Mars-Sedna: A Grip on Our Grasp

Ugolin et ses enfants by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (detail) 

(photo credit: Vassil, August 2010)

As of late on May 14th (UT/+0 time), Mars will enter the degree 18 Taurus. By itself, 18 Taurus is a degree known for experiences of conflict internal as well as external. So when we add in the assertive energetic which is Mars, we have good cause to wonder what might happen.

On that same day, dwarf planet Sedna will be positioned at 23 Taurus, a degree which some think of as spiritual and some think of more simply as ‘fated.’ There is a note of insecurity which comes with 23 Taurus, and that’s sure to be set off as Sedna does it’s long, slow traverse over 23 Taurus, a process which this year began on April 2nd.

I say ‘this year’ because with an orbit over 11,000 years in length, Sedna moves so very slowly that it takes plural years to finish transiting any degree.

Yet, Sedna is part of our solar system. So it is very much part of our life. And Sedna’s no teeny tiny object to be ignored astrologically. (As if anything is?) We all pay so much attention to Pluto – and yet Pluto isn’t a full scale planet. At less than 20% of Earth’s size, Pluto is a dwarf planet.

And so is Sedna.

The first time I sat down to do an analysis of Sedna in psycho-metaphysical terms, it came out that Sedna is something akin to our superego – that thing inside each one of us which, in having internalized standards, rules and lessons allows us…and sometimes forces us to do what we don’t really want to do in our more or less immature moments when the “I” (ego) of the situation seems all-important, even if sticking with that could be problematic.

The imagery of the Sedna story is really wonderful. If you’ve never read the myth behind the point you well may want to. Or you can read a shortish astro-version of it here:

- link to -

The Sedna Conflict

In everyday life, Sedna seems to be that need to understand that the images, the dreams, the motivations which propel us towards wanting to grow up and have our own way don’t always work exactly as we envision.

Life is reality, in other words. It’s not paradise. It’s not a dream. Life has glitches. Life comes with fingerprints on the glass, bad hair days and forgetting that really important thing at home.

Wanting to do better is one thing. Expecting life to be amazingly perfect is another.

Perfection is the dream. It’s the motivation. It’s not the reality. And in astrology, Sedna is the object which forces us to relegate dreams to the folder labeled ‘inspiration’ while dealing with life for real.

Does that sound Neptunian? Well, at some level everything which orbits out there beyond Neptune (earning all such objects the astronomical name ‘Trans-Neptunian Object’ or TNO)…they’re all a bit Neptunian. Why? Because Neptune is the last full-fledeged planet out there. And maybe also because Neptune has a highly curious quality known as magnetic resonance which literally controls a huge swath of space beyond Neptune’s orbit (which includes Pluto, by the by). And thus all the ripples of movement-generated energies produced by Sedna and everything else ‘out there’ comes to us by passing through this Neptunian ring of vibrational magnetism.

The distance between the dream and the reality so often is disappointment. But we experience that disappointment because we have chosen to try to retain that ‘image’ of what we want life to be instead of creating the life which would give us that image or that dream.

That’s a big giant part of the Sedna lesson. And let’s just wax a little bit metaphysical here and note that Sedna was discovered in 2003. Since 2003 all sorts of things have happened which tempt us to think life can be that ‘image’ or that utopia we have in our heads. All sorts of tools have been provided to us which tempt us to see their ‘world’ as our reality when in reality, only REALITY is a reality!

(A couple of months from now you’re going to find out just how much these ideas mean to me. But for the meantime…)

As of May 14th, the zodiacal distance from Mars’ position to Sedna’s position is 5 degrees: the outermost reach of a standard, old-time conjunction. So from May 14th until May 27th (when Mars exits the 5-degree conjunction heading away from Sedna), we are going to have Mars-like energies exciting and exacerbating the Sedna tendency to try to hold on.

As photographed by the Chandra X-ray Observatory, PSR B1509-58 (a relatively small object of only about 12 miles in diameter) produces x-ray nebula which looks like a ghostly hand reaching out through space.

(photo credit: Chandra X-ray observatory, NASA-CXC-P. Stane et al, April 2009)

Or is that our trying to get a grip?

