Chris Skidmore is a counseling astrologer in private practice in Bali, Indonesia. He is a PACFA registered psychotherapist as well as a biodynamic craniosacral therapist. In 2019, Chris graduated from MetaVision Institute in Australia where he learned the work of Arnold Mindell and his Process Oriented Psychotherapy.

His interest is in the way that Psyche, Soma and Cosmos interact with each other in the human experience. How something that seems so personal can in fact be so universal. And the way that the body stores these stories for us all to explore if we approach our symptoms with appropriate reverence.

Following the threads of Astrology and Psychology back to their roots he has discovered the rich world of Greek Mythology; stories that tie together human consciousness and the natural world. With the help of his teacher, Brian Clark, he has been weaving together the rich tapestry of our ancestors’ collective minds to find timeless themes; themes as alive today as they were in Ancient Greece.

In 2024, Chris’ work is expanding to include teaching, storytelling, lectures and writing articles. So far he has been published in the FAA and online at astro.com. He also hosts a growing podcast exploring the above themes called On the Soul’s Terms.

Website: onthesoulsterms.com
Instagram: instagram.com/on_the_souls_terms

The Healing Dreams of Asclepius: The Cycles of Neptune & Chiron

In Greek Mythology, Asclepius, son of the Sun God Apollo, was fostered by the wise healer centaur Chiron. Over his lifetime, Chiron taught him everything he knew: the healing power of herbs, how to use his hands to heal the wounded, the internal journey offered by music and stories, and much more that occurred in Chiron’s cave.

As a grown demi-god, Asclepius realised that something was missing in Chiron’s teaching: the Psyche itself. And so, he discovered a way to enter the internal workings of his patients through their dreaming process. Asclepius, or one of his totem animals: snakes and dogs, would enter the consciousness of the dreamer seeking health. From inside the dreamworld he would either perform the tasks necessary to bring back health and vitality or show the dreamer what was needed in their dayworld to heal.

In Astrology, Neptune is associated with the oceanic deep unconscious, the fantasy realm and the dreamworld. Asclepius, therefore, is in many ways a ‘child of Neptune’ (or Poseidon in Greek). The Centaur Chiron was discovered in 1977 and is directly linked to the wise centaur of the old myths.

Whether it’s Freud and Jung bringing a focus back to the dreams of their clients, or the advent of hypnotherapy (Hypnos being the god of sleep), or the use of psychedelics to enhance the body’s ability to spontaneously heal, we can see the signatures of these two archetypal figures throughout the history of Psychology and beyond. We even see the rod of Asclepius still in use today as the core symbol of medicine itself, and it is still common to recite the Hippocratic Oath when becoming a medical professional; Hippocrates being what was knows as an ‘Asclepiad’: a son of Asclepius.

In this talk we will look at the cycles of Neptune and Chiron, with particular attention paid to the moments of Asclepian/Chironic interference in the path of Western Medicine through the vehicle of chance and synchronicity. On a more personal level, we will look at our own relationship to these two figures in our chart, and how we might be able to dream more deeply into their non-rational relevance to our own healing process.

Astrology, Constellations and the Wisdom of the Field (Double Lecture)

When I was first introduced to Astrology 20 years ago, it was explained to me as a symbolic language. As such the symbols didn’t necessarily speak for themselves but referred to something else. For example, Venus referred to the world of love and desire. Mars pointed to our relationship with willpower and drive. The moon looked at our interior, felt-sense of the world.

A decade later I was introduced to an extension of Family Constellations called Intention Constellations. In this work, the internal parts of the self were no longer in symbolic form but being lived out by people I’d never met with uncanny accuracy.

Over the next few years I began experimenting with the parts represented in the natal chart as actual living beings. Not just archetypes but the gods themselves. If the chart was a reality on this level, then much like Constellation work, they would be available to be lived out in what Rupert Sheldrake calls the ‘Morphogenetic Field’.

In my monthly astrological constellation workshop, which I named Soul Constellations, I started to see charts come off the two-dimensional page and be lived out by the participants in the room. The central person would ask people in the circle to ‘resonate with’ their planets one by one; however many or few they wanted for the process. And immediately, every time, the chart began to come to life. This happened without anyone seeing the chart, and most participants had very little if any experience with the symbols of astrology.

What does this tell us about the interior and exterior reality that astrology represents? How would an experience such as this enhance our understanding of our charts not as a symbolic representation, but as a lived and liveable reality?

In this two-session interactive lecture/workshop, we will have the opportunity to learn about this way of working with astrology as an inherent structure of reality. By participating in a Soul Constellation as a witness, a character or the central person, we will have a chance to also see this work in action and watch the wisdom of the field as it moves us into the positions intimated by the chart as a living being.