Mars sextile Eris
- Alan Clay
- 1 day ago
- 8 min read
I hope you are enjoying the healing energy of yesterday's Chiron stationary retrograde. We have reached a plateau in our ability to heal our physical ills and thereby facilitate our growth, and we are moving into a period of consolidation in that healing process. Be gentle with yourself as you navigate this change.
Mars is also sextile Eris this week, our new planet of diversity consciousness, as she also turns retrograde at 26 degrees of Aries. In the Greek and Roman mythological tradition these two are brother and sister warriors who are always aligned in battle together, so this week we can fight the good fight to live our inner truth, if we are working on a spiritual level with these energies.
I'll talk more about this in a moment, but first, Eris is one of the 5 planets I will be teaching about in a one-day workshop in Florida this coming Saturday. This is the widely acclaimed new 5-planet workshop that I recently taught at the London School of Astrology, so this is a chance for those in the USA to catch me live - and to attract you to participate, I'll also have cut-price copies of my books for sale - but it is also possible to participate in this workshop by Zoom. You can find more information below and you can enrol on this link.
I'll also be presenting a talk on Finding Spiritual Fulfilment with Eris to open the Cosmic Intersections Conference - which is an online event coming out of New Zealand - on Thursday afternoon and evening this week if you are in the States or Europe, or Friday morning in Australia and New Zealand. The conference aims to put a spiritual and astrological lens on the current transition that humanity is going through, coming from the perspective of the brotherhood of humanity and a belief in the power of love-wisdom. Admission to the conference is through a koha (donation) of your choice. Find more information below and here is the list of presenters and the registration email.
If you can't join me for my workshop in Florida, or my talk at the Cosmic Intersections conference, and you want to explore Eris further, you can always check out Melissa Billington and my new book, The Astrology of Eris: Pluto's higher Octave, Our New Diversity Consciousness. We had over 700 downloads of the Kindle edition in our launch promotion last month and we have since sold almost 150 paperback copies. Thanks everyone for this support. Remember please, if you like it, help us spread the word by posting a review on Amazon, telling a friend about it, or by buying a copy of the paperback.
Fighting the Good Fight for our Inner Truth
But back to the Mars-Eris sextile, this aspect has a potent and rather electric quality, that rewards those of us who are willing to engage with it consciously. Eris is crucially stationary and about to turn retrograde, which means her energy is at its most concentrated, most focused, and most inwardly demanding. So this week, with a sextile flowing between these warrior siblings, we have the opportunity to fight the good fight to live our inner truth — if we are working on a spiritual level with these energies. This is a moment to step forward, to be fierce in our grace, and to let the combined force of brother and sister illuminate the places in our lives that most need our courageous, clear-eyed attention.
To understand the full depth of what Eris is offering right now, with Mars lending her his warrior fire, it helps to understand what she truly represents beneath the reputation she carries. She has been called the goddess of discord, and that name has stuck. But as Melissa and I explore in our book, the story is considerably more nuanced and considerably more beautiful than the label suggests. Yes, Eris threw the golden apple inscribed "To the Fairest" into the wedding gathering from which she had been excluded, triggering the chain of events that led to the Trojan War. But Eris doesn't cause the strife — she just reveals it. The competition, the vanity, the judgements, the willingness to push others down in order to win: these were already present in the assembled gods and goddesses. Eris simply provided the spark that made them visible. When we fail to address the underlying causes of conflict and strife in our own lives, they grow larger until an intervention from heaven is needed to resolve them. Eris provides that intervention, whether we invite it or not.
As she sits stationary retrograde, she is pressing us now to look inward — to let her laser focus illuminate the places in our inner lives where we have been fooling ourselves, avoiding our own truth, or allowing subtle forms of discord to breed quietly beneath the surface. With Mars in sextile, we have real energy and capacity to do something with what we find.
If we are not yet consciously working with Eris's energy, this configuration can feel uncomfortable in predictable ways. As Melissa and I write in the book, at the unconscious level Eris is always motivating us to compete, to grab any advantage we can, to get on our high horse about what matters to us and speak out regardless of whether the moment is right or the audience is ready. We may find ourselves getting pulled into battles that aren't really ours, or defending positions more loudly than the situation actually requires. Mars's sextile adds fuel to this — and with Eris stationary, the volume can feel turned up. We might also feel the opposite: that pull to go to any lengths to be included in something, compromising our authentic self in the process. Both of these — the over-assertive and the over-accommodating — are expressions of Eris at the unconscious level. The signal that we are in this territory is usually the feeling of having said too much, or too little, and the slight taste of unreality that follows.
For those of us on the spiritual path, this Mars sextile Eris is a genuinely empowering sky. The sextile is an aspect of flowing opportunity — it doesn't demand action, but it makes action remarkably fruitful when we choose to engage. And with Eris stationary, the quality of consciousness she most wants us to access is right at the surface of our awareness, unusually accessible. This is the moment to engage with her more deliberately than we might on an ordinary week.
