Part Five

Chiron and the Scapegoat

The ancient ritual of the Scapegoat

I mentioned earlier that I wanted to look more closely at the archetypal theme of the Scapegoat because it’s so relevant to the astrological Chiron, natally and in synastry. This theme might make a fitting conclusion to our seminar. The story of the Scapegoat appears in ancient Hebrew tradition and is described in Leviticus. The Hebrew word for the Scapegoat –  (azazel) – was understood in later Christian thought to be the name of a demon or a fallen angel, reflecting the idea of the goat as an evil bearer of the sins of the community. The goat in Christian iconography is often associated with Satan, who is portrayed with a goat’s horns and hoofs. This iconography has carried through into modern times in the association of the goat with black magic. But in the Hebrew tradition, the goat itself isn’t evil. It’s a holy sacrifice, a blameless creature given the job of carrying human evil so the community can begin another year free of sin and guilt.

Two goats were involved in the early Hebrew ritual. One goat was sacrificed to the Lord and the second goat was driven into exile in the desert. Both were sacred, chosen creatures blessed by God to be the sacrifice. Driving the goat into the wilderness to die symbolised the cleansing of the community. The ritual took place each year as part of the ceremony of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the holiest day in the Jewish religious calendar. Yom Kippur usually occurs in late September or early October, close to the autumnal equinox when the Sun enters Libra.

Audience: Is that significant?

Liz: I’m not sure whether the timing has significance. I suspect it did once upon a time, although the meaning may be forgotten now. Rosh ha-Shanah, the Jewish New Year, begins around the time of the autumnal equinox, followed by Yom Kippur. The New Year must begin with a spiritual clean slate. A great many religious rituals of all persuasions tend to occur near the equinoxes and solstices, and perhaps were originally linked to them. Christmas occurs around the time of the winter solstice, as does Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights; Easter occurs at the time of the spring equinox, as does Passover, and the Feast Day of St John the Baptist occurs at the summer solstice. Four of the eight Celtic festivals or ‘sabbats’– Samhain, Beltane, Imbolg, and Lughnasa – are very ancient and are related to the agricultural cycle, occurring roughly a week after the Sun’s entry into the four fixed signs of the zodiac. The other four, practised today by many modern pagans – Ostara, Yule, Mabon, and Litha – coincide with the equinoxes and solstices.

Some of the symbolic connections between religious festivals and the solar cycle are clear. Easter occurs on the Sunday following the first full Moon after the spring equinox when the Sun enters Aries, the sign of new beginnings. Christmas occurs just after the winter solstice when the old Sun dies and the new Sun is secretly born in the darkness. The Jewish New Year occurs at the autumnal equinox when balance is achieved between darkness and light, and the ancient ritual of the Scapegoat followed immediately afterward. From a Christian perspective, Jesus might be viewed as the ultimate Scapegoat. But the theme of a surrogate who carries sin or evil for others is universal, reflecting its archetypal nature, and it exists outside of Abrahamic cultures. In Celtic lore, the Scapegoat was a designated human ‘sin-eater’ who consumed a ritual meal to spiritually absorb the sins of a deceased person whose soul would otherwise wander unredeemed in outer darkness.51

In ancient Greek ritual practice, following the belief that natural disasters such as plagues or earthquakes were a sign of the gods’ anger, the perceived transgressions of the entire community were loaded onto one individual, deemed an appropriate ‘sin-bearer’ or pharmakos.52 In archaic Greece, this sacrificial victim may have been the king himself as the embodied link between the godhead and the people, offered up in times of great crisis. In later centuries, an individual was chosen from among the people. The hapless victim was ritually beaten and, if they survived, driven out of the community. This Scapegoat was often chosen because of a physical deformity or disability, or because of having previously committed a crime, or simply because of perceived ‘differentness’. It’s a disturbing archetypal pattern, but it seems that communities have always felt some chosen individual, especially holy or especially hated or both, should carry the collective burden of evil.

Chiron isn’t a literal scapegoat in Greek myth. He isn’t driven out of the community carrying the sins of others; he’s wounded by accident while trying to do something helpful. But in a deeper sense, this is exactly what happens to him. He is a sacrifice, inadvertently expiating the savagery and violence of his fellow centaurs as well as the arrogance and carelessness of the hero Herakles. He must bear the poison of the Lernaean Hydra and, alone among the deities, he is the one who must relinquish his godhead for Prometheus, who really did breach divine law but manages to get away with it.

