Chiron Conjunct Eris: A Book About Men
Aries, ruled by Mars and with the Sun exalted there, is the seat of masculinity in astrology. It's the most ‘yang’ sign, now being activated by Chiron and Eris.
“As deep drinketh the goose as the gander.”
— 1562 book of English proverbs.
Dear Friend and Reader:
No discussion of Chiron conjunct Eris in Aries would be complete without a discussion of masculinity and by extension, men.
The human universe as we know it (and probably much else) is held up by the balance of the feminine and the masculine; what in the East is called Yin-Yang. Without balance, there is chaos. We have a lot of that lately and it’s not difficult to see where yin and yang are out of balance. It seems there is a standoff between them.
Aries is the first sign of the zodiac and represents the ignition system of the physical world. Aries is also the sign of both self, and self-concept; it is where we find much related to ‘I am’. Where Aries lands in your chart is where you’re likely to be most comfortable expressing yourself — or where it is most necessary. This is integral to my work writing Sun sign columns and doing extended readings.
This is true in both individual and collective astrology, though ‘self’ is a complex pattern distributed throughout the chart. But you might say it finds a home or point of origin in Aries. In other words, to be a ‘self’ requires some aggression.
The Seat of Masculinity
Aries, ruled by Mars and with the Sun exalted there, is also the seat of masculinity. Named for the Roman god of war, it is the most ‘yang’ sign. Its neighboring signs Pisces and Taurus vie for the most ‘yin’, representing the feminine principle in its essence. Yin is inherently fertile, flexible and receptive.
Aries and its ruler Mars (sometimes called Ares) also represent various shades of initiative, motivation, desire, assertion, aggression and anger. None of these themes are limited to one sex or the other.
There’s a lot happening in Aries right now. For the past two weeks, I’ve been focusing on the Chiron-Eris conjunction, currently the main event. A conjunction happens when two planets are in the same place. It represents events at the ending of one cycle and the beginning of another. This cycle last reset in 1971-1972.
With this alignment in Aries, we have available many themes and issues related to the masculine force. This is a necessary element of the human collective, disparaged and degraded as it is today. It is socially acceptable to mock both men and masculinity to a degree that appalls me when I see it spread on the pages of somewhere like The New York Times.
Chiron is calling for a time of healing for the masculine. Eris represents the influx of chaos, subversion, covert aggression, disruption and fragmenting. Chiron, the noblest of masculine influences in astrology, is the whole-making or holistic principle, which is seeking to bring order to the chaos and healing to all of its negative effects.
First, an Environmental Issue:
We Live Within a Collective Nervous System
All of the effects we see in society emerge from a deeper cause created by what I call the ground field, or the environment.
We now live in a kind of collective nervous system created by electronic technology. We exist simultaneously within one another’s consciousness as opposed to apart from one another. Under digital conditions, there is no longer private identity and there are no longer truly private spaces. This has led to a state of psychic disruption and confusion affecting nearly everyone — and which is also a convenient hedge against taking responsibility for one’s life.
Acceleration of this condition has been so subtle (disguised as things like iPhone marketing) that few people noticed it happening. This is the Eris element: subversive, chaotic, and disruptive. This is why everyone is feeling so stressed and agitated. There really is nowhere to retreat and no inner sanctum to retreat into.
The Chiron-Eris conjunction describes something about the destabilization of both self and society, coming from the environment. It’s also a society-wide call, to every individual, to help restore some stability and get a grip on the historic process. Finally, it’s an open invitation to the self-actualization and maturity that would make that possible. And part of this is about re-learning gender differentiation.
The Eris element in the conjunction describes the disruption to the psychic environment and destabilization of self, individuality, identity, sexual identity and privacy. It’s subversive and disruptive and operating below the level of awareness. Its effects go back more than 100 years.
The much newer Chiron element (which goes back to 2018) is a focusing principle that is about discovering inner awareness, noticing personal distinction and healing from the chaotic quality of our times.
Astrology is not causing this. Astrology is indicative of a wider situation in society; it’s pointing out something that we need to notice. Think of it like a speedometer in a car. It does not make the car go a certain speed; it tells you how fast the car is going.
Digital: A Dimension with Neither Sex Nor Gender
Before I get into certain issues related to maleness and femaleness, let’s work with a basic concept. We spend most of our time in the digital realm, without our bodies. Bodies seem to be holding the phone or typing at the computer, or sitting in front of a camera, but we are projected across space without our bodies.
