Dreaming the Dark: 'Sedna', the Siren and the Selkie (Part 4)

Art Credit: Sedna, by Anthony Galbraith

Beneath the shimmer of northern lights, where night can last for months and seas are vast and merciless, a young woman sinks into freezing black water. Blood streams from her hands, hair tangles in the tide, her severed fingers falling like seeds into the deep. From them rise seals, fish, walrus, and whales. This is Sedna – the Inuit mistress of the sea – feared, betrayed, transformed.

This is the final part of Dreaming the Dark, a four-part series on shadow psychology, feminine consciousness, and the archetypes who carry these energies across cultures. You can read the other parts in the MUSINGS section.

The Legend of Sedna

Long ago, Sedna was a girl who refused every suitor, content in her parents’ home. At last a stranger came, promising food, furs, comfort. She agreed, and was taken far from her people. Only then did he reveal himself as no man at all, but a petrel spirit in disguise. Trapped in misery, Sedna was discovered by her father, who took her into his kayak to return home.

The bird-spirit saw them flee and summoned a storm so fierce the sea itself seemed to rise in rage. Waves towered, ice shattered. In terror, Sedna’s father chose betrayal over loyalty. He hurled her into the sea. She clung to the kayak, but he hacked at her fingers until she let go. Down she went into the abyss.

Yet she did not die. From her severed fingers came the creatures of the ocean. From her descent she became more than human, half-woman, half-fish, dwelling in a palace of whale bone at the bottom of the sea. All sea life belongs to her, and all hunters must reckon with her moods. Shamans tell how, when game is scarce, they must journey down to her realm, comb her tangled hair, and soothe her rage. Only then will she release her animals to feed the people.

She is called by many names across the Arctic – Arnakapfaluk, the Big Bad Woman; Nerrivik, the Woman Thrown Backward Over the Edge; Uiniyumayuituq, the One Who Did Not Want a Husband. Whatever the name, the essence is the same: betrayed daughter, dismembered bride, goddess of life and death, ruler of the underworld beneath the sea.

Art Credit: unknown

Parallels and Psychopomps

Sedna’s story echoes through the same dark corridor we have walked with Lilith, the Bean Sí, the Morrígan, Kali, Baba Yaga, Santa Muerte. Each refuses. Each is betrayed. Each descends – into sea, underworld, battle, bone-yard. Each is remade into power. They destroy illusion, transform the soul, and ferry us through thresholds.

Like Lilith, Sedna refuses the husband forced upon her. Like the banshee, her cry is bound to death. Like Kali, her power is born of blood. Like the selkie or siren, she belongs to the waters and cannot be tamed.

These are not figures of neat morality – not good, not evil. They are whole. They confront us with chaos, impermanence, death – and in so doing, they return us to life.

Grief Composting

Sedna’s myth is grief made flesh. Betrayal, mutilation, loss – and from that soil, new creation. From fingers severed, new creatures swim. Trauma becomes compost. Grief becomes soil. What is cut away becomes nourishment for what will be. This is the dark night of the soul – descent, dissolution, surrender – and the rising that follows.

Water and Shadow

Water is the element of this work – lunar, feminine, dream-filled, tied to the subconscious. In our own dream language, water is always the symbol of what lies beneath, the shadow we fear to meet. We are taught to dread the deep. Yet Sedna waits there, reminding us that only in the dark ocean do we discover the power to be reborn.

Selkies, Sirens, Ariel

And so the circle closes. In Ireland and Scotland, the selkie and siren tell of women bound to the sea, red-haired and green-clad. Sedna belongs to this same tide. Even Disney’s Ariel, the cartoon mermaid, echoes her – red hair, green tail, dulcified into sweetness. Once more, a fierce figure is watered down, hidden in plain sight.

Closing the Circle

Sedna’s story, like those of Lilith and her sisters, is no children’s tale but a map of initiation. It is the descent into the abyss, the death of what was, the remaking in power. It is the call to compost grief, to release what cannot be carried, to rise from the depths remade.

And so Dreaming the Dark ends where it began – at the threshold. But every ending is also a beginning.

Where in your own life have you been cast into the deep? What new life might be swimming from your severed fingers?

May you be unafraid of the dark waters. May you meet your wild twin there. May you rise, whole, when the time comes.

© 2017 The heART of Ritual. All rights reserved.

Art Credit: Unknown