Jill posted some interesting links on Discordianism which is evidently a quasi-pagan pseudo religion or a quasi-pseudo pagan religion, I can’t tell which. It may in fact be little more than a joke. Although this religion evidently began in the late 1950s, its first bible was published, not surprisingly, during the conjunction of Uranus/Pluto in 1965 that brought about a radical change (Uranus) in cultural norms that destroyed the status quo (Pluto) and brought new ways of thinking into the public arena. Religion was in flux and this time period also coincided with the birth of Anton LaVey’s “Church of Satan” in 1966. However, the Eris that is discussed in Discordianism lacks the truly dark face that is one side of the goddess Eris of Greek mythology. It is she, I believe, who will give us clues to Eris in the birthchart.

Eris may embody the principle that a small gesture can instigate a big chaos (she is after all referred to as the goddess of discord AND chaos. One tiny golden apple thrown into a wedding party began the biggest war in Greek history. Another interesting aspect to Eris is that her children (also known as the Plagues of Mankind) were born without fathers. Carlos Parada writes:

And when Eris and her children have made themselves at home, Lawlessness [these are the names of the children of Eris] takes over, and simple Quarrel ends in Murders, and Disputes feed in Lies, and Oath comes to trouble the forsworn, and Battles and Fightings ensue, leading the whole community to Ruin and filling it with Sorrows, Toil and Famine.

Pretty grim stuff. Somewhere in here though is the light of transformation.

Zane Stein is a noted astrologer who was in the forefront of the work on Chiron after its discovery. He has a page devoted to Eris which includes dates of conjunctions to other planets and events that occurred near those dates so that we can begin to put some of this information to see how Eris will work in the birthchart.

One thing that strikes me is that the whole golden apple thing (where Eris throws a golden apple marked “to the fairest” into a circle of goddesses and they duke it out to see who IS the fairest) is about there being just one who is the fairest. The principle of scarcity is what causes competition: if there is more than enough of everything to go around, as the principle of abundance teaches, then competition isn’t necessary. There can be more than one true religion, more than one best athlete, more than one beautiful goddess. So perhaps the light in this dark tunnel of strife and discord is in expanding our sense of trust in the Universe even when we feel it is collapsing in on us. This has historically been Pluto’s realm, and perhaps as we become more attuned to the transformational process the process itself is becoming more specific as it divides between Eris (the strife and discord that creates the endings), Pluto (going into the underworld of endings and grief), and Ceres (the process of regeneration).