Donna Carey, LAc, Ellen F. Franklin, PhD and MichelAngelo, MA, MFA, CTM
East Asian Medicine Journal, 2006
Returning Art & Spirit to Medicine
In previous articles in OM Journal we explored the Acutonics® Healing System and the growing field of Harmonic and Energetic Medicine. This integrated system of healing and education incorporates sound vibration with ancient Taoist teachings of the meridians, pre-meridians, and the immortal body. Through the application of precision calibrated tuning forks to specific acupuncture, acupressure and trigger points, you are able to access the meridian and chakra energy systems of the body on adeep cellular level. The tuning forks represent a natural harmonic series that is based on the orbital properties of the Earth, Moon, Sun and other planets. Their rich resonance, planetary correspondences, and vibration connects with and supports the body’s natural frequencies, bringing alignment with the cycles of nature and the cosmos known since antiquity as the Music of the Spheres.
When you work with these planetary frequencies, and deepen your understanding of the related archetypes and associated myths, you are able to fine-tune the energetic that is sent to the body. Throughout the Acutonics Certification Program, practitioners learn to work with and understand more complex archetypes and correspondences that come into play in the treatment process and reclaim the art, spirit, and mystery of medicine. Each musical combination or interval has its own unique healing properties. For example, combining the Ohm Fork—the sound of the Earth traveling through the four seasons—and the Zodiac Earth Fork—the sound of the Earth traveling through the 25,920-year zodiacal cycle—creates a 3rd. This is an excellent combination for reducing pain and scar tissue. The Mars and Venus forks combine to create a 5th, which provides an opening or gateway. This gateway sound is used to treat overloaded adrenals, balance charkas, access creativity, and achieve balance when we are pulled in too many directions. In this article, we invite you to take a journey, from the high Arctic to the far solar system, and learn about Sedna, discovered in 2003 and granted official name and status in 2004. Sedna truly represents the Water Element.
The Water Element invokes deep concerns regarding the conditions of our oceans, environmental degradation, and global climate change. My recent trips, with Donna Carey to the Arctic and Antarctica, left me with a deep, life altering understanding of the weight of water. I was not prepared for the majestic beauty of ice — icebergs, growlers, and pancake ice, the vastness of space, or our insignificance in the hands of nature, force twelve winds at sea in Drakes Passage, or the sheer majesty, indescribable beauty, and blessings you feel on sighting a blue whale in motion, the pain you experience when you read yet another report on the melting ice sheets, or experience it directly, the decimation of the whales, seals, and birds, over - fishing of our waters, and the PCB levels in the Arctic people and waters. Standing on this vast, unpopulated white continent, Terra Incognita, I touched the natural world with a different lens, and came to understand the force, power and capricious nature of the cosmos. This interconnectivity between heaven, earth, and humanity is at the heart and soul of East Asian Medicine. We are at a critical time in human evolution, and as teachers, healers, and citizens of the world we must take positive actions to help repair the damage that the human species has brought to mother Earth, and Sedna is both our herald and our harbinger.
This article and the theories that surround Sedna, are drawn from our advanced curriculum, and the forthcoming book, Sedna the Superconductor: Co-authored by Donna Carey, LAc, co-creator of the Acutonics Healing System, and co-founder of the International Institute of Harmonic Medicine and MichelAngelo co-author and co-developer of our advanced curriculum and Director of Astrological Medicine for the International Institute of Harmonic Medicine. For further information about the Acutonics System of Healing & Education, visit our website at www.acutonics.com.
Ellen Franklin, PhD
CEO, Acutonics Institute of Integrative Medicine, LLC
Co-founder International Institute of Harmonic Medicine
The Discovery of Sedna
Sedna was discovered November 13, 2003, at 10:32 pm, by a team of astronomers working at Palomar Observatory in southern California (see discovery chart and interpretation below). The announcement of the discovery was made early in the morning on November 14 (6:32 am) in Nogales, Arizona. At the time of its discovery, the new object was given the official designation, 2003 VB12, but, almost immediately, in a notable break with astronomical precedent, was given the unofficial name Sedna by the discovery team. Dr. Chad Trujillo, one of the group, had this to say about this development:
“The thinking was that we wanted to name it after a mythology from a culture that was expert in cold climates, because the surface of Sedna is so cold … we also wanted something that was pronounceable in English and something with an interesting story. Also, we wanted a creation deity, because that is the most likely rule in the IAU that this object will fall under Kuiper Belt objects, (KBO’s, must be named after creation deities)… With all those constraints, Sedna seemed a pretty natural name after doing some research on the Web and coming up with a short list of candidates … our specialty is not cultural research, it is astronomy. So, Sedna just seemed to fit as a good name.”
The provisional name Sedna was granted official acceptance by the International Astronomical Union on September 28, 2004, leaving astrologers once again in their customary position of determining what this new planet “means.” A cold planetoid, about three-fourths the size of Pluto, Sedna has caused a tremendous amount of controversy both in naming and classification.
Controversy
Sedna’s naming reflects a departure from the Greco-Roman patriarchal tradition. Sedna is an Inuit goddess of the sea who lived in the cold depths of the Arctic, the North, the primal yin. Sedna is the first observed body belonging to the Oort cloud with a highly elliptical orbit that takes about 11,487 years. Initially believed to have an exceptionally long rotational period of twenty to fifty days, newer measurements suggest a much shorter rotational period of just 10 hours, more typical for a body its size. Sedna is also one of the reddest objects in our solar system, nearly as red as Mars, an inner terrestrial planet. However, Sedna is well beyond the realm of even the outer gas giants, inhabiting the space where methane ice exists and dominates.
What does this have to do with the Practice
Of East Asian Medicine?
