With new equipment, astronomers found a planet on 14th November 03, which is very far away from the sun but still part of the solar system. It was named Sedna, Inuit goddess of the sea, perhaps due to its being so very far away and therefore intensely cold. On the internet, I found a version of the myth of Sedna, and this is a précis of that version:

Sedna: legend of the Inuit sea goddess

Sedna, a beautiful young woman, lives with her father in a land of ice and snow, and refuses to marry the young men who ask her. Eventually, because they are so poor and hungry, her father offers her to a passing hunter to take care of her, and she marries him.

Her new husband takes her to a far mountain where she discovers that he is actually a big black raven and she must live in his nest while he brings her raw fish to eat. She cries bitterly for her father, and he hears her and comes in his fishing boat to take her away.

The raven sees them getting away across the sea and attacks them viciously. The father fails to beat him off and eventually throws Sedna into the ice-cold sea for his own safety. She grabs hold of the boat with freezing fingers. Her father hits her fingers with his oar until they break off and fall into the sea - to become seals. She grabs the boat with her freezing hands and, when he breaks them, they fall into the sea to become whales.

Sedna falls back and sinks into the sea with her seals and whales. Her anger against men creates the storms at sea, and fishermen still give her tokens to appease her, so that she will allow them a good catch of food.

Sedna: discovery of the planet

It has become possible to detect this planet's movement using newly powerful equipment near San Diego, California that registers changes at an even greater distance than before. Photographs are taken at intervals of time and, at the third showing a change, the equipment registers the change as movement. Three photographs taken on 14th November 2003, of a sector of the sky known as Taurus by Western astrologers, showed a moving object about three times further away from the sun than Pluto or Neptune, but still part of our solar system. They were taken at Universal Time (or GMT to Britons!) 6:32am UT, 8:03am UT and 9:38am UT.

Now the astronomers know where to look, they have been able to calculate this planet's orbit using past photographic information. Sedna's orbit is extremely elliptical and it takes about 10,500 years to circle the sun. That means it won't be moving far through the Zodiac in our lifetime, by my calculation an average of 30 years to move one degree! However, because of the elliptical orbit that speed varies a lot from Earth's perspective, and at present it is in the section of orbit closest to us, so moving much faster than its average. Even so, it has been moving through Taurus since 1967 and is still only 18 Taurus.

Sedna . . . what does it all mean!

This is the chart for the time of the third photograph but without relating the time to any place on the earth, so there are no Houses. Our interpretation depends on the planetary Zodiac positions and their relationships with each other.

One perspective is that these charts are about the power of the feminine and its problem with the male authority in the family, Saturn in Cancer here trines Mars (favouring the masculine principle in the family, although also conferring responsibility) and quincunxes Venus (tending to undermine the feminine principle). To the squared Venus/Pluto in Sagittarius, Saturn trine Mars in Pisces could seem like a 'right of succession of the male line' as though spiritually ordained. But the Venus/Pluto conjunction is an applying aspect, showing us that feminine power is increasing at this present time. Whereas the Moon is separating from its conjunction with Saturn, which suggests that the authority of the parent over the child is lessening.

Sagittarius (containing Venus) and Pisces (containing Mars) are both unlimited qualities. Sagittarius grows through open enquiry and interest – the greatest view possible always drawing one on. With Venus expressing relationship, it is through each other that we learn - relationship is the path to understanding, transforming our understanding. Its ruler, Jupiter, squares Venus/Pluto, expressing the tendency in this 'war of the sexes' to swing the pendulum too far each time a new understanding registers, in the effort to balance up. Pisces is unlimited by virtue of our emotional connectedness, which leads us (if we accept the spiritual aspect of the feminine - Venus here sextiling Aquarian Neptune) to the oneness, the love that is life.

(For more on Sedna, see: Sedna - Part 2)