In cyber space, there are no bodies and therefore no sex and no gender. There are no hormones, gonads, or anything. Nobody ever had ‘cyber sex’. Digital is a nonphysical, artificial astral realm.
When we return our awareness to physical space, we bring back that conditioning. You might say, so what? Well, we need a way to account for the gender dysphoria problem that is not about what propaganda about 46 genders that a kid reads about in a school book. When people spend their lives in an environment without sex or gender, that would seem to be the perfect example of something leading to confusion experienced emotionally and physically.
Additionally, all people and critters are swimming in endocrine-disrupting chemicals. Levels started to mount after World War II with the widespread use of the pesticide DDT, the industrial chemical PCBs, plus many herbicides and pesticides and their related byproducts dioxins and furans. Though DDT and PCBs were mostly banned, we live with the toxic residue; and now we have PFAS and all of its cousins. Others in the PFAS group include PFOA, PFOS, PFNA among thousands of other related substances. This stuff comes in every bite of food, from plastics, from your frying pan and your popcorn maker and shampoo and conditioner.
All of these substances are gender-disrupting and most of them are specifically feminizing. In one study, it was determined that infants whose mothers were exposed to PCBs were born with smaller penises. Today’s men have half the sperm count and semen volume of our grandfathers. It is no wonder why. But nobody asks about the psychic effect of these chemicals. We live not just with gender dysphoria in the sense of a teenager thinking he was ‘born in the wrong body’ but also in a terrible standoff between men and women.
This kind of subversive disruption of the environment is described perfectly by Eris. But this is not just about the physical environment; the bottom line effect is on the psychic and internal hormonal environment. That means how we feel and how we think.
A Crisis of Men, Boys and Masculinity
Let’s frame this today as describing a crisis of maleness or masculinity that is disrupting the lives of men and boys — and by extension, everyone else. You can see this everywhere from the casual use of the term ‘toxic masculinity’ (apparently the only kind there is), to the numerous documented problems that men face in greater numbers, from social alienation to extremely high rates of suicide and incarceration.
These problems also impact women, who at the moment seem to have a lot to say about men (by which I mean complaints).
If one asserts that men and boys are in crisis, many people respond that such is not possible since men run everything and they have only themselves to blame. Some will laugh at you and some will say they are getting what they deserve. Others would say this is a necessary part of ensuring equality: taking male-bodied creatures down a few notches is the thing we need the most. If more men apply to engineering school, for some reason that needs to be ‘fixed’.
At the same time, men are assailed as emotionally unavailable, broken, wounded and antisocial. (Those sound like elements of a crisis, so there is a contradiction if the same person says there is no crisis of masculinity.)
None of the people claiming there are no issues would be men. Men know about the problems we face, even if many have not articulated them. Few claiming there are no issues would be the mothers of boys or young men. They also know about the problems because they must address them directly.
Boys Need to Be Boys
We might ask about the struggles that boys are facing, including the alleged condition ADHD (Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder, a false notion that cannot be sustained by any scientific means; it’s a matter of opinion). Many are on mood-altering drugs (twice as many boys are on Ritalin than girls; twice as many girls take antidepressants, all of them permanently altering their brains during formative years).
I hear my clients talking about how withdrawn many teenage boys are, that they have no interest in life, no interest in girls, and how they cannot find words to express themselves. This is the kind of ‘toxic masculinity’ that is not defined — maleness turned inward on itself.
Maybe this situation has something to do with boys not being allowed to be themselves, to express their energy, to be physically aggressive. Boys have testosterone. This is about action. They will compete and fight with one another. That’s fine; it’s what they do. Let them work it out. Fighting is not “bullying.” That is something else — done to and by both boys and girls.
Women and girls have far less testosterone and much more estrogen and are not inside the reality that boys experience; how would they know how this feels?
Maybe putting boys in front of gaming consoles for most of their childhood is making them unwell. Why the girls are depressed is another matter; depression usually masks anger and conceals the lack of emotional self-expression.
Maybe there’s a problem with nearly all children being raised by women, having only women teachers, and expecting to be helped by women therapists. I wonder how it is that women can complain about boys and men when it’s the women who raise and educate them, claiming to do a better job than men do. If boys were raised so well, they would be better adapted and happier. I rarely hear a whiff of discussion about how girls need men in their lives, either.