The Scapegoat in the family

An important dimension of Chiron’s wound is the feeling that we have been scapegoated, unfairly victimised, or punished for something that isn’t our fault. Sometimes the family history underpinning Chiron’s wound reveals a literal version of this, especially if earlier generations have suffered collective atrocities such as slavery, persecution, or genocide. But sometimes scapegoating has a more personal history. As a child, the person may have had to carry the shadow side of the family psyche so that everyone else could walk away feeling morally superior and blameless. Family scapegoats are often individuals who begin to display the sense of an individual self from a very early age. They may threaten the unconsciously established assignment of roles and relationship alliances inherent in family dynamics, especially in an enmeshed family.

The scapegoated child can be a potential awakener who threatens to break open the cocoon of the family’s wilful unconsciousness. Sometimes the child becomes the ‘identified patient’ who displays symptoms of what is interpreted as mental illness, and who must carry the conflicts buried deep in the family psyche. This tragic dimension of family scapegoating was explored by the psychiatrist R. D. Laing, who went as far as insisting that people labelled as schizophrenics were carrying the madness and suffering not just of the family, but of their entire collective. Although Laing’s work is not considered acceptable within the mainstream psychiatric establishment, he may have had a point.

Family scapegoats are sometimes gifted children who become the targets of parental or sibling envy. They might be spirited, rebellious children who display attitudes that challenge the family status quo. They may also be children who appear lacking in ability according to the expectations placed on them by the family. Examples of this are the dreamy, imaginative child of a scientifically inclined family; the withdrawn, introverted child of extraverted, popular parents; the highly sensitive child born into a military family; or the artistic child of parents focused solely on the money-making potential of a family business. Not only enviable talents, but also a lack of talent or inclination for a particular family aspiration, can result in scapegoating.

Sometimes family scapegoating focuses on physical differentness such as a disability or perceived exceptional attractiveness or unattractiveness, or – very commonly, although often unacknowledged – a resemblance to an earlier family scapegoat. Great Aunt Violet went off the rails and eloped with a drug dealer, became an addict, had an abortion and a breakdown, and then committed suicide, and one ever speaks of it. If we happen to resemble poor Violet in appearance or manner, we may be scapegoated without ever understanding why.

Fairy tales like Cinderella abound with family scapegoats, often portrayed as unwanted orphans or stepchildren. The external focus for scapegoating can be just about anything, but the inner mechanism is the same: the goat must be driven out of the community carrying everyone else’s sins. Identification with the archetypal Scapegoat lies at the heart of the astrological Chiron. But it’s not a good idea to identify with an archetype. It destroys the possibility of individual development and individual values, and it tends to end badly.

The pattern of scapegoating in families is often passed down over many generations. Parents who scapegoat their children have usually been scapegoated themselves, or their own parents were; and these scapegoated children may grow up to be virtue-signalling scapegoaters hunting down someone else whom they feel should be punished for what they believe was once done to them or their family or collective. Sadly, these people may be genuinely idealistic and entirely unconscious of the ambiguous roots of their opinions and actions.

Audience: So does Chiron’s placement show whether there has been scapegoating?

Liz: I think I would put it differently. Chiron’s placement shows where we feel scapegoated. There’s usually a trigger, but the impact of the trigger also depends on one’s own perceptions. Quoting the late Queen once again, recollections may vary. Chiron always feels victimised, and it’s hard to know how much is objective and how much is subjective. Sometimes destructive parental or peer group behaviour is so painfully obvious that there isn’t any question about it. But sometimes it’s far more ambiguous. The same experience may affect different children in very different ways.

The question of individual perception and how we interpret what has happened to us is critical in working with Chiron. Archetypal patterns, as James Hillman said, are lenses through which we view reality, and if we keep wearing Chiron’s spectacles rather than those of other planets, we will always see ourselves as victims. And we may also need to consider whether a person who constantly feels scapegoated may behave in ways that provoke rejection from others. We’re back to the issue of how we may sometimes create our own circumstances according to how we act in life, which depends in turn on what we perceive.

Audience: It sounds as if you’re saying there isn’t really any scapegoating, only people who feel they have been scapegoated. Surely that isn’t the case. Scapegoating goes on all the time, but it sounds as if you’re excusing it or saying it’s purely in the mind of the victim.

Liz: I’m not saying that at all. Please try to listen, rather than reacting without thinking and immediately putting words into my mouth. You’re giving us an excellent example of what I’ve just been talking about. I’m sorry if I’ve inadvertently put my finger on a wound. But please don’t misinterpret or reinterpret what I’ve been saying.

