posted November 20, 2011 08:50 AM            

I am gonna research Sedna, today.

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posted November 21, 2011 12:48 PM            

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posted November 21, 2011 12:50 PM            

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posted November 21, 2011 12:54 PM            

SEDNA MYTHOLOGY

An Inuit story

of betrayal and death

The goddess Sedna

Sedna is a beautiful young Inuit woman who drowns following betrayal by her husband and father, thereupon sinking to the bottom of the sea to become the immortal ocean goddess who governs the fish, seals, walrus, and whales upon which the Inuit depend for food.

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Several versions of the Sedna myth exist amongst the Inuit, who live in northern Canada and Greenland, but the basic plot line above is more or less consistent through the variations. An elaboration of some of those variations follows.

Most versions of the myth describe a beautiful young Inuit woman, Sedna, living with her widower father, although one version does mention her mother being alive. She is unmarried upon reaching adulthood, often having rejected several suitable young men as husbands. Some versions say she rejected suitors from pride, others say she simply refused to follow tradition. Some versions of the myth have her taking a first husband, a dog. In one version the dog marriage is punishment by her father for refusing to marry and the marriage consummated by the dog raping Sedna, but in another version Sedna falls in love with the dog who proves to be a kind a loving husband. Some versions have no offspring from the dog marriage, but other versions have both human and canine offspring who go on to be the ancestors of Europeans and Inuit. In any event, the dog dies, is killed by the father, or drops out of the picture.

Regardless of whether the dog marriage is contained in the myth, all versions talk about the fulmar, a birdman, as the key husband of the myth. For the dog versions, the birdman is the second husband. For the non-dog versions, the birdman is Sedna’s only husband.

Most versions begin this part of the story as follows: a well dressed stranger (in Inuit terms this means lots of fur clothing) arrives promising a fine comfortable life and asks Sedna’s father for her hand in marriage. The father says yes, and Sedna, in some versions willingly and other versions unwillingly, goes with the stranger and they paddle off to his island. He promptly takes off his furs and shows himself to be not a human but a fulmar, birdman. Sedna also discovers that his promises of a fine and comfortable life are a pack of lies. All the fulmar does is provide cold raw fish in a poorly-made stinking nest of broken twigs. Most versions do not speak of any children from the birdman marriage.

Some versions have the father next arriving at the island for a routine visit, and other versions have the father hearing his daughter’s cries of anguish. In any event the father arrives and observes first hand Sedna’s difficult life, and he doesn’t like what he sees.

Two plot lines emerge at this point. One version had the father killing the birdman and taking off with Sedna in his kayak to head back to the father’s home. The birdman’s friends and relatives, discovering the birdman had been killed, fly off to attack the father in revenge. A second version has the father arriving while the birdman is out hunting fish, and the father and Sedna escape in the father’s kayak. The birdman, arriving home and discovering his wife is gone, flies out over the ocean to get her back.

Regardless of which two versions of the story are being told, a battle takes place in the ocean involving the father and either the birdman or his relatives. Sedna dies in the course of the battle in both versions.

The description of the battle is remarkably consistent in the various versions. Either the birdman or his relatives flap their wings to such an extent that a great wind is generated creating a huge storm which threatens to sink the kayak containing Sedna and her father. Fearing for his life, the father throws Sedna overboard into the cold sea in the hopes of placating the birdman or his relatives so that the father might live. Sedna tries to crawl back in the kayak to escape the cold water, but as she grabs the edge of the kayak, her father cuts off her fingers one by one so that she cannot grasp the boat, and she sinks into the frigid Artic ocean and drowns. As her severed fingers sink into the sea, one finger becomes the fish, another the seals, another the walrus, and another the whales. Sedna’s father escapes death in the battle, but later dies of grief over what had happened.

One version of the myth has the Moon spirit and the Air spirit turning Sedna in the Ocean goddess to govern the Inuit, but other versions simply say Sedna became the spirit of the ocean. In any event because Sedna’s fingers were the source of the fish, seals, walrus, and whales, she rules them from her deep ocean home where her spirit dwells. In the dog-marriage versions of the myth, the dog joins her there as her protector.
Sedna soapstone carving

She is usually pictured in Inuit soapstone carvings as being fish from the waste down and human from the waste up with long hair, but Sedna is no mermaid. As goddess of the ocean, Sedna sets strict rules about the proper way to treat the animals of the hunt which the Inuit require for sustenance. This includes proper treatment of the animals' spirit when killed for food. When she feels the rules have been broken, she cuts off the supply of food. When that happens the Inuit tribal shaman is required to take a shaman’s journey to the bottom of the ocean to speak to the goddess. It is considered the most dangerous journey an Inuit shaman is called upon to make.

Upon arrival at the bottom of the sea the shaman is required to comb Sedna’s hair, because Sedna has no fingers to comb it herself, and to find out what the tribe has done wrong that the food has been cut off. Then the shaman has to do a deal with Sedna, promising that if the tribe corrects whatever transgressions it has made, the goddess will return the food supply to the tribe. The shaman then returns to the tribe with the list of things the goddess requires to be done to get the food back.

posted November 21, 2011 12:57 PM            

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.

If you want to learn more about Sedna, warm up your assorted ephemerides and take a look at your recent past. Between June, 2005 and January 2006, Jupiter by transit opposed the natal Sedna of everyone born in the 20th Century. The Indigo Children (born approximately in the 1990s) got three passes of Jupiter opposing their Sedna, and the rest of us got a single pass. (Click here for a free Sedna ephemerides, and click here for a free ephemerides which includes Jupiter.)

posted November 21, 2011 12:59 PM            

What would anyone think about these?

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posted November 21, 2011 11:26 PM            

Sedna is betrayal--bad, bad betrayal.her father cut her fingers off as she tried to get in to the boat. The betrayal is the worst, the deepest. It was by her father and he did it to save himself. He threw her under the bus, willfully, to save himself.

I will come back, tomorrow, and try to figure out the rest. I can relate to that kind of betrayal. I can feel how she must have felt when her father cut off her fingers to save himself and she sunk to the bottom of the ocean, because she could not hang on.

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posted November 22, 2011 11:46 AM            

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