Sedna Tattoo Meaning

The sea, sacrifice, and the goddess whose grief feeds every creature of the ocean.

Sedna is the sea-mother whose grief feeds the world — the Inuit goddess of the ocean floor, mother of all sea mammals, whose terrible loss became the source of every creature that sustains life, and whose care must be honored for the hunt to succeed. To carry Sedna is to carry the sea, sacrifice, and the goddess whose grief feeds every creature of the ocean — the mother of the sea mammals at the ocean floor, the wound that became abundance, the giver whose bounty depends on being honored.

In Inuit tradition, Sedna is the great goddess of the sea: Sedna — Nunavut's sea goddess, also called Arnaqquassaaq or Nerrivik — is the mother of all sea mammals; she lives at the ocean floor, and the health of her hair determines whether hunters find food or starve. Sedna dwells at the bottom of the sea, and from her come all the creatures of the ocean — the seals, the walruses, the whales — the sea mammals on which the Inuit depend for survival. In the central myth, Sedna's fingers were cut off and fell into the sea, where they became the seals and walruses and whales; she is thus the mother of all sea mammals, the source from which the ocean's life-giving creatures came.

Sedna's relationship with humanity is bound up with the hunt and survival. The health and condition of her hair determine whether the hunters find food or starve: when humans break taboos or behave wrongly, her long hair becomes tangled and filthy, and in her distress she withholds the sea mammals, so that the hunters find nothing and the people face starvation. Only when she is appeased — when a shaman journeys to the ocean floor to comb and clean her tangled hair — does she release the creatures of the sea again, and the people can eat. The Inuit Sedna is thus the mother of the sea at the ocean floor — the goddess of all sea mammals whose hair's condition determines whether the people find food or starve. Sedna, the Inuit sea goddess at the ocean floor, is the mother of all sea mammals — the health of her hair determines whether hunters find food or starve. The Inuit Sedna is the mother of the sea at the ocean floor — Sedna (also Arnaqquassaaq or Nerrivik), Nunavut's sea goddess, is the mother of all sea mammals, living at the ocean floor where the health of her hair determines whether hunters find food or starve; dwelling at the bottom of the sea, the source from which all the ocean's creatures came — in the central myth her fingers cut off and fallen into the sea, where they became the seals, walruses, and whales, the sea mammals on which the Inuit depend — her relationship with humanity bound up with the hunt, the condition of her hair determining whether hunters find food (when humans break taboos her hair becomes tangled and filthy and she withholds the sea mammals, until a shaman journeys to the ocean floor to comb and clean it and she releases the creatures again).

Sedna is the central deity of Inuit cosmology across the Arctic — the mother of the sea whose origin story is one of the most profound in world mythology: a young woman whose fingers were cut off as she clung to a boat, each joint sinking to the ocean floor and becoming a different sea creature. Seals from her first joints, walruses from her second, whales from her third. She became the keeper of all sea life, and when she was angered by human disrespect — when hunters failed to observe proper protocols — she withheld the animals and communities starved. Angakkuit (shamans) would descend to her in spirit to comb her tangled hair, releasing the animals. In tattoo symbolism, Sedna represents the abundance that comes from wound — the source that was created through loss, and the reciprocal relationship between the living and the one who was hurt to sustain them.

Sedna across cultures

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