Let’s go back now to Robert Green’s book, The 48 Laws of Power. This time, I want to explore Law #33. Green says, “Discover each man’s thumbscrew. Everyone has a weakness, a gap in the castle wall. That weakness is usually an insecurity, an uncontrollable emotion or need. It can also be a small secret pleasure. Either way, once found, it is a thumbscrew you can turn to your advantage. We all have resistances.”
He continues, “We live with a perpetual armor around ourselves to defend against change and the intrusive actions of friends and rivals. We would like nothing more than to be left to do things our own way. Constantly butting up against these resistances will cost you a lot of energy. One of the most important things to realize about people though, is that they all have a weakness, some part of their psychological armor that will not resist, that will bend to your will, if you find it, and push on it.”
As I contemplated this law, I thought about how angry I had felt when I realized my oppressors knew me better than I knew myself. As a result, I had doubled down on my self-study. And just before the peak of the dark night of the soul, I started to reverse engineer how I had been enslaved into my particular flavor of victimhood, cults. Before that, I spent my time wondering why anyone would want to take power away from me or my family. But the real question was not about why would they would want to do so. It was about why they could.
So, while discovering myself through astrology, I concluded my weak spots or thumbscrews were my wounds. I learned about Chiron, the comet-planet named after the great mythological alchemist, shaman and wounded healer. Meredith, whose Chiron playlist I posted below, is an astrologist as well as the founder of Soul Navigation. She says, “Chiron is your fated wound in your life (and) your greatest teacher (and) your gift that you have to offer the world.” She teaches that it can be either our medicine or our poison depending on how we choose to process the pain.
Most astrologist agree that the Chiron wound can never be fully healed. Since I believe everything is possible, I don’t choose to make this theology a part of my rainbow belief bridge. However, I also don’t push against this established doctrine which has been proved to be true through the power of the crowd’s belief. Instead, I accept mine as a gift of alchemy.
See, according to Meredith, the Chiron wound, which shapes “that vulnerable part in you,” can be turned into a magical elixir which transforms pain into power. She also says, “Don’t try to cure your wound.” Instead, she teaches that we should learn how to care for it and thus transform it. We must go through the wound to get the gift, the medicine, the elixir.