NEW MOON IN LEO-EXPRESS YOUR PROCESS

8/8/21

NEW MOON IN LEO, LION’S GATE AND RECLAIMING CREATIVE EXPRESSION 

Leo season is a powerhouse time for the C word. 

Creativity, Courage and Confidence.

Leo is ruled by the sun which doesn’t question whether it shines, it doesn’t give a shite, it unapologetically shows itself in full light.

We are currently in a super powerful portal which just so happens to fall on the new moon in Leo. It satisfies the poet in me deeply, it is called The Lion’s Gate and falls on the 8th of the 8th.

Please don’t get overwhelmed but this is HUGE. 

The Lion’s gate is a massive opportunity for opening up a new timeline and activating another layer of your creative potential for whatever your heart desires to manifest. 

Leo rules the heart, creative expression, bravery, strength, confidence, joy and child-like play. Connect to your heart, it is magnetic. 

What does your heart yearn and burn for?

It could be a devotional partnership with a beloved soul mate, to change career and take a chance on your soul’s calling, to reawaken an old childhood passion, call in profound heart healing or like the sun, rest in the innate radiance that you already are without having to do a thing! JUST BE! 

Leo is ruled by the life giving force of the sun, it is the most generous benevolent energy that bestows and empowers infinite creative possibility. Know you are divinely supported in whatever your heart desires. 

BECOME BEST MATES WITH THE NUMBER 8 

The Lion’s gate is characterised by the number 8.

8 represents empowerment, abundance and material manifestation in numerology. Power is energy, so whatever you focus your energy on at this time is super solar charged with lion’s gate when the star Sirius comes into alignment with earth and the light of the Leonine sun. 

If you want to see it, it is a blue white star to the left of Orion’s belt also known as the “hunter” constellation. YASS! How fucking magical I feel to have serendipitously discovered this fact out today!

8 rules the material world as it is a multiple of the master builder number 4; whatever you are building is magnified by the super high frequency of the lion’s gate portal which opened on July 28th through august 11th, with its peak activation on the 8th, also the new moon in Leo.

A HUGE COSMIC YES!!

AN ABUNDANCE OF HIGH FREQUENCY LIGHT IS ON YOUR SIDE.

ONE WORD TO ALL.

Do not play small. You deserve it all.

EVERY ONE IS AN ARTIST.

At Hunter And Her everybody is an artist as our philosophy is life is art.

My new mentor is a Leo goddess and has a tattoo on her arm that reads in capitals 

‘NO FATE BUT THAT WE MAKE.’ 

The Lion’s gate is providing you a portal to not leave it up to fate but to empower you to actively CO-CREATE your own fate. 

Do not hesitate, the love of Leo is GENEROUS and great and will help you on your way. 

Leo is the artist, performer and ultimate creator of the zodiac.

A.R.T is A-ching R-aw T-ruth 

An A.R.T.I.S.T shares A-ching R-aw T-ruth I-n S-tories T-old

Only you know your truth and what you lived through. You are also not the sum of your current or past circumstances.

You are the auteur of your own story.

Leo is about standing unapologetically in your unique individual expression. 

Reclaim your power and self-sovereignty. Nobody is you and that is your power! Nobody can take your essence. Your soul’s evolution is within your power.

Leo is telling you take a risk, take a chance, your destiny is in your hands.

Beloved artist now you are awake, it’s time to align with the divine energies and make your fate happen.

I am Leo rising and did not expect to write the rest of this, it comes from the fires of my humble lived experience and I feel called to let you into unshared details of my story and how I recovered my music. It leads up to the summer of 4 years ago in the when there were two moons in Leo. May this story give you faith, strength and emotional resilience to stay the course. I am a lioness tenderly shining with inner pride surrounded by a divine Pride who each celebrates each others shine.

A PERSONAL STORY ON ANXIETY, DEPRESSION AND RECLAIMING CREATIVE EXPRESSION 

First a little astro and historical context

We each have Leo energy in our chart.

