Eris in Astrology: What can it mean?
"Eris caused strife and discord by causing quarrels among people, and that's what this one has done too." -- US astronomer Mike Brown (2006)
--- Eris: How it was named ---
Brown initially wanted to call the object "Lila", a concept in Hindu faith that means 'divine play' in Sanskrit.
However, the name "Lila" was not accepted, due to an ongoing strife within the astronomy team working at the across the observatories in Hawaii and Southern California, specifically with the issue of 'premature naming'.
During 2003-2004, Sedna was also named 'prematurely' (i.e. Brown was accused of naming the planet without agreement from the team), and that one stuck and got officiated. So when he listed the address of his personal web page announcing the discovery as /~mbrown/planetlila accidentally, he did not want to get involved in an even deeper conflict, as his newborn daughter at the time was also named 'Lilah'.
The naming of Haumea (Hawaiian goddess of childbirth and fertility) had its own controversy, which was to be named Ataecina (Iberian goddess of the underworld and spring) by a Spanish team that claimed to have discovered the planet first in 2003, but had accusations of fraud levied by the US team, leading to a dispute.
Brown accused José Luis Ortiz Moreno of fraud upon learning that the Spanish observatory had accessed Brown's observation logs the day before the discovery announcement. Ortiz maintained that he only did so to see if this was the same object that his team had been tracking.
The IAU as compromise listed the Spanish observatory as the place of discovery, and accepted the US-proposed name. For the latter, a developing IAU tome was referenced: That it cannot be named Ataecina because plutinos are named after mythological creatures associated with the underworld, and Haumea was not that kind of planet. (or maybe to match its moons, I am not sure, it seems like this was a way to perform a rule which did not codify in the first place).
Amidst this developing bureaucracy of naming conventions, as astronomic research spanned large teams across nations, Brown came up with Eris when it was discovered. For a while, as the concept of equity was being discussed in naming, especially after his mishap in nicknaming it Lila mistaken for inconsiderate arrogance. I try to take a neutral stance here because only Brown has published such information of internal conflicts within his memoir, and most astronomers have not done so, so I am trying my best to say who was right or wrong here.
--- Eris: how it came to mean what it means.
Astronomers as an organization do disavow astrology as a pseudo-science, and of course it is, as with many divinatory practices that got its 18th century re-evaluation from empiricism experience the same label. I do want to think a bit about how significant and symbolic the act of naming space bodies are, and I do find it quite interesting how they are named from an experience; for Mike Brown, Eris is named after his strife with his community and the general ambience around him. (The author has no control from this paragraph on. :( )
---- Eris in Astrology: How commonly used is it?
136199 Eris, the second largest dwarf planet in the solar system after Pluto, listed in astro-seek.com as a negative asteroid -- its meaning and symbolism really unsettled among astrology enthusiasts as it was only discovered in 2005.
"Eris feels like discord and conflict that are vague and far away but I'm still aware of, and feel at a distance. I often wonder how can my personal life feel be so comfortable (sun/moon), yet I still feel this angst around collective problems my country and our planet are facing." -- LaVidaLohan
"I see Eris as a metaphor for women's autonomy, the right to choose, Eve eating the apple. Her mythology is all about throwing a Golden Apple (sovereignty, the freedom of choice and will outside of predetermined structures) into a group of women that fought amongst each other over the acceptance of a man." -- SophiaRaine69420
Traditionalists seem to not like Eris.
---- Eris: A generational planet
The pull for giving meaning to Eris however makes sense. At least to me, I often think about the generational planets Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Particularly, it has become quite important to me in my shadow work, to unpack unpleasant events from my childhood to my early thirties, by compartmentalizing the ingresses to my houses as phases of my life.
For example, It makes it a bit more symbolic and comprehensive to find a comforting conclusion as to my struggles in education as Uranus ingressed my 3rd house in May 2020 when I was preparing to travel abroad for education, and conjuncted my Natal Saturn in Taurus around 2020 to 2021 where I tried to study in a more engineering-heavy field at the time only to fail because I also did not know how to manage my new house on my own, and do all the tasks that I didn't learn to do because my parents did it (i.e. the issue with moving out at 20 for the first time in a foreign country with no family nearby).
It helps also for me to accept that my education got delayed and that I am graduating in July 2027 as of now, lining up with my proper ingress of Uranus to the 4th house.
To compress that, I think it makes sense that many astrology enthusiasts rely on slower moving planets to understand the phases of their lives. Uranus ranges from 6 to 7.5 years in each sign, Neptune for 13 years, and Pluto has a large range from 11.5 to 31.5 years. These periods vary due to the planet's eccentricity (0.0457, 0.0086, and 0.248 respectively -- Pluto has a highly eliptical orbit).
Uranus is the only one out of these three, where a good amount of people are seeing a full Uranus cycle (median life expectancy is 77 years worldwide at age 25). Neptune and Pluto are longer, they will never complete a cycle in our current life expectancy, but if you live to 80 you will see your Neptune get opposed by transit Neptune. Earlier cohorts with Pluto in Leo are currently experiencing an opposition from Pluto in Aquarius during their late 80s. This is definitely not something everyone will experience (people born in the 2000s have to live up to 137 years).
