Mercury has stationed direct, and the Aries New Moon is exact tonight just before 10 pm EDT (02:00 UTC). The next event up is Chiron entering Aries, which takes place Tuesday at 4:09 am ET (08:09 UTC).

Chiron’s sign changes are always significant, in that they often arrive with immediate shifts in the social climate and turning points in history. What may have seemed impossible in one moment of time is suddenly the thing that’s happening in another.

Chiron began its journey through Pisces in April 2010, and the span since then includes news events such as the BP oil spill, the Fukushima nuclear meltdowns, the Arab Spring movements, Occupy Wall Street, the Wisconsin public employee labor movements, the Trump campaign and the first two years of his administration.

Astrologically, Chiron in Pisces ran in parallel with Uranus in Aries, and all of those many related events: the seven squares of Uranus and Pluto; the three events of the Uranus-Eris conjunction; and the beginning of the Pluto-Eris square. For those new to this astrology business, that’s a lot — and I do mean the motherlode — of outer-planet activity.

During this time, so far as I can tell, the main event in society has been the rise of the portable phone-based computer — the iPhone, and its flurry of imitators. These have changed the structure of psyche and of society in ways that we are only beginning to figure out.

It’s a bit much to go into in a short letter, though this article will give you some insight into what I’ve been thinking.

However, Prof. Eric McLuhan summed it up in a few words, which will take on new meaning under Chiron in Aries: “The body is everywhere assaulted by all of our new media, a state which has resulted in deep disorientation of intellect and destabilization of culture throughout the world. In the age of disembodied communication, the meaning and significance and experience of the body is utterly transformed and distorted.”

Said another way, the entire world has been turned inside-out.

The Sacred Space of Self

Now Chiron is about to move from Pisces to Aries — two rather different energy fields, which are joined by something called the Aries Point, or the first degree of Aries. Technically called the “sidereal vernal point” or SVP, this is a location of the zodiac that merges the individual and public realms — and today, the Aries Point is a raging river of events, information, security breaches and social media privacy breakdowns.

Chiron in Aries is about taking responsibility for oneself. This is not about identity but rather about the ground of being, so much as we can get there with a body and a personality as our vehicles.

The time has come to return to speaking in “I-statements,” taking responsibility and ownership of your own experiences, and making a point to distinguish yourself from group identity.

These things alone will thrust many people into a kind of identity crisis, since so much of our identity is currently tribal, but struggling to be something else. Among the first-tier properties of Chiron is standing out, distinguishing oneself, and being different — pretty much no matter what the cost.

When Chiron is present, it’s time to be a maverick (which was the first keyword associated with this point, granted by its astronomical discoverer, Charles Kowal). It’s pretty easy to hide by trying to blend in, though this comes at the expense of learning how to be yourself. Not being yourself means being someone else, which is not possible — so the crisis is something of an encounter with the reality gap.

The image of Chiron entering Aries is that of many people waking up at the same time, though what they wake up to will differ. One possibility is anger. There is no estimating the amount and depth of suppressed rage that is brewing underground in the collective psyche. This rage is bending and twisting all of emotion, resulting in some strange and unpredictable effects in society.