The Arctic peoples, Eskimos and Inuit are our ancestors, the descendants of the original keepers of East Asian Medicine. These Siberian shamans migrated across the Bering Sea, guarding spiritual mysteries. They are the taproots of knowledge, the sounders of sound, the original people. Our ancestors were aligned with the cycles of heaven and earth and lived in community and communion with nature. They believed in the cycles of the Five Elements, and held to universal ethics that we have forgotten. The shamans guarded and kept a vigil on the North Bushel, the big dipper. This ultimate expression of unity, this hologram and sacred geometry residing in space, manifests on earth as the northern direction and has correspondences in nature, the human body, and soul. Our ancient ancestors understood the weight of water for survival on all levels. Our modern Inuit ancestors understand the weight of water for survival on all levels. The people and animals of the Arctic, living in one of the most remote spots in the world, are among the planet’s most contaminated organisms. Inuit women have the highest levels of PCBs in their breast milk. The polar bear carries excessively high loads of industrial chemicals. Cubs are being poisoned by their mothers’ milk, which contains higher concentrations of PCBs than their mothers and billions of times more than the Arctic waters.
Since 2003, around the time of Sedna’s discovery, a growing number of scientific reports have been published including one sponsored by the PEW Charitable Trust, Recommendation for a New Ocean Policy, and Impacts of a Warming Arctic published by Cambridge University Press. These and many other reports raise awareness of the horrific conditions of our oceans, including the melting of the ice sheets, decimation of species thru pollution and global warming, costal erosion, changes in distribution and abundance of species. We have recently witnessed the increase in life shattering hurricanes, tsunam's in the east, heavy rainfall or draught, and these are only the beginning of the type of global climate change that we will experience in our lifetime as individuals and planetary healers. The reports, including a recent one on the rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet, provide a harsh wake up call of our planetary responsibility to the North.
As practitioners of East Asian Medicine, we cannot loose sight of the integrative nature of our work, it is systems theory, all parts relate to the whole, connecting us to nature, all beings, planets and the cosmos. The central goal of our medicine is cosmic attunement.
Planetary Discovery as a Mirror of the Evolution of Human Consciousness
Prior to the modern, scientific era, human beings knew of only seven planetary bodies: the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. These traditional cosmic wanderers, originally seen as divine “real estate,” over time became directly vested with the attributes of the gods. The correspondences between astrological planetary energies and the archetypes of Greco-Roman myth that we have inherited are demonstrably self-evident. The hierarchy of divine intelligences, which remained firmly in place for several millennia, was viewed as an absolute cosmic structure that reflected the primordial forces that governed human affairs.
However, in 1781, with the discovery of Uranus by the English scientist William Herschel, a long-established paradigm was rendered incomplete, and it became necessary for astrologers to incorporate an additional planetary body within their worldview. The naming and recognition of this object as “Uranus,” by the astronomical community, presented as a fait accompli, placed upon their more esoteric brethren the burden of illumination of this new archetype, one that could only be discharged through observation of the impact of Uranus upon contemporary world events.
Over time, a consensus was reached that the new planet encoded ideas relating to revolution against the established order, exemplified by both the American and French Revolutions; an increased sense of altruism that extended itself to the leveling or elimination of class distinctions, and enhanced freedom and self-expression for all members of society. Its arrival also seemed to coincide with a similar revolution and discoveries in the natural sciences, leading to the development of new technologies that partook of the electrical nature of the Titanic sky god and his thunder and lightning.
A similar process has occurred with subsequent discoveries – Neptune in 1843, Pluto in 1930, and Chiron in 1975. In each instance, the Western astrological community (for we should note that these new planets are not considered relevant by Vedic or Chinese astrology) has sought to assign significance to these emergent archetypes through a similar process. In an extension of the ancient Hermetic axiom of “as above, so below,” it has viewed each new planetary find as an outward manifestation of an inner process of spiritual evolution, shared by civilization as a whole. Similarly, 20th and 21st century astrologers, taking their cue from the theories of noted Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, have seen the workings of synchronicity in the seemingly arbitrary choice of mythical nomenclature for each additional celestial orb, and supported their interpretations with the evidence of mundane astrology.
The Discovery of Sedna
As we begin our investigation of this new planetary archetype, we should note that Sedna presents us with a number of anomalous features:
Sedna lies beyond the parameters of the solar system, and is best identified as an ‘oortoid,’ meaning that she emerges from the inner edge of the Oort Cloud, a region of deep space from which the long-haul comets that periodically appear are said to originate;
Despite the fact that, due to her location, astronomers would expect Sedna to be carbonaceous in nature (like Pluto), through the telescope, she appears a ruddy red-orange, like Mars;
The Sedna story is a mythic construct that departs from the prevailing Greco-Roman astrological paradigm;
Sedna is not divine, she is a troubled spirit; this is perhaps indicative of a movement beyond the semi-divine Chiron, a further departure from the “divinity” of the Olympian pantheon. The Inuit tribes do not worship Sedna; they fear and respect her.
Astrologically, Sedna may perhaps function more like a fixed star than a planet; this is because its orbital period is so long, her position barely shifts from one year to the next.
The Sedna note represents a new frequency in the Acutonics® Healing System, with a correspondingly unfamiliar set of intervallic relationships; the logical result of this is a RETUNING of the tonal cosmos.
