Dear Friend and Reader:
I was just soaking in the irony of New York’s governor choosing an anti-choice, apparently regressive Senate replacement for Miss Rodham the day that Mars squares Eris. I’ve identified Eris as being the representative of the outcast woman; the one who lives on the edge of town, who comes to the market early so that she doesn’t have to deal with the judgment she feels. She could be anyone, but she’s not going along with situation as normal/moral.
Though she may not identify herself in public, I associate her with a number of feminine archetypes — the witch, the whore, the spinster, the lesbian, the solitary artist: generally she is not a householder, but she certainly can be, and this energy is getting stronger in the culture and that will resonate on some level with everyone. I think of Eris as the woman who knows she is different and is not afraid to be different, even though she may do it quietly.
She is the inner attribute of women who have not necessarily embodied their truth. For those who are aware of the Lilith archetype — the original woman, created equal to Adam — she is in this cycle of mythology. The problems with this energy generally arrive when she goes covert; when she conceals her agenda; when she refuses to state her needs because she is afraid that they will become a cause of discord. And this, more times than not, is the actual cause of discord.
Mars coming in for a square feels like a clash on the level of sibling rivalry. Mars and Eris are brother and sister. Mars is the essential male energy; the glyph is a circle with an arrow at the exact angle of an erect penis. The turbulence is between something that is inwardly authentically feminine and something that is outwardly, blatantly male. Men and women understand little about one another’s respective plights, or human conditions. I would propose as a man that most women think they “want their men to be men” but don’t understand what that really means. There is something a little wild about maleness, and I think this scares the bejesus out of the overwhelming majority of women, who feel that energy must be contained and controlled.