The Astrology of Eris, the New Dwarf Planet

Eris, the new name for the dwarf planet UB313 (Xena), was the Greek goddess who was not invited to the forced wedding of Peleus and Thetis. In retaliation, Eris tossed an apple (a fruit with a rich symbolic tradition in many world cultures) inscribed “For the most beautiful one” into the middle of the wedding party—an action which led to the judgment of Paris and indirectly resulted in the Trojan War. She is thus a goddess of strife and discord.

Eris was also the sister of Ares, the Greek god of war. In Roman mythology, Ares was named Mars. We thus have a sister planet to Mars. Some have complained that this naming smacks of patriarchal attitudes: Why pick the name of a “crazy” goddess who inadvertently started the Trojan War? And why attach it to a “dwarf planet”? Why not a crazy guy/god instead?

 

Goddess of discord is just one way of looking at Eris. As we know, Mars is much more than just a god of war—although he is that, too. The same goes for Eris. According to Hesiod,

 

“But the other [side of Eris] is the elder daughter of dark Night and the son of Cronus who sits above and dwells in the ether, set her in the roots of the earth: and she is far kinder to men. She stirs up even the shiftless to toil; for a man grows eager to work when he considers his neighbor, a rich man who hastens to plough and plant and put his house in good order; and neighbor vies with his neighbor as he hurries after wealth. This Strife is wholesome for men.”

 

In other words, another form of the word strife is “striving.” Competition creates conditions where individuals (and, some would assert, nations) strive to improve their situations in life.

Eris was a central character in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty and the Grimm’s folk tale upon which it was based, “Briar Rose.” Sleeping Beauty has been castigated for presenting the feminine role model of a sleeping woman rescued by Prince Charming. In the Disney animation, the uninvited Maleficent—a recast Eris—curses the baby princess Aurora, setting in motion a chain of events which leads to eventual sleep and male-induced awakening. The feminist revision of this now views Maleficent as the uninvited (by patriarchal culture) true strength and power of women. Eris has been discovered at a time when feminist power is asserting itself in powerful ways.

In the Grimm’s version of this tale—from which Disney adopted the movie animation—the Eris character is still a woman who was not invited to a party, the christening of the princess Briar Rose. There were no fairies in the Grimm’s version, but rather twelve “wise women”:

“When eleven of them had made their promises, suddenly the thirteenth came in. She wished to avenge herself for not having been invited, and without greeting, or even looking at anyone, she cried with a loud voice, ‘The king's daughter shall in her fifteenth year prick herself with a spindle, and fall down dead." And, without saying a word more, she turned round and left the room.’ They were all shocked, but the twelfth, whose good wish still remained unspoken, came forward, and as she could not undo the evil sentence, but only soften it, she said, it shall not be death, but a deep sleep of a hundred years, into which the princess shall fall.”

As a result of the curse of the uninvited guest, the entire kingdom was affected. Spinning wheels were banned, but Briar Rose stumbled upon one and pricked her finger. The kingdom fell into a 100 year collective sleep. Since there were twelve “wise women” who were invited, we can infer astrological significance from this even though that may not have been the Grimm brothers’ intent when they recorded these folk tales as parts of German oral folk narratives. The thirteenth was uninvited, much like the planet Eris seems to have been.

The spindle is part of a spinning wheel, which is symbolic of wholeness, the self, and creativity, spinning cloth. The zodiac is also a spinning wheel. Briar Rose was led to the spinning wheel by the thirteenth woman, showing the greaat power of the uninvited guest. In the original Grimm's version, there is even a suggestion that the thirteenth woman was at the spinning wheel when Briar Rose "accidentally" came across it.

Click here to read Anne Sexton’s feminist poem, “Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty).”

What can we infer from these versions of the Eris myth? First, Eris probably does symbolize the conditions which create competition. When she threw the apple into the wedding party, she created competition—a kind of Olympian beauty pageant that was ultimately judged by Paris.

The fact that Pearl Harbor—with havoc wreaked by explosive, shrieking “apples” thrown into an island paradise—took place just as Eris squared the U.S. Venus suggests this planet’s contemporary power to sew discord.

Eris takes almost 560 years to complete one orbit around the Sun, roughly half a Millennium. This would give the planet significance in the large movements of history, climate, nations, cultures, and religions. However, her presence in Aries in most of our lives (those younger than about 80) creates a personal point in our individual horoscopes. Aspects to Eris may be significant. Only by studying Eris and how it acts in individual charts will astrologers be able to reach some conclusions. See an online ephemeris for Eris/UB313.

Scroll down to see a horoscope set for the exact time—as reported by one of its discoverers in an online Cal Tech diary—of the discovery of Eris.  The discovery also came at the same time as the launch of the New Horizons spacecraft to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, a synchronous event. Eris is part of the Kuiper Belt and is therefore emblematic of the newly emerging power of that outer region of the solar system.

 

The name of this new dwarf planet is highly relevant because the world is filled with strife and discord. Mike Brown, the astronomer who discovered Eris, said he named it because of the discord surrounding the planet classification system which demoted Pluto. Since the late 1920’s, Eris has been squaring the U.S. planets in Cancer: Venus, Jupiter, the Sun, and now Mercury. When Pearl Harbor was bombed, Eris squared the U.S. Venus to the exact degree. The 20^th Century, which we now know to be marked by Eris’s passage through Aries, was the bloodiest in history.

 

Eris was discovered by a team of astronomers at Cal Tech in Pasadena. According to one of the team members, Mike Brown, writing on the Cal Tech website:

 

"Because the new planet is so far away it is moving slower than most of the objects that we find. It is moving so slowly, in fact, that our computers didn't notice it the first time around! We began a special reanalysis a year later to specifically look for very distant objects. This reanalysis found the new planet at 11:20AM PST on January 5th 2005, almost 1 1/2 years after the initial data were obtained. Note that initial reports suggested that the discovery date was January 8th. We apologize for the mistake; it was caused because of the craziness surrounding the first day of announcement. We didn't have time to check our notes and apparently our memories are not as good as they used to be."

Therefore, Jan. 5, 2005, 11:20 AM, Pasadena, California, should be the time and place used for the discovery chart. See the chart below. Note the hemisphere pattern, with Saturn as a singleton opposition planet below the horizon. Eris was discovered at 19 degrees Aries, so it forms part of a grand cross (with the Sun, Jupiter, and Saturn) in the discovery chart.

See also: Pluto's New Definition; Astrology Blog; New Horizons Mission to Pluto