Beyond Synchronicity: As Without, So Within
Beneath the seeming synchronous nature of planetary “discovery,” there is a deeper core of truth, which has to do with the psychological phenomenon of projection. It is generally conceded by psychologists that the human psyche evolves through a process of incorporating aspects of itself that it initially perceives as being “other,” in other words, beyond the center of ego awareness. This is often the case in intimate relationships, where one partner is drawn to another because of the subjective impression that this “other” somehow possesses desirable qualities that one lacks in oneself. Over time, if the relationship evolves to a state of greater consciousness, each partner recognizes that they themselves partake of those very same qualities, which they have ascribed to their intimate other. Often, these qualities have been repressed due to some negative feedback, and conscious recognition and acceptance of them would not otherwise occur, unless an individual who safely embodied those longed-for attributes were somehow to manifest themselves with their “orbit.” Until that time, such disowned aspects of the individual nature are consigned to what Jung termed the “shadow,” which can serve, as well, as a repository for a myriad of unattractive personality traits that may be readily assigned to other people.
Thus the advent of a new planet presents an opportunity for collective humanity to identify an emergent aspect of consciousness, a new archetype, which, like all such universals, may have both desirable and less-than-admirable qualities. We might even speculate that the more remote the manifestation from the epicenter of human consciousness, i.e., the Earth, the greater the likelihood that the emergent archetype is consigned to the deepest regions of the collective psyche.
What hidden qualities of the human soul are encoded in the archetypal energy of a “planet” like Sedna, immured in the blackness and cold of the interstellar void, so removed from the light and warmth of our own terrestrial abode? And to what previously disregarded and disowned aspect of our collective humanity does it refer?
The Myth of Sedna
In our process of illumination of the new Sedna archetype, let us first examine the myth. There are myriad variations that occur throughout the Arctic; the basic outlines of the story are as follows:
Sedna is generally characterized as a somewhat vain, self-centered young girl; she is an only child, motherless, who lives with her father, and spends most of her time gazing at her reflection in the mirror, combing her long locks. In her self-absorbed state, she has rejected any number of eligible suitors, and shows very little interest in marriage, in defiance of the norms for behavior of young women of her tribe.
Suddenly, a mysterious stranger appears in Sedna’s village; he is tall, dark and alluring, and manifests all the requisite signs of affluence. Sedna conceives a passion for him, and prevails upon her father to let her wed. Her father consents to the union and following the ceremony Sedna and her consort depart the village for his home in his boat.
However, once out of sight of her village, Sedna’s new husband immediately transmogrifies into a frightening, eldritch spirit, a malignant creature of the air, perhaps a giant raven. He then transports her, very much against her will, to his aerie a cold, barren island in the sky, where Sedna is isolated from all human contact, and forced to subsist on a diet that consists entirely of raw fish.
Sedna is left desolate; her new husband and his companions spend all their time hunting, and she yearns for the solace of human companionship. After a certain amount of time goes by, she prevails upon her consort to permit her father to come for a brief visit. Presumably through his magical arts, the sky creature weaves the illusion of an idyllic marital situation, but, in spite of his efforts at deception, Sedna is successful at communicating her immense unhappiness and despair, and convinces her father to take her away with him. He agrees, and under cover of darkness, they depart the island in all due haste.
Upon his discovery of Sedna’s disappearance, her spurned paramour screams his displeasure, and he and his fearful relations descend from their aerial haunts in pursuit of his wayward spouse. Sedna’s father has made considerable progress toward home by this time, but, without warning, the great Raven and his brethren swoop down upon his little vessel, stirring up a great storm with the beating of their wings.
Stricken with terror, and in spite of the entreaties of his daughter, Sedna’s father (or, in other variants of the story, his crew) promptly throws her overboard, leaving her to a ghastly fate. In her desperation, floundering in the midst of the tempest, she grasps the gunwale of her father’s boat, and steadfastly refuses to relinquish her grip.
In an ultimate, violent act of renunciation, her father severs Sedna’s fingers with his ice axe, whereupon she descends to a watery grave. However, in so doing, her amputated digits are miraculously transformed into the animals of the Arctic north – the whales, seals, dolphins, fish, and other sea creatures – and Sedna assumes the position of their Queen, a hyperborean “Mistress of the Animals.”
Now immersed in her dark, silent, aqueous demesne, Sedna is anything but content with her new state. From time to time, her uncoifed, lengthy tresses become irretrievably tangled due to the ebb and flow of oceanic currents; her subsequent displeasure at being unable to perform her toilette, due to the lack of fingers, leads her to withhold the bounty of her sea creatures. She also roils up the ocean, engendering violent storms. It is at these times that Inuit shamans must journey to Sedna’s “queendom”, and render her the valuable service of combing her hair and singing gentle songs of consolation and homage. It is only then that Sedna is mollified, and, in a more amenable frame of mind, permits the return of her subjects to their homes, thus ensuring that the Inuit will not go hungry.
Mythic Considerations
The Sedna myth can be broken into six underlying motifs.
Refusal to conform with societal expectations regarding marriage/children (creativity), rejection of suitors, inappropriate choice of partners, violation of reproductive taboos.
Vanity, narcissism, hubris.
Abduction into non-earthly realms by a dark figure associated with death (raven); lack of nurturance, initiation into womanhood.
Escape to earth; betrayal by family of origin/tribe.
Dismemberment results in the birth/re-birth of nature.
Descent into the underworld; displeasure gives rise to cycles of abundance/famine.
Sedna’s physical dismemberment is also a form of sexual initiation, in that it leads directly to the birth of animal life, in particular aquatic life. According to the Inuit, Sedna’s power is at its greatest in the winter, when, due to the almost perpetual dark and cold above the Arctic Circle, there is a scarcity of animal life. As in the natural world, the rebirth of nature occurs once the goddess has been appeased through observance of the appropriate rituals. Sedna finds her ultimate identity as a dark queen of the nether regions, regarded by her subject peoples with fear and trepidation.
