0:01 Greetings everyone. I am so thrilled and honored to be back in conversation with my dear friend Melanie Reinhardt. And today we're going to be talking in depth about the healing centaur Nessus. But Melanie, I'm so glad to be back in conversation with you. I mean, as everyone knows, you're an internationally known astrologer. You're a patron of the faculty of astrology studies, a gifted writer, teacher, as well as astrologer. You are especially amazing with your delineation of these healing centaurs and how they're coming into play in our lives in these profound times. And two of your
0:48 many books are Chiron and the Healing Journey and Saturn, Chiron and the Centaurs. And part of what I respect about you and love about you is your own commitment to your inner process of contemplation and healing. So you not only talk about these healing centaurs and how they're guiding us individually and collectively, but you walk your talk and you really work with them in a profound way in your own life. So thank you for being in this conversation today. Oh, Heather, thank you for that lovely introduction. And yes, I mean I I know I can't imagine working without the
1:33 centtors and they have indeed been very focal in my life and I think have really helped me with some really difficult inner processing and so forth. So I tr I truly know from the inside the kind of processes that they're about and I'm always happy for an opportunity to share that especially in conversation with you my dear. Well, I am so excited to talk about Nessus today because he's unique in terms of his lineage in in comparison with the other centaurs, but also as you
2:20 and I were just discussing, he's so critically active now as he's moving into conjunction with the North Node in Pisces. will be with a 5°ree orb from May 7th through December 14th this year. Wow. And I have just been profoundly moved by how the critical role the different centaurs are playing in the transits as we're in this incredibly accelerated time of transformation coming out of the end of the Kyuga and moving into the age of Aquarius. It's like they're holding us through this transmutational process to help heal and
3:06 move into new ways of being and new forms of consciousness. Yeah. Absolutely. And you know when I was very first working with Nessus um the phrase the buck stops here came to me. Now I didn't make that up. I just heard so many clients use that phrase and o of of what that phrase means. I think it's something about drawing a line under a process which may have been rolling and rolling and rolling maybe out of
3:54 awareness where you didn't even really know what it was. But you knew there was something bothering you, agitating you, frightening you, whatever the case may be. but you didn't have the context and you couldn't see what it was. And the amazing thing about Nessus is that sometimes its transits precipitate um a person taking really firm action to stop something. Okay. But there is also an internal version of that where a process goes
4:39 on which ripens to its closure and you may never know what it was. So for those of us who kind of know it alls and have to know everything and analyze everything, that's terrible. But actually, it's a it's a grace of such depth. And now I I'm talking just, you know, from how I've seen it working in people's lives. People report things like, "Wow, I just woke up one morning and something which has been burdening me all my life and I still don't know what it is, it's gone."
5:27 Wow. Okay. So, that's the two ends of that spectrum. It can be an entirely invisible process which is very likely to be something ancestral and it's possibly far enough back so you don't even know who the ancestors are. Um, not many people can fill their family tree beyond about four generations back unless you're royalty or something where they keep all the records. Um, but ancestrally Nessus will also refer us to the historical, political, social
6:15 context within which our ancestors lived. And who were and our ancestors were impacted by that. And so there can be story lines which are historically specific and you know the details and the tone and everything they really are date and time specific and place specific. uh for example the Holocaust in the Second World War that's a very specific set of events that produce a very specific set of traumas with it or you know over here in the
7:02 UK there were things like the famines in Ireland and all the political complexities around that mind-boggling and and that experience of starvation, I've seen it again and again in in people from these islands, you know. Uh and so these are the kind of things that that the trail of Nessus picks up. Some of them see I I I I always work on the kind of principle that whatever we need to know for the sake of our own
7:51 unfoldment and for the sake therefore of our relationships with all the people that we're connected with. Whatever that is. uh if we need to know it somehow by some means or other it will come to us and of course astrology is a a prime tool that can help to make that possible. It's not as if when you've when you've picked up the the planetary and astrological details and that's not it. But depending on how you approach that information, it can be like
8:39 the the famed arrow of the centaur which goes straight to the point and may even appear to open up a wound. But in fact, it's like an arc of healing that goes straight into the depths of what we do need to know. And we will know that from within. It's not something you can necessarily figure out. Although sometimes trying to figure stuff out has its own value because it starts to focus your energy on what you need to know even if you don't know what it is that you need to know kind of thing. And so to me that's the kind of
9:25 territory that that Nessus o opens up for us can be very ancient poisons which kind of come to the surface in one way or another. I noticed when I when I was still intensively researching Nessus that the metaphor of burning came up again and again and again. So, in the story of Hercules, which I know we're going to discuss more, one of the core images is the burning shirt or tunic. And so that can
10:12 manifest transits can manifest as things like rashes, nettle rash, poison ivy, even measles or something which has a it's usually red cuz there's inflammation there. But any kind of a rash or just being very flushed, being allergic, getting flushed. And it got to the point where if a client would walk in and I could see their fl their face or neck was really flushed. I would I would immediately wonder whether there was a Ness's transit around and nine times out of 10 there was.
