New weekly horoscope for Mercury retrograde, and Jupiter conjunct Eris
Apologies for sending this out late. Today is the second-ever conjunction of Jupiter and Eris now that we know it's there.
Your weekly horoscope, but first some planetary history
Dear Friend and Reader:
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Jupiter is Conjunct Eris in Aries Today
Today is an unusual conjunction, and I think a marker of the digital age — Jupiter is conjunct Eris in Aries (at 9:02 pm EDT). Eris, a planet in our solar system many miles from the Sun, was discovered by Mike Brown and friends at Caltech in 2005, and was named in 2006. It was not the first planet discovered beyond Pluto, but it stole all the thunder (the first was 1992 QB1, discovered 13 years earlier by the eminently low-key Jane X. Luu and David Jewett on an old beast of a telescope in Hawaii).
As Jane says in this article on the 20th anniversary of the Kuiper Belt (where Pluto lives), QB1 starts the problems for Pluto, and the discovery of Eris results in its “demotion” to minor planet (134340) Pluto. (She is funny; this is one of my fave interviews ever. Most astrophysicists have a great sense of humor, but Jane’s mild-mannared, biting sarcasm is my flavor of tart.)
I covered the naming and discovery of Eris in this article from the summer of 2006, when I was living in Brussels, called “The Foggy New Edge of Neptune.” Here is the old-style presentation of that piece, which our ancient subscribers will remember.
Eris is About Digital Conditions and Postmodernism
In the months after the naming of Eris, I worked with Rick Tarnas on the first monograph ever written about it. And at the time, it was apparent that there would be some connection to both postnodermism and the digital age, which both translate to mental and intellectual chaos, identity chaos, etc. You can read that monograph here. I kind of got it right — and even mentioned Marshall McLuhan.
For reference. the immediately prior Jupiter-Eris meetup was April 29, 2011, in a phenomenally interesting year: the Occupy Wall Street protests, Arab Spring, and the public union support protests in Madison, Wisconsin. The human race still revealed signs of having a little spunk left. That was really Mars-Jupiter-Eris in the same place.
Before that, the previous conjunction was May 5, 1999, but nobody knew and most did not supsect that Eris was out there. It is definitely out there, and we are living with its influences every day.
Thanks for reading; your horoscope is below the radio dial. The May monthly will be ready Thursday.
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