Diving With Sedna: An Astrologer’s Journey Begins

First having read the book of myths,

and loaded the camera,

and checked the edge of the knife-blade,

I put on

the body-armor of black rubber

-Adrienne Rich, “Diving Into the Wreck”

"The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth." 

-African Proverb

In Iceland, there is a Christmas tradition called the Jolabokaflod (“Christmas book flood”). Everyone in the family exchanges books on Christmas Eve, and the evening is spent reading together. After I stumbled on this tradition in the news, my family decided to do our own version last Christmas. We each asked for a book we wanted to read, and we opened our book presents on Christmas Eve. 

I asked for Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology because it felt fun to combine Jolabokaflod with the old tradition in the English-speaking world of telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve. 

My husband got me the book, and I read aloud the story “Kushtuka” by Mathilda Zeller. It was a wonderful ghost story, creepy and violent, but I was especially tickled that there was a reference to Sedna in it. 

I knew from Alison Chester-Lambert’s lecture (YouTube) on the dwarf planets that there was a dwarf planet named for Sedna, the Inuit spirit of the sea and the underworld. Aside from that, I didn’t know much.

A quick Google search told me that Sedna is best known for her violent origin story. While Sedna and her father are at sea in a boat, her father throws her overboard and refuses to let her back in the boat. Instead, he chops off her fingers when she clings to the side of the boat, begging to be allowed back in. Her fingers become sea mammals, and she falls to the bottom of the ocean where she becomes the protector of sea mammals.

It struck me that there are many different versions of her story. Each version of the story contains the story of the assault of Sedna, but they all give a different explanation for why the violence is happening. It is as if the Inuit received a common vision, and the different versions represent different ways that people cope with the hard truth that parents can do horrible things to their children.

Curious, I started including Sedna in all my charts and looking for her influence in astrology readings. 

Showing up in charts isn’t the same as having something to say in readings, of course, especially when the astrologer has done much research on the planet, but Sedna has been coming up a lot in readings this year. Recently, I was talking about Chiron with a client, and the only way to understand her Chiron was to tell Sedna’s story. What came after was so dramatic and so healing for my client, I knew that I needed to go deeper with Sedna. 

Most astrologers begin their research by looking at celebrity charts, studying history, or reading myths. My instincts told me that the best way to start learning about Sedna was to continue doing the work I was already doing. I would just do it in a more purposeful way. I would offer a reading in which I would tell her story, describe the places that Sedna touches in the charts of my clients, and help them process their responses to it. 

I asked the members of the Narrative Astrology Lab if they would help me develop these new Sedna readings. So far, eleven people have had or scheduled these readings with me.

I’m writing this in 2024, which is a big year for Sedna the planet. She was discovered in 2023, and 2024 is the 20th anniversary of the announcement of her discovery. As luck would have it, I happened to announce to the Narrative Astrology Lab that I was ready to start working with Sedna in charts on her last day transiting the sign of Taurus. Sign changes are significant for every outer planet, but especially for Sedna. Her orbit is 11,500 years long, and it takes her way out past Pluto--halfway to the next star! She’s moving quickly right now and approaching the fastest part of her orbit, but fast is relative. She spent almost 60 years in Taurus.

Because Sedna has been in Taurus for such a long time, most of the people who have gotten Sedna readings from me have Sedna in Taurus in their natal charts. As you might expect from her story, she tends to feature prominently in the charts of people who have been rejected by their parents, but parental rejection isn’t the only similarity. 

Just like Sedna is an advocate for the sea mammals who provide food for the Inuit, I have found that people with a prominent Sedna tend to be involved in advocacy. Sometimes, this advocacy is professional, such as fighting for fair treatment of women in the workplace. Other times, the advocacy is more informal and subtle, like building communities that are safe spaces or having a presence that makes women feel safe.

So far, the people who have answered the call to meet Sedna in a reading have told me that they found the process to be illuminating. It is far too early to know what Sedna in Gemini will bring, but Gemini is the sign of the storyteller, and I suspect that Sedna’s passage through Gemini will be a time for telling healing stories.

But Sedna is polarizing.

As I’ve started to talk about the things I’ve learned from Sedna publicly, I've been getting a crash course in the lengths to which people will go to convince themselves that bad things always happen for a good reason. 

Sedna cannot hide her scars. To face Sedna is to face her story. To face her story is to face the problem of evil… and the evils we need to keep us alive. She is the child of Omelas. She is the sacrificial victim on the altar to the lies we tell to make ourselves feel safe.

But for the ocean’s prey and rejected children and the ones who can’t hide our scars, she is one of us.