Sedna is an icy trans-Neptunian object on a highly elliptical orbit of 10,667 years. She reaches the (so-called) inner Oort cloud. The Oort cloud is a hypothetical spherical cloud of comets that extends to a distance of almost halfway to the nearest star. Sedna’s orbit is so long that she works almost as a fixed point in the chart. At the moment she is quite close to the Sun approaching her perihelion, so she is traveling “fast,” spending only about 100 years in one sign. When she is far from the Sun she can spend about 1,600 years in one sign. The last time she was this close to the Sun, Earth was just coming out of the last ice age.

Sedna is believed to be the fifth-largest known trans-Neptunian object after the official dwarf planets Eris, Pluto, Makemake and Haumea. She qualifies as a dwarf planet candidate. The discovery of Sedna was announced in 2004.

Some time ago the news was telling that the world’s oldest known living tree, a Norway spruce that first took root at the end of the last ice age, has been discovered in Sweden. The discovery of this 9,550 year-old conifer in 2004 coincides with Sedna emerging into our awareness. This persistent ancient tree has existed through about one Sedna cycle. The spruce’s stems can become about 600 years old at most. The tree has survived by pushing out another trunk as soon as the old one has died. It has an ability to clone itself, which is a kind of death and rebirth.

The image of the lonely Swedish spruce brings to mind Yggdrasil, the sacred World Tree in the Northern tradition. Yggdrasil is usually said to be an ash tree, but lately it has been suggested that it may originally have been a yew. The yew has a strong association with death and immortality; it is often found in church yards.

I see quite a few parallels in the symbolism of Sedna and Yggdrasil. Just as Yggdrasil is the cosmic axis joining all the worlds, including those of humans and gods, also Sedna is connecting different realms of the solar system with its exceedingly long orbit.

Yggdrasil is a vehicle for a shaman to travel into a different level of reality. Odin undergoes a shamanic initiation, a death and rebirth, by hanging from the World Tree for nine days and nine nights in order to gain the wisdom of the runes. Yggdrasil supports and sustains life. The cosmic tree survives Ragnarök, the end of the world, and also two humans get a shelter under its protective branches and survive. Yggdrasil is a symbol of eternity.

In Inuit mythology, Sedna was a young girl who, through a transformation, became the goddess of the icy waters. She lives at the bottom of the ocean with seals and whales. To ensure that she continues to feed the people, a shaman must descend down to her to comb her long, black and tangled hair. This calms Sedna down, and she releases her mammals and allows the people to eat from the bounty of the sea.

The Full Moon forms a grand trine in Earth with Saturn in Virgo and Jupiter in Capricorn. The Sun in Scorpio conjuncts House, the asteroid referring to the residence and to what is experienced “at home.” The Sun-House conjunction is sextile to Saturn and Jupiter and forms the apex of a kite pattern. In Scorpio the theme of death and rebirth is being repeated again. The conditions of Earth, our shared home, are in the spotlight.

The wellbeing of trees and forests is essential to our future. Recently I saw a news story reporting that we are depleting the Earth’s natural resources so quickly that we would need two planets to sustain our current lifestyle within a generation. The Luminaries of this Full Moon are on the Taurus-Scorpio axis. The rulers of these opposing signs are Venus and Pluto, respectively, and they are conjoined on the cusp of Capricorn, one of the cardinal signs. The first degrees of any of the cardinal signs are related to the Aries Point, the point where affairs of the world become personal.

“The next time Sedna comes back, the world might again be a completely different place,” has Mike Brown, the discoverer said. It is up to us all, what kind of place it’s going to be.