The Inuksuit
Keeping a lonely vigil and embedded with secret testimonies of time, space, and history throughout the Arctic are stone sculptures called Inuksuit. The Inuksuit can weather the violent and brutal forces of wind and snow and ice for centuries, yet remove one stone and the rest will crash to the ground—they are born and created in unity, and the strength of the whole lies in the commitment of unity, interconnectedness, and interdependence.
The Inuksuit are often arranged in the shapes of human beings with outstretched arms and are the compasses that guide the lost or disoriented travelers safely towards home, or point toward abundant hunting grounds. But they also serve spiritually and etherically as moral compasses, artistic and primal messengers of guidance, trust, and connectivity in a vast, severe, uncompromising and solitary land. In this place, the sun never rises in winter and never sets in summer and human beings rely on the cooperation of nature, the animal realms and each other to simply survive. When an Inuit hunter sees an Inuksuk, they know they are not alone.
Inuit myths and legends are rich, abounding with themes of interchangeability between humans and animals; hunter and hunted transforming into one another, women marrying octopi and bearing offspring, the stubbornness of blue jays, the grudges of wolverines, the body and spirit of a human fusing with the body and spirit of a seal or a bear or a bird, seeking the tenuous balance that allows each to survive, prosper, and become larger somehow, without overcoming the other. The strongest and most enduring ties bind people to nature with a deep respect, awe, necessity, and connectivity. This is a tenet of East Asian philosophy, which informs the medicine.
Throughout history, people have learned from animals, mimed them in dances, echoed their voices and cries in song, created ritual homage to them in great number, maintained communication with them through harmonic languages or through shamans. Animals have been loved, admired and feared, and humanity has engaged an entire range of emotions and ritual to honor and attend their vital importance in every day life, and to entertain their vanity. We find animals as tricksters, messengers, guides, prophets, spiritual overseers, givers of medicines and riches, deities, lovers, portents, husbands, wives, and magicians—the visible and invisible world of animals. And shamans lived the life of all the animals, revered nature and honored the consciousness.
The messages of the planet Sedna speak to the heart and the soul of East Asian Medicine. These themes, cosmologies, and universal truths compel us to enter, explore and understand the ancient roots of our medicine. There is richness and tradition that we have lost, as we sell out our shamanistic egalitarian and cooperative roots, the way of water and the mysterious female to a dominator matrix that controls, cannibalizes and monopolizes. But the markers are still there to help us understand the Way. We must each find true north, the compass center direction of healing and dreaming. Open the mysterious pass that brings us to an appreciation of the beauty and interdependence of all things, to revere and respect the myriad sentient beings and forces that inhabit and animate life, and recognize that neither heaven nor nature begrudge the Way but simply circulate it in the manifest world.
In Superconductivity, Superfluidity, In Living Organisms, And In Societies, There Is A Collective Order Within Each Chaotic And Random Motion, So That Radically New Forms Of Behavior Emerge At Critical Points Through The Cooperative Action Of The Whole.
Interpretation of Sedna Discovery Chart
Natal Chart (Method: Astrodienst/Placidus)
Sun Sign: Scorpio
Ascendant: Leo
The chart signature is mutable water (dominant element by sign and modality). Hence, this is a very watery chart; also Mars in Pisces is located in the 8th house, which is associated with Scorpio. Neptune, the planet traditionally associated with the sea, is setting; perhaps this is an indication that a new energy relating to the oceans is about to emerge. One might even suggest that the idea of “mutable” water would indicate that the essential nature of mankind’s relationship with water is in the process of changing;
It manifests a grand sextile in water and earth (Sedna,Mars, Chiron, Sun, Jupiter, and Saturn are involved), both by sign and house; in other words, the planetary “players” are located not only in water and earth signs, but also the water and earth houses (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12). A grand sextile appears as a Star of David against the backdrop of the heavens, and traditionally this would be considered a configuration of great significance and potential benefit. Sextiles, which are 60 degree aspects, are considered to relate to opportunity; hence, a grand sextile might, in simple terms, be considered representative of a “huge” opportunity. We should note, however, that, in this instance, both beneficial planets (Venus, Jupiter) are overshadowed by malefics, planets inimical in their effects, Venus by Pluto,Mars by Jupiter.
It is interesting that water and earth, the two elements that are considered yin in Western astrological symbolism, should be the signs emphasized in the chart. In a divinatory context, it is frequently the case that an emphasis on a particular element may, in fact, be indicating exactly the opposite. This might reflect the fact that our planet is becoming increasingly yang, and that, while the emergence of the Sedna archetype may be a harbinger of a long-overdue evolution in man’s relationship to the biosphere, the news is not all good. We are living on a planet that is out of balance;
In the language of astrological aspects, the opposition is traditionally considered to be the most challenging, in that it encodes the greatest potential for hostility and antagonism; we can associate this with the more negative aspects of projection. However, at the same time, because the two planets are most visible to each other, they can communicate more readily, and perhaps achieve a rapprochement that would not necessarily be feasible were they in a different energetic relationship. In the discovery chart, we have Sedna opposite the Sun; we might characterize this as illustrating the greater implications of the emergence of the Sedna archetype; it is in the interaction between the Sun and the oceans that weather is generated. The one symptom of global warming that is almost impossible for the average person to ignore is the recognizable changes in weather patterns.