Instead, the struggles of boys and men are blamed on how they are allegedly imperfect creatures, constantly told that the girls and women are better than they are. Then they are accused of being potential rapists and part of the ‘patriarchy’. That is a crisis.
Who Defines What a Man Is?
A set of political theories took over gender definitions starting some time in the mid-19th century — in my view, driven by the rapid advents of telegraph, telephone and electricity (you will not find a feminist or an antifeminist anywhere who agrees with me on this).
Yet whatever you may think of various feminist concepts, they have one thing in common: they define a woman as a political entity.
She is not a social being, or a biological being, or a sexual being, or a familial being (such as a mother or wife) but rather she is a political creature characterized by her relationship to the state, the economy and the taxation department. This sounds like a government takeover. Under feminist theory, all expressions of sex are also defined as political acts. As Carol Hanisch wrote in the 1960s, “The personal is political.” But is that true? And what about privacy? This statement asserts that there is none.
If women are inherently sexual, under the terms of feminism, their sexuality is a commodity. The biggest anti-porn zealots are also the biggest promoters of prostitution.
Obviously we are being presented with a limited concept of what a woman or any person is, dreamed up by people with a political agenda. In my view, the beauty of woman is her full-spectrum nature, and her compatibility with men; and for a great many, her compatibility with men and other women. What people miss is that men also have this capacity, though it only emerges in a trusting environment.
Yet men, under this theory, are also defined as political and economic beings who merely serve the economy or do not; who allegedly commit crimes or owe someone money; and are further described by their supposed problems: allegedly lacking empathy or being unhelpful or being violent or leaving the toilet seat up, or whatever.
Bear in mind, this is also the politicization of sex and gender to the exclusion of all other ways of defining it. Others may exist, but mostly they are banned from discussion. You cannot talk about actual sex in any public forum and most private forums. All you can talk about is the politics of sex. This has had profound implications for society and is another indication of electrically-driven lack of privacy.
An Autonomy Issue
When men seek to define themselves, they are held to be antisocial, and they are disparaged by culture. If men so much as get together to support one another, they are attacked as allegedly being against women. If men define themselves as involuntarily celibate, their alienation is used as a social weapon against them.
A men’s rights activist gets all the respect of a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
If they get together for spiritual purposes, they are described as sissy tree-huggers (and enemies of feminism, as they were in the 1990s, when American poet Robert Bly led a short-lived men’s movement). If men describe their collective issues, they are attacked as misogynist or being against feminists or women. This sounds like a crisis to me, and any denial of the crisis sounds like a coverup.
Meanwhile, women can stage the Are Men Obsolete? book and debate series. Public figures can wear “The Future is Female” tee shirts and somehow this is not only presumed to make sense, and to be cool, but is also supposed to not affect or impact men in any way. And if it does, who cares? Men don’t have feelings, right? Books such as The End of Men and the Rise of Women get editor’s pick on Amazon. (I wonder: under this plan, are women going to clone themselves, or will they keep a few men around as sperm donors? Will they be eternally happy fucking silicone dildos? Whose idea was all of this?)
Isn’t this a little nihilist? Just a little much? Is anyone asking who benefits? Who is going to put out forest fires and fix the electrical grid after an ice storm?
And what are men supposed to think? Where is the affirmation of our worth? Where is the acknowledgement of the contributions, the sacrifice and the suffering of men?
Nowhere to be found in public discourse, and extremely rare to find privately. Veterans (cheered on the way to war) are treated like shit upon their return, among many other examples. People say “defund the police,” then immediately call the police when they’re in trouble. Such as when they get five McNuggets instead of six.
There would seem to be a serious and unacknowledged issue of personal autonomy for men, as if the only ones who can define themselves as fully human are women. For women who think this is providing them with any kind of advantage, I would differ. You will feel better if you admit that you need the men in your life. You will feel better if you set aside your anger for a moment and acknowledge your gratitude to your father.
I regularly hear women complain that men are emotionally stunted, stupid generally, simplistic, terrible at sex, cut off from their feminine side and/or their intuition, and most lately, either not interested in women, or allegedly too chicken to approach them. Men remember that there can be serious consequences for expressing interest in a woman, whether at work or in the community. Any such interest can be considered de facto harassment, punished as such without a trial.
This is a crisis for both men and women here in peak digital conditions — chaos of sex and gender as we live our lives in the abstract.
Emotional Labor
Much of my guidance comes from Tantric wisdom when it comes to relations between the sexes. It is essential to Tantra that the women are the teachers. This is their sacred honor and duty. It is not very popular, because teaching means setting an example and having tremendous patience with people who seem to know less than you.