What does conscious Eris engagement look like? As Melissa and I explore in the book, at the spiritual level she gives us a depth of focus and an x-ray vision that enables us to see through our own self-subterfuge — the story we tell ourselves about why we said what we said, why we avoided what we avoided, why we are entitled to what we are claiming. She is not cruel in this illumination; she is precise. 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. Mars is lending that scope some real directional energy this week. Point it honestly inward first.
You might find over these days that a truth you have been circling — about a relationship, a direction you are not taking, a way you have been misrepresenting yourself even to yourself — becomes suddenly, briefly unmissable. That is Eris stationary doing her work. The question is what you do with the seeing. Mars is offering you the courage and the momentum. As we say in the book, Eris brings us sacred truth, but we have to be able to hear her message, and we have to ground it in reality by doing something about it. This is the secret to handling her heat: we have to embody her insight by acting on it. When we do, she becomes an endless source of sensitive strength.
The diversity consciousness that Eris carries at the most evolved level is also particularly alive right now. With Mars activating her from a flowing sextile, we have support for the kind of engagement that Eris most loves: showing up in our interactions with others with genuine, clear-sighted inclusivity — no comparison, no judgment, no quiet calculation about who is worthy of our full presence. At this level she becomes a truth-telling trickster, able to craft the message perfectly for each person, seeing what each one is ready to receive and offering precisely the spiritual nudge that will land. Mars gives that trickster the nerve to actually deliver it. The sibling warriors are working together this week, and when they work together consciously, something genuinely beautiful becomes possible: the courageous, inclusive, fiercely loving engagement with life that Eris, at her finest, represents. Let this be a week of fighting the good fight — not the ego's battles, but the soul's.
JOIN ME IN FLORIDA:
5 NEW PLANETS, 5 NEW ASPECTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
This Eris transit is wonderfully timely, as I am presenting a one-day workshop in just six days, and Eris is one of the five planets we will be exploring in depth. On Saturday August 8, 2026, I will be offering a full-day workshop — 5 New Planets: 5 New Aspects of Consciousness — with the NCGR Florida Atlantic Chapter, hosted at Nova Southeastern University in Davie, Florida, and also available online via Zoom.
We will be exploring Ixion (seeker consciousness), Makemake (systems consciousness), Haumea (unity consciousness), Eris (diversity consciousness), and Sedna (soul consciousness) — five of the most extraordinary new planets in our solar system and the five new aspects of consciousness they are opening in us.
It is a full day: registration opens at 10am Eastern, we begin at 10:30am, and we go through to 5:30pm with a lunch break. The cost is just $55, and recordings will be available to all registrants. If you would like your chart used as a live example during the workshop, you are warmly invited to submit your birth data.
I will also have copies of my book New Stars for a New Era: A Consciousness Workbook for our 10 New Planets available at cost price — US$20, which is considerably less than the US$49 shop price — so if you have been looking for a way into the dwarf planets through your own chart, this is a wonderful opportunity to get both the workshop and the book in one day. Places are limited in person, and there are also a limited number of online spots, so please register soon if you are coming. Full details and registration here.
May you fight the good fight with fierce grace this week, and let the truth you find set you free. I hope you can join me in Florida, or at the NZ conference, and thanks for your work embracing these new aspects of consciousness.
Love and laughter
Alan
As one returning to astrological study after decades away, I find Alan’s instruction fun and informative, and the classroom format a gift of shared learning for everyone participating. Alan has created a safe and supportive space where anyone, at any level of knowledge, can thrive and shine. His obvious love of this work illuminates its presentation. I echo the comments of others, “Best astrology classes ever!” - Nalini MacNab, USA
Finding Spiritual Fulfilment with Eris
A talk by Alan Clay at the
COSMIC INTERSECTIONS CONFERENCE 2026
Eris is our diversity consciousness, where we learn to value everything and everyone for who they are. At the personal planet level, she encourages us to engage in discord and strife, so we learn to stop fooling ourselves, or stop being fooled. As we adopt a more spiritual approach, we understand that our strife can be dealt with simply by accepting opposing points of view. And at the highest level, she is a spirit-guide, transmuting life into love, and bringing sacred wisdom into our lives. Eris is the higher octave of Pluto, lifting his transformative energy into a fierce grace. This gives us a female power which is gentle in contact, but which rises to meet the needs of any challenge.
Presentation: Finding Spiritual Fulfilment with Eris
10.00 am NZT (7th Aug) - 10.00 pm GMT (6 Aug)
Alan Clay – 60 mins
Admission to the conference is through a koha (donation) of your choice
I highly recommend the Dwarf Planets Course for the insights and the amount of new information and perspective gathered. Alan’s teaching inspires one and brings new light and spiritual understanding to charts (certainly to mine). His humor and friendly approach made the seminars very enjoyable, yet profound. Elisabetta Quintiliani - Italy
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