Hylonome Notes
These are just some thoughts and ideas based on the mythology and the orbit.
Mythologically, centaurs represent the wild, untamed, animal, sexual, or even barbaric side of human nature, and how it is (e.g., in the case of Chiron) or is not integrated. In Hylonome we had a potential symbol of unbridled female passion, a strong, sexy woman who cannot be owned. Instead she fell in love with the alpha male of the centaurs, Cyllarus, and committed suicide by throwing herself onto the spear that killed him in battle. She had potential but she threw it all away on some bloke. This is what we tend to hear about her, and so her archetype often gets reduced to something like, the myth of the stupid girl.
If we look at Ovid’s description of her, we can see that she was beautiful, feminine and loving, but she was also strong, was in an equal relationship with Cyllarus, and could fight well:
Many females of his race courted him, but one, Hylonome, won him, none lovelier, among the female centaurs, in the deep forests. She alone held Cyllarus’s affections, by endearments, by loving and admitting love; and by her appearance, as far as those limbs allow its cultivation: now she would smooth her mane with a comb, now entwine it with rosemary, now violets or roses: or else she wore bright lilies. She bathed her face twice a day in the spring that fell from the woods, on the heights near Pagasae, twice dipped her body in the stream. She would wear only selected skins of wild beasts that became her, over her shoulder or across her left flank. Their love was equally shared. They wandered the mountainsides together, rested at the same time in caves: and now they had both come to the palace of the Lapiths, and both fought fiercely.
These traits are not mutually exclusive, but neither are they easily combined by just anyone. They describe an expectation that’s commonly placed on women (by themselves); to be strong, feisty and independent, yet sweet, receptive and loving; all things to all men. Hylonome illustrates how this can be a dangerous balancing act to attempt, since it’s not safe to simultaneously be emotionally wide open (which Hylonome certainly is) and go into battle. Men are often expected to achieve a similar balance between something like hunter-warrior and sensitive lover, but this is probably shown more by Cyllarus. Cyllarus and Hylonome are both idealised versions of their gender, and of love, and try to live that in reality as mere mortals (of the centaurs, only Chiron was immortal).
Working with this kind of duality / paradox is a centaur theme (see also liminal beings), and it’s echoed by the orbits of the centaur planets, which usually swing back and forth between two or more of the outer planets, bringing the energy of one to the other — not combining them like a conjunction, but bringing them towards and away from one another, as a process, requiring ongoing learning and adjustment.
Hylonome’s orbit goes from Neptune to Uranus, and if you transport yourself into the myth and be her, you can feel exactly that transition:
A javelin (who threw it is unknown) came from the left and took you, Cyllarus, below the place where the chest swells to the neck. When the weapon was withdrawn the heart, though only slightly pierced, grew cold with the whole body. Immediately Hylonome clasped the dying limbs, sealed the wound with her hand, placed her mouth on his, and tried to prevent the passage of his spirit. Seeing he was dead, with words that the noise prevented from reaching my ears, she threw herself onto the spear that had pierced him, embracing her husband in dying.
Her response seems sudden, impulsive, erratic (Uranus), but we can understand where she was coming from, we can understand the overwhelming empathy and oneness with her loved one (Neptune). The theme of feeling other people’s pain and taking it on as your own, perhaps completely unconsciously, and the potential dangers of that, is in there. Astrologically you could say that if you pick up vibes from Neptune, which are by definition unconscious and possibly delusional, it’s pretty dangerous to let Uranus decide what to do with them. The result will probably be some kind of irrational reflex, which could be either tragic or utterly brilliant.
We could also see this scene as a metaphor for the ending of any relationship; Cyllarus’s heart “grew cold,” and Hylonome followed the standard procedure of hanging on, trying to patch it up, making futile attempts to breathe life back into it and finally despair. But she still didn’t let go, she joined him even in death. She may be someone for whom endings are inconceivable, incomprensible, just totally out of the question (Neptune acknowledges no boundaries). Or she may simply be what any of us might feel at the time of the initial shock and disbelief.
