Chiron, Eris, and Why the World is a Different Place

In a Starcast from earlier this week, I take an early look at our current very unusual astrology.

Dear Friend and Reader:

I would love to approach this topic with satirical wit, but it ain’t happening. In such a case, I write from the heart and do my best with imprecise words.

Those who follow astrology are familiar with how there’s always a big deal brewing, or even the biggest-ever deal. As with CNN, there has to be a headline, or something cool for the thumbnail image. However, for 2025 I’ve been focusing on the events in Aries, which first come into focus in late May at the time of the Gemini New Moon — one month from this weekend’s Taurus New Moon.

The times we are living through are so strange that half the people seem to be overwhelmed, and the other half aren’t noticing. This is something you would have to feel. Logic and reason are not going to get you there.

As I make my way through the foggy ruins of journalism, I’m looking for anyone who has a clue that the instability, chaos, and extreme, edgy restlessness of the world are the product of the digital environment. Unless you’re extremely intuitive and/or not a true believer, this can take a while to figure out.

If you’re totally in the trance, aided and abetted by happy pills, it might feel wonderful — especially if you don’t know or remember anything else. Everything is just another Gee Whiz and “Sure, let’s get the upgrade.”

Aries is the Focus of Self, or Loss of Self

The Sun is in Taurus now; I’ll cover that in Starcast. Meanwhile, there is astrology on a generational or lifetime scale happening next door in Aries.

This is not the place for a tome on the subject, though whenever there is highly focused activity in Aries — the kind that happens once or twice a century — the bottom has a way of falling out of consciousness. There are a series of shocks that might sound like they’re off in the distance. Then they’re in bed with you.

Each time, humanity is swallowed by another wave of technology that redefines who we are, as individuals and together, and the result is never admirable. Nor is it noticeable. Everyone thinks that ideology and ads and propaganda change society. I don’t think so. Psyops only work when the ground is well-prepared.

Key times that come to mind are the mid-19th century, the 1930s, the 1970s, and today. Think: telegraph, radio, television and digital. All emerged with landmark events in Aries. All changed the world irrevocably and in ways barely understood.

Of course it’s all sold as the fantastic new product that will make our lives perfect, but I don’t see anyone dancing in backlit silhouette with their iPod in their hand. We’re not gathered around the radio, staring at the dial, listening to the reassuring voice of Pres. Roosevelt.

But What About the Children?

What I do see are many articles that reflect a state of panic about what exposure to devices does (has done to) to the developing brains of young teenagers. What happens to them happens and is happening to society. This may be the first time society has attempted to reflect the effects of a new, overwhelming media environment while it’s happening.

Then there are those who are looking right at the phantom disembodiment, the free-floating hostility, the dissociation, the detachment, and this sense that just about everyone is both tripping and emotionally cut off — and wondering what to do.

I would say “know thyself” is a good suggestion, and “know now to know when you do not know thyself.” There is not an easy answer and the territory we are in is, so far as I know, unprecedented. It’s a little like when the monolith appears in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and some new transmission comes through and…everything changes.

But now the monolith is everywhere, it weighs about seven ounces, it knows where you are, and it’s trying to convince you to let it make your decisions. The biggest problem with digital technology is that it presents itself as the solution to the problem it has created. It involves people like nothing before it.

Chiron Conjunct Eris

There are two events brewing in Aries, which will have many variants over the next year. But the foundation is the same. The first is that Chiron (healing process, radical awareness) is lining up with Eris (a chaos and conflict generator, and deep factor in the environment). Both are new discoveries and had not been discovered when they last aligned, in 1971-1972, so we are about to experience the first-ever conscious Chiron-Eris conjunction.

The second is Saturn conjunct Neptune in the first degree of Aries (where self and collective intersect). I’ve been told that to find a precedent for this, you have to go back to about 4600 BCE — 2,000 years before the Great Pyramid in Egypt was built.

My concern with the presence of Neptune is its drug-like, anesthetic quality, or the lure of “oh what a lovely dream” (of total technology). In the words of Human Design, the biggest risk of Neptune in Aries is confusing Not Self with Self, which humans already have a hard time with.

Saturn enters Aries later this month and describes some mitigating effect: something tangible. Borrowing again from HD, this could be a form of the all-essential inner authority — the only one that matters.

But Why oh Why…

If you’re asking yourself, “But why are things especially ________ right now?” (fill in your favorite or least favorite descriptor), Chiron-Eris (and what it says about the digital environment) holds a clue. Yet that clue has to come from within you if it’s going to be meaningful. And that’s not easy to discern, because “within yourself” is the first thing that digital technology moves outside of yourself (such as holding your brain in your hand).

If you’re wondering why all these people who say things like “Love is Love” seem to hate themselves and everyone else, you have a clue.

This is what I mean when I say that way down at the bottom, the crisis we face is spiritual. Something never-before known or experienced is taking hold of every concept of “self” and every concept of “god” and every relationship all at the same time. It will feel like both self and God to those who don’t know the real thing, and the “relationship bots” are appearing all over the place — without earning so much as a meekly whispered like wow.

In computer science, there is something called the Turing Test; you may have heard of it. Alan Turing invented the computer as we know it, including the term “algorithm.” The test named for him is whether a biological person can discern whether something acting like a person really is one, or is an algorithm.

(He knew this was coming nearly 100 years ago. Despite his essential service to the Allies during World War II, he was also convicted of the then-crime of being gay in England, and “chemically castrated.”) If it’s difficult to discern, it’s not because the computers are so good. It’s because people are acting so much like them. They’re the ones who think that computers can make art.

Tell me this: when you hear one of those now-everywhere creepy synthetic voices, such as narrating an ad or reel, how many seconds does it take you to notice that it’s not human? I suggest getting it down to nanoseconds.

Eye of the Centaur

So, we’re about to go through a kind of eye of the needle at a very fast speed, as the planet most associated with waking up meets the one most associated with numbing/shocking out. This is “The Awakening” aspect. It is “The Reckoning” aspect. It’s a new, intense version of “The Eye of the Centaur.” It’s much else besides, though those are my best approximations.

So what’s a girl or boy to do? (Keep asking that.)

Pay attention. Use whatever is left of your attention span, hopefully longer than the duration of a TikTok, to practice focusing your awareness consciously. Notice when you’re making a decision. Notice how you feel at all times.

Feel the pull of the digital environment, and if you’ve figured out there is no escape, admit that consciously. If you’re worried about young people, show them something interesting about the world.

I am also pretty sure that our relationships with cats and dogs are dependable grounding in reality, as most of them are not sucked into digital yet and remain instinctual, warm and emotional. (I am worried about the dogs and cats learning to speak through digital technology — those videos are everywhere and they seem real to me. But I have yet to interview one of their persons.)

Cats and dogs certainly love us, though it’s the truly unconditional love that you feel for them that matters right now. That’s what will give you what you need. Then extend that feeling to people. Getting outside will help, as will reading physical books, the kind you can scribble in and smell.

Pay for things in cash. Especially leave tips in cash, which will remind you that it exists.

Yet all of this may only serve to remind you the extent of the problem that, at the moment, cannot be easily defined, much less solved. And beware of those who preach wise use of digital technology; that raft is back on the beach, and we are heading on foot into an unknown continent.

And if there is an antidote to be found within the environment itself, that would be in the form of making art instead of “consuming content.” We are all about to explode, so let the pressure off slowly when you can.

With love,

Your faithful astrologer,

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