NAME: Eris, "the Lady of Sorrow," "defender of the people," (Homer)
known by the Romans as Discordia.
SYMBOLS: A golden apple of immortality with Kallisti "to the fairest" or
"to the prettiest") written on it.
USUAL IMAGE: Usually depicted as a beautiful young woman, who on looking
closer is shown to have corpse pale skin,hair bedecked with thorns and
wearing a garland that from
the distance seems floral but is really a poisonous s****. Was also said
to become
larger while close to battles.
AREA OF INFLUENCE: Originally strife, lately
Chaos, but in a good way.
HOLY BOOKS: Theogony of Hesiod, The
Iliad, The The Principia Discordia.
HOLY DAYS: None
RELATIVES: Chaos (grand parent), Nyx (Mother), no father, Gaia (Aunt),
Erebus `Darkness´ (Uncle), Apate,goddess of deceit, Geras goddess of
old age, Philotes goddess of affection,Nemesis, goddess of vengeance,
the Keres,the Fates (sisters), Thanatos, god of death, Hypnos, god of
sleep, Momus, god of writers, critics, sarcasm & I would assume these
days Blogsters(brothers), Horkos god of oaths (son `withAres?'),
(Morpheus (nephew.) Ares (consort.) I have to say however that
Saturnalia supper over at "the gloomy house of Nyx" had to have been one
interesting affair!
Later accounts give her mother & father as Hera and Zeus, I think this
can be discounted
as a much later addition.
SYNODEITIES: Discordia (Roman, who though later said to be one and the
same as Eris was at first another Goddess altogether), The Morrigan
(Celtic), Loki (Norse), Kali
(Hinduism), Seth (Egyptian), Lucifier (Christianity.)
DETAILS: The Greek goddess Eris was original a vary minor goddess about
whom little is known.
Most of our knowledge about her comes from Hesiod, where we learn there
were two Erises
(Erisi?) one bad and one not so bad, and Homer's Iliad, where we are
told that Eris, the
goddess of strife, was one of the few deities not invited to come to
Boeotia (Cow-Land) to
witness the marriage of the human Cadmus, former slave on Olympus for
eight years for
having killed one of the giant serpents of Gaia, to the Goddess Harmony.
(apparently as
a reward for being a really good suck up to Zeus)
All the gods & goddesses were at this wedding, save for Eris, who they
thought an
inauspicious personage to invite to a wedding, though a bit unfair I
would say as
they did invite Ares, hardly the best house guest.
Hearing of it anyway Eris crashed the party and rolled one of the golden
apples of
immortality into the middle of it marked with
the word Kallisti meaning ether "for the
fairest" or "for the prettiest."
This led to a dispute between the Goddesses Aphrodite, Athene & Hera
about who should
have it. (you would think Athene would have better sense) which led to
the human Paris,
who apparently had never been introduced to the concept of cutting an
apple into sections,
being called in as the sucker to settle the dispute, which led to the
Trojan War.
The whole moral of which seems to have been sometimes practical jokes
just go too damn
far.
There is not much else heard from Eris, though we are told that like the
Celtic goddess
The Morrigan that while she doesn't take part in battles herself, she
does revel in them and
during some may grow larger in size as she becomes more excited.
However I suspect that there may be sometime been more to Eris than
this. For one
thing while Homer goes to a great deal of trouble to paint her in the
harshest colors, he
(whoever he or they were that ended up being called Homer) also at one
point refers to Eris
as "the defender of the people."
I suspect that it may be that the much later Homer is letting the lore
about an earlier Eris
slip in. I think this may show that perhaps she is another Greek triple
Goddess, with her
"sisters" Philotes, goddess of affection, & Nemesis shape-****fting
goddess of vengeance.
However as so much of the ****fting beliefs of that time are lost, I
doubt that could ever be
proven. So we are left with the golden apple story.
Until that is the year 1958 or 59 when Greg Hill & Kerry Thornley
brought her into the 20th
century with the Principia Discordia. which led to The Illuminatus
Trilogy by Robert Shea
& Robert Anton Wilson, which led to many thousands of people starting to
call
themselves ether Discordians or Erisians and acting accordingly.
Restating, it would seem, the same moral we got from the Iliad above.
And Eris, having been brought back, refuses to go away, still showing up
on such venues as a cute `goth´ on the television series Xena Warrior
Princess, (where they insisted on just calling Her Discord), as the foe
of Sinbad in a cartoon where she is voiced by Michelle Pfeiffer, to a
stint as a villaness in the Wonder Woman comic in the 80's & 90's, to
now where Eris is depicted as a British accented blonde, with a David
Letterman gap in her teeth, & wearing a midriff revealing toga on the
Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy on the Cartoon Network (based, I am
informed by Wikipedia, on Madonna). Showing that you might as well send
her an invitation because she's coming anyway.
As Greg Hill is re****ted to have said, "If I had known it was all going
to come true I would
have picked Venus."
For images and Links go to:
http://community-2.webtv.net/Toomuwik/Eris/index.html
Terry McCombs
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