I hear complaints coming from all quarters and all generations that there is something wrong with men. I do not hear many people questioning this, or asking how men (largely raised by women) got into this supposedly broken state. In fact there is a very long list of things I don’t hear anyone discuss.
And one of them is the responsibility that women, as a part of humanity, have to men. Many would argue that women have absolutely no responsibility. You will not find me accepting this theory any more than I would accept that men have no responsibility. We are all people and we are part of our communities.
One complaint I hear regularly is about men who allegedly have no contact with their feminine side. However to determine the truth rather than perception we would have to begin with an honest assessment of real situations, and an understanding of what is innately different between men and women, especially in how they experience and express their feelings.
Who exactly is supposed to teach men to be friends with the feminine generally, and their inner feminine, if not women? What kind of example are women setting, so often refusing to be in any way feminine? Further if women know so much about sex and men know so little, is it up to them to teach the men? Or do we expect men to learn from their Character.AI porno agent?
In the 1970s women wanted to be paid for doing housework. Today, some want to get paid as ‘therapists’ for doing uncompensated ‘emotional labor’ — for being emotionally and morally supportive of their partners. If this includes you, you may be missing something important, something that I think is obvious.
The Source of the Chaos
The universe is held together by feminine and masculine, by yin and yang. Both must exist in a balanced way within people if they are to be remotely sane or able to live well. Yet these natural forces are in chaos now, as is the world we are living in. They have been disrupted by electricity and chemicals and exploited by those with divisive political agendas. Ideology is an opportunistic infection attacking a weak body.
Relations between men and women are at an all time low. People are having so few kids as to point to a population collapse within several decades. Sex is a big item in the media and most people are not doing it, afraid to do it, have no interest or are too confused.
For men and women to relate, there must be trust, and it seems like this fragile human quality is under constant attack.
We might ask the source of the chaos and the imbalance. It’s not about ideology. There are some vicious ideologies, and they misinform and disinform people terribly, providing endless rationalizations for entitlement and bad behavior. My assessment is that ideology is only coming along for the ride. It’s the effect of the environment and not the cause. It’s like the insane ravings of a person on drugs. The drugs are the issue.
What I think is happening is that we’re being fried by electricity and poisoned by chemicals and fake food. Then, a culture grows out of this and we think it’s natural.
Solving this problem is about noticing the way we treat ourselves, and by extension, one another.
The world is psychotic right now. The violence is rampant and criminal behavior (of the ruling class) is out of control. People are exhausted. Many are acting in over-the-top inappropriate ways, and selfishly making unreasonable demands on the people around them.
There is just one thing I can tell you for sure. Healing starts with you. I am calling for an honest assessment and mutual respect, not political but humanitarian.
When you deny the humanity of anyone, you deny it in yourself.
All hail the Chiron-Eris conjunction. We’ll catch you next time just before the Aries equinox.
Your faithful astrolover,
Additional Resources:
“Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ” — Compersion as Erotic Empathy
The Radical Notion that Men are People
About Sex: Suggestions & Ideas for Young Men
The Reality of Sexual Trauma and the Paradox of Healing
Thank you for calling attention to the deep pain of men and boys. And women too, we're all in pain at this chaotic time in our collective history. I think of a friend, age 37, who's in love with a woman who believes she needs to be entirely self-sufficient, doesn't need men. And of my nephew, age 30 with a "diagnosis" of OCD, who struggles with what many of us consider simple daily tasks like sending text messages and preparing dinner.
I have a deer in the headlights, numb/freeze response going on after reading this piece. As with most of your work, it cuts deep, spurring me to question beliefs about men and women I hold/have held without even knowing it. Luckily, the past five years of pandemoniac have taught me how to do research. I need to look into the history of feminism. Mostly, I need to keep loving and being available for the men I know and love.
Just re-read this. I'm not sure if I should comment. Myself, I've been traumatized by experiences with men and traumatized by experiences with women; traumatized by societal "norms" for "people with vaginas" (lol) which I am one of but who didn't embrace the 'shave your snatch and legs and wear make-up' scene and am fairly convinced my failure to embrace said 'femaleness' contributed to my being generally considered a pariah.
I didn't join any feminism clubs, particularly, and I think there may be different sects, so to speak, under an umbrella of 'feminism.'
What's the word for men parallel to feminism? Masculinism?