the Keeper of the Sacred Wine Jar (given to him
by Dionysus) which had been kept sealed for four generations – a
reminder that all Centaurs have an ancestral dimension. The story of
Pholus and his downfall is that Heracles came to visit one day and
Pholus took the lid off the jar to give some to Heracles. Chaos
ensued! The wild centaurs smelt the wine and became intoxicated.
They came thundering to the cave and began to hurl rocks and tear up
trees. Heracles got out his arrows and started to fire them into the
centaurs. They dropped like flies because the arrows had been dipped
in the blood of the Hydra, which was deadly poison. The remaining
centaurs fled with Heracles in pursuit. Pholus, left behind to clear
up the mess, pulled an arrow out of one of the dead centaurs and
examined it, marvelling at how such a tiny thing could fell such an
enormous beast. However, the arrow fell from his grasp and pierced
his foot, and he died instantly.
In
'Saturn, Chiron and the Centaurs' (pg 224) Melanie mentions the
possibility that the brief period when Pholus is within the realm of
Saturn – and so subject to more constraints than when in the realms
of the three transpersonals – may be times when the lid should stay
on the jar. This idea fascinated me and I've been mulling it over
since the seminar. There are two things to consider here. Not only
is there the matter of what difference it might make to mundane
events and people born when the jar should be kept sealed, but also
how does it change Pholus' expression in the period that he ventures
out past Neptune's orbit and moves through Pluto's realm?
All
Centaur cycles begin at their perihelion, when they're at their
closest to the Sun. When they're at aphelion, they're at their
farthest way from the sun and closest to Pluto's realm, which is the Kuiper Belt astronomically and the
Underworld mythologically . Some Centaurs go further into Pluto's realm than Pholus,
but that doesn't concern us here.
To get an idea of how it might work in individual charts it's
easiest to start with what was happening in the world when Pholus was at the extremes of his orbit, as that's the ground
from which individuals emerge. And it's important to remember that
Pholus isn't operating in a vacuum. In fact, Pholus seems to be
linked in to the Uranus-Neptune cycle, as for the last couple of
hundred years every other Pholus perihelion has occurred quite close
to the Uranus-Neptune conjunction (understandable, as this cycle is around
171 years and Pholus' is about 92 years). There are also links with
the Uranus-Pluto cycle, though these are more spasmodic.
Potentially
there are six different phases in Pholus' cycle. The waxing
phase starts at perihelion when the lid is kept
on, then the main part (the lid comes off) and the period in the Underworld. Aphelion
begins in the Underworld still, but with things now being brought back to the surface world. This leads to another period of 'the lid comes
off' when things spill out of the jar then, at the very end of the
cycle, the jar is once again sealed.
The
sealed jar suggests a womb-like environment, where things can ferment
or develop in the dark. It's like the period when the Moon is
dark, which encompasses both the end of the old cycle and the
beginning of the new. Using the analogy of the seed, it's released
towards the end of the cycle and drops to earth. It beds itself down
as one cycle ends and starts to germinate as the new cycle begins,
which in this case is when Pholus is closest to the Sun. Or at
least, it might – after all, not every seed develops. That's why
the lid has to stay on – to provide a safe and nurturing
environment from which new impulses can emerge. And what better
place for things to begin to take form than in the realm of Saturn?
During
the next phase – the lid comes off – we get the new shoots
emerging and growing ever stronger. Pholus at this stage is like the
genie who escapes from the bottle: once the cork's out, there's no
telling what he'll get up to. It could be an inspirational and
creative journey, or a disastrous one. Life's like that. There are
no certainties, and uncertainty is very much part of Pholus' nature.
Pholus
entering the Underworld is about encountering forces that are beyond
our understanding, and beyond our control. They're cold and
impersonal, like Pluto. You can't bargain with them, or do deals –
this is not the realm of the mischievous but genial genie. What you
encounter here are chthonic forces that are utterly indifferent to
humans. And they can be terrifying. I think here of bumbling Uncle
Andrew in C S Lewis' 'The Magician's Nephew,' who unwittingly lets
loose the terrifying, titanic figure of Queen Jadis on Edwardian
London – She who has spoken the Deplorable Word which destroyed her
own world. We, of course, are Uncle Andrew.
Aphelion
is the midpoint of the cycle, and from here we're bringing something
back from the deepest part of the Underworld and letting it loose on
the world. As Pholus once again crosses into Neptune's realm, the
lid is off the jar again and who knows what will arise or where it'll
lead us. Then, as the cycle draws to a close, the lid is shut again.
This both closes the door on the old cycle and carries the seed of
the new, which may well be something else
that was brought back from the Underworld, but which
hasn't yet manifested.
I will
pause there, and explain how this plays out in Pholus' recent cycles
separately.
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