“One of the most important works of astrology published this year.”
Eris: Sacred Feminine Force of Evolutionary Astrology
[Full disclosure: The author is my long-time astrology teacher and a good friend. Having said that, each year I read much of what’s published in the worlds of astrology, and in my view… ]
Daniel Fiverson’s book on Eris is one of the best astrology books published in 2025.
Eris is the name of the Greek Goddess of strife and discord, a “disruptor” and a “catalytic force,” a fierce feminine archetype for stirring up trouble and overturning the status quo. In her most infamous role, she crashed a wedding she wasn’t invited to, and furiously threw a golden apple inscribed with the words “to the fairest,” into the crowd. The resulting ruckus led to a beauty contest among Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite that sparked the Trojan War.
Astronomically, Eris is the name given to one of the trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) discovered in the first quarter of the 21st century. Out in space, beyond Neptune, there are untold numbers of celestial bodies being discovered. They travel in “elongated, elliptical orbits that span hundreds of years,” Fiverson writes, making these “distant wanderers … elusive, mystical, and rich in symbolic meaning.” Eris was first noticed in a digital image in 2003. It was initially thought to be as large as Pluto (discovered in 1930) and labeled a “tenth planet,” but once Pluto was reclassified as a “dwarf planet” in 2006, Eris was similarly labeled. Just as astrologers have been studying Pluto for its symbolic correlations for nearly a century, the discovery of new celestial bodies is fueling a new wave of astrological research. The timing of recent discoveries is apt, as our lives on planet Earth face one crisis after the next.
Daniel Fiverson is based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He has a deep background in astrology and other intuitive arts. He teaches astrology through Kepler College, and he’s the kindest of counselors. About nine years ago, he began researching Eris astronomically and for its astrological symbolism, studying its placement in birth charts and mundane astrology, the astrology of world events. Over the years, in his counseling and writing, he’s been integrating Eris with his long-time study of astrological Pluto.
Fiverson practices evolutionary astrology, which holds that astrology speaks to a mysterious continuity in the soul’s trajectory across multiple lifetimes. In particular, Fiverson works within the evolutionary astrology (EA) paradigm of Jeffrey Wolf Green, which centers the symbolism of Pluto, by house, sign, and aspect with other planets in charts. Pluto moves so slowly that everyone born within about the span of a generation has Pluto in the same sign. Eris is like this, too, with a 557-year orbit around the Sun. Everyone born between 1928 and 2048 has or will have natal Eris in the fiery, initiatory sign of Aries.
What makes the astrology of Eris unique in natal charts is its placement by house and in aspect to all the other planets.
“Understanding Eris in an astrological chart requires recognizing where we are called to disrupt, challenge, and resist compliance with falsehoods,” Fiverson writes. “Her placement reveals the area of life where we must confront uncomfortable truths, face distortions, and ignite transformation—not only for ourselves but also for the collective.”
The bulk of the book, called Eris Through the Houses, consists of chart analyses of several dozen iconic cultural creatives: Allen Ginsberg, Joan Baez, Jim Morrison, Malcolm X, Bob Dylan, James Dean, Elvis, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Beatles Lennon and McCartney, and more. These are chart examples often studied by astrologers, the difference being that Fiverson’s work on Eris adds whole new dimensions to understanding how an individual may make a mark in society and, based on house placement, the areas of life where “the soul grapples with the deeper meanings of identity, authenticity, disruption, and truth.”
Newcomers to astrology would do well to read Fiverson’s chart delineations; they are a master class in how to integrate key features of a natal chart and weave them in with a person’s known biography. There’s an emphasis on people from the 1960s counterculture–and let’s say that, especially for a reader “of a certain age,” they are a delight to read.
But there’s much more to this book, which is why I say it’s among a handful of the best astrology books of 2025.
