Taurus Full Moon: Eris, Chiron & the Apple of Discord.

While Venus is opposite Chiron today on the Taurus full moon, my attention turns to Eris, goddess of discord who sits next to Chiron within 1 degree. In fact, for the whole of 2025, Eris keeps company with Chiron, with exact conjunctions in May and October, and then again in September 2026.

In the full moon chart, Venus is at the apex of a Yod with Uranus and Neptune, both quincunx Venus and sextile to each other.

Venus/ Aphrodite is at the heart of the Eris & the Golden Apple myth, her placement opposite both Chiron and Eris highlights tension between discord and harmony. Chiron draws our attention to the wound that may arise in attempting to balance the two, while at the same time hints at a more spiritualized view that incorporates the personal (Saturn), and the transpersonal (Uranus).

In mythology, Eris has no interest in maintaining harmony, at least not the kind concerned with social mores and niceties. On another level, she may be privy to a cosmic order that flies in the face of human design. Her magical weapon is a golden apple from the Garden of Hesperides. As Daughter of the Night (Nyx), Eris has access to the garden of Hesperides, located on the fringes of the Western world, and watched over by the Hesperides, “Daughters of the Evening”.  The tree on which the Golden Apples grow (a gift from Gaia to Hera), is protected by the dragon Ladon. The setting sun, mysteries of darkness, the fringes of the known world, serpent protection, magical maidens, and a prize worthy of Herculean efforts to obtain, suggest the apples are imbued with magical power… feminine power. The kind of feminine power that can disrupt the patriarchal applecart.

Eris in opposition to Venus invites us to balance our needs and the expectations of society while honouring our own soul, and with Chiron in the mix wounds sustained through self-betrayal may be painfully felt. How many of us, particularly those of us with Chiron in Aries, have betrayed ourselves in favour of the needs of others only to be further wounded. Until Chiron in Aries has healed the wounds of the self, the self can feel like a fragile, or even unowned entity.

Since Chiron is next to Eris and both are opposite Venus, the focal point of a Yod, we are talking about the ways in which women have diluted themselves to fit into a male dominated society. By which I mean power structures largely created and controlled by men. To add insult, in the myth of Eris and the apple of discord, also known as the Judgement of Paris, the gaze that decides the standard of female beauty is a mere mortal.

In modern society which arguably is the land of the never setting sun, a new day with an endless supply of artificial light is dawning, and the unpredictable, chaotic mysteries of the darkness may be tamed. That is until Eris, and those who carry her energy, release a drop of dark goddess medicine into the fray. Then all hell lets loose. If we never put the lights off, if we live always in the realm of ego and control (daytime consciousness), the gifts of night are lost to us, and transformation becomes an artificial process instead of an organic unfolding of wisdom. I guess that’s Eris’ point. Balance is achieved by integration of the dark and light. In striving for never ending growth, Promethean man’s use of hard-won illumination may be abused.

Of course, Eris wants to go to the party, and yes, there’s a good chance she will disrupt anything that has become too rigid, too static, too artificial. The Golden Apple, a stolen prize of the solar quest, is returned to its rightful keeper, the lunar goddess, She who knows how to wield the power correctly.

In the Myth of Eris, Venus/ Aphrodite appears to have lost her feminine power and foolishly engages in an ego competition with Hera and Athena, to claim the title of most beautiful. This vanity leads to the Trojan war. This aspect of the myth also speaks to the ways in which women compete for the approval of men, and how men set the standard of female beauty.

On an individual level, this full moon in Taurus invites us to reflect on how we have allowed ourselves to be diluted and seduced by the superficiality of society, at the expense of our deeper knowing and feminine power.

Between the personal and the transpersonal realms is Chiron, erratically orbiting between Saturn and Uranus, crossing boundaries, and resolving opposites. Chiron’s medicine reminds us that our wounds can be used against us, to manipulate and disempower, or they can invite us to the depths of our soul to recover the fragmented self. In the wholeness found through the Chirotic journey, we own ourselves and are less likely to get involved in interpersonal dramas that may have multiple and ongoing consequences. Likewise, in working consciously with Eris, we choose when it is necessary to shake things up and when to smile politely and walk away. This comes from experience and psychologically speaking fits the maxim “Order Out of Chaos”. Life is a series of deaths and rebirths, destruction and creation. Learning to work with these inevitable processes is a path to wholeness. But then again, you just never know what Eris has up her sleeve.