10:57 Also the adjective burning, we use that a lot in our language to describe different emotions and states of mind. And you can guarantee that the story of Hercules, Nessus and Hercules taken as a whole package. It includes all of them. We have burning anger, burning rage, burning shame, burning ambition. All of it. All of it is there. And there's probably many more examples that I could think of. And so, it's both a burning and a kind of burning up. It's extraordinary. And I want to
11:44 get into the story so people have a sense of those deeper themes. But some of what you're talking about that is so profound, Melanie, is that that ancestral trauma can get encoded in our psyches without our knowing the stories because so Exactly. for example, Holocaust survivors did not want to share the stories of their trauma with the next generations. And from a psychological perspective, I know about how often then what occurred was vicarious traumatization. It was often grandchildren that would then start exhibiting the trauma response related to the trauma their grandparents had been through, but without knowing the
12:29 stories. Exactly. So it feels like Nessus helps us clear what we've inherited that we need to clear to be back in our own healing. But I also believe that when we heal, we heal forward seven generations and back seven generations. Absolutely. Healing the ancestral lineage. Yeah. Interesting too that rashes are often the body's way of trying to detox. Yes. burning up because usually the body temperature is raised. Yeah. And also you know I I've seen a lot also of situation of migration. So as you say
13:15 often parents don't tell children about their traumas. So it like skips a generation. So you can see that in patterns of migration. Um the first generation of migrants are often so focused on trying to adapt to the new culture, find their feet, make a living, establish a network and so on and so forth. That there may be precious time for anything remotely resembling inner work. Okay? So that may be paused and handed on to the next generation who because they don't know the full story that kind of don't know
14:02 what's hit them in their own inner process. But very often um the central process can take can take people on some astounding journeys. People start getting a little sense of what's back there and they pick up the trail. And I'm sure you know this too from your work. people, you know, make journeys to places of significance where ancestors lived or died or went to war and so on. And you know when you when you look
14:49 at the when you look at the statistics around this you know you could almost see much of Europe is a big graveyard from wars of one kind or another. You know the ground we stand on is full of the bones of our ancestors. Not just personally but nationally. And you know there's many a story untold in that but a story which really looks to be told will find its way out in one way or another. I'm quite sure that many
15:35 uh artists and musicians and creative people of all kinds may well be using that grist to the mill of their own creative work. And I've heard many interviews, as I'm sure you have, with people who have become conscious of specifics about their ancestry through the medium of their own creative work. You know, this the stories that are like our root system. I believe they're fundamental to the life of the soul, you know. Well, and it's interesting too that
16:21 these Greek myths that are so embedded in our psyche are filled with these themes of trauma. Absolutely. And this story in particular is so filled with layers of trauma, layer upon layer. It's a mythic representation of what so many of us individually or culturally have lived and and the Greek myths come out of that age of Aries when we moved into the time of war and conquest power over. So we see these themes play out in the stories. So tell us the story of Nessus. Indeed something just came to mind. You
17:08 know the word cathosis, I believe it relates back to the art of Greek drama. So the way that Greek dramas were originally held was as a major event which was all day or over a weekend. Not that they had things like weekends and so on back then. So you know people would come and they would eat there and maybe sleep there and everything against the backdrop of this extraordinary drama going on. And so the sense of identification with the actors, the singers and everybody
17:55 presenting the drama, the audience's capacity to empathize with that was the cathosis because they could see out there on the stage the actions and the consequences of what the mythical heroes and heroins in these stories we're actually going through. So there are many many points of identification and the story of Nessus and Hercules is a big one. I mean, there's so many contemporary hero stories, including in Hollywood and all
