So where were we? Ah yes, I was doing a little investigative reporting in the dairy aisle at Vashon Island Thriftway when I uncovered the following story.

THIS JUST IN: NATURE STILL EXISTS

For some reason, our local supermarket carries a lot of goat products; this is how the Northwest gets its reputation for being so groovy. Goat yogurt. Imagine all those mellow Northwestern farm women in their Birkenstock clogs milking little mischievous gray critters, in places like downtown Seattle, which of course you see every day.

Stuck to that particular shelf was a hand-written note that said:

I cannot tell you how relieved I was to see that the natural order of reality had some bearing on the human experience.

As cosmic coincidence would have it, that was the same day the discovery of Sedna was announced by astronomers at Cal Tech. It was seen using the Palomar Mountain telescope in San Diego, which among its tricks peers into space by way of a camera. Most planetary discoveries are not made by gazing at the stars in the backyard sense of the word but rather by studying photographs. The discovery was made in a plate taken on Nov. 14, 2003 at 6:33 am UT, but due to the need to confirm the discovery, the announcement was delayed five months. It has a distinguished team of discoverers: Mike Brown, C.A. Trujillo and David Rabinowitz.

Given that the minor planet count presently stands at 243,682 (bodies orbiting our Sun), and you hardly ever hear about any of those, there's a pretty big deal being made about Sedna; it's made all major media and there are many articles that appear in searches.

Sedna is something unusual even on the scale of all those minor planets. It's very nearly the size of Pluto, and thus the biggest planetary discovery since Pluto, in 1930. It is believed to have a Moon, though the evidence is indirect. It is the reddest thing discovered since Mars.

And its orbit is about 12,650 years -- the longest known. As the Cal Tech web site put it, "On 15 March 2004, astronomers from Caltech, Gemini Observatory, and Yale University announced the discovery of the coldest, most distant object known to orbit the Sun. The object was found at a distance 90 times greater than that from the Sun to the Earth -- about 3 times further than Pluto, the most distant known planet."

Its orbit is extremely egg-shaped, and it's currently near the Sun, about 90 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun (called an astronomical Unit or AU). At its furthest, Sedna travels to 1010 AUs. It goes WAY out there, and comes back with messages and information from the deep subconscious.

Sedna is between 1,250 and 1,800 kilometers in diameter, bigger than Quaoar, another major discovery in which Brown and Trujillo were involved. Quaoar was designated minor planet 50,000 in 2002 and was named for the creation god/dess of the Tongva people, indigenous to the area around Long Beach, CA.

The combination of Sedna being the largest thing since Pluto, the most distant object sighted, the length of its orbit and the fact that its discoverers broke the rules of naming a planet, have collectively gotten this thing a lot of attention. Specifically, the rule they broke was that the International Astronomical Union (IAU) doesn't normally entertain naming proposals till a planet has been assigned a catalogue number. It's been provisionally designated 2003 VB12.

But the discoverers will get the opportunity to name it once all the orbit is confirmed and the paperwork is filed, and obviously the name is going to stick. It has already become part of our culture.

There are a lot of themes to cover relating to this discovery and how we relate it to astrology. If you're wondering where this planet is in the sky right now, it's at 18 degrees of Taurus. In our lifetimes, it has only been in Aries and Taurus. Interesting that it was conjunct Chiron in early Taurus (within two degrees) at the time of Chiron's discovery, and as such can be counted as part of the 'rainbow bridge' reality that Chiron represents.

The name comes from the Inuit goddess of the sea. The Inuits, formerly called the Eskimos, hold her as a goddess of abundance in that she's directly involved with the bounty of the hunt. She is depicted as a morph between a woman and a seal. She lives, in the myth, at the bottom of the Arctic Sea. You can see an image of Sedna and an artist's conception of the planet here, where there are also lots of clear illustrations showing the orbit, the relative size and much more:

http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/sedna/

Astronomy

Astronomically, Sedna resides somewhere called the inner Oort cloud, the existence of which is not yet fully agreed upon by scientists and where the New York Times does not have a bureau. In recent years, that is, since 1992, astronomers have been discovering planets beyond Pluto. The first of these was 1992 QB1, which still bears its provisional designation and, curiously, has not been named. QB1 is an icy planet that orbits our Sun in 291 years. I consider myself the world's leading expert on 1992 QB1 and I know absolutely nothing else about it other than what I've told you.

Planets near or beyond the orbit of Pluto (referred to as transneptunian objects or TNOs) come in two categories: cubewanos (named for QB1), and plutinos, or bodies with an orbit similar to Pluto. Most of these bodies are members of the Kuiper Belt, a region of space of which Pluto is the first known and currently largest known inhabitant.

