The Winter Solstice, one of the four turning points of the calendar year, is always a great drama: an annual test of our relationship to hope (discussed in this lecture). This year, it offers even more. Multiple cycles are pivoting all at once.
It’s a fitting end to an extraordinary year. The notorious transits of January and those of this month are bookends for each other.
As 2020 winds to a close, we’re about to get the other shoe dropping.
Pile-up
The Sun enters Capricorn (12/21 2:08 am PST), a solar hinge point, at the Quarter Moon (3:42 pm), a lunar hinge point. This exaggerates the cardinality in the air, for a blast of active, initiating force. That very day, Jupiter and Saturn conjoin: the only exactitude of a cycle which itself contains multiple cycles (details here). Within hours, Mars squares Pluto.
And when it does, it will be exactly conjunct Eris.
Revenge
Eris is the 13th fairy at Sleeping Beauty’s christening (discussed in this lecture). When her beauty and power were disrespected, she wielded the revenge of the spurned.
But outrage can be appropriate. Ideally, Eris shows up as righteous anger with the potential to balance and redeem. If you identify Eris’ house and aspects in your natal chart, you will get clues about how to shake off the helplessness of victimization.
Whether in childhood, in the present day, or in unknowable past lives, every one of us has been wronged. Eris is the symbol of acknowledging and rectifying grave misdeeds that have become entrenched as psychic patterns.
Aries conjunction
In Greek mythology, Eris showed up as the formidable furies. They symbolized the vestigial values of the Goddess-worshipping societies which were wiped out by the sky-god cultures of the classical period. The epitomical example is the story of Orestes, whom the furies went after when they learned he had killed his mother — matricide being the ultimate sin in the pre-patriarchal world.
Almost everyone alive right now was born with Eris in Aries (1926 – 2048). This placement suggests a shared mandate to process the abuses of the bellicose father-gods. Collectively and individually, we all harbor a cellular memory of the Age of Aries, whose inhumanities Eris is in charge of calling to account.
Each of us has, at some point in our karmic history, been a slave, an indigenous victim of colonialism, a woman under patriarchy.
Eris-gone-wrong
This isn’t to say all expressions of Eris are constructive or justified. As always, everything depends upon the awareness with which an astrological symbol is expressed.
Creative Eris in Aries pumps a martial strength into the redressing of abuses, whether systemic or interpersonal. In the process we reclaim our power and our birthright. In contrast, unconscious Eris just gets lost in its own reactive rage, turning the wronged person or group into a flailing avenger.
During these years of her conjunction with Uranus, Eris has fueled the rancorous blowback from marginalized groups the world over (“populism” [see this excellent debate about the confusion around this term]). In recent months, Mars’s infamous back-and-forths through Aries have poured gasoline on the fire.
Where do you fit in?
In addition to the dramas clustered around the Solstice, there are five other ingresses this month. Mercury enters Sagittarius on the first and Venus follows on the 15th; Saturn enters Aquarius on the 16th and Jupiter joins it three days later. Mercury then enters Capricorn on the 20th.
Pay attention to the parts of your natal wheel where this activity is taking place. The 23rd degrees of Cardinal signs, in particular, will be tasked with processing the power surges from Mars and Pluto.
And the very first degree of Aquarius, wherever it falls in your chart, is the site of the convergence of the two gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn. Here is where your personal reality intersects with that of the society you live in.
Use December’s transits to point you towards an understanding of your role in these chaotic times.