18:41 that, that have probably been influenced by the story cuz it's just got everything in it, you know. Absolutely. Yes. So, describe the story. Well, no, you please chip in because the story is so immense that I I think I'm facing two risks. One is that I go off on all kinds of highways and byways and lose the plot. And the other one is that I don't say enough, you know. So you please you chip in, intercept, ask questions, do whatever. So in terms of the relevance for our friend the centaur Nessus
19:29 um I'll start with that bit and maybe backfill a little bit. Uh the involvement with Nessus relates to the stage in Hercules's story uh where he was married to a woman called Diona and it wasn't his first marriage or his first love. to wind back a bit at the beginning of the life of Hercules. His um his father was Zeus and his mother was a mortal woman called
20:15 Alchem and Hera was the official wife of Zeus. So Hercules stood as an eternal reminder of her husband's infidelity and so she hated Hercules. The name Heracles is a a kind of a it's a kind of a pun, kind of an insult that means the glory of Hera. Oh my goodness. Never knew that. It was the opposite of her glory. So that's like a digger, you know, glory of Hera lost out
21:00 to one of Zeus's mistresses, you see. And so Hera tried to kill Hercules who had a twin brother called Epheles. There's a whole complicated story about how they were twins but with different fathers. Okay, figure that one out. But Ephes was almost a polar opposite of Hercules. kind of timid and sensitive and fearful. Okay. Hera sent snakes to kill Hercules when he was still in the cradle. And Hercules proved his divine
21:48 origin by successfully seeing them off without either Ificles or himself getting wounded. And so, you know, only somebody who was a son of a divine being could do that because there was, you know, an argument about which of the two young boys, which of the twins was the mortal one. Interesting. And so Hercules had a mortal twin or a twin not sired by an immortal, but he was. And it didn't stop there. Hera kind of pursued and harassed Hercules to the point where she literally drove him
22:33 mad. And in a fit of unconsciousness and madness, he murdered his wife and his whole family. That was his first wife called Mega. And when he sort of came round from this horror, the beginning of Hercules capacity to self-reflect shows itself right away because he goes to the Oracle of Delelfi for help. And there he's told that in order to expedate this [Music] crime, he has to perform a number of labors, 12 to be
23:20 precise. And in particular, in the work of Alice Bailey, the 12 labors are associated with the 12 signs of the zodiac, which is a fascinating background myth. through which to think about the zodiac at all. In other words, there stories of experation, of struggle and redemption. So there are 12 very elaborate and very dramatic labors is all all of it is the stuff of Hollywood. You know, it's Hollywood is nothing new. This is it, you know, thousands of years back kind of thing.
24:08 And around the final labor was when the story with Diona [Music] happened. So he needed to cross a river. It's the river eenus. Don't know how you say it, but the word is spelled like e Venus, which to me is like a pun. You know, us Geminis, we always play with words like that. So, it's eenus out of Venus. And and if you look into the
24:53 story, all of it is around the kind of pain that can arise in relationships, particularly intimate relationships, particularly in sexually intimate relationships. So anyway, Hercules needed to cross a river which was in flood. And so to prevent Diona, his wife, getting wet, he asked the centtor Nessus if he would fa across the river while he was able to wade across. So there is some
25:39 hint I believe in the language there's a light suggestion that this could have been a setup. In other words, that Hercules either deliberately or unconsciously directly or indirectly invited Nessus to have it off with his wife. However, Nessus was about to rape Dira. Hercules turned around and spotted this and got out his trusty bow and
26:27 arrow and shot Nessus immediately. So as Nessus lay dying, he made of his own blood and semen, a potion which he gave to Diona, saying that this was a love potion and this would keep Hercules faithful. should the need arise. So in due time the need did arise and Hercules was going to a tournament and he had become connected with a woman called
27:13 Ioli under tragic circumstances because it's in some versions in a battle Hercules actually killed the father of Ioli. And so he felt a certain responsibility for this woman as well as whatever sexual desire he might also have felt. and he did want to bring her back to the household to live with him and his wife Diona.
