Asclepius (Ophiuchus) & the Mythic Roots of Western Medicine
A solar eclipse occurs when the light of the sun is partially, or fully, blocked by the moon from the perspective of the earth. It’s a moment in time when the night intrudes upon the day for just a few minutes. Astrologically, it can be an omen of some kind of sudden change occurring, a break in the natural order of things. Even in our modern, logic-washed world, we stop to take in this awe-inspiring moment, witnessing the sacred geometry of the moon being 400 times smaller but also 400 times closer to Earth, allowing this perfect union. And mythologically, it is the story of Apollo, the sun god, falling in love with a human called Coronis - a name associated with the dark moon.
From this union of light and dark, life and death, day and night, the demi-god Asclepius was conceived. Apollo, being the eternal youth sun god, had other things to do besides hang around for the gestation period. In his absence Coronis, having no interest in raising a ‘son of god’ by herself, began a relationship with a mortal named Ischys. The raven saw this and reported it back to Apollo, who became so infuriated by the message that he scorched the raven, turning it from white to black. In his jealous fury, he reacted without hesitation and sent arrows raining down on Coronis, killing her instantly.
As the flames began to engulf Coronis’ funeral pyre, Apollo, feeling a deep sense of remorse for his rash actions, sent his brother Hermes to rescue the baby from his mother’s womb. In this moment Asclepius was born from the ashes of death into the world of the living.
Apollo, the god of prophecy, saw something special in his son. He took him to the centaur and master healer, Chiron, to mentor him in the healing arts. Steadfast in his task, Chiron adamantly taught Asclepius everything he knew. Asclepius was a fast learner and willingly soaked up all the wisdom his mentor had to bestow upon him. He learned of the medicinal plants of the forest and how to mix them together to create remedies for all sorts of ailments. He was taught about the healing powers of the hands (chiro means ‘hands’ in Latin) that can realign physical structures and reestablish an energetic flow in the body.
For Asclepius, however, something was still missing from Chiron’s methods: the link between psyche and soma. He began to see that the root of many illnesses went far deeper than the physical level. In order to access these hidden and subjective layers of his patients, he began to enter their dreamworld and heal from the inside of their souls.
So compelling were the ideas Asclepius represented that temples began to arise all over ancient Greece. Those seeking healing would arrive at the temple and be met by physician-priests named Asclepiads. They would put the seekers through a purification ritual that often lasted some days, which would include purging, fasting and cleansing.
After completing this purification process, the patient would enter the temple and walk past non-venomous snakes until they made it to the innermost sanctum - the Abaton. Here they would be invited to go to sleep. Asclepius, or one of his snakes, would then enter their dreams and either perform a healing there, or show the dreamer what needed to be done in the surface world in order to heal. If the patient was unable to sleep because of their excitement, they would be visited by waking visions. Many of these dreams and visions still remain to this day, scribed on stone tablets and kept for the records of the Asclepiads.
Remember this the next time you drive past a hospital or clinic and see the symbol of the snake wrapped around a staff. That’s the Rod of Asclepius1. The mythic roots of western medicine go back to this moment. His temples were the western world’s first prototype for a hospital. They were always built nearby a sacred spring and surrounded by abundant nature. Asclepius, after all, was a personification of the miraculous healing powers of the natural world. Alongside the temple was often an amphitheatre where the dreams could be acted out to captivated audiences. It was known that some dreams contained healing medicine not just for the individual, but for the collective to which they belonged.
Eventually, Asclepius’ healing gifts became so powerful that he was able to bring back a soul from the dead. Hades, god of the Underworld, was none too impressed by losing one of his treasured souls and appealed to Zeus to restore the natural balance by punishing the demi-god for going against the laws of nature.
With the flash of Zeus’ almighty thunderbolt, Asclepius was taken out. For his service to the healing arts, however, Zeus restored his soul to the sky as the constellation of Ophiuchus2, the serpent bearer, placed between Scorpio (ruled by Hades/Pluto) and Sagittarius (ruled by Zeus/Jupiter) in the wheel of the constellations of the Zodiac. It is this point in the story of the Zodiac that the mythical ‘return from the underworld’ occurs; the edge between Scorpio and Sagittarius being the liminal space between depth processes and meaning making. Fitting, then, that Asclepius should find himself there; this child of the Solar Eclipse, born mixing cremation with creation; the alchemical blending of the forces of life and death.
The constellation of Ophiuchus sprang into public awareness by accident in the mid ‘90s from a falsely reported BBC article that it was the 13th ‘sign’ of the Zodiac. Though the BBC later published a correction, the ‘myth’ remains. Ophiuchus has now entered the Zodiac as an outsider looking in. In fact, the article was published just as Pluto was moving from Scorpio into Sagittarius; the very point that Ophiuchus inhabits.
Perhaps, as above so below, there’s relevance here for this moment in history. Perhaps we need to remember the origin story of Western Medicine and its connection to the cycles of the natural world; the honouring of dreams and reverence for those often-experienced and well-documented healing miracles - even if not replicable in a scientific laboratory that eliminates chance and nature.
With such a rich cultural mythology and history surrounding the complexity of health and healing, including the importance of honouring the Psyche, how has it come to be that modern medicine has become a strictly materialist scientific business? To explore this question we’ll need to visit a prominent Asclepiad from the 4th century BCE named Hippocrates, whose oath medical students still speak today in their sacred ritual of initiation into becoming a Physician. (Coming soon on Abaton - the inner sanctum)
1In fact the symbol of Western Medicine got confused between the Rod of Asclepius and Hermes’ Caduceus in the 19th century - an interesting turn considering Hermes’ connection to commerce and thievery… an article for another day.
2If you have planets or points in Sagittarius between 8° and 26° then they have Ophiuchus as their backdrop in the sky. If you know your chart, you might like to experiment with whether the demi-god of medicine feels relevant to those placements.
