New Moon in Taurus – May 14, 2010, 01:04 UT
Sedna is not happy today. The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, caused by a drilling rig explosion on April 20, is still gushing thousands of barrels of oil daily into the sea. Efforts to stop the leak haven’t been successful so far.
Sedna is a trans-Neptunian object which astrologically has a strong association with the climate change and other environmental issues. She is conjunct the Taurus New Moon and wants to be heard now! At the moment she is also tightly opposite to the Sun of her discovery chart. My attention was drawn to this current transit by the Planet Waves astrologer Len Wallick. Thank you, Len!
Sedna is a peculiar little planet with her extremely long orbital period at somewhere between 10,500 and 12,000 years. She works almost as a fixed point in the chart. She will reach her perihelion within this century, before moving farther away from the Sun again for another 12 thousand years or so. We could say that now that Sedna is relatively close to us spending “only� about 100 years in one sign, we are able to experience a transit of Sedna.
Sedna is named in honor of the Inuit goddess of the sea. Sedna was a beautiful young girl who had many suitors. She and her father had no food. One day a hunter came and said that if he could have Sedna, he would give her father fish in return. Sedna’s father agreed. The hunter was really a birdman who took Sedna to a big nest on a cliff where she had nothing else but rotten fish to eat. Sedna cried for her father to take her back, so he came to rescue her, but the birdman caused a terrible storm which nearly sunk their kayak. In desperation, Sedna’s father threw her into the raging sea. Sedna tried to hold on to the boat, but he chopped off her fingers, which became marine animals. Sedna descended into the depths of the ocean and became the mighty queen of the underworld.
There are several variants of the myth. In some of them Sedna is an innocent victim, in others she is portrayed as a hungry and greedy creature. But all tales agree that she became the goddess of the icy waters. When Sedna is happy, she releases her mammals and allows the humans to eat from the bounty of the sea. If she is not respected, she sends storms and starvation. Then a shaman must visit her in the deep waters and calm her down again.
Astrologer Karen Hamaker-Zondag has noted that Sedna wants to be known. She gives us subtle warnings. If we don’t pay attention to her, we may have to deal with her strength.
In the New Moon chart, Ceres (the goddess of grain) and Pluto (the god of underworld) are retrograding together in the early degrees of Capricorn, one of the four cardinal signs, and squaring the Aries Point. The first degrees of any of the cardinal signs are related to the Aries Point, the point where affairs of the world become personal. Chiron (cave) which has just recently entered Pisces, is in conjunction with Neptune (water).
In the light of the chart aspects, the news release on the day of the New Moon, concerning the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, made sense to me. The local newspaper on Spitsbergen, Svalbardposten, reported that the temperature in the secure seedbank is too high, and that there is water in the surrounding tunnels.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a backup storage for seeds from gene banks around the world. It is an effort to protect the globe’s rapidly diminishing biodiversity. The seed vault is located on Spitsbergen in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago. The vault is an underground cavern surrounded by arctic permafrost. The permafrost will help maintain the low temperature of the seeds even in the worst-case scenario of global warming, or if mechanical refrigeration should fail. Seeds from most major food crops could preserve for hundreds of years. The seeds of important grains could survive far longer, possibly thousands of years.
There has been significant public interest in the seed vault project. The laying of the first stone took place on June 19, 2006. This was an Aries Point event, having its orientation in the future, symbolized by the North node of the Moon in the first degree of Aries. The Sun was in exact conjunction with asteroid 55555 DNA (genes) to the degree. The Sun-DNA conjunction was opposing Pluto, and the opposition was aligned with the Galactic Core, emphasizing the large scale of the project.
The opening of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault was held on Feb. 26, 2008 with Centaur Bienor at the Aries Point. In the Lunations solar eclipse article only few weeks earlier Eric Francis had phrased it like this: “Bienor may be associated with the strength of mankind expressed through technology, and when we combine it with the Aries Point, it affects ‘everyman’.” Pluto had recently ingressed Capricorn for the first time squaring the Aries Point. Sedna (cold) was in conjunction with Ceres (grain) in the same degree of Taurus (seeding). The Ceres-Sedna conjunction was in opposition to asteroid DNA (genes).
“Biological diversity is under threat from the forces of nature … and from the actions of man,” Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said at the opening ceremony of the seed vault. Today the biodiversity of the sea is in jeopardy in the Gulf of Mexico because of the actions of man. This is a wake-up moment for us. We have to start noticing Sedna.
References:
Wikipedia, Deepwater Horizon oil spill
Sedna, Karen Hamaker-Zondag, Astro Logos Ltd