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 snake. 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 `with Ares?'), (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-shifting goddess of vengeance. However as so much of the shifting 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 reported to have said, "If I had known it was all going to come true I would have picked Venus."