The enlightened soul of Leo needs to express, not to be the best, but to rest in a state of soul-sated success.

Self expression is Leo’s soul medicine. 

The soul of Leo wants and needs to be seen, heard and adored. This is human and healthy when in balance. When out of balance this creates distorted self perception and misdirected creative expression.

Little Lion Heart

As a child and teenager I had been repeatedly told I was “too much”, telling this to a Leo is like a dagger to the heart as full expression comes so naturally. Simultaneously I was praised for my singing and performing abilities. This caused a huge conflict in my sense of self and development of healthy ego.

I am sensitive, feel deeply and express this fiercely and intensely. I now see this as an asset. I love the way I am. It makes me a great lover and leader. In my youth this was not celebrated and I internalised the “too much” narrative- paradoxically I adopted the belief of “not enough” so I unconsciously made myself small to fit in with my peers. This squeezed so much vitality out of my personality. I believe it was my first heartbreak. I still struggle with it sometimes but recently have found profound healing in a really special relationship and a chunk of that old story burned away beautifully thanks to their love.

Whilst at uni studying music, I carried these unconscious beliefs forward with the hope that pursuing my artistry and making music would heal my not-enough-ness, that it would be the key to being fully seen as singing was the only time my full expression was whole-heartedly celebrated. All it did was fuel an insecurity that if I didn’t achieve world wide fame I was a failure.

An unhealthy relationship to my ego that was hungry for perfection and starving for recognition slowly and successfully robbed me of my childhood joy of the process of making melodies and story telling through my songs. I was also comparing myself to the other singers that was causing severe anxiety before performances and major impostor syndrome.

Lost Lioness

The ego only wants perfection and adoration and I secretly held a deep-rooted fear I was an attention-seeking narcissist instead of what music actually is to me- creative catharsis.

I had begun creating from my head and not my heart. On the surface I achieved a first class bachelors degree in music and was an external success, underneath I had lost my why and was in a world of pain.

I had moved away from my soul’s sanctuary that used to love singing for singing’s sake; a place to put my emotions, a place to feel, a place to heal had become a prison.

The pressure I put on myself to succeed externally had developed into chronic anxiety and extreme spiritual severance;I had no connection to a sense of play or my true voice as a divine gift. 

It was then no surprise that I lost my voice in 2011 and needed surgery to recover from it. That’s a whole other blog. The next few years were dark, I released music as Hunter And Her but it was coming from a place of force and was not sustainable or enjoyable. I was focusing on product over process and my identity as a “successful artist” more than my healing and humanity.

I was selling my soul instead of sharing it.

Since my Saturn return in 2014 I have been on a spiralling, fierce and tender path of inner child healing which eventually led (with no expectation) to reclaiming my creative expression. 

Becoming so lost became a relentless and quiet quest of self-discovery to source my inner lioness that protected and nurtured her little lion back to creative health. This is life long work.

Leo represents strength and it has required every ounce of courage and resilience to confront my past trauma and tend to my wounded inner child.

FROM GREAT GRIEF TO A SEED OF SELF BELIEF

It had gotten to the point where I was in such a state of scarcity mentality I was jealous of people shining. I stopped celebrating other musicians. At one point I couldn’t even listen to music as it triggered me so much. 

It was all a mirror illuminating the pain of unrealised dreams and unloved gifts that haunted me for years until I got sick of being creatively sick.

This is when I changed career to teaching yoga and spiritual philosophy in 2015. Even though it seemed like I left music never to return, this was a necessary detour to heal my soul.

I believe we have many purposes that feed into the deep purpose.

By 2017 I found a brilliant mentor and developed enough egoic resilience to honestly self reflect.

I was reading the book Awakening Shakti by Sally Kempton on the goddess Dhumavati who represents death, disappointment and failure. Dramatic? I prefer to think of it as an awakening.

I was trying to finally and fully let music go, to unhook, but what it actually asked me to do was really LOOK.

TO LOOK AT THE TRUTH. At how much pain I was in that I was trying to let something go that didn’t want to let go of me.

