New Moon in Aries — April 12, 2021, 02:31 UT
Aries energy is heavily emphasized at this New Moon. Besides the Sun and Moon, there are planets Mercury and Venus, dwarf planets Eris and Ceres, and centaur Chiron in Aries. The New Moon was in conjunction with Eris.
Eris is now at the Mars/Jupiter midpoint. Eris is squared by Pluto in Capricorn. Last year Eris was also receiving squares from Jupiter and Saturn. Eris is named after the Greek goddess of strife and discord, who indirectly started the Trojan War. Recently there has been alarming news about the growing tension at the Ukrainian border and in Crimea between Russia and Ukraine. Also in Northern Ireland the worst wave of violence for years is now causing concern.
Nicholas Campion writes in The Book of World Horoscopes: “The history of the Cold War in Europe may be traced to The Yalta Conference, at which Roosevelt secretly agreed with Stalin that the Soviet Union should have a sphere of influence in eastern Europe after the Second World War.” He sets the chart for the beginning of the conference at 5:10 pm on Feb. 4, 1945. Saturn in Cancer was squaring Eris in Aries in 1944 – 1945. The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 marked the end of the Cold War.
Some say that the second cold war has already begun. For example Edward Lucas’s The New Cold War was published in 2008, relatively soon after the discovery of Eris. Eris was discovered in January 2005 from images taken in October 2003. Also the launch of many popular platforms of social media is dated in the same period. LinkedIn was launched in May 2003, Facebook in February 2004, YouTube in February 2005, and Twitter in July 2006. Populist movements have gained popularity in the 21st century, too. Polarization is the feature of today.
Everything stated above may be relevant with Eris. However, the molding of the astrological meaning of a planet may sometimes take time, and the myth behind the name is not always in-line with the astrological meaning. It seems that in Eris’s case the delineation is still developing.
Astrologer Raimo Nikula proposes in Eris vai Proserpina? (Eris or Proserpina?), that the symbolism of planet Eris is better in accordance with the Greek myth of Persephone, the equivalent of Roman Proserpina, the daughter of Ceres. Unfortunately both names were already taken for asteroids, but the planet could have been named as Kore, as the daughter of Demeter (Ceres) was also called in Greek mythology. The name Kore is Raimo’s own favorite.
In myth Ceres’s daughter Proserpina was abducted by Pluto, and she became the queen of the Underworld. In her desperation Ceres stopped the growth of fruits and vegetables. Proserpina was freed, but she had to spend a part of each year in the Underworld with Pluto; for the other part, she was able to return to living with her mother on Earth. Before the abduction she was Kore, “the maiden”.
In his book Raimo Nikula reminds that for example the name of Uranus doesn’t correspond with its astrological symbolism either. Among other things he notes that astrologer Dane Rudhyar (1895 – 1985) proposed the name Proserpina as the name for a yet undiscovered planet beyond Pluto: “Beyond the planet Pluto, symbol of the Guardian at the Gates of Immortality, we may already distinguish the presence of a new orb. I have suggested long ago the name Proserpine for the yet unknown planet; for in that name lies hidden the symbol of all resurrections. And the stage beyond Pluto can only be that of the Resurrection.”
Before the official naming, astronomer Mike Brown, the discoverer of Eris, had also speculated that Persephone, the wife of the god Pluto, would be a good name for the object. According to science writer Govert Schilling, Brown initially wanted to call the object “Lila”, after a concept in Hindu mythology that described the cosmos as the outcome of a game played by Brahman. The name resembles “Lilah”, the name of Brown’s then newborn daughter. However, one of the names by which the Hawaiian goddess Haumea was known is Lailai, which sounds a lot like Lila. Haumea is another dwarf planet discovered by Mike Brown’s team. Goddess Haumea was called by many names, because she could take many different guises and morph from old woman to young girl, and become her own daughter or granddaughter. In 1900 Edward Tregear wrote in The creation song of Hawaii: “‘Lailai of the distant night, Lailai the woman,’ appears as a very shadowy figure, and it seems impossible to understand what power she is intended to represent. She is indeed, to be described best in the line, ‘This woman was from a race of illusions (myth)’—and is evidently some Cosmic goddess, probably the impersonation of the Eternal Feminine in Nature.”
In Jungian psychology Kore is the personification of feminine innocence. Quoting Carl Jung, “Demeter and Kore, mother and daughter, extend the feminine consciousness both upwards and downwards. They add an ‘older and younger,’ ‘stronger and weaker’ dimension to it and widen out the narrowly limited conscious mind bound in space and time, giving it intimations of a greater and more comprehensive personality which has a share in the eternal course of things.”
Interestingly, the New Moon in Aries was also in conjunction with asteroid 4946 Askalaphus, which is a Jupiter trojan and therefore named after one of the Argonauts from Greek mythology. But there is another Ascalaphus in mythology, the custodian of the orchard of Hades. He told the other gods that Persephone had eaten pomegranate seeds in the Underworld, and because of this revelation she was obliged to return to the Underworld every year. Demeter was so angry because of this that she buried Ascalaphus beneath a heavy rock in the Underworld. Heracles for his part rolled the stone away and released Ascalaphus.
In Eris vai Proserpina? Raimo Nikula suggests as one of the meanings of the transit of Eris to the natal Sun as getting lighting to unfinished and current matters. He writes: “A conjunction can be particularly illuminating and truth-revealing.” Are there going to be crucial revelations now that the transiting Sun is in conjunction with Eris and Askalaphus?