Exploring Eris in the Natal Chart: Some Thoughts

If you’ve been reading my entries regularly, then you already know that I’m a student of Hellenistic astrology. Ptolemaic aspects. Like-engirding. Saturn-rules-Aquarius-not-Uranus. But every now and then, I like to dabble in outer planet transits. While I cherish the use of “The Classical Seven” and favour “aversion” over the “inconjunct” or “semi-sextile,” nothing quite drives home post-modern angst like saying, “Pluto is transiting my natal IC and I’m at breaking point.”

Before Pluto, there was Saturn; before Neptune, Jupiter; before Uranus, some might say Mercury or Venus, but I’d argue that, in the vein of Richard Tarnas’ archetypal re-visioning of Uranus through the lens of the Prometheus myth, there’s nothing quite comparable in any of the aforementioned planets, not even the Apollonian Sun. Chiron has also been elevated to prominence in its assignment as the modern ruler of Virgo, dethroning Mercury who, in the traditional astrological schema, both rules and is exalted in the receptive earth sign.

To add to the modern pantheon of planets, dwarf planets, and asteroids bearing the names of Greco-Roman deities, I recently read Keiron Le Grice’s thought-provoking monograph, Discovering Eris: The symbolism and significance of a new planetary archetype.

In it, Le Grice writes that as we grapple with new discoveries, new names for celestial bodies, and, by extension, new archetypal associations, “Eris could refer to an archetypal principle associated with reactions, discord…