Sedna takes us beyond the Kuiper Belt and into the Oort Cloud, where reside a swarm of worlds that go halfway out to the next star, Alpha Centauri (interesting, named for a centaur, what you might call "the first centaur"). Sedna has been named by its discoverers in keeping with the theme of the Cubewanos, which are named for creation and resurrection deities. Plutinos, on the other hand are named for underworld deities, after the king of their realm, Pluto -- the Roman underworld god.

All the discussion you may be hearing about "whether Pluto is really a planet" has to do with the fact that Pluto is really a Kuiper object, the first ever sighted, and there are some people who feel that calling it a planet was incorrect.

There's a precedent for demotion: Ceres, discovered in 1801, was originally called a planet and was then reclassified as an asteroid, which was probably a mistake that may be reversed soon. For Scorpios in the audience worried that your planet is going to get demoted, fear not: from an astrological standpoint, this notion is an absurdity. Pluto is Pluto and evermore shall be so. If one pending scientific proposal is approved, Ceres, Varuna and Quaoar will be promoted to official planet status rather than Pluto being demoted. This will be fun because it will send tons of astrologers scrambling to catch up with what's already a very interesting and available field of study today. But it's also purely academic. What astronomers define nine or 12 of a quarter million bodies to be seems like a lot of wasted bandwidth. They are all planets if you ask me.

The fact that Pluto is so influential suggests (or might reasonably suggest) to astrologers that there's more information waiting in its region of space. But in fact, exceedingly few astrologers bother with anything beyond Pluto, and by exceedingly few, I would take a guess and say there are maybe 20 in the world who could do a chart session really factoring in these points in a meaningful way. That's about on par with how many professional astronomers are involved with this kind of research as well; lots of planets, few people interested.

The Oort Cloud, where Sedna lives, is the next swarm of stuff out beyond the Kuiper Belt, and extends halfway to the nearest star. The Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud are the realms from which comets and centaur planets are drawn into the inner solar system, like a reservoir of ancient space material from the earliest days of the solar system. All of those little planets, probably millions or billions of them, are held into place by the Sun's gravity. But from the viewpoint of Sedna, the Sun could be covered with the head of a pin at arm's length. It would look like a large, bright star. You could not do much sunbathing there; the temperature is about 400 degrees below zero. Not exactly Rio Rancho.

Mythology

Sedna, as I mentioned, was named for the Inuit sea goddess. The myth is rather interesting and deserves a much closer look than I'm going to give it here. But in short, it involves a very beautiful young woman who was preoccupied with her own magnificence. She turned away suitor after suitor until one day, when the family was starving, her father said that she would be married off to the next hunter who came along. This was done, but the hunter turned out to be a raven, who secreted Sedna away to his island, where she was miserable as a captive of marriage to a strange and alien being. (Sound familiar?)

Her father heard her howling through the airwaves and finally, riddled with guilt, he came in his kayak to get her. But the raven wouldn't have it, and attacked the father as he made his rescue. Finally the father threw Sedna into the sea, and when she tried to climb back into the kayak, he hit her fingers with the paddle. They broke off and became seals. Then he hit her arms and they broke off and became whales. She sank to the bottom of the sea, where she now lives, kept company by the creatures of the deep.

A complete version of the myth is located here:

http://www.hvgb.net/~sedna/story.html

It's important to remember that there are many versions of myths, more or less similar to one another. To get a feeling, you have to study several versions, which I plan to do over the next few weeks.

What I find the most interesting about this story is that it's about the creation of a god where man is doing the creating. I know of no other such myth associated with any creation god or goddess among the named planets. With all these worlds beyond Pluto, we're seeing a lot of creation god names and stories come to the surface: Varuna, Quaoar and others. But they all involve god or the gods creating people or other gods.

I also think Sedna's preoccupation with her own beauty but total disinterest in men is really quite an interesting one for our times. Perhaps it makes sense given who she is revealed to be, once the story is borne out. But it's certainly a pretty common scenario today. And I think the dynamics between the father and his daughter deserve a much closer look: he perceives her as property to claim or discard as he pleases. There is obviously a relationship. Were I a woman, I would not have interest in men who would take me as property, particularly if that was my father's attitude.

We could also ask: who were these people? They predate the gods, or at least Sedna, a primordial goddess. Were they proto-people, or deities themselves?

The announcement of the sea goddess returning comes at a moment when water and the health of the oceans is a very serious issue on the planet. The seas are in distress; as a result, all ecosystems are in distress.

This is particularly true at the polar regions, which are basically melting, and which bear enormous burdens of pollution. PCBs, for example, are heavy, oily chlorinated compounds that were used in hundreds of industrial applications. These collect in the fatty tissue of critters and quite effectively at the polar regions, despite there not being any industry there, and people in the region eat those animals.

