Eris conjunct Chiron

I hope you are enjoying today's Uranus stationary direct. Uranus promotes our consciousness growth by breaking through our Saturnian defences and we've been responding intuitively to these changes in our network over the past few months, dealing with developments that have been brought into our lives by external events. Now our intuition is in a position of equilibrium and we are about to forge ahead to expand our network and open our lives in new intuitive ways that work for us.

Neptune, newly in Aries, could be bringing a vision of how to do this. And we have to remember that Uranus is on a journey to enter Gemini in April and conjunct Sedna in late May, so through listening to our intuition over these next months, we will see tremendous change in our consciousness with the Gemini ingress, and in our soul-growth with the conjunction to Sedna.

Meanwhile we have Eris, our new planet of diversity consciousness, at 24 degrees Aries, sextile Mercury, semi-square the North Node, and conjunct Chiron. Eris is a truth telling spiritual guide at the top level, so we are in a time where we are being challenged to create new karma by speaking our truth in a way which can be both wounding and healing in our personal lives, or in the lives of our friends and family.

This process of speaking our truth is often fraught because other people defend themselves against it. As a result, those of us with a strong Eris have frequently been demonised for speaking out about the underlying truth we perceive. Or we have learned to mask our innate power just to survive consensus reality. However as we develop spiritually, Eris gives us a depth and an x-ray vision which enables us to diplomatically navigate our interactions with others and engage at the appropriate level with each person. We learn to see what people are ready to see, and are able to offer the spiritual nudge they need.

I talked about the Eris semi-square to the North Node aspect a few weeks ago because it was exact on the 18th January, and it will go out of orb at the end of February. I suggested then that we are being encouraged to speak out in this time. And because Eris is also inconjunct the South Node, that we are likely to find fated karmic factors are motivating these outbursts.

The conjunction with Chiron means that we're in a period of healing truth-telling. This is part of a long-term alignment which started with the first conjunction in May last year, was reinforced with a second meeting in October, and will conclude with a final one in mid-March, marking eight months of intense, transformative energy. 

These two have an interesting connection in the most famous myth of Eris, which details her role in the Trojan War by triggering the Judgement of Paris. In the myth all the other gods and goddesses had been invited to a wedding, along with the rest of Olympus, and Chiron was the one who did the inviting. He chose to snub Eris because of her troublemaking inclinations, but she famously went anyway and tossed a golden apple into the party which was inscribed in Ancient Greek with the phrase, "To the Fairest". This provoked the goddesses to begin quarrelling about who could claim the apple. 

We can see the themes of this myth are inclusion verses exclusion, and competition based on self-image, personal vanity, and the judgments we make of others, which leads to us pushing others down in order to win material reward and recognition. This is the unconscious manifestation of Eris in our lives. Discord and war inevitably ensued from this competition, which is the origin of Eris’ reputation as the Goddess of Discord.

But Eris doesn’t cause the strife, she just reveals it by throwing the golden apple into the gathering, which encourages it, so that the strife can be dealt with and we can live in harmony. Or, if she does cause the strife, it is the necessary spark to activate our will to see and engage with what we’ve been ignoring or denying. At the spiritual level, Eris is promoting a diversity consciousness which wants everyone to be included and no-one to be judged.

It’s interesting that Chiron was in charge of the wedding invitations. Chiron is always encouraging our growth, frequently by appearing to damage us in some way, and, in the healing that ensues, we grow. In his choice not to invite Eris to the wedding, Chiron played a similar role in the myth, triggering Eris to provoke the growth of her diversity consciousness. He invited diversity consciousness into our world by not inviting Eris to the wedding.

So with this conjunction, Chiron could be triggering your diversity consciousness by throwing you into a growth process, where initially you may have felt wounded by the truth telling you were doing, and hopefully now, as we head towards the final conjunction in March, you're healing yourself by enabling a greater tolerance in your life.

In our personal lives, Eris' laser focus points to the disharmony that we need to address to reach an internal harmony. When we’re not attuned to the underlying disharmony, it breeds rapidly, showing up in our work as back-breaking toil, in our health as spiritual starvation, and in our governments as the breakdown of civil order.

Learning to be tolerant within yourself, to not feel torn apart by seemingly contradictory aspects of yourself, promotes a healthy body and a healthy mind. Likewise in the outer world, as we learn to see clearly without preconceptions, it also helps us to keep our body and mind in harmony so that health and happiness prevails.

So with the Eris-Chiron conjunction you could have been on a healing journey of learning to be tolerant with yourself as a way of nurturing a healthy body and a healthy mind. Eris gives you the ability to be present in the moment and do whatever is needed, and the power to bravely deal with any disharmony you encounter. This enlightened self-centredness is why she rules on the battlefield and it gives us the surgical cutting-through power to show up in our lives with a fierce grace that enables us to take action on the important matters.

Eris teaches us to maintain a steady spirit through all crises by being open to the promptings of love and sympathy. This is vital for our spiritual growth because it gives us the strength and courage necessary to take the spiritual risks required. It encourages us to develop an open heart, which is essential for personal transformation and expanded consciousness.

So the Eris-Chiron conjunction may have been bringing health crises which have pushed you to open your heart in some way and to realise that by doing the work of healing yourself you can transmute that effort into love. Learning to love ourselves is one of the most healing things we can do. Our lives go through different phases, but through compassion we are able to support ourselves and one another through any challenge.

As we develop spiritually, Eris gives us a depth of focus and an x-ray vision that enables us to see through our own self-subterfuge. Like a high-powered rifle with a long-range scope, she enables us to both see into and beyond the day-to-day accommodations we make to get by and accurately target the heart of our delusional nature. She gives you the power to change your perception of the world, which enables you to transmute the volatility of your experience into the purity of wisdom.

Eris Scholarships

So jump into our Eris course, starting just after the upcoming retrograde Mercury, to develop this open hearted self-clarity which enables you to transmute volatility of your life into wisdom. This is one of the most empowering of the courses that we run here at the Uni and I have a few last scholarships to encourage you.

Eris 101 - Scholarship

NZ$270.00NZ$100.00

Buy Now

New Books - The Astrology of Eris

And just a final note that we're in a bit of a publishing phase here at the DPU, in which Melissa Billington and I have been working on a new book on Eris, and I have to credit her with some of the interpretation in this newsletter. The Astrology of Eris will be launched in June in a talk I will be having with Pam Gregory. However, well before that we will be publishing my next book, The Astrology of Ixion. That book is currently with the editor, so I will be talking more about this in the next month or two.

I hope you can join us on the Eris course, and thanks for your work embracing these new aspects of consciousness. 

Love and laughter

Alan

"What Alan Clay has created with the Dwarf Planet University is nothing short of genius.  His in-depth knowledge and amazing teaching style are unique and what the astrological world has been waiting for. I'm so enjoying learning about our far-reaching dwarf planets amongst a galaxy of friendly, intelligent student astrologers from all over the universe, logging on at their differing time zones."  Eileen Richardson, UK.