27:59 So, it seems that Dion kind of knew about this, but she put on a tunic, this potion that the centtor Nessus had given her, and gave it to Hercules as he was going away on this tournament. I guess she thought maybe he was going to see Ioli, which could have been correct. But at any rate, after Hercules had already gone, she noticed that some of this potion which had dropped on the ground had begun to froth and spit and burn and
28:44 smoke and all that. And she realized, "Oh my god, it's poison." So she sent a messenger very quickly after Hercules to warn him, but it was too late. He'd already put on the tunic and he couldn't get it off because it was kind of corrosive and it was corroding his flesh. And so he was ripping off his own flesh as he tried to get it off, which he couldn't. and he stroed over the mountains and over the over the land roaring and screaming in pain and eventually begged Zeus his
29:30 father to allow him to die with some dignity. His wish was granted. So Hercules and I think his attendant, they built a funeral p for him and Hercules got on the the fire. His faithful attendant refused to light it and so some random stranger did it for them and he burned himself to death. But the story doesn't end there. We learned that a goddess called
30:16 Hei, also called Pandia, meaning all the gods, was the one who midwifed the soul of Hercules in his transition to the afterworld and guided him up to Mount Olympus. Now remember that Hercules was classed as a mortal. So he had a divine father but he had a mortal mother. And the custom was that if a child had one one one mortal mother they could they were not divine. They they were classed as mortal. And
31:02 so he didn't belong on Olympus, but he was taken up to Olympus where he he underwent a rebirth ceremony through the skirts of Hera. The one who pursued him, tried to kill him and drove him mad. Remember? So it was through that gate that he went into the realm of Olympus. And now this new character he was an attendant of [Music] Hera and also
31:48 involved with Aphroditi. And her qualities were all to do with reconciliation. Witness the fact that Hercules came up to Olympus through the skirts of Hera. A huge reconciliation to I mean talk about ancestral wounds. Wow. So I found an anecdote where there's a shrine to the goddess Heibi or Panda. This shrine was where warriors went in order to be purified from the
32:34 sins committed in battle. and they would hang all of their weapons in the trees which surrounded this grove. So that's a incredibly potent of symbol of re reconciliation there. reconciliation, purification, atonement and many other profound processes like that which today people returning from wars, they don't have anything like that. Instead, they're shamed and shunned and retraumatized. So, there's something very profound that goes on there. But it
33:21 was he who presided over that process. You know, as I'm recounting this story, I can't help thinking how there are echoes and mirrors everywhere in the story that are so incredibly contemporary. Anyway, Hercules and Hei got together as man and wife as a divine pair and they even had offspring up there in the snowy heights of Olympus. So the story of
34:07 Hercules goes from trauma upon trauma upon trauma, hardship and affliction and labor. Every imaginable nuance of human experience you will find in the package of all the stories around him. And it it works its way through to this extraordinary denum. which is one of redemption. It truly is. And so this is the story in which Nessus is involved and Heather and I were talking be before we um turned on the recording.
34:55 We were talking about how this the centaurs as they transit they often seem to be involved with another important set of transits. I could reel off lots of examples but it's very very common what whatever is going on in the sky you'll often find it's accompanied by a centaur. Oh, the one that does come to mind is when when Pluto went into Sagittarius. It was very close to the date when Nessus also went into Sagittarius. And I thought, oh, I had this image. Nessus was known as the black
35:41 centaur. So, I had an image of Pluto with his helmet of invisibility and maybe a black cloak or something suitably dramatic, you know. uh emerging from the underworld into the realm of Sagittarius accompanied by the black centaur. I saw that the two of them like walking walking into the realm of Zeus which is Olympus of course. Um and so transits of either Pluto or Nessus in the last decade of last century all of them had this uh Nessus Chiron conjunction. Um many examples of that
36:26 but almost as if those transits are like the arrows of a centaur which in the experience of may feel like ah we got wounded by an arrow or ah we have to get this arrow out that's already wounded us but it's locating something very precisely. That's the other thing. It's a point, an arrow um of what needs to heal. Yes. Sorry, I talked over you. It It's pointing to what needs to heal, what's embedded in us. That's Yes, absolutely. And and the story Melanie is extraordinary in terms of like you said the layer after layer
37:13 of trauma and how it shows how trauma begets trauma and it just keeps absolutely this cycle whether it's collectively or through this ancestral lineage absolutely there's so many threads we could follow with this but one of them is just that last piece that you talked about with the you know the temple of He be being where the the warriors could heal the wounds of war. And it reminds me of the temples of the vestal virgins in Rome where the warriors would go back to be healed of the wounds of war and that poem by Marge Piery, women who make love with men to take the war out of
37:59 them. Oh wow. So it's that sense of how do we heal these wounds of conquest of war? Yeah, of destruction. And the other thread I I was curious about is was Nessus called the black centaur because he's kind of the black sheep among the other healing centaurs because his lineage was from Exion. Do you know? I'm not sure. I don't know what makes absolute sense because he was that outofcontrol impulsive egotistical destructive centaur who then gives birth
38:47 to Nessus. So Nessus himself comes from this lineage of yes abuse of power and destruction. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So, do you think with NASA now conjunct the North Node in Pisces that it's calling us to look at these ancestral wounds that we all carry to heal them to Pisces? Come back into compassion. Come back into wholeness. come back into dissolving the wounds that keep controlling our stories and our history.
