Hello,
Everyone.
Welcome to Everything is Energy.
Thank you for joining me for another episode.
Today,
We're going to talk about,
Well,
We're going to spend some time with one of the more fascinating and,
In my opinion,
Potentially most misunderstood celestial bodies in modern astrology.
Her name is Eris.
And if you spent any time studying astrology,
You've probably heard Eris described as the goddess of discord.
She's sometimes also referred to as the street fighter.
And those descriptions come directly from Greek mythology,
Excuse me.
And they're certainly not wrong,
But over the years,
I've come to,
In my own sense,
Notice that they're more than a little bit incomplete.
To me,
Eris.
Fundamentally isn't interested in creating conflict.
She reveals the places where conflict already exists,
And that's a different energetic.
She uncovers what has quietly remained beneath the surface.
And she illuminates essentially where ego has become over leveraged,
Where we have become so identified with our own individual perspective,
Our identity,
Our way of seeing the world.
In a sense,
We've built these artificial walls around us and we've forgotten that we're part of something much larger.
And Eris comes in in those times.
And so I would offer that discord isn't her purpose.
Instead,
It's a consequence of what happens when long-hidden imbalances are finally brought to surface,
Finally brought into the light.
And that distinction,
That difference between discord for its own sake and discord more in a Plutonian fashion of when there's something beneath the surface that needs to be brought to light.
And,
You know,
That's just my own refinement over the years.
Once again,
I don't know if noise cancelling is going to cancel all my chickens out.
I live on a farm,
As many of you know.
I really want to get this podcast out.
So there won't be chickens in the meditation,
But there might be chickens in the background of this.
But back to Eris,
I want to kind of just put a pin in that,
You know,
If we've misunderstood Eris,
We might also misunderstand the absolutely remarkable period of history that we're living in right now.
And,
You know,
In my own experience,
One of the gifts astrology has to offer for my own life,
Throughout my own life,
Is perspective.
It reminds me that history unfolds in cycles,
That cultures evolve,
That civilizations transform,
And that also that nature moves in seasons,
Just as the heavens and the celestial bodies move in rhythms and move in circles and cycles.
And when we begin paying attention to those rhythms,
When we as I've said,
You know,
Lift ourselves up and out of linear time and space,
We stop expecting every answer to arrive immediately.
We understand that there's a cycle afoot.
And when we can see that we're not out of control,
We're just in a part of something much larger.
For me,
That patience arrives and curiosity comes and I find myself more observant,
More compassionate.
And I think that's especially important today.
It can be very easy to become absorbed by the pace of the modern world,
By the news that's changing by the hour,
By the markets that change by the minute,
By the social media that changes by the second.
We're continually being invited to react on one level,
Right?
I would offer that some of the most important stories unfolding in our lives right now don't happen in days.
They actually happen over decades and over generations,
Sometimes even over centuries.
And Eris absolutely reminds us of this.
And one of the things that fascinates me most about Eris is just how slowly she moves.
Eris takes approximately 558 years to complete one single orbit around the Sun.
And just to put that into perspective,
Let's take Pluto.
Pluto's orbit is 248 Earth years.
So she's essentially over twice as long of an orbit as Pluto.
Neptune's orbit is 165 years,
And Uranus is 84 years.
And all those planets are considered to be extremely subtle energy.
And then enters Eris with this orbit that's 558 years.
And if we think about what that means,
You know,
Entire civilizations rise and fall in less time than it takes Eris to complete one celestial journey.
And during all of 2026,
Eris travels less than two degrees of the zodiac.
That's right,
Less than two degrees.
And the pace itself.
Her energetic self becomes part of her teaching.
She doesn't describe the mood of a month.
Instead,
She describes the evolution of an era,
And she's asking and inviting us to think beyond economic cycles,
Beyond election cycles,
Beyond even our own lifetime.
She asks us to become students of history,
In a sense.
And this week,
As I'm recording this,
This week on July 22nd,
Aries is stationing retrograde at 24 degrees and 37 minutes of Aries.
Ares's cardinal masculine fire.
And whenever a celestial body stations,
Whether it's direct or retrograde,
Its symbolism often becomes much louder in our awareness.
It's as if this big ship is going one direction and it's finally got itself to a halt before it changes course.
And that doesn't necessarily mean that dramatic events are going to occur on that particular day.
I think of everything about astrology as having these cusps or orbs of energy.
So astrology is rarely that literal,
But I would just say stations invite us to pay attention.
They invite us to notice and to reflect and to observe the larger pattern unfolding around us.
And what makes this station especially compelling is that it's not occurring in isolation.
Throughout this year,
Throughout 2026 and extending well into 2027,
Eris remains in an extraordinarily close conjunction with Chiron.
And we're going to spend much more time exploring that relationship later in today's episode.
And you might remember that I recently did a podcast about Chiron entering into Taurus.
But for now,
I just simply want to say that,
You know,
This is my offering.
Take it or leave it.
But I believe that we're living through.
And within one of those rare moments.
When several great archetypal stories are unfolding simultaneously.
And I've said it before,
I'll say it again.
Pluto into Aquarius,
Saturn and Neptune have begun their long journey through Aries.
Uranus has entered into Gemini.
Chiron is dipped into Taurus,
But it's still going to have one more transit back into Aries,
And we'll talk about that in a second.
And Eris is just quietly continuing her centuries-long passage through Aries.
So individually,
Each of these moments is significant.
And I've said before,
That would take up a whole year of an astrology.
Podcast.
