http://www.karmastrology.com/NewPlanets/Sedna-meaning.shtml Sedna is beautiful young Inuit woman living with her father. She has turned down all requests for marriage, but one day a handsome well-dressed stranger arrives and she winds up marrying him. After she paddles off to his island, he reveals himself to be not a human but a fulmar, a birdman, and all his promises of a fine life are lies. Sedna is forced to live in a cold smelly nest of twigs with no food to speak of.
Her father eventually discovers her plight and paddles off to rescue her. But as father and daughter are paddling back home, the bird man and his relatives fly in to attack their kayak. In the course of the battle, Sedna falls into the ocean. As she struggles to get back in the kayak, her father, in an attempt to save himself, cuts off her fingers one by one as she tries to grasp the edge of the boat.
Sedna then falls into the frigid Arctic water and drowns. Her fingers become the fishes, the seals, the walrus, and the whales, and she sinks to the bottom of the ocean where she becomes the goddess who provides the food for the tribe. She is a strict goddess. If the tribe obeys her rules and treats the fish, seals, walrus, and whales with respect, she provides the ocean animals as food.
However, if the tribe disobeys and does not respect her rules for proper treatment of the animals she withdraws the food. The tribal shaman at that point is required to travel to the bottom of the sea to appease the goddess and find out what corrections the tribe must make to get the food back.
No, it’s not a pretty story, and we need to look at Rudhyar’s system of analysis to put this rather chilling myth in context. In his book, The Astrology of Transformation, Rudhyar says that the energies represented by every planet may be manifested and used in one of three more or less distinct fashions, which some have quickly (and loosely) described as density, journey of liberation, and enlightenment. I usually describe the three as beginners (mired in density and a majority of the population right now), intermediate (the seekers on their spiritual journey), and spiritual (which makes more sense to me than enlightenment).
For example, the energy of Mars can be manifest as quarrels and fights (beginners, density), climbing to a mountain retreat to take yoga lessons (intermediate, journey of liberation), or awakening kundalini and living peacefully (spiritual). It’s all Mars, but just at different levels. Rudhyar says we have to work through the three levels of each planet in our chart, and some days (and lifetimes!) are better than others for each planet.
Once we understand the three levels of Sedna and her place in the Great Year cycle, she makes sense as a planetary energy in the natal chart. The beginners level for Sedna, or for those buried in density, is victimization. Indeed, many in the pagan tradition call Sedna the goddess of the victim. At this unevolved level, a person can either be a victim or a victimizer. Check with your local social worker for appropriate horror stories. If my astrological clientele is any indication, the victimization is often for no good or apparent reason. The individual just gets dumped on. As the old saying goes, **** happens.
At the intermediate level, the energy represented by Sedna both follows Rudhyar’s schema but also departs from it. Rudhyar says that after a period of time or lifetimes, the individual gets fed up with the garbage of the beginners level, and makes a decisions to do whatever is necessary to break free of the recurring garbage. This in turn results in the individual beginning what is a great journey of liberation. Rudhyar doesn’t actually describe the journey, but anyone acquainted with Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey, knows the plot line. It is the greatest adventure of them all, the journey out of density to the light. (Ninth house people love this stuff. Check in with one of them for details.)
Yes, at the intermediate level, the energy represented by Sedna does involve letting go the density of victimization and taking a journey to the light. But, where Rudhyar correctly observes in the inner and outer planets that the decision to set off on the journey is free choice, in the case of Sedna, no free choice exists. Now pause for a moment and let this one sink in. Sedna is in a new category of planet, and the rules are a little different. There is no free choice. Let’s look at the myth. Sedna had no choice but to die. She was betrayed and killed by her father. But she became an immortal, the goddess of the ocean.
At the intermediate level, Sedna represents the energy which forces us, whether we wish it or not, to let go of our mortality and accept our immortality. Please understand this does not mean anyone is going to die. This is an emotional and psychic reference point. It is a state of consciousness. Are we merely a mortal who will die and disappear after a few years? Or are we an immortal soul, who just happens to be having a temporary adventure in the material plane? Sedna at the intermediate level represents that life experience which forces us to answer no to the first question and yes to the second question.