The seas are being fished empty by industrial fishing. There is exceedingly little fresh water left clean -- we barely had any to begin with on this planet, and now most of it is polluted. Reading the articles on water in aquasphere (the Planet Waves annual horoscope for 2004) earlier this year was enlightening: I had no idea how serious the situation was. See "The Hydrotoxic Spiral" by Tracy Delaney:

http://planetwaves.net/contents/hydrotoxic.html

Meanwhile, there has been a lot of talk of water on Mars in recent months, as Spirit and Opportunity explore that planet via remote control. The fact that Mars had water and as a result probably had life are bigger reality shifts than we may notice today. Until fairly recently the only image of a Martian anyone could muster was of someone who was going to fly over in their space ship, land and conquer us. There is a vast subculture in the U.S. -- listeners of Coast to Coast A.M. -- who are followers of the folklore that Martian civilization was destroyed by a cataclysm, the atmosphere dried up, and Martians came here as refugees.

If that is true, and it seems plausible enough, we carry the memory of this trauma in our genetic code. Even if not, we are headed on a course that we must soon reverse or risk the same kind of cataclysm in which a large number of people leave the planet suddenly. Those who think we don't actually face this risk perhaps can give as much as acknowledging that this fear is rather strong in the unconscious and conscious minds of many people. And evidence that this fear is founded can be found in the oceans, which function as the immune system of the planet, as well as the food source and the primordial seed-bed that supports all life.

Thanks to Chad Trujillo and Mike Brown peering in to deep space but remembering the myths at the core of the psyche, we're reminded to honor the goddess of the oceans, Sedna.

Delineation

I'm often asked how these new planets get, or is it reveal, their meaning to astrologers. Most of the time they do NOT. With a quarter-million asteroids, centaurs, damocloids, cubewanos, plutinos and now critters like Sedna, an oortoid, most astrologers glaze over when they meet with this data. But there are rich rewards to using these planets, many of which have names, and all of which have birth charts and orbital diagrams and means to research their position in any chart. Everyone on some level can relate to the themes that emerge with new planets, but these inhabitants of deep space allow us to go deep into the psyche and explore our motives, experiences, feelings and life processes.

I am fortunate in that when I came to astrology 10 years ago, Chiron was still a teenager. It was clear to me at the time that if I wanted to work with Chiron, my astrology would need to have a research focus. So I read everything I could find. But I also set out to learn as much about Chiron from my clients as possible by listening to their stories of transit experiences -- that is, of times when Chiron was active in their charts. This led to the development of my method of working with clients, which involves working in two or more sessions and spending a lot of time listening and coming to mutual understandings with clients before reading the chart.

When asked how these new planets are delineated, I can give a lot of answers: the exceedingly few astrologers who concern themselves with these planets do everything from analyze the properties of the orbit (its length, shape, the position of its perihelion and nodes, and so on) to study the myth. Many will look for how the planet is prominent in the charts of famous people. Others will look at their own experiences of when the planet was active. All of these methods have validity, but none has worked as well for me as listening to the experiences of my clients and gaining an understanding of how they work individually.

And, hundreds of thousands of discoveries beyond that of Chiron, I still find Chiron to be highly dependable and an endless source of information, reflection and perspectives that lead the way to solutions. This is because Chiron speaks about the way that people raise awareness and what happens when this occurs. Chiron was discovered at the height of the Human Potential Movement, a term sometimes attributed to Abe Maslow.

Astrology is full of technicalities, scientific fascinations, mystical information and endless intellectual avenues to explore. But we do astrology for people. If it's going to be worth its salt and its considerable effort, astrology needs to relate to the human realm and human experiences. It needs to be practical and geared toward awareness, liberation and processes of change which seem to be so much a part of our experience. All the data in the world will not help us in the least if we can't apply that data in a meaningful and helpful way.

The Record of the Time

Scientific discoveries can help serve as markers of time. At the time of the Sedna discovery, we note the following news stories were developing. There were two cases in which parents were charged in the mass killings of their children, one in Anchorage and another in Fresno. The enquiry in to the death of Dr. David Kelly, the UK arms expert who had warned that the claims of the Bush and Blair administrations were nonsense, was itself called nonsense by a group of doctors in England. But the coroner refused to re-open the investigation, making it an open secret that there's something to hide.

Tensions in Kosovo escalated. In the wake of terrorist bombings, Spain threw out Jose Maria Anzar and elected Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero prime minister. While essentially replacing a fascist with a socialist, this set a dangerous precedent of terrorists electing the next government as the US enters the full-throttle of its election process.

We are on the anniversary of the fraudulent invasion, occupation and war in Iraq, as the insurgency steps up its resistance dramatically, killing many people. The Washington Post reported last week:

A small asteroid, 2004 FH, made the closest approach to Earth ever recorded Thursday (see NASA web page: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news142.html). ++