That would be the major backdrop and we've got it all happening right now and that's suggesting something much larger and it's not merely change.
I would offer that it's reorganization.
A profound reorganization of how we understand ourselves,
One another,
As well as our place within the living world.
And that's why I got to choose today's title,
Which is The Great Reorganization,
What Eris reveals about the next chapter of humanity.
And before we begin,
I just want to offer one invitation.
As you tune in and listen today,
I invite you to set aside the temptation to ask.
You know,
Who is right or who is wrong.
And instead,
Maybe entertain a different question.
What larger pattern is trying to emerge?
And that question is really,
I find that question so intriguing,
You know,
Not only in astrology,
But also in herbalism and in farming and meditation in my own life,
Because nature is rarely interested in assigning blame the way humans tend to.
Nature's interested in restoring balance.
And I just want to offer that perhaps Eris is asking something similar.
Not necessarily that we become louder or more certain.
All of those are fine,
But more importantly,
Both and.
So let's go ahead and begin by meeting Eris herself.
One of my favorite aspects of astrology is that it continually reminds us that human beings have always looked to the heavens for meaning.
If you think about it,
You know,
Long before telescopes and observatories,
Long before computers could Calculate planetary positions with the push of a button.
Our ancestors looked upward.
And wondered and they told stories and they created myths and they built megalithic buildings in alignment with the celestial bodies above us.
And when they told myths,
They didn't tell myths because they were primitive science.
They did so because mythology has always been one of humanity's languages,
Storytelling.
And mythology,
You know,
Invites us to explore psychological and spiritual truth.
And so I would say,
You know,
Whether or not these stories happened historically or exactly is a little bit beside the point.
My sense is that the myths endure because they continue to reveal something about human nature.
And Aries is absolutely one of those stories.
Eris was discovered relatively recently,
Just over 20 years ago in 2005.
And astronomically,
Her discovery became one of the most consequential in modern times because it ultimately led to the profound question of what exactly is a planet.
And if you remember,
The discovery of Eris challenged long-held assumptions about our solar system and eventually contributed to Pluto's reclassification as a dwarf planet.
And I find that symbolism alone fascinating.
And,
You know,
Astronomers very boldly named this celestial object after the goddess associated with discord.
Because.
.
.
Let's remember,
She arrived not simply to create disagreement.
But to invite humanity to reconsider the categories it had taken for granted.
Already we can feel her archetype at work,
Just as how in looking at how she showed us up in our world.
She's not creating conflict for its own sake.
But instead,
She's revealing where our existing frameworks are potentially no longer sufficient to hold where we're headed.
And the mythology tells us that Eris was the only goddess not invited to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis on Mount Olympus.
And as the only god or goddess not invited,
She felt excluded.
But she showed up anyway.
And the way she showed up is as important as any aspect in the story.
She didn't enter the celebration directly.
She showed up at the front door,
She gave a knock,
And she held a golden apple.
And as the guards opened the door,
She tossed the golden apple into the assembled guests at the wedding.
And in some myths,
She speaks this,
And in some myths,
These words are written on the apple.
But the words that are echoing into this wedding are,
To the fairest.
And immediately,
Several goddesses believed the apple should belong to them.
And what followed was not simply an argument.
It exposed A rivalry.
Comparison,
Pride,
Ambition,
Competition,
Ego.
Questions of worthiness.
And eventually these tensions contributed to the chain of events that culminated in the Trojan War.
And for centuries,
Eris has therefore been remembered as the goddess who brought discord.
But as I mentioned at the top of this podcast,
I've personally not really experienced her story that way.
To me,
Eris did not create the vanity.
Instead,
She revealed it.
And she didn't invent the rivalry either.
She illuminated it.
The apple she tossed in simply made visible what was already quietly but abundantly present in the room.
And in my experience,
That changes everything.
Because if we understand Aries as revelation rather than disruption.
Her symbolism becomes profoundly relevant to both psychology and spiritual practice.
She asks,
You know,
Where have I mistaken my ego for my deeper self?
Where have I become attached to identity that is hanging on at the expense of truth?
Or where have we become so certain in our world that we have actually stopped listening?
And that one I think lands.
Because this idea that we've potentially left.
Something outside of our awareness that's now asking to be seen.
You know,
Carl Jung famously wrote,
Until you make the unconscious conscious,
It will direct your life and you will call it fate.
And every time I return to the mythology of Eris,
I think of that sentence.
Whether or not you believe in the unconscious,
Those could be subtle energetics,
But what remains beneath the surface unconscious,
Subtle energy,
However you want to name it,
It doesn't disappear.
And if we've ever had any experience of sweeping anything under the rug,
I think most of us understand that doesn't make it go away.
What remains unconscious doesn't go away.
It simply continues shaping us until we're willing to see it.
And perhaps this is Eris's deeper invitation,
Not to fear what is revealed,
But to recognize that the revelation is the first step or an absolutely important step toward healing or within the healing process.
And before we kind of shift to explore Eris astrologically,
I'd like to spend a few minutes just simply appreciating her as a member of our solar system.
Because one of the things I love about astronomy is that it continually reminds me that astrology begins with wonder.
So long before we assign symbolism to the planets,
They are extraordinary celestial bodies moving through an unimaginably vast universe.
Sometimes simply contemplating the scale of this stuff shifts our perspective.
And Eris has certainly had that effect on me.
As I mentioned earlier,
She was discovered in 2005.
And although she's categorized as a dwarf planet,
She's actually slightly more massive than Pluto.
And her discovery really challenged astronomers to ask a fundamental question,
What defines a planet?
