Sedna

Dwarf Planet Sedna moves slowly.  Pluto takes 248 years to move around the entire Human Design chart. Sedna takes a massive 12,000 years.  That’s an average of nearly 200 years in each gate (although she spends much more time in some than others).

Sedna is the Inuit Goddess who rules over the bounty of the sea.  She seeks balance between humanity and the ocean, particularly it’s creatures.  Regardless of our situation (environmental or otherwise) we must avoid seeing ourselves as a victim, keep our hearts open, play our drums and sing to life.

In our design she represents a profound experience of stepping beyond culturally approved roles, surrendering to a form of annihilation of self, and a reformation in divine form.   Once we’ve been through a Sedna activation we’re never the same person again.  She is clearly an indicator for the exiled feminine who refuses to conform.  And for those times when only a shamanic experience can lead to a personal resurrection.

Sedna is transiting in Gate 8 from 1 May 2015 till 28 April 2024.

Sedna’s Discovery

The discovery position of a planet tells us a lot about it’s meaning. Dwarf planet Sedna was discovered by Mike Brown and his team on 14th November 2003, at which time she was in Gate 2.6 – The Receptive.

Gate 2 is in the G Centre and brings us a receptiveness to the creative power of the feminine, opening to our soul journey by living in unconditional love, and the mutual dance of the creative energies of feminine and masculine.  On her discovery she was conjunct the asteroid Ophelia, which I find fascinating.  Ophelia tends to represent the place in our design where we feel invisible; unseen because our needs are not as important as the general busy-ness of running a country, or a family.  Ophelia is seen for her role – she is daughter, sister and royal love interest – rather than for her true self. There is a creative secret hidden in Ophelia’s true existence, but that secret treasure is obscured by her role.  Another startling parallel between the two stories is that both Sedna and Ophelia were manipulated by their fathers in their choice of marriage partner.

Here’s a description of the line Sedna was in when she was discovered.

The power of earth lies in being constantly open to all possibilities. At the extreme, this becomes sheer inertia, resisting the creative impulse that would give a new and specific shape to things. Such change is at once necessary and unthinkable.

And so earth’s dragon battles with heaven’s dragon, and the energy of both heaven and earth drains away through their wounds. This battle can be played out between people, or as an individual’s inner struggle.

Hilary Barrett ~ I Ching

This echoes the idea that we have something ‘heavenly’ and creative to bring to the world, but that we resist bringing it into form out of fear of the change it will bring. The battle drains away our energy.  Instead we can make clear choices and hold to them, regardless of whether they fit the prevailing circumstances.

There is a magic to Sedna, as her orbit approximates a half cycle of the precession of equinoxes, a huge cosmic cycle that is intimately connected to the Mayan Calendar’s 2012 predictions.

Sedna in your Design

Sedna has been in the Gate of Splitting Apart (23), in the Throat Chakra, since June 2004 and will stay there until June 2014. Considering she wasn’t discovered until November 2003, most of our conscious experience of Sedna has come to us through the filter of this gate.

The underlying message in the Gate of Splitting Apart, the gate that Sedna is in now, is the rising up of yin energy to break down the rigid yang energy at the top. In the traditional interpretation of the I Ching this is generally seen as a evil influence. However I believe that in this situation we are looking at an evolutionary journey of the feminine, via Sedna, to break down an aspect of the masculine that is no longer working. A step in the evolutionary journey for the feminine to step out from behind the father and the husband and grow into her own power.

The last time Sedna was this close to earth, we had the end of the last Ice Age. Again, Sedna may be unlocking the emotional energy of the planet by melting ice (water = emotions), and our feminine aspect is the portal for that process.

Sedna’s Mythology

Sedna, as the Inuit people’s Goddess of the Sea, is particularly interested in things oceanic, including global warming, sea temperatures, ozone levels, melting ice and glaciers, rising sea levels, fish stocks and the general health and wellbeing of sea based cultures.  She is also profoundly interested in the relationship between people and the way those relationships impacts on our interactions with the planet.

Sedna is generally seen as a protector of the environment.  Al Gore has a very strong Sedna influence in his design.

Astrologer Barbara Schermer describes it like this:  We have become a danger to our own natural world and must act swiftly to insure salvation of all living beings. (You can download a pdf of her article on Sedna here.)  It seems to me that there is a need to stop breaking things into two, to let go of the dualism with which we view the world.  This is part of Sedna’s story – that we are all in this together and that we need each other.

Do you know the Sedna story?