Another interesting aspect of the discovery chart is that, while Sedna is the most elevated planet, i.e., the closest to the top of the chart, the midheaven (MC), the Sun (in opposition to Sedna) is approaching the nadir of the chart, the lowest point, called the Imum Coeli (IC). This is entirely appropriate, as Sedna revealed herself to the astronomers for the first time at night (with the Sun below the horizon, represented by the Ascendant/Descendant axis). In a larger sense, though, what we see here symbolically, is a submersion of the solar principle; not only is the Sun in a water sign (Scorpio), it is also in the 4th house of the chart, associated with Cancer, ruled by the Moon. Hence, we find the Sun itself symbolically drowned, as the Moon and Cancer relate to the waters of the Earth. The Sun, representative of the light of human consciousness, is consigned to a watery grave;
However, we can also view any given chart as relating to the period of a year; this is because a chart has 12 houses, representative not only of a 24-hour day, but also a year of 12 months. From this perspective, the chart is also indicative of that time in the year when the Sun is at its most feeble, and, according to the Inuit Sedna is most powerful. This is immediately prior to the midwinter solstice, at which time the Sun would be at the IC of the chart;
Another symbolic connection that strikes me is the idea of fire (Sun) vs. ice (Sedna), and I am reminded of Robert Frost’s famous poem, “Fire and Ice.”
Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
–Robert Frost
Exploring this polarity, we can see the Sun, which is a fiery star, as representing on one hand, the human potential for self-destruction by self-immolation; the Sun is a great furnace, driven by the engine of nuclear fusion. It is also quite easy for us to implicate the Sun in our perception of the current Earth changes; the Sun is the most obvious agency behind the global warming trend. In contrast, we have Sedna, at the opposite pole of the solar system, a fact that is indicated quite clearly in the opposition aspect between the two. Sedna lies in the frozen interstices between the worlds, and in spite of her orbital motion, would in many ways, seem to embody the principle of entropy. Nevertheless, it is the action of the Sun upon Sedna’s realm of ice, i.e., its melting of the polar ice cap, that poses the greatest threat to our climatic equilibrium; this action of the Sun upon Sedna’s icy domain may indeed precipitate the end of the world as we have known it, through a phenomenon known as Abrupt Climatic Change, as a new Ice Age descends upon the globe;
Yet another take on this Sun/Sedna opposition would be that the Sun, as fire, is representative of technology, since fire, the legendary gift of the Titan Prometheus, was the first technological innovation of mankind. In contrast, Sedna, associated with the Inuit, and by extension, other aboriginal peoples, represents the idea of sustainable living. The ascendancy of Sedna here then suggests that it is our slavish devotion to technology at the expense of the natural resources of the planet which will drag us relentlessly downward into the abyss, and only by adopting a lifestyle more in harmony with nature will we survive.
It may appear that much of what is gleaned from this investigation of the astrological symbolism in the Sedna discovery chart is pretty dire. However, let us return briefly to the configuration of the Star of David (also known as a hexagram) that has accompanied this initial manifestation of the Sedna archetype:
According to medieval alchemists, the hexagram was viewed as a union of two triangles, the upward pointing triangle symbolizing the element fire, and the other water. Together, they represent the potential for the harmonization of seemingly irreconcilable opposites, and it is perhaps in this way that salvation lies. What I find interesting about this idea is that, even in the blackness and cold of interstellar space, Sedna “burns” with a mysterious, ruddy glow. It is as if in some way, this vagrant planetoid is a concrete embodiment of the Tai Chi, the symbol for the inter-relationship and inter-connectedness of all things.
SOLITON: A type of non-linear equation, a “solitary wave” discovered in a wide variety of non-linear systems like electrical circuits, nerve impulses, and the vibration of atoms. They are sustained through global activity. These non-linear manifestations of nature have been discovered in a diversity of systems—tsunamis, the Great Red Spot of Jupiter, heat conduction in solids, super fluidity, and superconductivity. Einstein anticipated the Soliton but it was first discovered rolling with great velocity, in a waveform, by J. Scott Russell while riding beside a channel of water.
Sedna Has Everything To Do With Us
Sedna rules the North (and South) poles, the cosmic axis, the pillar of heaven, both the microcosmic orbit and the macrocosmic orbit, the yin, the capacity of reverting to the root, winter, cold, the doctrine of resonance—sympathies—the doctrine of signatures and correspondences, dreaming, weather, and celestial divination, shape shifting, death, rebirth, and healing. She rules the spine, and vertebrae, as well as the cerebral spinal fluid, the Northern Bushel (Big Dipper), water, bones, memory both cellular and cosmic, the kidneys, hair, the ear, hearing, listening, sound, harmonics, and harmonic language. Her sacred animals are the polar bear and whale. Sedna symbolizes water as the source of all birth, the sacred darkness, the great yin, the Wu-wei, where all the forces of nature collect and are hidden. She represents the highest germinal concentration and capacity of all force, time and space. Her season is winter, her color is black, and she is the guardian of the Zhi (will). She reigns over superconductivity, super fluidity, and super creativity. Her emotional key is fear. She keeps The Book of Power over Water, Doctrines for Purifying the People, and the Original Bone Oracles in the etheric realms and watery spaces of the dreamtime. Sedna carries the energy and power of the North Bushel (Big Dipper) in her heart, and in the heart of all of the animals she protects.
Thus it is easy to see the commonalities that Sedna shares with shaman Yu. Long before the earliest explorers headed north, the indigenous peoples of Asia settled there. Stone Age artifacts recently discovered in the Yana River Valley suggest that humans hunted big game animals in that region 30,000 years ago. When the sea fell at the end of the last Ice Age, a land bridge was formed between Siberia and North America, and these distant ancestors of our medicine and of the Native Americans crossed into the new world following mammoth herds across the huge Artic grassland called Beringia. Anthropologists believe a second migration of the ancestors of the Na-Dene occurred 12-15,000 years ago, and the Inuit, the last group to migrate east, 7-8,000 years ago made their way to Alaska, and then to Canada and Greenland. The oldest archeological sites identified as Inuit are in southwest Alaska and the Aleutian Islands and date from around 2,000 BC.
