Lunar North Node Conjunct Eris
Eris has been a major player in our personal lives and world affairs since its discovery in 2005. We have realized that it has been a base note, like Pluto, to all of the significant evolutionary changes in our world since that time.
Since March this year, the Lunar North Node in Aries has conjoined rogue planet Eris. Eris is cast as the uninvited guest. She is mythologically held accountable for starting the Trojan War, the conflagration that ended the Greek Classical Age. That dubious honor belongs to Helen of Troy, who ran off with Paris, the son of Priam, King of Troy, knowing full well that when she married the Spartan King Menelaus, a pact had been signed declaring that if anyone interfered with the marriage, a war would be the result.
Eris did not bring about the demise of the Greek Classical Age. Eris was, in actuality, responsible for founding the Roman Empire. One of the Trojan War survivors, Aeneas, a royal Trojan who was the son of Aphrodite and Anchises, sailed to Italy and married into the ruling bloodline. His posterity founded the city of Rome, which still stands today and holds worldwide influence after more than 2000 years.
The orbit of Eris is two Pluto distances from the Sun, taking approximately 530 years to complete. Everyone on the planet right now has Eris in Aries. The current Eris Aries ingress occurred in April 1924. One month later, Uranus conjoined Eris, setting the stage for the Stock Market Crash of 1929, the Great Depression, and the rise of Fascism. From 1933 to 1936, Uranus in Taurus, squaring Pluto in Cancer with Eris in Aries, laid the groundwork for World War II. Cancer is the archetype of nationalism, devotion, and allegiance to the mother country. Uranus is again in Taurus right now.
A square is a 90° angle between two planets. It is a crisis point such as driving 60 miles an hour and suddenly realizing that you must make a hard left turn without braking. Uranus in Cancer squared Eris from 1948 to 1952, underscoring the Korean War. Uranus conjunct Pluto throughout the 1960s brought the War in Vietnam, radical antiwar protest, and the Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations. A conjunction is a blending of two planetary archetypes. Pluto is about karma and power. Uranus generates what often results in an unexpected, cataclysmic change of the order and structure of things.
The gradual expansion of the State of Israel occupying land that was once Palestine has generated friction and hostility between Israel and the Arab communities for 75 years. It is a tangled web. The two states are biblical brothers. They both worship the patriarch Abraham, the father of both Isaac and Allah. The map of Israel is shaped like a knife. Some say that the British mandated the State of Israel as a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine via the Balfour Declaration to punish the Ottoman Empire for their resistance to become subjugated to British rule.
As Uranus and Pluto opposed Eris in the 1970s, the Yom Kippur War erupted in the Middle East.
The Uranus-Eris square in the 1990s brought the Dissolution of the Soviet Union. Like a third Russian Revolution, the Communist social experiment crumbled like the Berlin Wall.
The Uranus Pluto square through the late 1990s and early 2000s brought the ascendancy of cyberspace to Spaceship Earth with all of its positive and negative potentialities. We live in our email and social media that now faces an unknown future as AI becomes more widespread and invisible.
As Uranus again squared Pluto and Uranus conjoined Eris in the 2010s, the world suffered COVID. The US was haunted by Donald Trump and the ascendency of fascism from the far right. Pluto has been in square aspect to Eris since 2017 and will remain in orb until May of next year. This has been a volatile combination of powerful metamorphosis and transformation.
Since its ingress into Aries in the early 1920s, Eris has aligned with the lunar north node through
- The Great Depression
- The Korean War,
- The tumultuous 60s
- The Reagan years
Uranus is not just progressive. It can also be regressive. Promethean and Epimethean. At any given time, approximately one-third of the population promotes progressive change. One-third want things to change by returning to how things used to be. One-third are on the fence, in the middle, unable to choose. The transformations brought about by Uranus and Pluto reawakened regressive politics and a conservative revolution as a reaction to the populist liberalism of the 60s and 70s, the aftermath of 911 with the Patriot Act and the “hardening” of democracy, and most recently, the surfacing of a politically fortified ultra-right wing that has been under construction since the Reagan years.
The Eris nodal conjunction will perfect on November 27, 2023. It has been in orb with the Aries lunar north node since March and will persist until May 2024. Eris in her retrograde condtion implies that events from the past will be revisited in the future. We are witnessing the threat of a wider global conflict with a potentially more drastic outcome. The financial talking heads are dispensing cautious warnings about the possibility of an economic downturn. Health crises, including new COVID variants, continue to emerge below the surface of headline news. Increasingly gun violence is increasing, targeting ethnic and religious groups and sometimes just innocent people in public spaces. Donald Trump is still out on the streets working his agenda in overtime. The next US Presidential election looms large with increasingly uncomfortable potential outcomes.