39:35 Abs. Absolutely. I think that's beautifully put and it it could also refer the arrow, you know, could refer to places in our own biography, let alone the ancestors. I mean of course our own biography is backed up and preceded by the ancestors but even in our own lives um nurses could be pointing to places where we lost compassion and went into a feeling of hardness or judgment and so forth including against ourselves because the places where we lost
40:20 compassion uh and got falsely heroic because we were not able to find the healing that we needed. the compassion froze. So I think with node Nessus in Pisces, wow, it's kind of pointing to places where we lost compassion, lost a part of our soul if you like. And so opportunities to retrieve that I think will be coming thick and fast. uh I've already been observing that in
41:06 my work you know. So how as you see that in your work how do people who are in a critical transit with Nessus right now and that north node in Pisces how do they work that? Well, one thing that I think is usually important with centaur transits is the body absolutely has to be included. And so any kind of body work can be so helpful, particularly if it's the kind of body work that has enough psychological and emotional
41:52 space for you to really start joining up some dots for you to follow the path of that arrow. So, it's not just body work to help you feel good. That's a whole other level. But it's body work that helps you open your tissues, open your bones where this kind of stuff can be stored and to go really really gently with it because um you know healing is not is not a battle or a campaign. It may take a lot of discipline sometimes, but the vibe, the heart
42:38 quality that we bring to it is everything. I think beautifully said. Beautifully said. And so important that you're honoring how the body is often the messenger of what needs healing because the things that are unconscious in our own history or in our ancestral lineage often are encoded there. Yeah. They're stored there in the body. Yeah. I mean even in the story of Chiron you know it was his animal half that was wounded you know and in that sense our animal half well using the image of the centaur it's the animal half that
43:26 connects us with the ground we stand on those four legs you know and so that represents a very deep and very ancient part of us. Speaking of the ground, I mean that is so that really moved me when you talked about how the very land beneath our feet may hold the trauma from the past and the bones and the wounds of those who died in war or trauma. And I'm thinking about how the asteroid series is now also conjunct Nessus and the North Node. Oh, that's right. So, do you think it's also trying to help us heal the wounds
44:12 in the energy of the land that hold the memories of the trauma? Absolutely. I mean that that would absolutely be a kind of Ness's theme you know when when in fact when I was researching about Chiron in Aries um came across some material which was just pointing out how many war graves there are all over Europe in particular. And as I was reading this stuff, I just had this impression like the earth that we stand on is full of the bones of the
44:58 ancestors. And you know, if you look at what's happening around the world, there is so much death and destruction now. And in one way or another, whether it's through our ashes or our bones and flesh, all of us end up back in the earth. You know, even if we scatter ashes, throw them to the winds, going to land somewhere. And that is actually what we stand on. It reminds me of how it feels like there are more people active now. I mean Rory
45:44 Duff in his own way, Sandy Hy is doing a lot of energy work to clear the trauma embedded in the land and she describes how that in and of itself when it's unhealed can create disease or absolutely trauma in the people living on that land. So that we are needing to clear that layer of trauma also so that it doesn't get absorbed within us and absolutely and you know there there are people probably I'm guessing here but I'm kind of convinced of my guess you know people probably all over the
