Astrology Explored

May 17, 2008

Eris, our newly discovered dwarf planet of the solar system demands a voice. As the ancient daughter of Night, and having no male provenance in her lineage, Eris was an outsider in the patriarchal pantheon of Olympian gods that dominated Greek culture that spawned our own. She is an ancient goddess whose meaning became subverted when the patriarchal northern tribes of Greece conquered the southern matriarchal tribes and broke and diminished the roles of all goddesses.

In a stunning moment, Eris, crashed a wedding party to which she should have been invited and displayed the weakness of the female Olympian goddesses by tossing a golden apple maked “To the fairest” in the center of the party. All the goddesses, each representing a different aspect of female power, fought over the prize. Note that if each goddess was actually sure of her own power and place, they wouldn’t have fought over this “prize” no matter how valuable. It demonstrated how females fall for outer trappings of beauty and wealth to validate themselves within society.

Eris, in flaunting the diminished power of the women in the power elite, became known as the Goddess of Discord. Yet Eris’ situation mirrors perfectly what happens to women when they try to step out of societies’ mold and demands an equal share of power. They are edged out of crucial decision making positions, denied the same pay as men, and attacked as being “castrating” or a “bitch”.

Eris in myth is the non sexual companion of the god of war, Aries. She accompanies him into battle and gained a reputation for delighting in the blood of war.

As with all paradigms that do not resonate with societal expectations, we go begging for a well accepted symbol of that energy. Unwittingly, perhaps, the creators and writers of the show Battlestar Galactica has given us an image of Eris in the character of Starbuck, Captain Kara Thrace.

In the original Battlestar Galactica, Starbuck was a Jupiterian good time boy, sidekick and wingman of the more serious Captain Apollo, the son of the fleet’s commander. In casting a woman in the part of Starbuck the dynamics of the character changed dramatically. We see that though Kara’s skill as a pilot far outstrips any other pilot, she is seen as a outsider within her group. She has difficulty accepting authority and is often at odds with her commanders. Independent and intelligent, she often has insights that escapes her male counterparts.

She is seen at times playing cards “with the boys”, smoking cigars and engaging in boxing matches. But all this is a glaring counterpoint with her obvious physical beauty.

She also is drawn into an emotionally difficult affair with her flight commander, Lee Adama, known by his flight name as Apollo. Kara is unable to accept the intense intimacy of her relationship with Lee and the secondary place a formal union would give her. Both of them flee into marriages with other people. Her now illicit sexual affair with Commander Apollo continued for time despite their marriages.

She suffered at the hands the enemy capture and repeated torture, physical, which demonstrated her strength as a soldier and sexual, which demonstrated her weakness as a woman. In a strange counter point her enemies gave her a child to care for, making her believe the little girl was her own so that they could use the child as a bargaining chip against Kara. As a result of her experiences she suffered a nervous breakdown. However, the torture seems to have served as a catalyst for unleashing a previously hidden power that gives her special insight into the finding the direction of the fleet’s objective, the home of the thirteenth colony, Earth.

In the episode “Faith”, Kara has to fend off a mutiny of the ship she captains because a male subordinate questioned her decisions. She staves off the mutiny by the support of her husband who uses a firearm to disable one of the mutineers. However, the audience, but not Kara, knows that her husband is an embedded enemy agent, whose motives are questionable.

Currently, in the story arc, as she struggles with her role and her subordinates, she is hailed as the “Savior” who is on a mission to find Earth, which promises to be an oasis of human support against an enemy on bent on destroying them. In the episode “Faith” she is called the “Harbinger of Death” by the quazi-mystical “hybrid” that appears to act as the CPU of the enemy’s ship.

The creators of the show promise that the humans will find Earth, but what kind of Earth, they aren’t saying. Though we had no way of knowing what Kara Thrace’s ultimate fate will be in final episode, we do see the problems and complexities of woman who defies societal expectations. We see the face of Eris.

Other posts about Eris: Eris, Here We Go With Them Apples Again

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astrology, horoscopes, zodiac, Battlestar Galactica, Kara Thrace, Starbuck