Eris
Greco-Roman goddess of Discord and Chaos adopted in the 20th century by the Discordians. Eris was the personification of strife. Known to the Romans as Discordia, she was a sister of Mars and belonged to the retinue of Mars and Bellona. She is said to have a son known as Strife. In Greco-Roman mythology she was variously blamed for strife, deceit, contention, murder, wars, disputation, and rivalry. She has been associated with the Fool and Tower tarot cards (representing both her trickster and her destructive aspects).
She is most commonly known by the part she played in:
Myth of the Apple of Discord
(this version extracted from the Principia Discordia - it's more or less true to most versions of the myth except for the bit about hot dogs. And about Paris being French. But what do historians know anyway?)
Zeus was preparing a wedding banquet for Peleus and Thetis and did not want to invite Eris because of Her reputation as a trouble maker. This made Eris angry, and so She fashioned an apple of pure gold and inscribed upon it KALLISTI ("The Prettiest One", sometimes translated as "To The Prettiest One") and on the day of the fete She rolled it into the banquet hall and then left to be alone and joyously partake of a hot dog.
Now, three of the invited goddesses, Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite, each immediately claimed it to belong to herself because of the inscription. And they started fighting, and they started throwing punch all over the place and everything.
Finally Zeus calmed things down and declared that an arbitrator must be selected, which was a reasonable suggestion, and all agreed. He sent them to a shepherd of Troy, whose name was Paris because his mother had had a lot of gaul and had married a Frenchman; but each of the sneaky goddesses tried to outwit the others by going early and offering a bribe to Paris.
Athena offered him Heroic War Victories, Hera offered him Great Wealth, and Aphrodite offered him the Most Beautiful Woman on Earth. Being a healthy young Trojan lad, Paris promptly accepted Aphrodite's bribe and she got the apple and he got screwed.
As she had promised, she maneuvered earthly happenings so that Paris could have Helen (the Helen) then living with her husband Menelaus, King of Sparta. Anyway, everyone knows that the Trojan War followed when Sparta demanded their Queen back and that the Trojan War is said to be The First War among men.
And so we suffer because of the Original Snub. And so a Discordian is to partake of No Hot Dog Buns.