46:32 world who you and I and those watching you watching We'll never know. We won't know their names. We won't know what they're doing. But they are out there doing this stuff. Yeah. Absolutely. And and here I do want to if I may just give a little mention in honor of a dear woman called Anne Proctor who worked for decades together with her husband Roy. Exactly. Doing this kind of earth healing work actually focused on houses. They wrote a book together
47:17 called Healing Sick Houses, but they were very attuned to all of this. I don't know how old Anne was. I think she was in her 90s already. And she died recently. Um, and I I just wanted to mention her because I would imagine too, you know, that people who are aware of this this kind of stuff, I reckon when they transition into the so-called afterlife, I'm sure for some of them it's like business as usual in terms of they continue doing
48:03 what they were doing when they were alive in a physical body. But who knows, maybe they're even more effective. Now that they're in another plane of existence, this is this is my it's not exactly a belief. It's kind of what I sense and I have no idea whether that's true or not. And for me, it totally doesn't matter. But something like that is going on of that. I am sure. Well put. That feels so true. And I know also there are so many indigenous peoples and shamans and healers who are doing that work in this realm and in the other realms. Exactly. Support us in
48:50 trying to clear these. Absolutely. Absolutely. And not keep repeating the trauma patterns. Yeah. And you know even in kind of regular orthodox traditional monasteries and nunneries in the Christian church and varants of that if you look at some of the prayers that are said there is some awareness of this kind of stuff maybe not phrased in the way that we would talk about it. But there too are countless people all over the world. We don't really know what they're doing, but they're in there
49:36 in a life of prayer, you see. And people could maybe, you know, get cynical and say, "Oh, you know, they should get a life or whatever." But we and prayer doesn't do anything, right? But I shuddered to think what the world would be like if all these people were not doing their invisible work. We'd probably be a lot worse off even than we are now. And when I just said the phrase invisible work, I do associate that with Nessus. Not only because some of the processes that it represents are virtually impossible to put into
50:22 language. Um, and I'm going to say some of them maybe should not be put into language. They need to remain where they are. It's enough that there is a subtle awareness of something has happened and I may never know the full story of what it is which as I said could frustrate some of us but that's the way that's the way of the underworld like in the Anana story when Anana's being taken into the underworld and she's stopped at the seven gates on the way down and she protests at every gate And the guardians say, "Hush Inana, the ways of the
51:09 underworld are perfect and must not be questioned." So that's the kind of respect and reverence even I'm going to say that I think are appropriate for this kind of a territory. You know, that's so beautifully said and it it to me it's such a reminder that the consciousness of the cosmos with these powerful centaur transits is guiding us as humanity and as individuals in healing all levels in ways that we're conscious of and in ways that we're not conscious of. to try to be clearing
51:57 these trauma patterns and imbalances from the past to move into this new age. And do you think Melanie I I've been exploring and in a recent video I talked about this upcoming conjunction between Neptune and Saturn. I mean they were conjunct in Pisces. Now towards the end of this month they're moving into the early degrees of Aries as Saturn moves into Aries. One of the layers of meaning that I see in that conjunction Neptune and Saturn in Aries is our need to dissolve these age of Aries out of balanced paradigms.