And it was this question that ultimately led to the International Astronomical Union redefining the word,
Quote unquote,
Planet.
And in the process,
They reclassified Pluto.
And I just,
I've always just found that deeply energetically symbolic,
Because the very discovery of Eris required humanity to reconsider the categories through which it understood the solar system.
She didn't simply add another object to our map.
She invited us to redraw the map itself.
And let that settle in.
That feels,
To me,
Just profoundly heiress.
And,
You know,
Astronomically,
She's astonishingly distant.
She travels through the outer reaches of our solar system.
As I mentioned,
It's approximately 558 Earth years is what she requires to complete just one orbit around the sun.
And let's let that sink in.
558 years.
The United States has existed for less than half of one heiress year.
The Renaissance,
The Scientific Revolution,
The Industrial Revolution,
And even the Digital Age all unfold within a single orbit of this remarkable celestial body.
And I think as we kind of just consider that larger cycle,
We begin to understand something important.
You know,
Eris is not describing the emotional tone of a Tuesday afternoon.
She's describing the evolution of civilizations.
And one of the ideas I often return to in astrology is that the slower a celestial body moves,
The longer the story it tells.
You know,
The moon teaches us about daily rhythms.
Mercury teaches us about 3D thought and communication.
These are the personal planets.
Venus and Mars unfold over months and years.
And as we move to the outer planets that have really been the main feature,
You know,
Pluto,
Neptune,
Uranus,
They're speaking about,
They're called the generational planets for a reason.
But then we move to Eris,
And Eris is so far beyond a generational planet.
Eris speaks in centuries.
She asks us to become students of extremely long cycles of time.
And she reminds us that in a sense,
History itself is alive and breathing.
And I often return to,
I think it's a little bit simplistic,
But there are some astronomers that will say,
Just because the outer planets always win.
And I don't mean that in the sense of like a duke it out in the physical world type of fight,
But outer planets are often misunderstood because to me,
They work in subtle energy.
The personal planets work in more concrete ways.
Understand that,
You know,
Mercury interacts with our communication and our technology and we can get some actual data points to understand it.
And then we move to the generational planets and it's a little bit nebulous.
We have to look back at history.
And,
You know.
Eris showing up this year and doing this conjunction with Chiron,
Which we'll get to,
And stationing Retrograde,
Which we'll also get to.
Is pretty significant in these times.
And let's remember that she moves less than two degrees of the zodiac this year.
She moves from approximately 24 degrees in 37 minutes of Aries to just under 26 degrees.
That's less than two degrees.
And just imagine that,
Many of us move through emotional territory that is far vaster in one single afternoon than Eris is moving through the Zodiac in an entire year.
And again,
I believe that the energy of the pace itself is part of the communication.
It's part of the symbolism of Eris.
Because in our culture,
You know,
Speed is often mistaken for importance.
Yet,
If we look to nature,
Nature teaches us something very different.
The oldest oak tree grows slowly.
The deepest forests develop over centuries.
And healthy soil is created patiently.
Mountain ranges rise almost imperceptibly and perhaps the heavens are reminding us of something similar.
Right now.
That not every transformation is meant to happen quickly,
That some changes absolutely require generations.
And this is one of the reasons why I find Eris so compelling,
Because she continually invites me to ask larger questions.
You know,
The questions aren't what's happening this week,
Even though I love weekly astrology,
And I'll be offering that.
Later on today.
I think,
You know,
With heiress,
It's it's not about this moment in time.
It's about what chapter of of evolution,
What chapter of history am I living within?
And those are absolutely distinctly different questions.
And I believe that astrology is at its most powerful when it helps us ask those larger questions.
And there's another fascinating aspect of Eris's movement.
Because she moves so slowly,
She remains in each zodiac sign for approximately a century.
So the last time Eris entered Aries was in the early 1920s.
No,
Actually,
I'm sorry,
Not the last time.
This time Eris entered Aries,
It was in the early 1920s.
And she's going to be in Aries until the 2040s.
So let's even think about what that means.
Nearly everyone alive today was born with Aries and Aries,
Number one.
In terms of birth chart interpretation,
That's extraordinary.
She's making the same cosmic thumbprint on all of us in some sense.
And unlike planetary placements that distinguish one generation from another,
Eris in Aries belongs to almost our entire modern civilization.
She isn't describing a generation and she isn't describing an era.
She's describing an archetypal atmosphere through which nearly all of us have lived our lives.
And to me,
That realization alone invites us to think differently about astrology and about the times that we're living through.
Because instead of asking only what Eris means for us personally,
We're sort of invited to ask,
What is Eris asking of humanity?
And that,
You know,
That kind of naturally brings us to Aries.
I mentioned that Aries is cardinal masculine fire.
It's ruled by Mars.
And,
You know,
If Aries describes one of the great archetypal stories of our civilization,
Then Aries tells us where that story is unfolding.
And as the first sign of the zodiac,
Aries absolutely marks beginnings and emergence and birth.
It's like the first courageous step into unknown territory.
And areas as often associated with individuality and initiative and action and identity.
And at its healthiest energetic,
You know,
Aries teaches us authenticity.
It asks,
Who am I?
What is mine to become?
How do I live courageously?
How do I bring my unique gifts into this world?
And these are just such beautiful questions.
And I think they're pretty necessary questions in this moment.
Without Aries,
You know,
None of us would ever become fully ourselves.
Yet,
You know,
In astrology,
Every archetype,
Every planet,
Every sign has its uplifted aspect and it has its shadow.
