Later this week, the Sun makes a conjunction to the relatively new planet Eris in Aries. Eris, discovered in 2005 and named in 2006, is the planet that caused astronomers to reorganize their view of the solar system. It goes around our Sun in 560 years, and is currently the most distant, coldest and one of the slowest-moving known objects in our solar system. Very little is written about Eris; I have prepared a number of articles over the years, of which this is one of my favorites. it’s from the March 28, 2008 subscriber edition of Planet Waves. — efc
Dear Friend and Reader:
IN THESE DAYS, the Sun is making conjunctions to the natal Eris of just about every person walking the planet. Eris is now in Aries, where it first arrived in the 1920s and where it will be through the 2040s. For the first time, we have a major astrological factor where nearly every living person has the planet in the same sign.
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She is the goddess of discord (in ancient Rome, she was called Discordia), and we surely live in a time of planetary chaos: of ideas, of history, and most significantly, of who we think we are. I believe that Eris represents the fundamental crisis of identity — and as I’ve discovered in the course of doing this article, gender identity.
First, let’s do a quick overview of Eris and her rather spectacular arrival in consciousness and astronomy. That arrival is essential to understanding her role in astrology — a role that, for the most part, astrology has not been looking at. It’s an old story that 99% of astrologers ignore new discoveries. I am sure there are few of them walking around muttering, “The jury is still out on Pluto.”
The basic Eris story is that a discovery team consisting of Mike Brown, Chad Trujillo and Dave Rabinowitz photographed something way out there in 2003, but did not immediately take notice of the discovery. In 2005, Mike realized it was a planet, recording a discovery time of 11:20 am on Jan. 5, 2005 in Pasadena. Considered one of the world’s preeminent astrophysicists, Mike told The New York Times that he looked at his watch and recorded the time of his discovery because he knew astrologers would ask him. Hence, the lead discoverer not only possessed none of the difficult-to-fathom animosity that astronomers are so famous for harboring toward astrologers; to make things even more fun, he recently announced to his colleagues that he loves astrologers. We ran his article in Planet Waves.
This bit factors into the story too, because we have a rare example of an astronomer willing to break the mold, forget idiotic prejudices and do what he wants. He can afford to — he has his place in history, but more to the point, he has an open mind.