About a month ago, I had a sudden urge to check out my childhood home in upstate New York on Google maps. With the new “on-the-ground” feature, it was as though I were standing right in front of the house!

Two days later, I discovered a new online history of the village. The author had been in the 4-H Club chapter started by my father, whose name was mentioned in the registry of previous inhabitants. There was a link to some old photos, two of which showed my former home. This photo was taken before my parents moved to the farm in the 1950s. The other, which I posted last week, showed what was left of the barn after a tragic fire.

As an astrologer, I tend to look at everything through the lens of astrology, so of course I wanted to know why I suddenly got all of this information about my early childhood. I lived on the farm for less than seven years. Then, upon reflection, I realized how important these formative years are for us … and how wounding it was when my family was forced to leave this idyllic location. What’s more, all of my photos from my childhood have been lost or destroyed. Seeing these images was a shock, but it also opened a window for some deep healing to take place.

And therein lies the answer to my question.

I’ve written a lot here and on my former blog about the healing potential of the Neptune-Chiron conjunction. For the past couple of months, it has been in an exact square to my Midheaven and IC (fourth house cusp). Transits to the Midheaven typically show up as obvious events or situations, while transits to the IC may be felt internally and often relate to our early childhood experience or our genetic and spiritual roots — what some call “past lives.”

With Neptune and Chiron in Aquarius, much of the healing is taking place in the collective mind, but the collective is composed of individuals. Where this conjunction falls in your natal chart can tell you where you are doing the deepest healing work now. If it falls on a chart angle or conjoins personal planets, the healing potential is extremely powerful. A dear friend has 27 degrees Aquarius on the Ascendant, and you can bet that she is feeling this transit intensely. Her self-image is undergoing a radical change. It is a portrait of a healer being healed.

Hard aspects of Neptune to the Moon or IC are especially likely to bring up memories of the distant past. And to those memories, I now return…

We left the farm in 1963. Four years went by, and then two weeks before my birthday, my mother died of Hodgkin’s disease. A couple of months later, near what would have been her 45th birthday, the barn burned to the ground. I learned later that the entire herd of dairy cows perished in the blaze. I was fond of those cows and spent a lot of time in the barn “talking” to them. In the years following my mother’s death, I used to have recurring nightmares of her burning up in a fire, calling for help. Could there be a connection?

I’ll never know, but I do know that revisiting my childhood home via the Internet has been a powerfully healing experience, and that, too, fits with Neptune in Aquarius, sign of technology.

You see, there are many ways to heal.

Pat