And here,
You know,
When individuality loses its relationship with the larger whole,
It can slowly become isolation.
Courage can become aggression.
Confidence can become.
Arrogance or certainty.
Identity can become.
Fixation and attachment.
A clinging to things that no longer serve.
And if we think about Aries' uplifted aspect as healthy selfhood,
The shadow aspect can be quite simply over-identification with the ego.
And this is where Ares becomes such a fascinating companion to Ares.
Because as I shared earlier,
I don't think of Ares as the goddess of discord.
I think of her as the revealer.
She shines light upon those places where ego has quietly become over-leveraged.
Where our attachment to being right,
To being recognized,
To being important,
Or to even simply just being separate.
Has become stronger than our relationship with reality and with the whole itself.
And I want you to notice that I'm not saying ego is bad,
Because I personally don't believe that it is.
You know,
Psychology doesn't ask us to eliminate the ego.
And neither does spirituality.
The ego gives us a name,
It gives us a voice,
It gives us our personality,
Our way of of moving through the world and expressing ourselves.
And,
You know,
In my sense,
It's a necessary part of being human.
And so the problem isn't the existence of the ego.
Quietly begins believing that it is the whole of who we are.
And that's a very different thing.
Carl Jung often spoke about this distinction.
He recognized that the ego is only one part of the psyche.
Beyond it lies what he called the self,
A deeper organizing principle that connects the conscious and unconscious dimensions of our being.
And to me,
Eris continually invites us toward that larger perspective.
She very gently asks us to consider where has the eagle become louder than wisdom?
Or where has our identity become more important than our relationships?
Where have I confused or confounded certainty with truth?
And,
You know,
These aren't necessarily comfortable questions in the world that we're living in,
Because we're living in these tumultuous times and humans,
You know,
We get a little uncomfortable when we get it.
We're creatures of habit.
And,
You know,
Many of us adults in this world have experienced a world that felt very real and this world is going through absolutely.
A molting or a transformation or it's within the chrysalis,
The caterpillar has dissolved,
The butterfly has yet to have its wings formed.
Who are we?
And so when we think about this idea of grasping for this certainty,
Instead of breathing into and opening up to what might feel resonant and true and what is emerging.
Those aren't comfortable questions,
But I.
.
.
I think they're pretty profoundly liberating ones.
And this again is where I find the natural world,
Such an extraordinary teacher and healer and kind of providing the balm to the mind.
If you've ever had a chance to walk through an old forest or spend an afternoon beside a river.
Or even just sit quietly in a healthy meadow,
You can really witness that nature rarely competes.
In the ways that humans imagine.
And I've had this experience up here living in the woods.
You know,
An oak tree doesn't become less magnificent because the wildflowers bloom beneath it.
And even in the natural world,
You know,
We have mountain lions up here and I have dogs that absolutely let the cats know that they're there and they just talk to each other.
And if we even think about the mycorrhizal fungi beneath the forest floor.
They're not asking which species deserves the most attention.
It's just that the sun isn't asking who deserves its light.
And if you think about the energy of the pollinators,
The bees are moving from flower to flower to flower.
They're not looking for which blossom is most worthy.
And so I think of this metaphor that the natural world is offering for us and inviting us to return to,
Because we are ultimately always and only nourished and supported.
By the natural world.
And it's reminding us that healthy ecosystems thrive in their interconnectedness.
That each organism expresses its own unique nature while simultaneously precipitating,
Precipitating?
Participating?
In something much larger.
Than itself.
And that doesn't erase individuality,
It gives individuality its proper place.
And to bring this back to Eris and Ares,
I think that she's asking us to remember something similar.
We're invited to become fully ourselves,
But without forgetting that we also participate in a much larger,
Greater,
Living,
Web of life.
And I sometimes wonder whether this is one of the deepest invitations of our era.
It's not to become less individual,
While we certainly are being invited to take responsibility for ourselves and care for ourselves.
I think it's inviting us to become individuals who remember our relationship with each other.
With nature and with the living earth.
And that doesn't mean letting go of our ego.
It means two things can happen at the same time.
And that,
I think,
Is again,
Lifting us up and out of this linear.
Illusion.
And I think that is potentially the balance that Aries has been seeking all along.
Not individuality or community.
It's not one or the other.
It's individuality.
In sync with and an understanding of and understanding what it means to be in service to the community,
In service to the collective.
Not martyrdom,
Not a lack of boundaries,
Healthy self-care,
And being a part of community.
And I think on many levels,
We kind of know that's what we're missing.
And my sense is,
As we begin to understand that,
There's another extraordinary story that's starting to emerge because throughout 2026,
Eris is not traveling alone.
Let's touch into this now because she's accompanied by another profound archetype and it's one that speaks directly to healing and invites us into compassion.
And it's one that asks us to transform our wounds and our places of vulnerability.
Into wisdom.
And that companion is Chiron.
And together they open a door to what I believe is one of the defining stories of our time.
So let's return to the reason I wanted to create this episode at all.
Or the reason why I felt the nudge to create it at this juncture.
I'm recording a couple days before July 22nd and you'll find this whenever you're ready to find it because as I mentioned this Energetic is operative for the better part of a year and a half into two years,
Throughout 2026 and through most of 2027.
But on July 22nd,
Aries is stationing retrograde at 24 degrees and 37 minutes of Aries.
And like every outer celestial body,
Aries spends nearly half of each year appearing to move backward from our perspective on Earth.
Astronomically,
Let's know that nothing actually reverses direction.
