Dwarf planet Salacia in your Human Design

In September 2004 a new dwarf planet was discovered and named for the goddess of salt water, mineral springs and hot baths – Salacia.

Salacia’s main claim to fame is as the unwilling bride of the amorous Neptune. She was eventually persuaded to marry by the king’s messenger Dolphinus. The story doesn’t go on to say whether she was happy or not after the wedding, but the whole point of Salacia in our Design is in the making of important life-changing decisions and where they may lead us.

Salacia is said to represent the calm and sunlit aspects of the ocean, the healing powers of a mineral spring bath, the antidote to sickly sweet dreams that keep us from the joy of a truly lived life. Her Greek counterpart is Amphitrite, which is also the name of a herb used to treat diabetes and over-use of sugar.

In your Human Design, Salacia represents an opportunity over which we lose our head, not sure whether it’s wonderful or terrible. We can get carried away by the superficial trappings of beauty, status, riches, seduced into believing these are what will make us happy.

Salacia’s Discovery

You can view Salacia’s HD discovery chart here: https://taraka.io/transit_charts/54892

We can tell a lot about a planet’s meaning by looking at it’s discovery chart. Salacia is in the Gate of Fulfillment – After Completion (Gate 63).

Gate 63 is all about what happens right at the end of things, the moment of fulfillment, when everything seems perfect. The problem lies in the seeming perfection. If anything changes it is ruined. And so we can get caught up trying to keep things just as they are.

What we learn here is that endings are always new beginnings, and the very idea of completion is an illusion. It’s an illusion that Salacia has come to warn us about.

Think of the effort many women pour into their weddings.  Visions of perfection – the dress, the flowers, the cake …   the groom!  And yet, the wedding is simply the beginning of the real effort, the lifelong  journey of relationship with another person. Birth provides a similar experience. I remember when I had some issues in my pregnancy, my sister advised me to chill out. This was just the first stage, she told me.   I had decades of motherhood ahead of me. The birth was simply one important stage in a long journey.

In these transitional moments we must choose wisely and well.  Is this the person we truly want to spend our lives with (rather than just the person we’d like to marry?). Are we really ready to welcome a child into our lives?

The Salacia discovery chart is full of wisdom about how to work with the visions and ambition we hold for new beginnings. We can’t take the old version of ourselves into a new cycle and expect a different outcome. Every transition demands we face our demons, and release old illusions.

Human evolution is all about self-transcendence. It’s not that we need to become a better person, but that we need to stop trying to protect the stable sense of self we cling to through all the changes, and leap into the flow. Salacia is a representation in your Design of where you have the capacity for meta-evolution.

These watershed moments require our careful consideration, our calm and centred attention. When they arrive, we need to listen carefully to any anxieties they provoke, because it’s our anxieties that are pointing out the options before us and how they might play out in our future lives. And those future lives don’t necessarily look much like the old lives they are replacing. Choose well and we can become, like Salacia, the Goddess of our own calm and sunlight waters. Ignore our inner guidance and, as Gate 63 line 3 tells us, we may be repenting in leisure, constantly trying to deal with the negative effects of a definitive choice made unwisely.

Salacia’s Mythology

According to Wikipedia, Salacia was unwilling to marry Neptune for two reasons. She was ‘in awe’ of him, and she wanted to preserve her virginity.

As one of a score of sea nymphs, marriage to King Neptune was an opportunity for Salacia to step up, to become a Queen. Neptune rules illusion and delusion. But when we come right down to it, even the most omnipotent and romantic hero/king becomes human when we have to live with them day after day. And yet, that is the only way we can achieve happiness, by living fully in each day, loving the imperfect humans we share our lives with.

Can we trust this wonderful new opportunity? Neptune’s position on the day Salacia was discovered, in Gate 19.6 suggests we can.

This is a generous and genuine approach.  It honours Salacia and has no ulterior motives.  To draw near in this way might mean letting go of our own desires for a particular outcome right now, and understanding that the ongoing process of growth is more important that anything you get along the way.  

(adapted from Hilary Barrett’s I Ching)

Neptune does demand that we go through a process of dissolution of the ego self, a return to the briny deep, in order to find something bigger within us. He shows us how we can be better than we ever imagined.  

It seems that Salacia might be a way for us to connect with amorphous Neptune, to make his influence in our lives more real, more human. Salacia is the sovereign daughter/bride connecting with the wise protective father/husband. This profoundly alchemical moment is represented by Neptune’s appointed intermediary Dolphinus. The wonderful symbolist Avia Venifica says dolphins represent the wellbeing of the pure of heart (Gate 25), the integration of solar (masculine) and lunar (feminine) energies, and the gracious transcendent ruler.

Virginity used to mean something more significant. It was about having sovereignty over our own lives, the power to make our own choices – sexual or otherwise. In mythology, Virgins dedicated themselves to a higher purpose. Such a dedication requires us to let go of who we thought we were going to be, and discover something more. When each person is safe to make clear choices at the soul level, the relationship will always be powerfully transformative, pure of heart and experienced as embodied bliss.

Salacia tells us that when we choose wisely we open ourselves to a spiritual initiation that aligns with a deepening and widening of the soul. There is a purity and healing energy to Salacia that brings long term  joy into our lives. Her challenge is to listen to the quiet voice that seeks to lead us along the right pathway, to make the right choice for our soul.