The US Chart is also under pressure. Transiting Eris-LNN is in opposition to the US 1st House Moon. In mundane astrology, the astrology of nations, the Moon correlates to the general welfare of the people and the condition of the people at large. An opposition is like a “full moon” event where something critical is at a tipping point of balance. Full moons are accompanied by manifestations of events that have been developing over time. Any city police force will testify that at the full moon, things can go sideways.
Eris is squaring US Pluto (long term) which I wrote about several months ago. The United States is having its Pluto Return. Pluto is now in Capricorn, where it was when the country was founded. Eris is squaring both transiting Pluto and US Pluto. When Pluto squared Eris five times between 2020 and 2021, the world was in the throes of COVID-19. Transiting Pluto will soon move out of orb with transiting Eris. However, US Pluto is stationary, and because the transit of Eris is long and slow, the two will remain in aspect to each other until 2072, perfecting nine times between 2026 and 2030.
Uranus is squaring US Eris. Uranus tears down what is old and outdated. It can also generate a reactive response to promote what is established despite being outdated. The US is the first nation since ancient Greece to attempt to exercise the social experiment called democracy: government by the governed. Some argue that the experiment has been flawed since the beginning with political structures like private political parties and the electoral college, which act as intermediaries in determining who the candidates will be. The Founding Fathers, perhaps rightfully so, were aware of the frailties of humanity and sought to protect the system from discriminatory self-interest. The intermediate political agencies themselves may be guilty of such self-centered behavior.
The underlying archetypal polarity that underscores any astrological timeline is the lunar nodes, which are two points in space where the ecliptic, the path of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, and the path of the orbit of the Moon around the Earth intersect. The moon correlates to our emotional body. The lunar south node correlates to the emotional nature of what has come before. It describes the habitual, non-cognitive process that operates below the surface of our awareness resulting from past emotional experiences. It is our innate learned behavior.
The lunar north node is the behavior pattern and accompanying choices the Soul has laid out as a potential future direction. There is more than one variation of the future that can be realized. In the present, the archetypal nature of the Moon in the current lifetime is the determinant. We map our future through our emotional responses to the world in each moment. The moon has cycles of animation and withdrawal through eight phases. We can make different choices at any turn if we have the supporting emotional experiences in our current lifetime.
The lunar nodes are currently in the signs of Aries, Cardinal Fire, and Libra, Cardinal Air. Aries, ruled by Mars, learns about itself through trial and error, acting on purely non-cognitive instinct. Aries learns from the outcomes of its choices and builds a catalog of emotional experiences that guide it toward self-actualization.
Libra seeks to understand itself in the mirror of others. Astrologically, Venus, the ruler of Libra, correlates to magnetism. Relationships form through magnetic interactions with others. The magnetic attraction can be either favorable for both individuals or advantageous to only one to the disadvantage of the other. The determinant is the quality of their self-esteem and self-reliance. The need for a relationship derives from the Yang Libran expression of Venus. The quotient of self-esteem derives from the Yin Taurus expression of Venus.
Essentially, the Aries Libra polarity is about finding balance with ourselves and others. It is the archetypal full moon experience as the Moon reflects the Sun’s full light, sharing and achieving a balance between the two luminaries. A distortion occurs when the magnetic attraction malfunctions. In human experiences, the consciousness of each individual or party is the determinant. The quality of each individual’s self-love quotient holds the frequency. If the frequency emits low self-esteem, they will most likely attract someone who wants to mine that low self-esteem. If anger, jealousy, greed, revenge, hatred, or any other distorted emotion is the MO, the relationship will go out of balance. At first, the relationship seems fine, but over time, it deteriorates until it is realized that an exit strategy is needed. This describes how the Lunar North Node- Eris conjunction can manifest in our personal lives.
Generally, Aries, ruled by the Greek God of War, is self-oriented and aggressive. Libra, ruled by Venus Aphrodite, is loving and relational. Either archetype can express its polarity as well. This dynamic underscores the world at large for this current transit; different players express contrasting perspectives on the field.
Eris is not to blame. There is no one to blame. Eris seeks to remedy injustice. The lunar north node is the soul intention going forward in our lives. Anima Mundi, the world soul, is also playing her part.
“All that is visible must grow beyond itself, extend into the realm of the invisible. Thereby it receives its true consecration and clarity and takes firm root in the cosmic order.”
—Wilhelm Baynes Edition 50 Ting /The Caldron
“Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.” —Niels Bohr
The Universe is mental. Thoughts become actions. Actions become deeds. Our nighttime dreams are more real than our waking bad dreams. We don’t see the outer world. We observe what we project onto it. Realize that you are just seeing the projection. Trust. Keep working on the dream.
“It is going to be okay in the end. If it is not okay, it is not the end.” —Fernando Sabino
Excellent write-up