It's simply the changing geometry between Earth and Eris as both continue their journeys around the Sun.
So retrogradation is not that the planet stops moving.
I think we understand that,
But I just want to speak that truth.
You know,
Astrologically,
These apparent pauses have long been recognized as meaningful.
Let's think about how we evolved.
We were looking up with the naked eye at the sky for centuries.
And there was this Visual.
Thing that happened in the sky where a glowing body in the star in the sky would stop its progression in one direction and go back.
And,
You know,
Whenever a planet,
Or in this case a dwarf planet,
Stations.
Its symbolism becomes amplified.
It's almost as though the archetype pauses for long enough for us to notice it.
And I often think of stations as moments when the volume is just kind of gently turned up a little bit.
So the message itself hasn't changed.
Or simply potentially more able to hear it.
And this is especially true with outer planets and those more distant celestial bodies,
The ones that I often speak of them as offering in a subtle energetic.
And as I mentioned,
You know,
Many astrologers say the outer planets always win.
At first,
That sounds a little dramatic and even deterministic,
And I don't really understand it that way.
To me,
It speaks to something much gentler.
The outer planets work through this subtle energy.
And they rarely demand our attention all at once.
You know,
Mercury can force us to restart our phones,
Something we very.
In the 3D world have an experience of.
Pluto and Neptune and Eris,
You know,
They quietly reshape the landscape beneath our feet.
They influence collective consciousness over years and sometimes decades,
Sometimes,
In the case of Eris,
Centuries.
And so that translates into in our day-to-day lives,
There might not be any obvious evidence that anything has changed.
Yet one day we wake up and we realize that the conversations people are having,
The values that shape society.
Even the questions that we ask,
The ways that we relate to ourselves and to each other.
That they're no longer the same.
And so another way I think about it is,
You know,
Outer planets rarely shout.
They more likely whisper.
And they whisper for a very long time.
And eventually we realize that the landscape has changed.
Perhaps that's what astrologers mean when they say the outer planets always win.
Not because they overpower us,
But because life itself continues evolving.
And let's get to the directionality of what Eris is doing.
She's stationing retrograde,
And retrogrades invite reflection.
They encourage us to revisit,
To reconsider,
To look again.
Revise.
Renew.
And,
You know.
Again,
We're being invited to lift ourselves up and out of linear time.
We often understand growth is a linear thing.
And yet nature rarely develops itself that way,
Right?
The tides advance and retreat.
The moon waxes and wanes.
Trees grow outward while simultaneously deepening their roots.
Breath itself expands and returns.
And so retrogrades,
I would offer,
Remind us that Wisdom often arrives through revisiting what we thought we'd already understood.
And as Eris turns inward,
This week.
This year or the rest of this year.
Perhaps she's inviting us to notice where our identities have become rigid.
And where our certainty has replaced our curiosity in our humanity.
And where our relationship with our ego has potentially drifted out of balance.
Not because we have failed,
Not because we need to be punished or we're wrong,
But because every human being eventually builds stories about themselves.
And sometimes those stories absolutely serve us but also they have the potential to become prisons if we're not listening.
And Aris has a remarkable way of revealing that sometimes subtle but very obvious difference.
And one of the reasons this particular station feels so meaningful to me is that it isn't simply about July 2026.
It belongs to a much larger story that's already been unfolding for many months.
And as I mentioned,
It's a story that's going to continue throughout the rest of this year and into 2027.
And so to understand this station fully,
We need to really widen our lens,
Widen our perspective again.
And this brings us to what I believe is the deeper purpose of today's conversation.
I've come to the words,
The great reorganization.
And when I use that phrase,
I don't mean it as a single event.
Nor do I mean it as a political cycle or an economic cycle or even a generation.
I'm I'm speaking to something much slower.
Something that becomes visible only when we study history alongside the cosmos,
Alongside the heavens.
And so throughout this year,
2026,
Eris is in this extraordinarily close conjunction with Chiron.
The fact that the exact conjunction occurred on March 19th this year at 24 degrees and 39 minutes of Aries.
Is worth noting.
But as I mentioned,
Just like eclipse seasons,
Even though the date is absolutely important,
Sometimes the realizations are astrology can be cuspy,
Things and energy can be afoot well before and well after.
And the fact that this conjunction is operational through 2027.
Because eventually Chiron's going to also retrograde back.
And they're going to remain in this relationship,
This orb of conjunction throughout 2026 and 2027,
Well into 2027.
So,
You know,
It's not going to meaningfully separate until around solstice of next year.
So this isn't a moment,
This isn't a time for us to look at the sky and wait for the seas to part.
I think it's about kind of a more extended conversation.
And the cosmos and the heavens are absolutely asking us to remain with it.
And earlier this,
I think it was this month or last month,
I did a podcast on Chiron entering into Taurus.
And that moment still,
Because of this,
Remains incredibly important.
Yet Chiron isn't finished with Ares because before continuing his journey,
He's going to retrograde back.
He's going to return.
He's going to reunite with Eris.
And I've always loved that symbolism because healing also isn't linear.
Healing happens in cycles.
And the cosmos seem to understand this better than we do most often.
Because just when we believe we've moved beyond something,
Life gently invites us to look at it once more.
When we're really on the healing path,
We come to understand that we never truly repeat the pattern.
There's a theme that might repeat,
But as long as we've been awake and aware and moving with the energy,
It's absolutely always evolving.
So when we're invited to look at healing patterns,
It's not because we failed,
It's because another layer has become ready to be seen and to be released and to be healed.