52:43 Yeah. of abuse of power, of trauma, of conquest, of war, of the ways in which this lineage of trauma has been with us for thousands of years and that we need to heal it or we will keep reenacting it and being in the trauma pattern. Yeah. I I would also phrase it that it is dissolving because that's what this transit does. Now those powerful energies of the conjunction and remember
53:29 we're still in the leadup period. Yes, they're within orb of conjunction, but technically the conjunction of which is only one that only happens in February of next year. So this last couple of years or so is the leadup to the end of the outgoing cycle um just of the conjunctions, you know. And so during that time when these very powerful energies are inflowing, what can also happen is that they hit up against ego structures of all kinds on
54:15 all levels. And then we get the kind of madness that we see right now. you only have to turn on your radio or TV and wa that's what's happening. In other words, big defenses of all kinds, a pretense of power. It's all false power. And it's an attempt to try to stay in control, which actually then leaves one out of control in places where really you do need to exercise control. So it all gets kind of convoluted and toxic and everything else. However, internally, what an incredible gift because there is a dissolving going
55:04 on. And if we can find a way to allow that process of dissolving to occur by itself. Well, then I think we really are in the flow so to speak. Now that will inevitably involve coming up against our own defenses and that'll be unique to everybody. there's not one standard defense. So that's an interesting uh piece of that's a piece of work we can do. We can sort of look out for ways in which we defend ourselves
55:50 against a feeling of dissolving or a feeling of melting and that kind of Neptunian thing where the form is gradually being yeah dissolved, eroded and so forth. And if we begin to feel fear, that might be an aspect of our defense. And so then don't need to like jump on that with judgment and say, "Oh, I shouldn't be fearing because I know this is all meant to be and all that." Cuz that just brings in even more super ego. But if you can kind of hold that
56:36 gently and and kind of be curious about it, then you may well get to feel this dissolving in all manner of different ways. And you will be able to connect with what's inflowing uniquely for you. I think too given that Neptune being the ruler of Pisces and that's where the Nessus node conjunction is found. we may indeed be coming up against where we lost compassion for
57:22 ourselves. Because if if we're not holding compassion for ourselves with all of our foibless and mess and potent potential for destructiveness and all that, if we're not holding ourselves with compassion and curiosity, we won't be able to hold anybody else either. and the way we hold each other in our life and the way we co-reflect and co-regulate with important people in our life. This is to me it's like a mending of a fabric. You know, if you're mending something, you might be making really tiny
58:07 stitches, but lots of them altogether can mend the rip, you know. So I don't think that the kind of healing we're referring to here, it can't be made by a policy, a government policy or whatever. Even though it all sounds like a good idea, you know, that's a a very Aquarian kind of a trap in a way. A good idea once it becomes ideology becomes oppressive. So going to the Leo polarity, age of Aquarius has a Leo polarity. There's a great
58:52 deal that every single one of us can do in terms of deeply addressing what comes our way because each of our journey uh through that and in that will be unique to ourselves. But it's as if we're we're tending to the flow of life of which we're a part. That includes our ancestors. And you know, there are cultures still, thank God, who see the the rocks and the plants and the animals as our ancestors. Also they they
59:38 use the term for ancestors as if we came from them. They're part of profoundly inclusive. So every every little stitch that we do in mending mending the rip it ripples out excuse the pun ripples out to the hole. We can't fix the hole. that thinking about that too much, we just get overwhelmed. And not everybody is designed, as it were, to play a really extroverted, dynamic, actionoriented role in the times we're living in. Many
1:00:26 are, and that's wonderful. But that's not the only way to be with what's going on. And if we are to really really think and feel holistically, we must acknowledge that we're part of a web of existence which reaches far beyond what we can see and touch and know with our ordinary senses. There's dimension after dimension, ripple after ripple, like a stone dropped in a pond. So one little prayer, one little vibe of healing can be like a stone dropped in a pond and it
1:01:11 ripples out and ripples out and ripples out and that all of us can do. That is so beautiful. Such a beautiful image, Melanie. And that energy that you're describing, I I think that's so insightful and important that we realize we can't legislate the healing that's that's the word I was looking for and couldn't find. Thank you. It has to come from within us and that description you you gave of how we can be in that healing energy is so cheraclo. How do we hold that healing presence? And she's in Aquarius right now. How do we hold that healing? Being with each other, holding sacred space,
1:01:59 hearing and seeing each other. It's not fixing anything. She couldn't heal Chiron, but she could hold space for Chiron. Exactly. Pain and suffering. And we're being called to be cheracles with and for each other. And the other image that you said that I think is so important is this is such a huge transformation that we're in. Oh, it's huge. Exiting away we've been in our whole modern understanding of history. We're leaving paradigms behind and moving into very new paradigms. We don't even yet know what shape and form they're going to take. It is dissolving. That is like the caterpillar going into
1:02:45 the crystis and just Yes. this liquid mess. Yes. Yes. And but if we don't trust that, even if we're afraid or even if it's all unfamiliar, if we don't let ourselves be in that liinal time of not knowing and dissolving, we never become the butterfly. Yeah. And it does feel to me, and I used this image once before, that a lot of what's happening in the world right now is the caterpillars don't want to melt down, you know, pouring themselves up and they're getting Yes. Yes. Caterpillar warriors and they're, you know, fiercely trying themselves. Yeah. Absolutely. are meant to melt and dissolve so we all can
1:03:33 become butterflies. I love that image. So, this is such a profound time, but I love your emphasis, you know, before we close. I just love your emphasis that we need to hold ourselves with compassion and allow ourselves to dissolve these old ways of coping. Dissolve old trauma patterns and be in the not knowing but be gentle with ourselves and hold ourselves and each other with that compassion. Yeah, because sometimes
1:04:21 uh that kind of gets criticized as self-absorption, self-p preoccupation and self-indulgence and all that kind of thing. And okay, there may be ways in which we could slip into that, but in truth that comes from a kind of a narrow view of what an individual actually is. We do live embedded in a larger whole to which we are responsible and which does impact us. There is an exchange going on all the time.