The first part of the book features Eris as a revelatory symbol in world event astrology. Fiverson has been tracking the transits of Eris in aspect to other outer planets, especially Pluto and Uranus, which have correlated with socially disruptive events and the rise of authoritarianism since 2016. A couple of examples: the 2016 U.S. presidential election, “marked by foreign interference and the manipulation of disinformation,” occurred during a conjunction between Eris and Uranus, the planet of shock and awe. Then, the January 6, 2021, attempted overthrow of the U.S. government took place during a tense square involving Mars, Uranus, Saturn, and Eris, a combination which “indicated an explosive confrontation between personal will, entrenched power structures, and destabilized social contracts…the visible expression of a psychic civil war…”
For the near future, what’s on the horizon is no less ominous. Between 2026 and 2030, Eris will make an unprecedented nine squares (90-degree aspects of friction and conflict) with the United States’ Pluto (power and power structures). Fiverson forecasts “not only the collapse of political norms or democratic institutions, but the unmasking of a collective identity crisis, as evolutionary pressure forces confrontation with the soul-level consequences of exclusion, suppression and denial.”
The point here is not to say that Eris –or any planet – causes events. Astrology’s not like that. Rather, the movements of bodies in the sky form a language that “reveal[s] what is already in motion…The evolutionary demand is not obedience but awakening. These transits are not a detour; they are the curriculum.”
In this respect, the relatively recent discovery of Eris, along with Daniel Fiverson’s work to illuminate its astrological significance, comes at just the right time, revealing what is already in motion.
~review by: Sara R. Diamond
Author: Daniel Fiverson (Wessex Astrologer, 2025 249 pages) $30.00
AVAILABLE ON AMAZON https://tinyurl.com/88jkc9fp
https://facingnorth.net/books/astrology/eris-astrology
Daniel Fiverson’s new book ‘Eris: Sacred Feminine Force of Evolutionary Astrology’, published by Wessex Astrologer, is the first title I’m aware of to purposely integrate Eris into the evolutionary astrology approach – specifically the Jeffrey Wolf Green school of evolutionary astrology.
Fiverson’s book begins with several scene-setting short chapters on different topics, including The Astronomy of Eris, The Mythology of Eris, and The Astrology of Eris. Then there is a section exploring Eris’s cycles in relation to both Pluto and Neptune. Next, a variety of mundane astrological topics are briefly considered in terms of the influence and symbolism of Eris, before the rest of the book is focused on reading Eris in the birth chart. This section begins with a succinct look at Eris in aspect to the natal planets, but the bulk of the space is given over to multi-page delineations of Eris in each of the twelve houses, with each one supported by multiple lengthy case studies of Eris’s natal house placement in the charts of famous people. The author makes a conscientious choice not to delineate Eris through the signs, pointing out that: ‘because Eris has a 577-year orbit, everyone on the planet today was born with Eris in Aries’.
Without the case studies, the house delineations would run to about two pages each, but the case studies pad this material out into a much fuller book than would otherwise be the case. For example, under Eris in the 1st house, we find just over 1½ pages of delineation followed by 12½ pages of case studies spanning three well-known public figures.
The inclusion of these lengthy worked nativities will likely increase interest in this book among astrologers who study the lives of cultural icons. Fiverson places a significant focus on the impact of Eris in the houses in each of these case studies, but as part of an integrated picture of the birth chart as a whole.
This book is an original and dedicated contribution to the growing astrological literature on Eris. It comes as recommended reading for astrologers in three categories: all who are curious to include Eris in their readings in a sensitive and balanced way or who have already read other sources on its astrological uses and want to blend in another opinion; evolutionary astrologers in particular (although not exclusively); and all who enjoy reading originally written worked case studies of famous people by sincere astrological thinkers.
–Philip Graves
“The author Daniel Fiverson, with a background in Tarot, Hermeticism, and the I Ching, takes a soul-centered approach to astrology and writes lyrically and persuasively of the goddess of chaos and discord in action. Due to its highly elliptical orbit, it spends 20% of its 557-year orbit in Aries, most recently from 1928 to 2048.
- Although Eris is a force that disrupts, provokes, and shatters
- illusions, here it is presented as a potent force for personal
- evolution and for understanding global historical cycles. Both
- conflict and catalyst, it highlights fractures that already exist.
House positions are key for personal interpretations since they stay for so long in Aries, as are aspects to natal planets. In a chart, it is where we are called to disrupt, challenge, and resist compliance with falsehoods, confront uncomfortable truths, face distortions, and say ‘No More’. The mythological background to Eris is extensively explored, and there is a wealth of detailed chart analyses focused on the house positions of well-known creative and political celebrities.”
–Marjorie Orr