With Hylonome maybe we need to recognise that Neptune and Uranus have stunning potential but are both literally too “far out” to be left to their own devices. It seems that this process needs grounding. Many of the other centaurs’ orbits (like Chiron) come in as far as Saturn, which does exactly that. It may be worth looking at bodies aspecting Hylonome in a chart to see what could consciously be used to perform the grounding function, something to slow her down before she crashes. It seems to me that she would be exalted in an earth sign for that reason, but I think her nature is Piscean.
The planet herself is a sun-sign Pisces, discovered 27th February 1995, and the grief-stricken wailing often associated with Hylonome situations (she can have a kind of mass hysteria effect) is evocative of the so-called Neptunian spiritual longing, coming from an unfillable place inside that needs to join with something bigger than itself and go home. Hylonome seems to focus more on the side of Neptune/Pisces that has that instinctive sadness, rather than its blissful side. Hence her association, at the extreme, with suicide, when the Uranus factor is allowed to impulsively act out those feelings of both sadness and need for oneness (ego death) that Neptune picks up from the ether. But Neptune doesn’t speak of anything that really has any physical equivalent, so attempting that kind of literal translation into this realm can be anything from disastrous to pointless. Neptune can be expressed more obliquely through any form of art, and this is the best way I can think of for Hylonome to fulfill her need to do something dramatic with her longing, not least because she’d be so good at it. You don’t have to die to be dramatic, but I think maybe you do have to get your feelings out in a way that is physically satisfying if you’re dealing with Hylonome (see below).
Sylvia Plath had Hylonome in Aries in the first house (conjunct Eris), very close to the Aries point. To me she sums up the feeling. She manifested the most extreme both positive and negative expressions of this planet. If you listen to her voice at this link, it’s very strong, not like some dreamy fish girl, but with a slight crack. This reminds me of Ovid’s initial description of Hylonome; she seems both strong and intensely vulnerable (sounds like a Cancerian trait).
Hylonome’s Uranian impulses seem to be directed more towards the self than at others, as if Uranus was retrograde. Mars is retrograde in Leo in the planet’s discovery chart, which could be expressed as self-attack, and which is also a picture of the arrow through the heart in the myth. Leo rules the heart, and in the myth we can see that Cyllarus’s heart was pierced by the javelin, and that this was a mirror of how Hylonome felt emotionally. Her heart was pierced. The feeling is of a wound that energetically had already happened to her, which she then acted out by throwing herself on the javelin. In a sense she simply manifested the “pierced heart” energy she was experiencing, which was just too strong not to appear in the physical world. This need to physically touch the pain in your heart is something we can all recognise on a gut level by feeling that myth, hard as it might be to explain or express; we can feel that maybe Hylonome talks perfect sense in the wordless realm (and note that her words were inaudible in the myth).
An everyday example of this instinct to physically touch unconscious pain is described by Carola Beresford-Cooke in her Shiatsu text book, based on the principles of traditional chinese medicine:
It is my personal opinion that addictions such as smoking or drinking are tied in to a primary weakness in the organ or organs affected by the drug, and that the habit arises as an instinctual attempt to protect a vulnerable organ or stimulate a sluggish one, but one which subsequently causes more damage. So, for example, a receiver who smokes and has a Lung imbalance may well have had the Lung diagnosis before he began to smoke, although he will have made it worse over time.
Hylonome probably does not represent addictions as such, but she does have a strong Neptune element. Maybe she gives some clues about the underlying causes of addictions, and maybe there is a relationship to compulsive behaviours where you are quite literally trying to put your finger on something. These could be forms of addiction that are not really to a substance. Self-harming might be one example.
It seems to me that Hylonome is deeply intuitive, picks up all the vibes around her and feels them in her body. I think Uranus is related to the energy body, as the go-between for the physical (Saturn) and pure being (Neptune). We need to be aware of Hylonome’s process, and somehow learn to allow a thought gap between the feeling and the doing in any situation. It isn’t easy, and so Hylonome may sometimes represent the pain you bring on yourself with emotional reflex actions that truly don’t feel controllable, that you honestly don’t understand, and that feel more as if they “just happen to you,” but which eventually cause enough heartache to force you to find a way to slow down and have some compassion for yourself. Then perhaps it’s possible to use Hylonome’s potentially stunning combination of sensitivity and genius, to express yourself in other ways.