A Soliloquy on Sedna

Surely you have heard about her by now, she who is termed a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) close in size to Pluto, slow in movement and blood-red in color. Her lonely perihelion runs no closer to the Sun than twice Pluto?s maximum distance; the furthest point of her orbit lies out nearly 20 times that distance. Once upon a time, something big disrupted her orbital path, so she travels in a comet-like pattern yet does not reach the comet home ground of the Oort cloud. She exists outside the orbits of other KBOs, a starboard outcast from the society of her own kind, cast into the frigid outer darkness against her will. She has been unofficially christened with the name and myth of Sedna, a troubled creation spirit and Denison of the Underworld, originating from the Arctic realm of the Inuit people. An ephemeris for her position is available free from Astrodienst on the Internet. Click on this Link to view the horoscope chart for the date of her discovery.

Sedna was a vain girl who spent all her time admiring herself and combing her long hair, while rejecting all suitors who came seeking her hand in marriage. She was eventually made a wife through the deceit of a shape-shifting demon spirit from the nether-world. When she learned of the deceit she demanded that her father come in his kayak to rescue her. As the two were escaping the sea rose up in anger, stirred up by the demon husband. The father dumped his daughter overboard to appease the spirits, hacking off her fingers that clutched at the sides of the boat. The severed stumps became the various mammal species of the sea. Sedna sank down to lurk in the darkest caves of the deep ocean. When she is angry she stirs the waters into a tempest; famine stalks the tribes because there can be no hunting. A shaman must make the descent in a trance to comb out her hair, attend to the vanities she can no longer perform. Sedna is not worshipped by the Inuit, she is feared.

Sedna represents the products of creativity withheld, temperamental passive aggression and the potential for self-sabotage through vanity and spiteful actions. She is shallow and stubborn in perception, duped by a glamorous illusion into giving away the best of herself. Her creativity is delivered only by violence and dismemberment; in the end she is left with no way to fend for herself. Sedna is strongly represented in my natal chart, and I have felt her breathing down my neck. She conjuncts my angular natal Mercury in the first house within 1°, the two planets forming the tip of a kite aspect pattern that encompasses the dynamics of my own creative drive. True to the tenets of the myth, the ability to communicate creatively has often been self-blocked; communications tend to be forcibly ejected from the basement of psyche in sporadic degrees, then cyclically refined upon the larger stage of life.

Perhaps where Sedna is in your own natal chart, is where the best of your own potential is held back, kept from the light of day. The reasons always sound good; not enough time, patience, equipment, money- They don't understand me, karmic doom rules, my health is fragile, modesty prevents, self-medication prevails, etc. But in back of it all is an immature disinclination to meet the world on its terms, to petulantly refuse stepping up to the plate and meeting the challenge of uniting personal inspiration within a form of presentation (book, painting, career change, web site, diet, dismantling a compulsion or obsession,) that the general public or even just your family can applaud. Fortunately, the progeny of deep inner quickening can still be brought forth into material bounty; the shaman within must be able make the descent to calm and beautify the neglected parts of a raging soul. But beware the shape-shifting demon that betrays your finest efforts, for that is the ego's face as judge or twilight elven rider.