Sedna: Part II

Editor’s Note: the following article on Sedna, written by Eric Francis, was originally published on March 19, 2004 and is now part of the Planet Waves archives, only available through a subscription to Planet Waves Astrology News. Friday marked the fifth anniversary of Sedna’s discovery. Part I of this article was published on Saturday. –RA

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. Most of the little planets beyond Neptune belong to something called the Kuiper Belt, which is a swarm of icy planetoids on the far reaches of the solar system (these are the Plutinos and the Cubewanos). Pluto is the king of this realm. 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.

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/aquasphere/norlnpgg/open/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 civilisation 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 honour the goddess of the oceans, Sedna.

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 U.K. 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 reports in today’s editions:

A year ago tonight, President Bush took the nation to war in Iraq with a grand vision for change in the Middle East and beyond.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq, his administration predicted, would come at little financial cost and would materially improve the lives of Iraqis. Americans would be greeted as liberators, Bush officials predicted, and the toppling of Saddam Hussein would spread peace and democracy throughout the Middle East.

Things have not worked out that way, for the most part. There is evidence that the economic lives of Iraqis are improving, thanks to an infusion of U.S. and foreign capital. But the administration badly underestimated the financial cost of the occupation and seriously overstated the ease of pacifying Iraq and the warmth of the reception Iraqis would give the U.S. invaders. And while peace and democracy may yet spread through the region, some early signs are that the U.S. action has had the opposite effect.

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).

Additional research: Kirsti Melto, Tracy Delaney, Juan Revilla. Thanks to Chryss Alex of the Centaurs list, Jeanne Treadway and others for their contributions.