Eris is currently ingressing Aries since 1923 and until 2044 it will remain here. That's about 100 years, and about 17% of the full cycle (556 years). With an eccentricity of 0.436, Eris is possibly having one of the longer sign phases right now.
--- Eris: Not really understood
"Have we underestimated Eris? Whilst Eris isn't necessarily outright ignored, I've noticed she tends to get sidelined a bit compared to the ruling planets and Chiron." --MadGentlemanJ
"Yes, Eris is not utilized nearly as much as she should be. Though Ceres requires far more attention as well.
Chiron is vastly over represented and highly misunderstood in application by “insta-astrologers” and others who attempt to use astrology to promote their subjective views onto others.
I personally cannot even look at a chart without at least Ceres, Juno, Pallas, Vesta, Hygiea, Astraea, Eris, Sedna, Haumea, and MakeMake represented.” --unknown user.
"Indeed, Eris is 98% of Pluto’s diameter, but Eris is also 27% denser, and unlike Pluto Eris is fully outside of Neptune's orbit, so there are reasons to consider Eris at least as if not more astrologically significant then Pluto."--CruiserOne
Eris - Bob the Alien's Tour of the Solar System
There is a lot of interest in investigating Eris. Pluto as a planet has become pretty well loved among astrology enthusiasts, due to its association with death and rebirth, kind of signifying not only personal experiences of breaking away from something, specifically old baggage, but also as a way to understand the changing world.
Pluto entering Aquarius in 2023 coincided with the the GPT boom, this mass slop event affecting you and your mother and your grandmother, and also the genocide in Gaza that really showed how useless international law is (and they aren't separate, AI slop is also being used to automate war). I see this as a phase that is bringing the themes of technological optimism to an end, and bringing in doubts to claims of technological advances benefitting structures of human laws.
Neptune ingressing Aries in 2025 is something I am yet to fully understand, but it may signify how people are utilizing new frameworks to understand the bullshit that is happening. After all, economists are in shambles because they really cannot explain why countries that borrow and issue government debt in their own currency aren't collapsing yet -- but I suppose that's what happens when you conceive economics in a vacuum and neglect the role of military power. Heterodox economic frameworks that got called cringe by mainstream nerds are becoming a bolster of comfort.
So Eris becomes kind of important in understanding as well in two ways:
on its own, as what Eris in Aries means in energy.
as a quite large generational cohort.
and as its role to an individual (the natal houses).
--- Generational planets and the personal
Because as I see it, the way we perceive individuals and their sun signs are impacted by generational symbols. For example, it would be interesting to understand if the "two-faced Geminis" or the "victim-blaming Cancers" or the "attention-whore Leos" are being perceived in such a way due to Pluto's trajectory from Sagittarius to Aquarius during the age of online slopstrology (in contrast to the pre-online slopstrology).
"This can be an extremely difficult period for relationships, both intimate and casual, because you are likely to get involved in power struggles with others." -- Robert Hand,
"It’s honestly exhausting. Every time you read a description, it’s like we’re all just narcissistic drama queens or 'attention whores' who can't live without a spotlight.
I really want to know: what was the real description of Leo back then, before it got watered down by all this pop-culture nonsense? Because the leos I see in history is a lot more private, intense, and hated attention." -- Monisfor
The way an individual relates to the zeitgeist (current trends, feeling out of place, le wrong generation) can also be the Sun's relation to the current signs of the generational planets.
and for Eris, I feel as if this very slow movement through the signs as of now will in fact address a pretty important question: where am i in the world? Many people are asking this.
So I want to end this meandering thought. I have a feeling that Eris in Aries marks this era where scapegoating becomes very prominent in our lives, perhaps due to the prominence of ideology after the fall of hereditary legitimacy, and the danger of your individual identity can become atomized into parts, pried apart and joined to a group, and subject you to shame, stigma, joblessness, isolation or death.
Everyone finds themselves in this fear when they ask the question, where can I be safe as myself, too? For now I have nothing to say about what it means for you, but definitely encourage further research, as there are other people already writing about interpretation.
Eris appears in relatively few myths and acts more as an achieved condition than an active character. When she does feature in stories, once discord has been created, Eris drops out of the story as a character and becomes the thematic representation of conflict.
Eris is the scapegoat, someone who almost never matters unless within a family, a community, or a nation, arises a conflict that cannot be solved until a scapegoat is named. Eris disappears from stories as soon as the scapegoat is identified. Eris is a false representation of how a problem can be solved. The mythical idea of a bad apple, bad barrels of apples, describing a group of humans as rot, infection, and presenting an easy solution to be solved.
When it comes to our lives, Eris can signal the domains where we will face the mechanisms of scapegoating and show us a way in which we can go against that.
The Wedding of Peleus and Thetis Miniature in Jean Miélot's adaptation of Christine de Pisan, L'Epître d'Othéa , ca. 1460 - Eris (mythology) - Wikipedia
I would really like better astrology tools with eris included too lol.
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