Or is that us needing to get a grasp on something?

It could be one, it could be all. And that’s the thing to remember for the next almost-two-weeks or so. This conjunction is going to be exact on May 21s – which first and foremost means that the tussle, the intensity of knowing that something needs doing or changing or getting hold of or letting go of….all that is going to intensify between now and then. Considering that this is in the prime zone for the surfacing of solar eclipse effects, that says a bushel-and-a-half. (At least!)

That Mars comes into this time at 18 Taurus gives us one set of notes on internal conflict which are shaped mostly around what we want…and Sedna gives us a separate set of notes about what we want things to be, or how we want them to work.

Mars is an inner and personal planet. (By ‘inner’ we mean it orbits inside the asteroid belt which cycles between Mars and Jupiter.) So Mars is always about what we want to do. It’s very much an ‘our’ energetic which most of the time is individual and personal, but which also can function as ‘my group,’ however you define that.

Sedna, on the other hand, is an operand we might want to control but which we definitely don’t – and never will control. Sedna is more about ‘how life works’ in the greater perspective and in particular, how the ‘times’ (or possibly the culture) ‘in which we live’ operate in particular - which we have to work with.

Many of us are wrestling with realizations about life and with how we're living our life which are symbolized by the Taurus Solar Eclipse. As part of that, this Mars-Sedna connection is about holding out for something, or working to earn our own security or worth, totally apart from what we've grown to believe in. 

All lives have problems. That’s because real life is lived in a regular reality where oatmeal has lumps, where toes get stubbed and where even the most glamorous of celebrities have been known to get the flu like the rest of us. Such realities are going to come upon us in coming days in forms which prompt a growing awareness, a dispassionate, almost cool factual starkness which for some of us is utterly new.

And for some, utterly unwelcome.

A couple of days from now - on Thursday, May 16th, asteroid Pallas conjuncts Sedna, setting off a round of realism. This is helpful if you can keep your perspective on situations...and not very helpful if you feel emotionally under the gun.

Furthermore, as this is going to happen as Orcus (another Neptune-controlled TNO) is on station, the likelihood is that what happens now is in some way a 'consequence' (or result) of something which has happened prior to now. AND that you may well be experiencing...or have the opportunity to change some sort of 'twisted fate.' 

This could be good. It could be tough. It merely could mean you need to get something done. Whatever happens, what you do and how you do it counts. It's of value to you at some level, though what that means is unique to you.

The actual Mars-Sedna conjunction happens on May 21st, as mentioned before. And that event is just a day after the Sun enters Gemini in tandem with Jupiter squaring Uranus.

So much energy. So few clues. So many possibilities! I hope you're doing something wonderful, useful, constructive and wholly 'you' with your time!

One other thing...as Mars conjuncts Sedna, dispassionate, intellectual-thinker Pallas conjuncts Algol. Does this mean you'll see through someone else's guise? Does this mean you'll see some pattern in your own life which in seeing allows you to make some sort of 'personal breakthrough'?

That's one way to look at it. Then again, this could be an ugly sort of moment when exactly what you didn't want to hear is what you do hear.

Whatever happens, don't leap off any verbal cliffs or do anything flagrantly regrettable. Algol has a funny sort of habit of manifesting as overblown reactions and emotional eruptions when it can be used to fuel needed acts of personal bravery.

Particularly because this Mars-Sedna process is happening along the dotted line of days leading from the Taurus Solar Eclipse to the Sagittarius Lunar Eclipse on May 25th, we can expect this to be an intense and probably trying time. Much which has felt lovely and stable is - or has already given way, leaving us in less defined waters. And why it is giving way is because we can do this. We can move ahead. We can let go of those expectations – whether they’re ours, or expectations someone or some group or culture has projected onto us.

We are human. Let us quail.
Let us feel our insecurities,
and in spite of that, prevail.
May we deal with our realities,
May we recognize our dualities,
And allow ourselves to rail
To think we will never fail
is assuming facts which have
never been in evidence
And which make neither rhyme
nor reasonable or sense
In a world
So very human.



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