- roseharvey
- Jan. 13, 2022
- Alumni & Community
- alumni
At the end of 2020, the end of my first year studying with Metavision Institute, I chanced upon a previously unknown mythical being called Chariklo. My interest had been caught by the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, or the Christmas Star, on 21 December 2020, an astrological alignment that had not occurred for 400 years. Through watching a YouTube video about the Conjunction (Gregory, 2020) I stumbled across an earlier recording, which introduced Chariklo (Gregory, 2019), and she set alight my mind and heart.
The short story of Chariklo is that she was the wife of Chiron, the renowned ‘wounded healer’. Her long story is murky but much more compelling, but a little about Chiron first. Chiron was wounded early in his life, healed from this wound, and went on to become a great healer himself. A second wound, however, from a stray arrow poisoned by the blood of Hydra became a source of suffering as the poison meant the wound could not heal. Chiron, as an immortal, was to live forever in endless and constant pain. In his agony he withdrew from the world. This may have been the end of Chiron’s healing powers in his myth, though I have been unable to find this explicitly stated. Eventually, Chiron resolved his suffering, not by healing, but through trading places with the God Prometheus, relinquishing his immortality and passing into death (Tompkins & Reinhart, 2004).
At the time I learned of Chariklo, I could find little published online about her. Yet I was drawn to her mystery and those first inklings of her energy. Her name means “spinning grace” (Smith, 2018). She was calm, serene and deeply feminine. She served with the Goddesses Athena and Vesta, she was a water nymph but married a centaur and shape-shifted into a centaur herself. She cared for Chiron with his unhealing wound, with the capacity for bearing silent witness; “The patience of the Earth, radical acceptance, kindly awareness, trust, loyalty to the ways of spirit, the power of quiet courage” (Reinhart, n.d.); “a feminine wisdom that transcends duality” (Smith, 2018). She was enigmatic and powerful, but held and wielded that power in a new way I had not previously encountered.
The theory goes that the discovery of a new heavenly body occurs when the human consciousness is ready to integrate a previously unrealised aspect (Gregory, 2019; Smith, 2018). Chariklo was discovered in 1997. The feminine healing of the masculine is nothing new, but it has for time immemorial been to the detriment and even destruction of the feminine. In the world in its current state, the dominant form of the masculine is both damaging and damaged. The darkest manifestation of it has taken over all our ruins, and perhaps the coming of Chariklo to our consciousness heralds the time for the rising of the divine feminine and masculine together, for rebalancing, and for the unhealable toxic masculine to transform and exit humanity.
The mythical image of Chariklo has become my idea of a holistic practitioner. She is beyond the concept of the wounded healer. She knows not just the pain of the wound but also the exquisite pain of healing and transformation. She is the holder of sacred space, who radiates healing simply by her state of being. Her energy has lain dormant, until the world woke to her, waiting to be dreamed into reality. I believe she is here now to hold and endure through the end times of the toxic masculine, not with judgement or criticism, but with grace and love and letting go of what can no longer be tolerated.
Chariklo as a figure remains largely a mystery, more an energy and concept, her story unknown and untold; and in her mystery lies her magic. Those of us called to pursue holistic healing professions at this time are here, perhaps, to live her story and fulfil her purpose in the earthly human realm. What an exciting prospect and profound privilege that would be.
About Katie
I have long been driven by a desire to work towards optimal health and wellbeing, and working in the public health field has developed my appreciation of a holistic perspective. My interest in psychology led me to study psychological science at university, before my holistic, spiritual and mystical perspectives compelled me to pursue a different therapeutic modality.
My approach to practising as a therapist is at heart client-centred and compassionate, for people seeking to explore grief and loss, anxiety and depression, stress and overwhelm, conflict in relationships, and dream interpretation. My belief that in all souls shines a light, and that a core part of my purpose is to seek that light and support it to grow. With that purpose in mind, I have named my practice Soulfire Holistic Counselling and Psychotherapy. I am looking forward to putting all I have learned through experience and training into my work as a therapist, and to continue to learn and grow in this role.
I am currently taking new clients Australia-wide via zoom, and face-to-face in Canberra as allowed under public health orders.