About 5,000 years ago, the legendary shaman Yu, from the tribal people in Northern Asia, settled along the shores of the Yellow River. There he surveyed the land and measured the world. He learned the secret knowledge of water. An engineering expert in hydrography, Yu held back the floods. The Lo Shu was revealed to Yu on the shell of a tortoise that emerged from the river when the floods receded. The pattern the Lo-shu pa’qua, described the nature of flux and change in the universe, and became the taproot of the Chinese divinatory arts. Yu flew to the heavens to gain knowledge of the stars. He shape shifted into animals to assist in their realm, and was granted their knowledge. At birth he shifted into a bear and throughout his life he often moved between man and bear, shuffling as he walked. This legendary walk known as the Pace of Yu traces the pattern of the Northern Bushel (Big Dipper). It is still practiced and reenacted today by those who carry on the work of water and uphold the shamanic traditions, reenacted in the dances of Taoist priests, mystics, and martial artists.
Thus, through both Yu and Sedna, we see the myriad connections between life itself and the universe. The maps of the individual hold the energetic blueprint of all that exists throughout space, time and the known universe. And yet, we are a species out of harmony with life. The Earth is diseased in all of its systems, soil, water, air, and in all of its ecological processes. We must recall the legacy and shamanic roots of our medicine, discovering new ways to remember and disseminate it. We cannot forget our spiritual roots, or the universal imperatives of a harmonious cosmos. We must remember our role as individual Wu in the journey to maintain balance through right conduct and ritual, participating as integral parts in the healing of universal patterns. We must work without and within, honoring both heaven and earth, to heal ourselves, and our planet. When we align ourselves with north, we can assist in the healing and transformation of our planet by showing our respect for nature and mother earth, and the myriad of sentient beings that inhabit the planet with us.
The North, represented by Sedna and Yu, provides us with many lessons and gifts for healing, purification, and transformation. Remember that sound travels four times faster in water and that we are more than 80% water. When we use the frequency and vibration of the Sedna tuning forks on points and meridians, particularly the more ancient Eight Extraordinary Vessels, we establish resonances and correspondences with our ancient ancestors invoking a powerful force, to conduct, transform, and create cohesive quantum states of new global and cooperative behavior of the individual organism and the planetary organism.
Sedna Keywords:
S is for Sound, Soliton: Solitary and Non-Dual, Superconductivity, Superfluidity, Super Creativity, Synchronicity, Super-Implicate, (t)Sunami, Shifting: Shape Shifting, Poles Shifting, Quantum Shifting, Thermal Shifting.
As you deepen your understanding of the science, myth and associated archetypes that surround Sedna, there are key healing themes that emerge.
Betrayal: Our betrayal by others, to others, to our planet, to our medicine, to our spirit, to our soul.
Forgiveness and Compassion: On every level where trust has been broken.
Creativity: Connection to rebirth, to the creative and universal mind, to super creativity and to conception. Infertility and fertility, drought and drowning.
Global View: Upholding higher law, global perspective, global ecology, global theology, global mythology, all residing in the One.
Toxicity: Individual and ancestral, planetary: purging and purifying.
Water: The mystery, magic, weight and infinite capacity, all elemental water issues or any correspondences.
Transformation/Transmigration (death/rebirth): The old themes, worldviews, patterns, personal, ancestral, societal, cultural, gender based, elemental, planetary, all that holds us back or brings destructions.
Non-Linearity/Non-Duality: Ability to see the universe as an undivided whole, be a true Taoist, no differentiation of mind/matter, scholar/shaman, individual/planet. Ability to comprehend the soliton, the solitary wave, whose patterns and forms emerge out of the ground, are sustained, and die back into the field that gave it birth.
Right Conduct and Responsibility: Understand right action, and personal responsibility, honor the animals and respect the larger cooperative. In the myth, Sedna withheld food from the hunters and brought violent weather if norms were broken.
Sedna: “Retuning” the Earth
In the Acutonics® System of sound healing, the Earth is represented by the tone Ohm (approximately C# in the Western harmonic scale), this frequency is derived from its orbital velocity around the Sun. The Ohm tone is the fundamental tone of the system, and because of this, in a manner consistent with astrology,we might regard Acutonics as a “geocentric” system.
Including Sedna in the Acutonics “scale” introduces a frequency (C)) that is lower than Ohm; this is appropriate in that Sedna, who resides at the Pole, also relates to the Earth’s axis. If we accept the idea that all the planets in the solar system were originally whirling balls of hot solar gases that gradually coalesced, then the axis of any given planet is its point of origin, since movement around the axis has provided the initial impetus for planetary “creation.” This is in keeping with Sedna’s identity as Divine Creatrix, and also hearkens back to the origin of life here on our planet, since we are moving from the element of Earth (Ohm) to the element of Water (Sedna). All life originated in the seas, and it is this relationship of mankind to water that is crucial. Sedna reminds us of our essential watery nature, and points the way toward a slowing down of the relentless increase in vibration that is associated with this new Information Age.
Many historians believe that part of the Chinese character for doctor (Yi) retains the archaic link and represents the magical cry of the shaman.
Moreover, the key of C has historically been associated with nature in Western music. This would certainly seem to be reinforced by the fact that the only perfect 5th in the Sedna tonality is formed with Earth Day. The 5th, which is the 2nd overtone that is generated by a particular fundamental, creates an interval that, as a structural component of music both harmonic and melodic, serves as a springboard to a higher octave. We may thus construe it as an interval, which represents a potential evolution in consciousness. At this point in our history, the blending of Sedna and Earth Day, representing the yin aspects of our terrestrial ecosphere, is most assuredly sounding a “wake-up” call to humanity regarding our increasingly tenuous grasp upon the environment. It also seems reasonable to suppose that Sedna, which is at the opposite extreme from the Sun (which is the most yang) should function as the polar opposite, the most yin.
