Monday at 8:02 am EDT is the Libra New Moon — the Sun and Moon making their monthly conjunction, this time in the sign Libra. What’s distinctive about this Libra New Moon is that it’s opposite Eris. This is the planetary discovery that informed everyone that the minor planets exist — and which was in part responsible for the demotion of Pluto (that is, becoming minor planet (134340) Pluto). The number in parentheses is the minor planet catalog number, stated in formal notation.
Nobody doubts that Pluto is just as potent as ever, despite being a ‘minor’ planet; now it’s time to consider a more recent discovery — (136199) Eris, a body about the size of Pluto, with an orbit more than twice as long. At this point, Eris is so far from the Sun that it’s spending more than a century in Aries, a factor that’s feeding the sense of identity chaos that is so prevalent in our phase of history.
In an article in the current issue of The Mountain Astrologer, I describe the process of figuring out what new planets mean and how they work. I give numerous examples of what I call “proving moments” — significant news or personal events where the newly discovered point is involved in something like a New Moon or a Full Moon, especially when there is an unusually tight alignment, say, two degrees or less. When this happens, it’s possible to witness the expression of the deeper nature of the newly discovered point (and by newly, I mean within the past 20 years or so) reveal itself.
We are about to have just such a proving moment with Eris. What we witness over the next few days will be expressive on some level of what Eris is about. In fact what we’ve been witnessing over the past week is offering some insight, though recently an asteroid called Psyche has been very active as well, lending itself to an atmosphere of healing crisis in personal relationships, deep self-doubts and the quest for authentic faith in ourselves and one another.
I’ve proposed that the Moon-Sun conjunction in Libra represents an idealized view of relationships. Libra is one of the signs that most vividly describes relating to others (it’s the sign opposite Aries, which is about self-focus). What we’re seeing, though, is that prefab views on relationships are not working so well; people behave differently from how the rules say they’re supposed to. In fact the rules seem to be a cover-up of actual behavior.