1:05:07 You know, even if we're sitting alone in our room having our meditation time, we're connected to everything and in that way responsible to it like like a kind of a parent. You know, we are both a child of the universe and the universe is our child. Well, and as we each do our own inner work and come into that inner compassion and healing, then we emanate that out and support the healing of all those around us, support the healing of the collective consciousness. Exactly. And we're more likely to be able to
1:05:55 receive that kind of grace from someone else who's radiating it rather than feeling that we have to do it all by ourselves and we don't need anybody and all that false heroic stuff because that relates to Nessus because you know in the final analysis it was Nessus was the one who actually brought Hercules down. So all of all of the kind of false heroics, not not that it was false, but it was a life based based on recapitulating trauma patterns and trying to expedate them and lurching from one hardship and disaster to
1:06:41 another, you know. Um, and we we we can go beyond that. It's not that kind of heroic, but that's part of a a potential defense that we get into. We got to be her we got to be Hercules about this, you know. Thank you. Thank you so much Melanie for your wisdom for the deep work you've done in your research in your own inner journey in your holding space for others into these healing centaurs. So thank you. You are so welcome Heather. As a little post postcript I can't resist mentioning
1:07:27 this. Now, if there's anybody watching who might be a fan of the music of handle, particularly the operas of handle, he wrote an opera handle just called Hercules. And the text is taken from the Sophocles play, the women of Tracis. And the text and the characters and so on and so forth absolutely feature Diona, the one with, you know, the fairing across the river and all
1:08:15 that. And it's quite extraordinary. It was an opera written in English, translated from the Greek, of course. But if you I if you like that kind of music or even if you don't you might want to give it a try because you know a short sentence that you might read in a book about you know or Diona said or Hercules said in an opera that's that's kind of blown out into maybe 15 minutes of beautiful beautiful music that gives you time to really sink into connection with the feelings
1:09:02 that are being expressed. So we get the whole lot. We get the jealous rage. We get the feeling of betrayal. We get the hope. We get the prayers to the oracle and the begging. We get the bad omens. We get absolutely everything. We also get reconciliations along the way. And it's a long watch. It's 3 hours long, but for my taste anyway, a supreme delight to just be immersed in that music. There is on YouTube, there's a full recording, video recording of this opera and I think with
1:09:48 absolutely beautiful singers. It's done in semi-odern dress. And one final thought if I may. There is, if I can find it, yes it will. So about 12 years ago, the Canadian Opera Company under the direction of Peter Sellers A S E L S E L A R S did a rendition of Hercules set in contemporary times. So in that one wasn't long ago and far away in ancient Greek ancient Greece and all that. It was in contemporary America. And so we have
1:10:35 Hercules as a traumatized war veteran returning home to this domestic mess and all of the permutations of that. And so in their program notes they say the subject ex subjects explored in Hercules include modern warfare, war and peace, military culture and postwar issues for veterans and their families. Absolutely amazing. Uh and so if you if you have that that kind of a a a potential in the back of your mind, if
1:11:23 you watch the opera, you could you'll really see my god, it's like a mirror of exactly some of the issues that are prominent on the world stage today with the addition of the entire emotional range. So it's not just reportage of what's happening and this and that. It's got the full the full watery Piscian emotionally charged level behind it. I will include those links below, Melanie. Thank you. Oh, okay. I'll I'll Yeah, I'll send them to you. And how perfect as Nessus is guiding us to heal
1:12:09 these wounds from the past that we can access it also through music. Absolutely. So I will I will definitely put those links below and thank you for your healing and work and I give thanks to this community for how we are all working to heal to support the healing of the world. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much Heather and thank you all for participating in this theme as you as you watch and listen. Blessings and love to all of you.
