Chiron Meets Eris: Focus and Chaos
Mental and physical effects of digital conditions, Chiron transits, the healing crisis, eight states of being associated with digital over-exposure, and what to do about it.
This is a professional-level astrological paper on the now unfolding Chiron-Eris conjunction. Our in-house subscribers may find it on your My Account feed at Planet Waves. Thank you for making this kind of advanced astrological writing possible.
This essay adds additional details about the forthcoming Chiron-Eris conjunction, how it describes the mental and physical effects of digital conditions, working with Chiron transits, the concept of a healing crisis, eight states of being associated with digital over-exposure, and what to do about this situation. It’s based on my work with clients since 1995 using a Chiron-centered astrology process.
Dear Friend and Subscriber:
Chiron is very active in all of our lives right now. Associated with healing, Chiron is also about the healing crisis: the eruption of events that indicate a problem, and which strive to call attention to the problem.
Specifically, we are in the peak of the rare Chiron-Eris conjunction. Last week I described the archetypal elements of this alignment, which happens every few generations. To sum up, ultra slow-mover Eris in Aries, which began in 1922, represents the destabilization of personhood associated with the electrical mass communication age.
This era spans from commercial radio in the early 1920s through iconic, scratchy-image television, high-definition TV and into the digital age and the current GPT (generative A.I. or deep fake) stage. Living through this era has been profoundly destabilizing, and it has now reached a point of frenzy. It’s why the world is so insane right now — and why the madness arrives on a twice-daily basis.
Chiron, now meeting with Eris for the first time since the 1970s, represents an ordering principle. It represents a healing process that is guided by awareness. Most of us are so accustomed to existing in a state of chaos that this might feel uncomfortable and very strange. But if you move through that you will discover something about yourself.
Combining the two influences creates a lot of tension. It can feel like the struggle to awaken or the struggle to extinguish those who are awakening. It is not a comfortable inner state, or state of the world. It’s what we are experiencing personally and collectively right now.
Mental Collapse and Moral Anarchy
Society is in collapse because our mental framework is in collapse. This happens periodically and always comes with a kind of moral anarchy. You may think your angst and difficulty focusing are the result of all you’re seeing outside you. I’m saying that the problem is arising from an inner condition; which is our collective psychological and spiritual condition as we try to exist in this environment.
This crisis is a subset of the wider history of electricity, which moves human experience to the speed of light — something totally unnatural and which collapses space and time. Electrical technology in any form drives people out of their bodies, which means out of 3D awareness, which means out of their minds. This has many effects, which we’re witnessing daily.
The good news is that individual choice matters. There is no mass awakening without individual decisions to do so. You do not need a mass awakening; you need to wake up to who you are and why you are here. That in turn will have you embarking on a healing process. Once you’re there, as a conscious daily act, you will encounter other people on a similar journey and then perhaps you will have company.
Tribalized State of Being Met by the Drive for Individuality
The factors that Eris represents regress humans back to an artificial tribalized state. I say artificial because we do not have real tribes in Western society. We have a state of mind that drives the herd mentality, where people are manipulated and turned to aggression quickly and easily, all based on exposure to electrical conditions.
This is mass consciousness, not group consciousness. Groups are groups of individuals. We have very few of those today, since genuine group identity is equally under assault by digital conditions.
Individuality, privacy, inner awareness and distinct identity have been washed out to the point where most people not only have no clue who they are, but do not know that they don’t know. The result is the violence, aggression, coldness, meanness and general sense of chaos that we are experiencing. Later in this article I will describe eight such states of being.
Chiron is a polar opposite influence. It represents an organizing principle. It’s about individuality, standing apart from the herd, and the focusing of attention and awareness. The problem is that in a diseased state, the first thing Chiron is going to do is reveal the extent of the problem, and potentially, the nature of the solution. Eris blurs and distorts; Chiron pulls focus and demands specific points of documentation and ultimately of action.
Chiron also represents the holistic principle. It’s about seeing the whole picture. It is amazing that you cannot find any commentary exploring the whole picture of digital conditions anywhere outside of Planet Waves. If there is serious discussion of Chiron conjunct Eris anywhere in the astrology sphere, please point it out to me.
Chiron Transits are Critical Moments for Most People
I’ve listened in detail to the lifetime Chiron transits of countless hundreds of my clients. When Chiron activates the chart, there is a critical moment, a crisis point, a juncture or an eruption of circumstances. It has a 50-year cycle. Because the orbit is so elliptical, events that happen to one generation at age 7 happen to the preceding generation at around age 22. Chiron is an important factor in understanding various forms of generation gap.
Each chart has to be carefully evaluated, but one thing is almost certain: when Chiron is active, there will be a result. This can be at any age (Chiron conjunct Sun, Moon or ascendant). Or it can be at specific times in Chiron’s cycle, which you can study here.
Chiron is now most active in the charts of people born around 1951-1955; 1973-1976; 1988-1991; 1995-1997; and 2002-2004. Some will be feeling this more than others. The transits peak at different times for those born with any specific sign placement. There will be important before-and-after points. These ranges of years work as one system and you may recognize others in the pattern as significant in your growth.
Saturn and Uranus Transits are Chiron-Like
There are other points of development. The Saturn return at about age 29, the Uranian opposition at about age 42, and the second Saturn return at about age 58, are all Chiron-like events. The resulting patterns are all highly individual and you don’t know what’s going on until you study the whole chart and learn your transit pattern.
Right now, society itself is in a sweeping, all-encompassing Chiron transit. While there have been similar events, there has been nothing of this magnitude since 1971-1972, at the peak of the television era.
A kind of “second Sixties,” this era came with its own crises and in particular, the birth of the identity politics that is now consuming social lives. But in our time we have something underlying that: the invisible ground of the all-encompassing digital environment.