Working with the Sedna Intervals
The following intervals are created by working with the basic Acutonics Tuning Forks that include the Earth, Moon, and Sun Frequencies, taught in Level I of the Acutonics Certification Program, and covered extensively in the book, Acutonics: There’s No Place Like Ohm. In this healing system, we always work with musical intervals, the combination of two tones or frequencies. The interval is the space in between the tones and is a powerful phenomenon, born from the origins of yin. Clinically, we always work with two forks together to create and apply the interval. For those of you with a music background, the following intervals have been designated as M-major, m-minor, or p-perfect. To help you understand the power of each interval, its basic characteristics are described along with suggested points for its use. A full treatment and a healing ritual are described after the intervals.
Ohm: Earth moving around the sun in its 365-day journey through the four seasons and the five elements.
Earth Day: Earth rotating on its own poles, its axis in a 24 hour cycle.
Zodiac Earth: Earth moving thru the constellations of the zodiac in its 25,920-year cycle, also known as the processional cycle.
Sedna: Sedna orbiting the Sun in its journey of 11, 487 years.
Applications: Symbolic Interpretations With Suggested Points
Sedna/Ohm (m2nd): Helps reestablish our connection to Earth, a simulacrum of Earth itself.
Apply this combination of earth (Ohm) and water (Sedna) to KID 1 and KID 3.
Sedna/Earth Day (5th): The only perfect 5th within the Sedna “tonality;” establishes harmony with Earth; and creates balance between yin and yang. This can be used as an antidote for an excess of speed or heat; cosmic time vs. clock time, and realigning our personal axis, or microcosmic orbit.
Apply the Sedna/Earth Day interval to the Huato Jiaji, the Baliao, Extraordinary Vessels: REN and DU.
Sedna/Zodiac Earth (3rd): This interval opens us to cosmic/intergalactic consciousness; moving our awareness beyond a traditional spirituality. It represents an evolutionary leap of revolutionary insight, tuning an individual with the Galactic Center.
Apply the Sedna Zodiac interval to the Four Gates of Heaven LI 4, LIV 3.
Sedna/New Moon (6th): Use this interval for difficulties with conception, infertility, creative sterility, issues around betrayal from family and community.
Apply the Sedna/New Moon interval to Zi Gong, REN 4, Extraordinary Vessels: Yin Wei and Ren.
Sedna/Full Moon (6th): This interval helps us with all nurturance issues, including loss of mother, uterine surgery (hysterectomy/myomectomy), irregular menses, reproductive issues, fibroids, and supporting movement into rhythm with emotional shifts.
Apply the Sedna/Full Moon interval to REN 4, LU 1, Extraordinary Vessels: Ren and Chong.
Low Sedna/Sun (7th): This new interval is more dissonant than the Low Ohm/Sun and provides more warmth, because Sedna is a superconductor, she helps us to thaw frozen or buried emotions and sheds light on them. This interval also directs us to our highest spiritual potential, leading us to the next octave.
Apply the Low Sedna/Sun interval to KID 7, and the Extraordinary Vessels: Yin Wei and Chong.
Whenever you apply the tuning forks remember to ground using the Ohm Unison on KID 1 or KID 3.
Treatment Strategies and Clinical Applications:
Individual and Planetary
Individual Treatment
This treatment is basic but very powerful designed for realignment and connection to the themes and frequencies that are invoked by Sedna. Tune into the keywords and the more universal imperatives, reset your own poles, your personal axis mundi to your souls’ directive and reunite the scholar (shi) with the shaman (wu). Remember that when you treat yourself and others, you contribute to planetary healing through the resonant frequency of the earth tones. The frequencies are based on the elliptical orbits of the planets.
On the Huato Jiaji points, or the Shu points, either line, use a progression of the following intervals: Sedna/Ohm, followed by Sedna/Earth Day, followed by Sedna/Zodiac Earth. Follow down the spine, one fork on either side and into the Baliao (Immortal Caves), sliding the vibrating forks down to UB 40 (Spirit Storehouse). Apply each intervals a few times and again slide down to KID 1 (Gushing Spring).
Reground using the Ohm unison on KID 1 or the sacrum.
Next, use this same progression Sedna/Ohm, followed by Sedna/Earth Day, followed by Sedna/Zodiac Earth on the Extraordinary Vessels pairing the REN and the DU, our microcosmic orbit, remembering to ground with the Ohm Unison on REN 4 (Origins Pass) or KID 1 first.
Sedna is used on the opening point and the Earth on the contralateral balance or coupled point. The interval flows between the two points. Contralateral entrainment helps the body establish the ability to open up new neural networks and to flow more easily from side to side.
Reground using the Ohm unison of REN 4 or KID 1.
Healing the Northern Element and the Arctic Oceans: Transmitting Planetary Healing with the Individual as Medium
This treatment protocol may be used on or (preferably) above the body to create the geography of the Big Dipper in the individual and to deliver distance healing, using the body as a medium to transmit global phenomena. You may touch down and anchor points on the body, but for points such as ST 17 (Breast Center) it is better to work above the body in the etheric field directing the vibration into the point.
Ground with Ohm unison on KID 1 or KID 3, use Sedna/Ohm on P 8, (Construction Palace) left side, SJ 10 (Celestial Well) left side, LI 15 (Shoulder Bone) left side, ST 17 (Breast Center) left side, ST 17 right side, ST 25 (Celestial Pivot) right side, ST 25 left side, tracing the dipper above the body, use the same point sequence with Sedna/Pluto to purge toxins and unconscious patterns around pollution internal and external, followed by Sedna/Neptune to conduct through water, for spiritual purification, for collapsing of boundaries of time/space, individual/collective, followed by Sedna/Chiron to clear the wounding of the waters, the animals, the wounding of the healers, followed by Sedna/Full Moon, to connect with the memory of nature and to deeply nourish. Complete with the Sedna Octave, to move energy to a higher level.