The paragraph that changed my life is this:

“The grace in failure doesn’t come from lack of trying or from premature surrender. Just as you have to have developed an ego before you can experience letting go of ego, you have to have given yourself wholeheartedly to your quest, your work, your practice before you’ve earned the right to realize that effort won’t take you there.”

I had done enough shadow work with my ego to know that I had let music go out of fear and not out of grace. 

I bravely looked at it and in that moment I unexpectedly had a real feeling of relief.

Goddess Dhumavati is symbolised by smoke and it felt like the the looming grief of potential further regret had all but evaporated.

I finally moved out of denial and into admitting my truth. I felt a mixture of fear, excitement and quiet clarity. 

I made a radical decision to commit to IT, to music no matter what external praise I got from it or how uncertain the path was, I was FULLY IN.

I now live by the mantra that I will only let something I love go when I have gone fully the fuck in first and it serves me well.

LEO LIGHT RE-IGNITES 

This awakening happened in the spring of ’17, that quote lit a fire under my ass.

When I made the choice to commit to returning to my number one love, I wrote a whole album in a month, I had never experienced a state of creative flow like it.

I remember it vividly, it was a hot June in London, it was like I was possessed and everything that I had repressed came pouring out.

The one thing that had changed- I was not questioning my creativity, or perfecting it, it was pure, raw unfiltered expression and emotional connection.

Something was being radically unblocked. I almost couldn’t contain it. IT WAS A LIKE A WILD UNTAMED RIVER, OF GRIEF AND JOY AND ECSTASY-AN ELECTRIC CURRENT MOVING THROUGH ME. I couldn’t turn it off. And I didn’t want to.

I was now AWAKE and quite literally so. 

I was being unapologetically woken by the muse at 2am in the morning, sleepily singing songs into my phone, or I would be on the tube and jump off between stops to record sketches so as as not to forget them. I felt high on life, I was beaming and smiling at random strangers, I was whole-heartedly enjoying the process of expression for expression’s sake. It was a new feeling, my music was my lover and all the energy I had poured into lovers I was pouring into my art. A huge shift that felt like a gift and it has been a gift that keeps on giving.

The process was the reward. I was proud of getting to that place internally. It was a profound longed for mindset shift. I will never forget that summer for as long as I live.

Our inner child is where our creativity lives. It was a massive creative excavation and inner child retrieval. Deep soul healing.

It was the most I had ever ever enjoyed music making because I had gotten out of my own way to PLAY, let it all flow and unfold. I was writing uplifting gospel songs and soul songs like the ones I adored growing up, they helped me channel my pain in an empowered way. 

I was writing deep dark stuff I will never release but needed to get it out to move the grief. I reclaimed the title ‘musician’ in conversation when people asked me what I did, I would say ‘I am a musician’ first.

This felt incredible because it was my soul that made that decision. Not my ego looking for permission or validation. It was an inner feeling of deep self-seeing and self-approval.

Healing was happening and I took all the pressure off myself sharing it publicly to let the medicine in.

YOUR CREATIVE REVOLUTION IS YOUR SOUL-UTION, YOUR MEDICINE 

It’s been a long ass road where I’ve had to become an expert in calling self doubt out. Even through periods of seeming inaction, I’ve spiritually stayed the course of keeping my creative fires lit and nurturing my music behind the scenes.

Before I could share my light I had to learn to stand for myself in quiet and resilient self-celebratory assurance before I felt I could share my inner standing, my re-found radiance with others. 

One of my tried and true practices is gently pulling myself out of my comfort zone. I have learned to listen to my inner lion who calls me forward whether I like it or not.

Leo teaches us how to take healthy pride in ourselves.

A week after I wrote it I performed a song at a talent show shaking like a baby deer but I did it because I needed to express. I was so fucking proud of how much my writing had came on after 2 years of complete creative repression. 

I would NEVER have done this even in my music uni days when I was performing frequently. I had stopped “performing” and began letting my vulnerable expression come through.