I am amazed that this is not being studied or even discussed as one all-encompassing phenomenon. It is so high, so deep and so wide that most people cannot see it. (If the internet ever goes out, we will definitely see it.)
Forms of the Digital Trance — A Few Samples
Individual results may vary, but here are several forms of the digital trance, which will often occur in combination. They often involve some form of living from drama to drama, and these usually originate in what is falsely termed the news or the public realm. There is no way not to pay attention to ’the news’ as nearly everyone has one or more social media feeds where the issues will come up in distorted form.
People are experiencing many issues in their ‘private’ and family lives, not accounting for decades of digital overexposure. Many think it’s normal to live this way because they know nothing else. It is in no way normal to be in a constant state of crisis. Here are some forms this may take:
1. Emotional polarization, especially rage. Then there is “love him or hate him,” various forms of derangement syndrome, cultish admiration of an ego figure, and belief that one guy is perfect and the other is evil; any form of “if I believe it, it’s true,” and any form of systemic bias (all men are perpetrators and all women are victims, all immigrants are evil, one political party is good and the other is bad, etc.) It’s all the same thing.
2. Confusion, which means getting caught in the chaos and the conflicting versions of events. Usually this is a kind of refuge. The confused person does not need to commit to anything. It’s perfect. This can include “not knowing what to believe anymore,” or conspiracy theorizing (which is fictionalizing beyond scope of the available facts, or ignoring the facts). The thing disordered here is the mind, even despite the chaotic nature of events. There is a near-total lack of applied logic or pattern recognition.
3. Withdrawal and despondency, marked by a sense that all potential is gone and the future does not exist. It’s not worth making any effort because everything is for nothing. This can involve various dissociated states of being.
4. Paranoia mostly affects the hard core ‘netizens’ who spend their late nights going down what they term ‘rabbit holes’ and seeing all the supposed connections and discovering how it’s all one big conspiracy — against them. These people are convinced they’re the real-deal investigative reporters watching Bitchute videos and waiting for what Q will ‘drop’ on them next. It does not matter whether these things are ‘true’ or not. The main distinction is you cannot tell either way, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. But you feel powerful because you’re allegedly ‘in the know’ and everyone else is in the dark.
Lack of Trust in Existence
5. Total lack of trust in existence is more widespread. This is the predictable result of any of the above four scenarios. You cannot be lied to over and over again to the point where you trust no public institution and still easily have faith in the people around you. These matters must be raised to awareness before they can be addressed.
6. A sense of loneliness and isolation that you’ve never felt before, as if you live in a world without people, or nobody is the same as they used to be. This can include betrayals and misunderstandings that never seem to stop.
7. The inability or refusal to follow logic; the abandonment of acquired learning. This is critical and very difficult to spot. Logic is important right now because it’s a pattern recognition tool. Logic is a ruler, essential if you want to know the accurate measurements of an argument.
Digital conditions swallow acquired knowledge. “Everything you were told is a lie” is a meme in our era, and while this might feel good for a second, it does not prevent you from being lied to by the person profiting from telling you there were no dinosaurs or that the world is flat. Discernment requires logic, pattern recognition and the use of acquired knowledge. It starts with believing nothing.
Nothing is Funny or Sexy
8. Extinguished sense of humor. Nothing is funny; everything is offensive. This is part of emotional calcification and the inability to sense the deeper situation that might be driving all of the above conditions.
9. Lack of interest in sex. Sexual imagery and political banter have taken the place of actual human contact. The electronic world lacks sex and gender because it is disembodied. Then we bring that same sexless, genderless experience back to 3D space. If you find yourself with little to no interest in sex, are repulsed or blatantly disgusted by it, or are raging at the opposite sex, or use your sexuality for financial or social leverage, you’re trying to live your digital life in the physical world.
10. Crisis of executive function, i.e., you struggle to hold your life together or to make decisions. Also called “ADHD,” this is a key element of being entrapped in digital consciousness.
The Solution is Individual. It Has to Be.
Many are “waiting for people to wake up.” This is a ridiculous principle. Your consciousness originates with you; you have the option to pay attention or not; to go with the crowd or not.
You are making this decision every hour of every day. When someone tells you to stick a needle in your arm and inject some mystery juice, why do you do it, or why not?
You choose every time you answer a question or make a statement or decide how to relate to the people around you — more or less honestly, for example. You might be more or less inclined to do what they do because you’ll be more acceptable. This is where the tire grips the highway, which is the same place where it skids.
There is no solution in distancing yourself from the internet. Yes, you obviously need things that you love to do in the physical world (which could start with making your own food, addressing one of the great travesties of digital existence). Yet equally important is what you do when you’re relating to the digital world.
Where is Your Awareness Located?
Do you have real friendships here, by which I mean time-tested friends? Are you creating or consuming? Do you make finished work product, or share what someone else has done?
What is your state of mind when you’re here? Do you respond to things that don’t merely trigger you? Or are you capable of being thoughtful and reflective?
Equally important is: do you treat people in the physical world like they are figments of the digital realm, or do you treat them as human beings? Do you treat those you know in the digital realm like robots, or like people?
Digital existence is the exercise of turning a nightmare into a lucid dream, where you start to make decisions about what you do with yourself, your time and your investment of consciousness.
And who are you in the midst of all of this? Where is your consciousness located? Is it inside your body, or outside?
Your faithful astrolover,
There is a great book about the beginning of the electric age by Wolfgang Schivelbusch. It goes into detail about people’s concerns and fears of what it might do to humanity. Disenchanted Night.
Hi Eric, I haven't read your essay yet. I wanted to say that the photos are gorgeous, particularly the little goats!