And when I think about Chiron and Eris together,
I don't immediately think about conflict.
Instead,
I think about consciousness.
Because Chiron is sort of asking the question,
Where is the wound?
And Ares is asking,
Where has Ego quietly organized itself around that wound?
And taken together,
They really invite,
In my mind,
A profoundly human question.
Can healing occur?
If we remain unconscious of the stories we've built to protect ourselves.
Let's let that sink in.
Can healing take place while we're still unconscious of the stories that we've manufactured to protect ourselves?
I think The question already begs the answer.
But I want to.
Squeezing another Carl Jung quote here because he states,
Until you make the unconscious conscious,
It will direct your life and you will call it fate.
Until you make the unconscious conscious,
It will direct your life and you will call it fate.
And to me,
This is one of the most beautiful descriptions of what Eris has the potential to reveal.
It's absolutely not punishment,
Nor is it judgment or condemnation.
Instead,
It's awareness.
She's gently uncovering what's been operating beneath the surface all along.
And it's only when we can really look there.
And see and realize that we have the freedom to choose.
Differently,
To vibrate differently,
To make different choices.
And again,
This is why I don't primarily think of Eris as the goddess of discord.
I think of her as the revealer.
She's like the revealer of where ego has become over leveraged,
Where our identities have become so tightly held on to,
They begin to separate us from reality itself.
And I want to again just say I'm not suggesting that ego is something we need to eliminate,
Nor do I think it's bad.
I'm saying the opposite.
I'm saying that a healthy ego.
Is what allows us to function in the world.
To create,
To love,
To express ourselves,
To become fully human.
You know,
And so the invitation here is not the death of the ego.
The invitation here is right relationship.
Reciprocity.
And one of the greatest teachers of right relationship has always been the natural world.
The longer I spend here on this farm,
The more I realize that nature rarely wastes any energy proving herself.
The old oak tree,
As I mentioned,
Isn't competing with the grasses or the flowers that are growing beneath it.
The fungi beneath the porous floor isn't asking which species is the best one.
You know,
Each organism is expressing its own unique nature,
Healthy ego,
While participating in a living whole.
So the ecosystem remains resilient precisely because no single part is attempting to become the entire system.
And.
You know,
Perhaps there's some wisdom there for us,
Not because forests are human societies,
But because life itself continually demonstrates that relationship creates resilience.
And this is why I believe Eris arrives at such an important moment in history and at this moment on our planet.
Not because she's creating upheaval,
But because she's illuminating where balance has quietly been lost.
She's revealing where we've mistaken certainty for wisdom.
Or are we mistaken?
You know,
Identity for essence or possession for relationship.
And perhaps what she's asking of us is not to become smaller.
Rather to become spacious enough that our individuality no longer requires separation from the larger whole,
That it's not binary,
It's not black or white,
That there's this scale of gradation.
Of all the shades of gray between the black and the white.
And so we don't need to lose ourselves to acknowledge that we are part of something much larger.
And when we step back,
We see that Ares is not working alone.
That Pluto is reshaping our collective relationship to power.
And community through Aquarius have spoken at length about that.
Pluto spent time in Capricorn shaking out the top-down structures and in Aquarius,
Pluto is absolutely inviting us to,
We're just dipping our toe in the water.
We're just starting to understand what circular power structures even mean.
And Saturn and Neptune are beginning an entirely new chapter in Aries as well.
To give enduring form to ideals while also dissolving structures that can no longer support life.
Both and,
Not either or.
And while Uranus has entered Gemini this year,
Earlier,
You know,
That's inviting profound changes in learning and technology and the exchange of ideas and communication.
Reminding us in Gemini fashion that Everybody in the room has a different voice.
And it's potentially interesting to talk to everyone,
Not that we need to give our identity away,
But that You know,
Gemini doesn't want to sit at the dinner party with the same clique of friends.
It wants to go talk to everyone in the room just because it finds it interesting.
And let's get back to Chiron here because Chiron is continuing his work of healing our identity.
Before ultimately carrying that work into Taurus.
This is where our relationship with Earth and with the embodiment of ourselves and our purpose comes really into focus.
And while any one of these is absolutely enough for many years of energetic comprehension.
These are not isolated transits.
They're a part of this symphony.
And I've talked about the minor triangle where a lot of these planets are trining and sextiling each other.
It's like all the outer planets,
The elders,
Are seated at the dinner table in calm and deeply interested conversation about how to usher humanity through this time of transition.
And there's nobody's yelling,
Nobody's afraid.
They're in symphony.
And together they're describing a civilization reorganizing itself.
And one of the reasons I find Aris so helpful is that she's asking us to think beyond immediate outcomes.
Beyond what's happening today and tomorrow.
Her orbit spans,
Let's remember,
558 years.
And that's reminding us that humanity's deepest transformations often unfold across centuries.
And when we become potentially overly attached to immediacy.
To immediate certainty.
When we become so attached to those minutiae,
Those small things,
We have the potential to miss the larger arc of history.
And I would invite that this is perhaps why Eris is asking us to become better ancestors.
That means that she's inviting us to participate consciously in the changes that are afoot.
And,
You know,
Maybe the full flowering we may never personally witness.
But that does absolutely has nothing to do and it doesn't negate the power of our individual choices,
The power of our consciousness,
The power that we have in shaping and in co-creating the world that we live in.
And there's just something so humbling about that when we think about that larger arc.
There's something humbling and there's something really deeply beautiful.
And I want to just give one final thought before I move into the herbal almanac.