Of course scapegoating goes on all the time, and it’s brutal and inexcusable. It’s not ‘just’ in the mind of the victim, and there is no justification for it. Sometimes we need to find the courage to avail ourselves of the law to right a wrong. But for your own sake there might be a better way of understanding what has happened to you, or to anyone else with whom you empathise, than simply returning the hatred fivefold and becoming a scapegoater yourself. If we want to work with Chiron in constructive ways and not get stuck howling in that cave full of bitterness and poison, it won’t help to look only at the ugly reality of other people’s behaviour. We might need to look at our own behaviour too. Scapegoating reflects the dark side of human nature, and only an incredibly naïve or deluded person would claim it’s all purely subjective. But as Jung put it in The Undiscovered Self, ‘None of us stands outside humanity’s black collective shadow.’ We might need to explore the ways in which we perpetuate the pattern rather than bringing about genuine change and healing, inner or outer.

I’m not suggesting minimising the pain, turning the other cheek, or pushing everything under the carpet. But we can become so stuck in hating and blaming that we see culprits everywhere, often in the wrong places, and fail to recognise that we might also be looking into a mirror. Becoming a scapegoater because you have been scapegoated is easy and seductive. It can even become addictive. But it won’t do anything at all to help anyone else’s pain, let alone our own. We just risk becoming the very thing we hate.

Any group within a general population – racial, religious, economic, social – may be scapegoated because they appear ‘different’. They’re often accused of causing social, political, and economic crises they have nothing to do with. Historically they have been blamed for the spread of disease, or they become the focus of conspiracy theories. The great challenge for any individual identifying with such a group is to avoid becoming a scapegoater seeking someone else to persecute. And that requires being able to distinguish what we perceive from what has actually happened.

Our individual perceptions affect not only how we experience our own wounds, but also the ways in which we interpret history. We can rewrite the past according to our personal grievances or we can make the effort to find enough detachment and balance to see the subtlety and complexity of Chiron’s myriad colours as they tint human history. With sufficient unconsciousness, hatred, and envy, any current ‘victim’ movement, however justified it might seem in external terms, can facilitate the scapegoat becoming a scapegoater if we polarise and fail to distinguish reality from our own emotional responses. Then people unconsciously become the very thing they’re opposing, and the cycle goes on and on into the future with no healing at all.

It would be misleading to associate Chiron with specific collective events such as pandemics, wars, or economic crises, in which there are always so many blameless victims. No planet ‘makes’ these events happen. The planets reflect our ways of perceiving, responding to, and interpreting events, and our responses in turn shape present and future events. If a collective is relatively unified in a particular response, it can change history for the better. But without individual reflection, it can also change it for the worse.

The dimension of the psyche that Chiron symbolises in the individual and the collective will respond to painful events with a particular mind-set, which initially is that of the archetypal Scapegoat. This mind-set might eventually transform into a wiser, more realistic, and more compassionate perspective. The impotent, poisoned centaur can reclaim his wisdom in the act of sacrificing his immortality. But the poisoned wound, accidentally inflicted, begins the story. Chiron reflects how we react as individuals and as a group when we feel unfairly victimised and scapegoated, which, sooner or later, for one reason or another, every one of us is.

51 On the tradition of the sin-eater, see Hilda Ellis Davison, ed., Boundaries and Thresholds (Thimble Press, 1993); Bertram S. Puckle, Funeral Customs (T. Werner Laurie Ltd., 1926).

52 The word may be related to pharmakon, which can be both a poison and a healing agent. On the Greek pharmakos, see Walter Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (University of California Press, 1982); Todd M. Compton, Victim of the Muses: Poet as Scapegoat, Warrior and Hero in Greco-Roman and Indo-European Myth and History (Hellenic Studies Series 11, Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University, 2006).

Conclusion

Feeling helpless and enraged in the face of malign and unfair forces over which we have no individual power is characteristic of Chiron’s response. We may feel victimised, but we may also seek victims – partners, parents, children, peers, governments, politicians, authors, racial or gender or national or economic groups – in order to feel more potent in the face of life’s unfairness. We can see this dynamic with the greatest clarity in the relationships in which Chiron plays an important part.

If we really want to make a difference in the world, we need to begin in the hidden part of our own back garden or the alcove in the basement that no one ever sees. Chiron in love is also Chiron in pain. With some effort, self-honesty, humility, genuine communication, and a willingness to go through Chiron’s stages from injury and rage to the acceptance of mortality, each of us might, within the individual sphere in which we work and live and in the relationships that matter in our lives, make a genuine difference.