Reground with Ohm Octave on KID 1 or KID 3 and REN 4.
Lantern of the Seven Lights Planetary Ritual: Blessings and Purification of the North for the Balance, Healing, and Transformation of the Planetary Axis
Make an altar facing north, with an oil lamp, incense and essential oils. Use a Tibetan bowl and place healing prayers, intentions, and petitions into it. The ritual should be performed when the North Bushel is visible, preferably a cloudless night. Arrange flat stones in the pattern of the Big Dipper, and place candles on top of them.
Write your intention for healing self and the North, use archetypes, symbolic associations, and correspondences, to key into the larger healing themes of cultures and collective intelligence. Use flags of power or create talismans imprinting or drawing the Big Dipper on the cloth, or write intentions on paper to be placed inside the bowl. Rituals and intentions are powerful sacred connections that rely on correspondences, signatures, and intention to achieve a collective goal. Rituals reach out on universal meridians to communicate messages across time and space. Petitions written on paper should be placed inside the Tibetan bowl and those written on flags or on talismans positioned in a circular design surrounding the dipper stones.
The ceremony begins at 11 pm and at that time the candles on top of the seven Dipper stones must be lit and the Tibetan bowl containing prayers and petitions placed inside the ladle of the Dipper. The leader—priest/priestess, healer lights the candles and purifies the ceremonial grounds and altar and traces Yu’s steps of the seven stars with a wooden or metal stick. The stick signifies the axis mundi and the Dipper, the unification of primal yin and yang as symbolized as the handle and the ladle, the union of opposites. The leader then invokes the energy of the North Bushel, and sends out a general petition, intention and prayer for healing.
Use Chen-Jen the third star as a focal point: it is sacred and represents the three pure ones, the triplex unity between heaven, earth, and humanity, this sacred star evokes the creativity, the power and the bond between all worlds and the manifestation of intentions.
Next, light the papers of intention in the Tibetan bowl and strike it to release the words and petitions. Trace the Dipper above the stones in the etheric field and spiral around the dipper and around participants with the Sedna/Ohm forks or chimes to focus and set context and geography, followed by Sedna/Pluto for release of unconscious patterns, negative destructive patterns, especially suicidal tendencies (Inuit have the highest suicide rates in the world) and toxins, as the Arctic North has some of the most toxic waters on the planet, a veritable sinkhole for industrial wastes of China and Russia, as well as other industrialized nations. Follow with Sedna/Neptune for the deep healing of water and the waters of the psyche, for removal of that which keeps us in a state of spiritual or communal amnesia; for the cleansing of addictions especially alcohol (Inuit have the highest rates of alcoholism in the world) followed by Sedna/Chiron to clear the wounding to the earth and waters and to animals and ancestors–for our personal wounding as well as elemental wounding to the water element. Touch the center of the ladle with the Sedna/Ohm forks then REN 17 (Primordial Child) of each participant with the forks.
Give thanks and blessings. Place all the flags and talismans in the center of the ladle for three days to cook in the energy of the Dipper and to amplify intentions.
East Asian Medicine in the 21st Century:
Revert to the Root
Our ancestors of the Arctic are providing us an Inuksuk, mapping a safe passage as we struggle to make wise and enduring decisions about what legacies we will leave behind, both as individuals and as a collective –as healers and transformers alive with the gifts of a tradition rich and far reaching that includes nothing less than universal imperatives. The traditions and wisdom they point us towards will guide us like a compass down the path of creative evolution. Our Arctic family, our ancestors, the inhabitants who have endured for millennia after millennia, are fighters who have struggled and evolved, adapting to brutal, hostile, capricious environments both natural and man-made. Often at the mercy of others, our Arctic predecessors have been treated like foreigners in their own land yet any efforts to shatter their communities and their culture fail miserably.
Canada’s government separated Inuit children from their families, farming them off to school for more than a century. Despite this the Inuit retained their heritage. Greenland’s Inuit of the Thule region were evicted by the US and Danish governments in the 1950’s, to establish a military base during the Cold War. The people persevered, creating the village of Qaanaaq. And the Alaskan Inupiat, in spite of massive infusions of oil monies and relentless international efforts to ban their whaling, have remained avid hunters in the traditional sense. There are a multiplicity of new pressures from the outside that severely threaten the Arctic cultures and ecosystems—namely contaminants, climate changes, modernization…all created from the carelessness and greed of humanity.
The Inuit and native Arctic populations, are descendants of the originators of our medicine, keepers of the waters, of the North, the direction of healing and of death and rebirth, of the treasures and the mysteries of the frozen deep geometries. Not helpless or hopeless, they embrace their plight, patient, intuitive, awaiting their fate, practicing the Tao in the midst of daily life. The Inuit may think often of lofty wonders and the empty void, but carry out the human Tao, fulfilling their nature, working for the benefit of all people, participating in evolution, knowing that heaven and earth are one, and that positive energy arises in the ocean of the primal, that fire arises within water, the creative and the receptive repeat and sustain, that the way of water is one of the great mysteries of mysteries, profoundly vast, undeniably infinite, reflecting the celestial order and time itself.
Super Implicate: Holographic order where the transformation of the part affects the whole and is able to order and organize non-linear functions.
Bibliography:
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December 2005 Report on the melting Greenland ice sheet can be found on NASA’s website at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2005-176
Knud Rasmussen, The Fifth Thule Expedition: 1921-24 The Danish Ethnographical and Geographical Expedition from Greenland to the Pacific, published 1926