Here’s the curious part. While we seem to have little or no choice over being put in a situation which requires us to produce the correct answer to the two questions above, we can decide to make the situation an easier one rather than a tougher one. My early observation with clients over the last year leads me to this preliminary conclusion. Trines and sextiles (and no oppositions and squares) to Sedna predispose one to the easier circumstances. Conversely those with oppositions and squares (and no trines and sextiles) are inclined to do it the hard way. A mix of hard and soft aspects could go either way.
Note that predispositions are just that. They are not certainties. This is where we as astrologers can really help our clients by pointing out to them that they are facing a couple of tough questions in their current life, and the client might wish to put some thought into the questions before life circumstances (like heavy duty transits!) force them to think about it in an unpleasant situation.
It’s at the spiritual, or top level that Sedna (and any other planet for that matter) becomes quite wonderful. Rudhyar says it is our goal to get every planet in our chart working at the spiritual level. If that sounds like a big job, well we do have as many incarnations as we need to complete it.
It is common for manifestation of the spiritual level of a planet to bear little resemblance to the earlier, lower levels, and Sedna is no different. Again we need to look at Sedna’s myth. At the end of the myth, Sedna is the immortal, the goddess who feeds the tribe. Given her brutal treatment, one could easily understand her going off and letting the tribe go rot. But not so. She sticks around and provides for the tribe. Nonetheless, there is a catch. The tribe had better treat the animals of the ocean well, and not mess around or she will withdraw the food. In other words, she is the provider and caretaker, but she is a very no-nonsense caretaker. The key here is her no-nonsense attitude. The energy of Sedna manifesting at the spiritual level represents the no–nonsense caretaker of humanity. Compassion with a hard edge, if you will, but a hard edge for good reason.
Now let’s put all the pieces together. We stand at the end of a 25,770-year cycle of evolution of humanity, and if today’s newspaper is any indication, things are a mess. But we simultaneously stand at the edge of a new 25,770-year cycle of human evolution where maybe, just maybe, we could get it right. Enter Sedna, whose message is: get it right in the way you treat this planet or pay the consequences.
So how does the individual do that? Easy. We just look at the house position of Sedna in the natal chart. Houses are easy to understand. They are simply areas of human activity. Which house is Sedna in? That is the area of human activity where the individual must deal with the Sedna energy. Aspects from the lower planets (yes the inner and outer planets are lower planets to Sedna) will mediate, mitigate, and in some cases mess up Sedna, but look at the house. It’s the house that counts.
For instance, Sedna in the 7th house is crystal clear to me now. I’ve seen several individuals with retrograde Sedna in the 7th house, squares and oppositions to Sedna, and no trines or sextiles. In each case, victimization in relationships prior to first Saturn return was a major life issue to overcome. The situation tormented them until they let go their attachment to the dysfunction, their victim identity, and found their immortal identity, their soul, within. By the time they arrived to see me for their reading, all they needed was to be informed of their destiny to be the no–nonsense caretaker of humanity in one-on-one settings. At that point, a light lit up inside them.
By contrast, those with a direct Sedna in the 7th house and just trines and sextiles, had no history of abuse and victimization, and would not countenance any such behaviour by others in their life. Period. Full stop. End discussion. But they still needed to hear about their role as caretaker of humanity, and yes the light lit up inside.
We’re still in early days with Sedna, and there is much to learn. For instance, I’m seeing both the 6th and 10th houses similarly so far. The difference between being victimized in a job (6th house) or a career (10th house) has not been singularly evident. Usually a job or career change is required to get to the intermediate stage of the Sedna energy, often forced if hard aspects are presents without the soft aspects to mitigate. The soft aspects tend to make the career change much, much easier.
So the rule of thumb is the affairs of the house in which natal Sedna is located are where a person either suffers victimization, or simply does not allow victimization if that lesson has been learned in this or a previous life. It is also the area of life where experience will force a person to let go their attachment to mortality. But the gift to the world is that once this process of growth is complete, the house placement of Sedna is where the person can assist the planet and humanity in a time of great change by doing their bit to be the caretaker of humanity.