Eris in Astrology: What’s a Battle Goddess Good For?
In preparation for the New Moon in Capricorn, some of my Patreon patrons and I were talking about Eris. Eris is featured prominently in the chart of that lunation, and for people born between roughly 1980 and 1998, our natal Eris's will be triggered, as well.
Eris is a recently discovered dwarf planet. It moves incredibly slowly--as evidenced by the fact that people born 18 years apart have their Eris placements close enough to be triggered by the same transit. Perhaps, because of this slowness, not many astrologers work with Eris.
I keep an eye out for Eris, since Steven Forrest started warning that we ignore Eris at our peril, but I have never done a reading where Eris's position has been relevant.
And, honestly? That's been a relief.
Until now. After that conversation with my patrons, I see things a bit differently.
Why Does Eris Make Everyone Uncomfortable?
To the ancient Greeks, Eris was a battle goddess. The sister of Ares, she was said by Homer to delight in the screams of men dying in battle. Hesiod said she was the mother of the cacodaemons, spirits with names like Toil, Forgetfulness, Starvation, and Pains. She was so obnoxious, she was the only goddess not invited to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis. In revenge, she incited the incident that lead to the Trojan War.
By transit and natal placement, Eris has become associated with competition, the famously ruthless fashion industry, and brutal (often sexual) violence.
In modern times, members of the Discordian movement have claimed Eris as their patron goddess, but few take this view of Eris seriously, which is probably fine, since taking things seriously is exactly not the point of the Discordian movement.
Astrologers are amazing at finding the bright side of difficult planets. Pluto, the Lord of the Underworld, is also the ruler of buried treasure, they point out. The best thing I've heard an astrologer say about Eris is that sometimes the fear of starving makes people do their best work. Not the most ringing of endorsements.
With all of these things stacked against her, how can a person possibly do anything with Eris but attempt to blow her rock out of the sky?
Let's Be Honest: Some Things Really Need to Die
My breakthrough with Eris came when my patrons and I were talking about where Eris lands in our charts. Many of us had stories about ways in which we had been subjected to unfair defeats and competition we really didn't want in those areas of our lives.
I have Eris in the 9th house of publishing. Before I was an astrologer, I was a fiction writer and editor of a small literary magazine. As a fiction writer, it felt brutally wrong to me that fiction writers are required to carve a professional path for themselves by knowing the right people or casting their creative children out into the world and collecting fist-fulls of rejection letters. As an editor, I hated creating a painful experience for the writers who submitted to my magazine and collected rejection letters from me.
My hatred for that aspect of the industry lead me to stop publishing my fiction and leave editing. I decided I would rather kill my career (and throw away an MFA in creative writing) than contribute to that dysfunctional system anymore.
And yet, you will notice that I haven't stopped writing or publishing. It's true that more people dream of publishing a novel than publishing a great work of astrology, but the occult publishing world still fundamentally works on the same principles as fiction publishing. Publishing is a secret passion of mine. I am continually looking for ways to make publishing more humane, that don't have brutal competition at their heart. While I work and dream, I dance to Eris's tune.
What's to Be Done with Eris?
I have a theory that Eris comes to the place she does in our charts because there are things in that area of our lives that really need to die. If we are brutally honest, if we could play a hand in making those things die, we would be like Eris, laughing through the battlefield.
And what do we do in the meantime?
The answer is, always, the best we can.
But my suggestion is to look around the areas of life ruled by the house where you find Eris. (It is probably somewhere in the middle-ish of Aries.) What things in that area of your life are really dysfunctional and deserve to end? What can you do to bring about that end? And how can you do that, joyfully?
Sources
Steven Forrest, Eris and Uranus: Lords of Chaos
"Eris," Theoi.com
Phil Hine, Condensed Chaos: An Introduction to Chaos Magic
