Asteroid Sirene: A Demo Through Sinéad O’Connor’s Chart~

Recently I’ve been working with asteroid Sirene, which was discovered on October 31st, 1927, and named after the dangerous enchantresses of Homer’s Odyssey. If you’ve been following my work, you’ll know I’ve been working with symbolic and archetypal aspects of the Odyssey for a couple of weeks, and particularly the Sirens.

I was lit up to discover that the position of the lunar south node in yesterday’s solar eclipse chart sat at 29 ° Leo (through a particular lens), and that the Sabian symbol for that degree is about mermaids coming to land from the sea.

From a psychological perspective this speaks to things from the deep unconscious coming to consciousness and taking shape in the world. Then…I was just about blown away to discover that asteroid Sirene sat at that exact degree in the eclipse chart.
The archetypal realms continue to speak.

For my demo today, I was working with Siren and the person who came to mind using as an example without thinking too much about it was Sinéad O’Connor. Here’s what I discovered:

Sinéad has asteroid Sirene at 23 ° degrees Virgo, closely conjunct Uranus at 24 ° Virgo, and close to Pluto at 20 ° Virgo.
Among other things, asteroid Sirene is thought to be connected to voice, because the Sirens had exquisitely beautiful voices- that was both their superpower and their weapon. It’s what lured sailors onto the rocks, toward the island, toward those irresistible voices. There was something haunting about them, something ethereal, said to hold all sorts of magic.

Sinéad O’Connor certainly had a magical voice- that Celtic, Irish strength, deeply soulful. When she sang, it did sometimes feel as though she was singing from a depth most people don’t have access to. Haunting, at times.

So, there she is, with asteroid Sirene in a powerful position- sandwiched between Uranus, sudden change, and Pluto, transformation and the underworld, the deep unconscious. Reflecting on Sinéad’s Sirene in conjunction with Uranus, I can’t help but think of the night she appeared on Saturday Night Live, on October 3, 1992. During her performance, she held up a photograph of Pope John Paul II and tore it apart on live television, saying “fight the real enemy.” No one could quite believe what they’d witnessed. She was cancelled for it; things were never really the same for her afterward.

But what she was doing in that moment was going very deeply into the depths, into the unconscious, into dangerous waters, and into the shadow territory that no one wants to speak about. And she did it suddenly, without warning.

The effects were devastating for her and sent out shockwaves that affected many others too. She was exposing something real: child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, deeply locked-away information that people may have suspected but that she brought right into the centre of public awareness. A profoundly uncomfortable thing to put in front of people on such a huge platform.

I’d say that’s an expression of asteroid Sirene in conjunction with Uranus. And with Pluto, it speaks to much the same thing- her capacity to make that descent into depths that not everyone can or would want to.

I only looked at her chart for a couple of minutes; I didn’t give it much thought. It was a bit of astro free-wheeling, and I think that’s sometimes the best way to approach asteroids in the chart, when you’re not treating it as something set in stone, as any kind of fixed truth. That is the case even with the traditional planets.

There’s a lightness to it, room to explore, and to notice what that exploration triggers in us. What does it bring up? How does it land? Does it pass us by without us really feeling it, or do we really feel it?

If it’s an archetypal energy working through us- and that can shift depending on where we are in life, and on transits- then we will feel it. There’s a felt sense, an instinctual knowing, something intuitive. It doesn’t come from the head; you’re not working it out cognitively. Something else comes through. And I think the more we do this, the stronger our relationship with the liminal world becomes.

One more thing to mention about her chart is that asteroid Lucifer (the Light Bringer), also sits at 24 ° Virgo in an exact conjunction with Uranus and 1 ° orb from Sirene.

On the night in question, Jupiter conjunct her Lucifer/Uranus/Sirene stellium by transit, amplifying the energy to cataclysmic proportions.

Thinking about the Sirens from this perspective one wonders if the archetype really is the dark destructive feminine, or else the feminine who has dived to the depths and brought back uncomfortable truths.