Remembering Ophiuchus & Becoming the Student of Healing

Now now, this is not another article announcing that there are 13 signs of the zodiac. You may have heard, Ophiuchus makes quite the rubble every few years as astrologers and mystics debate whether or not this constellation should be taken into account in our skies. Underneath the back and forth debate, there is the very real energy that is encased in this constellation, whether or not we categorize it as an official “sign”.

Ophiuchus is a constellation that shows us the story of the grandfather of medicine, Aesclepius. All that we know today in our medical world started with his practice. You may recognize the wand of Aesclepius, still used today in medicinal symbolism all over the world. Who was Aesclepius? Why does he get an entire constellation named after him? & if he is so important, why don’t we honor him today?

Well! Aesclepius was a healer, abandoned at birth due to his mothers adultery and raised under the care and guide of the wounded healer, Chiron. Chiron was a bit of a shaman and magical practitioner. It is he who passed down his wisdom that led Aesclepius to be one of the most famous healers til this day. People from all over the world would pilgrimage to Greece, where they would visit the healing temples of Epidaurus. It is here that they brought offerings to work with Aesclepius and his healing traditions. Through the dream space, Aesclepus would teach his clients how to anchor in intention and trust that the answers to their ailments would be shared to them in vision. It is this escape from the day to day business and mundanity that people were able to enter the safe and restorative walls of these healing temples. To let go of their worries, enter this space of ritual and dream their healing.

Aesclepius became so good at healing that it is rumored that he was able to bring back people from the dead. This unfortunately did not sit well with the gods, so they killed Aesclepius and projected his story onto the heavens.

As of 2020, we have had a long-term transit currently unfolding, with the point called the South Node of the Moon, moving through the constellation of Ophiuchus. Whether we see it as a sign or not, we cannot deny that these energies have been activated since 2020 and will continue into 2022.

As the South Node moves through the constellation of Ophiuchus, we as a people are learning to tell the healing stories of our humanities past. The South Node represents the past. The path in which we have come from, as well as a moving away from what no longer serve us. It is both a look under the hood at what is there, as well as an opportunity to move ahead more mindfully. What does this constellation have to tell us about healing?

Ophiuchus is here to remind us of our ability to become healers and the importance in the belief that we all have an important healing role to play. When we remember Ophiuchus and it’s place in our solar system, we rise to the embodiment of becoming a student of healing. In the symbolism of the constellation, Aesclepius wrestles a giant serpent. A serpent that if you look closely, is reaching up to grasp the Crown in the Corona Borealis constellation. There is an emphasis on this healing being about the primal instinct, about evolution and the fight for power. The Crown symbolizes more than just royalty. In the story of the Corona Borealis, it was awarded to a man named Theseus because of his achievement of getting through the mind maze of the labyrinth and out to safety, with the help of a young child. Daughter of Crete, Ariadne had given Theseus her red ball of yarn to get back, as no other individual returned alive from the labyrinth. There are strong echos in this story in the importance of not getting bogged down in hyper-logical and rational approaches to our healing. That we must treat more than just the symptoms. Nurturing our feminine divinity and intuitive knowing that we are are all connected to one thread of humanity is the medicine of this story. That love, support and safety can sometimes be the best medicine.

So as Ophiuchus moves ahead, we can ask ourselves, where do we need healing? Where can we offer our own unique healing gifts as an offering to the collective?