A beautiful, perhaps vain, daughter reaches marriagable age, but refuses all suitors until a handsome and spellbinding stranger wins her heart and hand. Only as they journey to his distant land does he reveal that he is the spirit-being Raven Man. He proves to be a poor husband, barely providing her sustenance and treating her as another of her shiny possessions.

Barbara Shermer

“A beautiful, perhaps vain, daughter reaches marriagable age, but refuses all suitors until a handsome and spellbinding stranger wins her heart and hand. Only as they journey to his distant land does he reveal that he is the spirit-being Raven Man. He proves to be a poor husband, barely providing her sustenance and treating her as another of her shiny possessions.

Reviving the Goddess

It’s not uncommon to find amongst women a feeling of being put to the use of the patriarchy by fulfilling the roles of wife and mother.  Even when we are happy in our ‘roles’, and have chosen them consciously, there is a sense of lost opportunity.  Was Sedna vain? Was she so self-concerned that she was unable to do what was best for her family and community?

Whatever the answer is to that question, Sedna was thrown overboard and her severed fingers became the dolphins and whales. She evolved into the Goddess who ensured that the Inuits were fed, clothed and housed from the depths of her ocean.

One key to this process is that Sedna’s mother died when she was young.  She had no mature female role model.  Compare this to Ophelia, who also was subject almost entirely to her father and brother when it came to who she could love and marry.   Another key is the need for a dissolution, a splitting apart, a refusal to take part in maintaining the order, the laws, the structure of our life and choosing instead to be thrown overboard to drop deeper into our own ocean.  I believe Sedna plays a part in returning a feminine aspect of divinity.  This has nothing to do with the kind of short term actions and decisions that our modern world is based on.  There is a longer and deeper need here for harmony within our own nature and with the natural and spiritual world. We feel pressured, harassed, bullied, unseen and unimportant when that harmony is lacking.

Sedna shows the place in the design where we need to allow ourselves to be cut loose from our traditional roles, where we need to drop deeper into our own frozen ocean, where we need to become the natural inhabitant of our own place.  Where we can make our own decisions, trusting in what feels right for us.

Sedna also shows where we may have become overwhelmed and/or frozen inside from the lack of protection from our mother against the abuses of our father.  This operates on a very subtle level, in the places where our soul has not been respected.  It is likely a reflection of the experiences our own parents had as children, since we tend to pass this unconscious material on, even while trying to be as loving and respectful as we can to others. Extrapolating this out, it can also represent where we have become inculcated in the destructive and harshly competitive ways of our modern western world, without the balancing influence of nurturing and grace.

Sedna’s process ensures our divinity, because when we arise from her frozen wastelands, we have incarnated – men and women – as a Goddess with the capacity to authentically nurture ourselves and others.

What is Sedna telling us?

Here are some issues that Sedna may trigger:

• the return of a sacred earth based goddess consciousness
• conflict between the protective father and the potential of the feminine to mature into it’s creative power
• choosing to resist cultural roles and norms
• allowing a deep dissolution and transformation that may trigger a fear of death
• letting go of frozen aspects of self, especially in our emotions
• having a naive view of life and not wanting to grow up
• feeling trapped or enclosed and having to do the work to become self reliant and get free
• fear of aging
• fear of committing to relationships or even to being here on earth
• fear of hurt and rejection of true self
• a vanity and self concern that cuts us off from others in our family or tribe
• attempts to use others for our own purposes
• disrespect towards natural limitations of the earth’s resources into account

Sedna and Shopping

And then, just to shift the viewpoint slightly, lets go back to our vain young Sedna and remember that it is women who do most of the purchasing in families. Shopping therapy and updating the furnishings are perhaps akin to planetary suicide.  Abundance is one thing, an addiction to consumption something else entirely.  When you consume, make sure you do it with a connection to your heart and soul because then you add rather than subtract from our wealth.

A Symbol of Sedna – Whale Rider

The movie Whale Rider was released in 2003, the same year that Sedna was discovered. It tells the story of a young girl who becomes a leader against the traditional belief that only males can take that role. The core of her leadership is her spiritual connection with the whales. Here’s a mini version of the movie, it’s so beautiful and perfectly expresses my take on Sedna. There is that moment at 1:22 when the grandfather tells the young woman – you don’t mess around with sacred things, which seems to be a bit of a projection! And sums up the end point of patriarchal consciousness, that the whole expression of the sacred needs to shift back to include both the masculine and and the feminine.