You know,
I find it fascinating that in this particular moment in time,
Our culture is once again captivated by the great myths of ancient Greece.
It's hard to ignore that I think it's in a couple days,
Maybe.
It's this weekend that Christopher Nolan's movie The Odyssey is drawing this kind of renewed attention.
Stories that have lived for thousands of years are once again entering.
Our collective imagination.
And whether one sees that as symbolic synchronicity or simply an interesting cultural moment,
I find it interesting and I find it meaningful.
You know,
It's because the myths endure because they continue to illuminate.
These underlying truths about the human condition.
And really,
Perhaps that's why Eris feels so relevant today,
Not because she belongs to the past,
But because every generation eventually discovers that the deepest myths are never really only about ancient Greece,
For example.
They're about us.
They're about the choices we make.
They're about the stories we inherit.
But they're also about the consciousness that we choose to cultivate.
And perhaps that is the great reorganization,
Not merely a reorganization of society,
But a reorganization of consciousness itself.
And as I want to start to bring today's conversation to a close,
I'll get to a meditation in just a couple minutes.
But I want to shift from the heavens back to the earth,
Because one of the things I love most about bringing astrology and herbalism together is that they answer potentially very different questions.
You know,
Astrology helps us understand the season that we're living in,
The energetic that we're living in.
But herbalism,
Because it's rooted into the earth,
It really helps us embody those seasons with greater grace.
You know,
The sky gives us the perspective,
The plants give us the companionship,
And we have evolved next to plants.
They have nourished us.
That's how we've evolved.
They are our co-creators,
So to speak.
And,
You know,
To me,
These conversations between the sky and the earth,
They've never been separate.
They've always been more or less speaking the same language.
And as I just kind of think about today's episode,
I was finding myself just asking the question,
You know,
If Eris invites us to become more conscious and if she's really kind of potentially just gently right now revealing the places where our identities have become rigid.
And if she's inviting us and asking us to return to that relationship.
You know,
What plant might help us embody that work?
And as I was thinking of this,
I kept returning to just one familiar question.
Friend of mine,
And that is Tulsi.
Holy Basil.
Tulsi has been treasured in Ayurvedic medicine for thousands of years.
It's often referred to in the modern day as an adaptogen.
And I love that word because adaptogens don't remove life's challenges.
They help us to meet those challenges with greater resilience.
And in the same way,
They don't eliminate the stress.
They help us to develop a healthier relationship with it.
And for me,
That feels very deeply aligned with Eris because Eris isn't asking us to eliminate the discomfort.
Right?
She's inviting us to meet Revelation without becoming overwhelmed by it.
And,
You know,
Modern research continues to explore Tulsi Holy Basil's ability to support nervous system resilience and healthy cortisol balance and immune function and inflammatory regulation.
But traditional wisdom understood something similar long before clinical studies existed.
You know,
A resilient nervous system changes the way we experience the world.
The circumstances may remain exactly the same,
But our relationship to those circumstances can begin to soften.
And if Tulsi is the herb of resilience,
Then I want to invite another beautiful ally alongside her.
If you happen to have milky oats on hand.
Whenever I walk through a little raised bed of oats,
I'm reminded that strength doesn't always look rigid.
If you think about what the oat looks like and how it feels energetically,
It bends,
It sways,
It absolutely moves with the wind.
And precisely because it moves,
It rarely breaks.
And there's potentially wisdom there for us.
So I'll just say this week,
If you feel called,
Perhaps prepare yourself a simple cup of tea,
Two parts Tulsi,
One part milky oats.
Or if your garden's overflowing with lemon balm this time of year,
You can add a little bit of that.
And not because the recipe itself is magical,
But I think the ritual is.
And whenever I make tea,
I like to sit quietly.
Hold the warmth of the cup.
Breathe in the air before you take your first sip.
Allow and invite the plants to remind you that resilience is cultivated slowly.
One quiet step,
One quiet moment or sip at a time.
And,
You know.
Let's just again bring it full circle.
The heavens are teaching us about these vast cycles of time at this juncture.
And I think the plant kingdom is absolutely coming.
Alive and interacting with us once again because it's inviting us to remember our daily practice.
And I think together,
They are the anecdote.
Together,
They are the medicine.
And so now I want to.
Invite you into today's meditation.
Go ahead and find a space and a place where you won't be disturbed for the next 10 to 12 minutes of time.
Somewhere where you can allow your eyes to gently close.
And as you do,
Bring your awareness into your body and feel that your spine is straight,
That your shoulders are either stacked over your hips if you're seated upright or just in alignment with your hips if you're lying down.
Let your palms rest face up.
And go ahead and take a slow breath in through your nose.
And take an even slower breath out through your mouth.
Again,
Breathing in through the nose.
And just gently taking a little bit more time on the exhale,
Releasing through the mouth.
Let's do that two more times together.
Just elongating the inhale,
Deep,
Gentle,
Full breath in.
And a slow,
Easy release through the mouth.
Breathing in again.
And breathing out.
And then just simply allow the breath to flow naturally.
Maybe it's a little bit deeper.
Maybe it's not.
There's no need to change anything.
Just simply notice that you are here in this present moment.
Acknowledge that there is nowhere else that you need to be right now.
There's nothing you need to solve or understand.
Just this moment,
Just this breath.
And allow your attention to just.
.
.
Sort of ambiently,
Lightly settle into the natural rhythm of your breathing.
Notice the gentle rise of your chest.
And really feel,
Experience the release,
The quiet release as you exhale.
