On America’s 250th Birthday, Reflect on Outsider Eris

By Sue Kientz

As the United States celebrates its 250^th anniversary, dwarf planet Eris, twin-in-size to Pluto, reaches 21 years since its emergence in our consciousness. Many astrologers are not yet acquainted with this vital addition to our solar system, but now is the perfect time to learn about Eris and its important role in the U.S. founding chart.

When the Continental Congress voted for Independence in 1776, establishing the U.S. Sibley chart, Eris (8 Capricorn) opposed America’s Sun, Jupiter, and Venus in Cancer. The new country showed great promise with such benefics by the Sun’s side, so what contradicted that fortunate group? Many Americans were left out of the famous phrase, “All men are created equal,” just like Eris who, in one defining myth, was not invited to a celebrated wedding. Excluded from America’s defining document were rights for women, non-landowning men, enslaved African Americans, and Native Americans. Nevertheless, America’s founders signed the document with its lofty goals, unwittingly giving hope to those who, like Eris, were left out, that one day they would find their humanity honored and rights awarded.

Astrology shows this unfolding with Eris’s transits to America’s founding chart. When the Suffragettes attended the Seneca Falls Convention July 19-20 of 1848, Eris (1 Pisces) and Neptune (2 Pisces) were trine U.S. Venus (3 Cancer), reflecting the faith and idealism (Neptune) of women (Venus) who refused to be excluded (Eris) from voting. When the Civil War broke out in 1861 and, soon after, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 declaring freedom for people enslaved in seceded states, Eris (7 Pisces) was trine U.S. Jupiter and Sun (5 and 13 Cancer). The North prevailed, but that war’s aftermath revealed that true freedom, actual equal rights, required extraordinary effort only possible when Eris entered Aries.

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954 that public school segregation was unconstitutional, Eris (8 Aries) was square U.S. Eris (8 Capricorn) and Mars (8 Capricorn) was conjunct U.S. Eris. Together they formed a T-square with the U.S. Sun stellium that energized America’s growing Civil Rights Movement. As Eris inched closer to an exact square with U.S. Sun in the 1950s-1960s, not only African Americans united to call for change. Women demanded equal pay and abortion rights, Native Americans rallied for recognition, and gay and lesbian communities vowed to hide no longer, sparking the 1969 Stonewall Riots that took place with the Sun (6 Cancer) square Eris (12 Aries), the latter one degree from exactly squaring U.S. Sun.

Today Americans are protesting on many of these same issues as Eris (25 Aries) is square U.S. Mercury (24 Cancer). Again, the plight of the outcast, the “alien,” the immigrant, the poor, sick, and homeless (all Eris-like), is of grave concern. America’s Sun opposite Eris is challenging, but the solution is not to otherize those unlike ourselves, but to see, acknowledge, and work with them to embrace the positive manifestation of oppositions. America’s Sun opposed Eris celestially confirms that by embracing the struggle inherent in the oppositions, America can become a place where “all humans are truly equal.”

Sue Kientz, author of More Plutos (2015), has studied astrology since 1977 and specializes in the new dwarf planets (Eris, Makemake, Haumea, Sedna, Gonggong, Orcus, and others all larger than asteroids). Visit MorePlutos.com to read free book chapters, her published articles, dwarf planet keywords, and other fun facts. Sue currently serves as Assistant Editor and regular contributor to the Astrology News Service (astrologynewsservice.com).