There is a huge difference.

It is exposing and terrifying and deeply freeing to let your soul be heard. It hits different in your nervous system when you become a channel.

I began playing more open mics and not inviting anyone. I didn’t need to be seen or validated. I just needed to express and practice my craft. It was my place to make mistakes, to be silly, to be serious, to sometimes cry onstage if I was singing something raw. Me and my guitarist’s mantra became “mistakes are good”

If this resonates you can do this too, whatever you are called to do, take a baby step, you are brave and deserve to embrace what your soul is trying to say. 

EMBRACE YOUR PROCESS, EXPRESS YOUR PROCESS, REST IN YOUR PROCESS, GO SLOWLY, GENTLY AND BRAVELY AND ALL WILL MANIFEST.

YOUR CREATIVITY WILL CALL IN YOUR COMMUNITY OF UNITY 

One thing I really must say is its way WAY better to uplift others along the way. 

The most healing place I recalled my light was in my open mic community in South East London. I had experienced encouragement like it. My confidence blossomed there.

I stand by my lived experience and point 20 on the HH manifesto:

“We each have Art in our heart to share; individuation is key, and it is best done in the unity of community.”

It lights me up to lift you up. THERE IS ROOM FOR EVERY ONE TO SHINE. 

HOLD YOUR OWN HEART AND SOUL’S EVOLUTION AS EQUALLY HIGH AS THE HEARTS AND SOULS OF OTHERS.

The reason I state this, is that low vibrational Leo tends to have an inflated ego and can get caught up in shadowy self serving pursuits where it sees itself, like the sun, as the centre of everything- this is where it’s mirror Aquarius comes in. Aquarius reminds mind Leo to have others in mind as everybody deserves to shine and this raises the collective light.

WE NEED THIS MORE THAN EVER IN THESE DARK TIMES OF SCARCITY AND DIVISION. 

TO MIRROR SOMEONE’S LIGHT CAN CHANGE THEIR WHOLE LIFE.

Your creative potential is infinite. Trust this. Know this. Stay committed to the brave path of standing in your truth and owning it.

More than anything I stand for empowering and encouraging others to realise their greatest creative potential as I know what it feels like to have shite self esteem and be around people that caused me to diminish my voice and held me back from my dreams. 

And I know what it feels like to have incredible mentors and soul mates of support who can embolden you with the confidence to keep going.

Who are you and what do you stand for? If you don’t know it’s ok, go gently little lion.

TAKE A STAND, LEO IS HERE TO GIVE YOU A HELPING HAND 

As spiritual writer Lalah Delia says “Don’t rush who you’re becoming”

I am raw expression.

I stand for encouraging myself as I encourage others.

I stand for empowering myself as I empower others.

I stand for Love and the Truth and express it in everything I do. 

I stand for living a meaningful path of life and love as art, fiercely and vulnerably from my messy human heart. 

I fully commit to the humanitarian mission of being a part of the emotional and creative intelligence revolution.

COMMUNITY AND CONNECTION IS A HUGE PART OF HEALTHY CREATIVITY. 

For the last 4 years I have quietly nurtured my music in my various London bedrooms on my keys, in random pianos in quirky cafè’s, friends houses, dingy music studios but mostly cappella walking through the London streets. I find flow when I’m in motion.

I am sharing some of my original music that I wrote that summer of 2017. I’m scared but I’m doing it.

I will be performing as part of an all female line up for The Creative Courage Circle at the Boiler Room in Guildford on wednesday 12th august which will also be live streamed on YouTube.

It has been a long held dream of mine to play a solo gig accompanying myself, I’m scared but I’m doing it. I cannot thank my producer enough for encouraging me out of my comfort zone to play keys to some stripped back beats he made.

It wont be perfect but it will be part of my creative and spiritual process.

This is why I do this. To respect and share my soul’s deep need to express. This to me is real success.

In creative strength and empowered expression,

Francesca, mama lion of Hunter and Her xxx