And imagine that with every breath on the inhale,
You're calling your consciousness,
Your energy,
Your awareness into this moment in the inhale.
And as you exhale,
You're letting go of whatever distractions,
Whatever heaviness,
Whatever tensions there.
Breathing in,
Coming into this moment.
Breathing out.
Letting go.
And now imagine yourself standing before a magnificent old oak tree.
Perhaps you've known a tree like this somewhere in your life,
Or perhaps this one appears simply in your imagination.
Notice its enormous trunk.
It's deeply furrowed bark.
And as you look up,
Begin to acknowledge the seemingly countless branches that are stretching upward and outward,
Reaching toward the sun and the stars in the sky.
And as you place your hand on this gentle giant,
Connecting with it.
Begin to imagine you're no longer standing beside the oak,
That you are merged with it.
Go ahead and start to feel your roots descending deep and wide into the earth.
Moving down,
Steady and patient.
And just take a moment to acknowledge that these roots have grown quietly.
Over many decades.
Perhaps even centuries.
Storms have come and gone.
Seasons have changed.
Leaves have fallen.
New leaves have emerged.
Yet this tree has remained.
And now begin to.
Feel,
Experience yourself branching upward and outward.
And maybe this tree is one of the taller trees in the area.
And notice how far and wide your branches move upward and outward.
Healable leaves slightly flutter in the breeze,
The branches swaying.
And start to feel the strength and the wisdom.
Of this growth over time.
Not because life has always been easy,
But because it learned how to remain rooted.
While the world continually changed around it.
Go ahead and take a slow breath.
And release and just simply rest here.
Within this oak tree for a few moments.
And now allow your awareness to gently expand.
Beyond this oak,
You begin to notice that the oak is not alone.
That around it stretches a meadow.
Wildflowers,
Native grasses.
Butterflies,
Bees,
Dragonflies.
Each expressing its own unique nature.
None asking permission to become itself.
None competing to become everything.
Each offering something beautiful.
To the whole.
And as you allow your awareness to move through this meadow,
Notice how the meadow doesn't ask every flower or grass to be the same.
Its beauty and its strength and its resilience comes from its diversity.
Relationship.
And from each life fully expressing its own essence.
And go ahead and take another slow breath in through your nose and notice.
You belong to this living landscape.
Exhaling through your mouth.
And begin to.
Connect this notion that you belong not because you've earned your place.
Instead because you've always been a part of it.
And now notice that you can hear the gentle sound of moving water.
There's a small river flowing nearby.
Maybe you walk or just move your awareness toward it.
And allow yourself to just rest quietly beside the edge of this river.
Notice how effortlessly the river moves around every stone.
It does not argue with the landscape.
It participates with it.
Sometimes slowly,
Sometimes swiftly.
Always moving and becoming.
And perhaps there is wisdom there.
In the eddies.
In the rapids.
Notice if there's anything within you that has become rigid or that perhaps has forgotten how to flow.
And as you notice or check in,
Do so without judgment.
Simply allow the river to remind you.
That movement is not weakness,
That adaptation is hardly failure.
And that life itself is always becoming.
And as you're connecting to this river.
It is sunset and you can start to connect to the gentle arriving of the evening.
And you can lift your eyes toward the night sky.
And notice that the stars are beginning to appear above you.
And as you connect to some of the twinkling stars,
You can begin to see as the horizon is turning dark.
Connect to this notion,
The light reaching your eyes began its journey.
Long before your grandparents were born.
Some light from these stars and celestial bodies started its journey to your eyes long before civilizations existed.
And as you look up,
Really see if you can connect to and feel the vastness.
Not as something that makes you feel small,
But instead as something that gently returns everything to its proper scale.
Go ahead and take another slow breath in.
And as you do,
Connect to this notion that you're breathing beneath the same sky that is watched over every generation before you.
Exhale through your mouth.
And connect this is the same sky that watched forests grow.
Mountains rise,
Rivers carve valleys.
This is the same sky that watched civilizations appear.
And quietly transformed.
And as you look up,
The stars continue to appear as the sky continues to grow dark.
And see if you can receive this notion that you are an inextricable part of this story.
You are not separate from it.
You are a part of it.
Go ahead and bring one hand to your heart if that feels comfortable or simply bring your awareness to your heart center.
Perhaps another hand to your abdomen or just connect to your sacral center and your solar plexus.
And first just connect the gentle movement of your own breathing.
The same rhythm that has accompanied you since your first moments of life in this body on this planet.
And allow yourself to rest in a simple knowing.
That you do not have to control every season.
That you do not have to understand every change,
Nor do you need to carry the weight of the entire world,
That your invitation is much simpler.
To remain rooted.
To remain open.
And to remain in right relationships.
With yourself.
With one another?
With the earth.
And with the great unfolding mystery of life itself.
And go ahead and take one final slow,
Deep breath in through your nose.
And as you exhale through your mouth,
Perhaps offer a quiet word of gratitude or thanks to the earth beneath you,
The sky above you.
And gratitude to the breath that's moving through you in this present moment.
To the life that continues inviting you to grow.
And whenever you're ready,
Just gently bring your awareness back into the space and the place where you began this meditation.
Maybe wiggle your fingers to your toes.
And when it feels natural,
Just gently allow your eyes to open.
And potentially set the intention to carry this with you,
This sense of being deeply rooted.
And open and interconnected.
And in right relation to everything and everyone around you.
May you move through the days ahead with steadiness and curiosity.
And with the quiet wisdom of remembering that you have always been a part of something infinitely larger than yourself.
