The Lion Heart Rising: Under the Leo Full Moon
This weekend's Full Moon dares us to rise like kings & speak like prophets, as it crowns the courageous & calls out the tyrants hiding behind the golden curtains of empire.
In the heat of the Egyptian desert, nestled among the pyramids, lies one of the most mysterious monuments on Earth, and one of the greatest wonders of the world - the Sphinx. Carved from a single block of limestone, it rests low to the sand, massive and still. A lion’s body, stretched and eternal, with a human face, staring east toward the rising sun.
A great Lion facing the dawn.
For centuries, historians dated it to around 2500 BCE, but in the 1990s, geologist Dr. Robert Schoch proposed that the deep weathering on its flanks came not from wind, but from rain - heavy rainfall that hasn't fallen on the Giza Plateau since at least 7000 BCE.
If he’s right, the Sphinx may be over 12,000 years old, built not in the age of Pharaohs, but in the Age of Leo. And if that’s true, then at the time it was built - around 10,500 BCE - the constellation of Leo would have been rising on the eastern horizon, exactly where the Sphinx is looking.
A lion, carved in stone, watching its own reflection rise in the stars.
The sky has shifted since then and Pisces - soon Aquarius - now rises where Leo once stood, but still the Sphinx stares east, as though waiting for the Lion to return.
A memory etched in limestone.
A riddle cast in silhouette.
A heart facing the dawn.
In ancient Egypt, the lion was not a symbol of violence, but of sacred rulership. The Pharaoh was not meant to dominate, but to govern in alignment with Ma’at - the cosmic order of truth, balance, and justice. When the ruler lost alignment with the heart of what was right, the people believed, the land itself would descend into chaos.
To the ancient Egyptians, authority came not from control, but from the heart being in the right place.
That’s Leo.
The Sun.
The lion.
The sovereign heart.
And if the Sphinx ever did begin as a lion - a symbol of sacred heart-led power - then somewhere along the way, we changed its face. We carved over the lion with a man’s head and shrunk the seat of authority from the chest to the mind. We reduced the heart to a pedestal for reason and gave ourselves a head too small for the body it sat on.
We forgot what the ancients knew - that the mind was never meant to rule the heart - but now, under this weekend’s Leo Full Moon on Sunday February 1, that ancient memory stirs again, not in monuments of stone, but within us. This weekend’s Full Moon pulls us out of the noise of systems, headlines, and abstraction, and brings us back to something far older, far quieter, and far more powerful:
The question of whether what we are living still honours our humanity.
When the collective feel their dignity all at once, people stop arguing abstract ideas and start feeling what is true for them. They stop performing roles and start speaking from the chest, as they quietly realise, “I can’t keep pretending this feels okay.”
This Moon won’t be quiet as it calls up the heart. In a world that’s been living mostly in its head, those used to leading with the mind may find the rising-heart signal deeply confronting. It may manifest as fear, but it’s really the mind tussling with the heart for control.
This Moon does not just awaken the heart in the people - it exposes where leadership has been operating from ego rather than service. For those in power known more for force, control, or dominance than warmth or empathy, this rising-heart energy will feel destabilising, because as people become more visibly human, leadership feels more exposed. Under a Moon like this, they are being held to the ancient understanding of Ma’at, into a reckoning for their loss of heart alignment that triggered the descent into chaos. Leaders already under scrutiny may feel the shift as pressure as the spotlight turns emotional and visible and the temperature in the room rises.
This is no ordinary Leo Full Moon.
It rises opposite an Aquarius sky freshly charged by Pluto, where systems, truth, power and people have just been stirred awake. We are standing at the threshold of a heart-led revolution of visibility, and visibility is what changes narratives.
The Lion is roaring.
Are our hearts ready to listen?
This writing leans on the wisdom of planetary pattern recognition. If you’d like to know more - and why I don’t believe in astrology - read all about it HERE
Getting to the Heart of Fear
The Leo Full Moon speaks directly to our hearts, so as we head into the weekend, don’t be surprised if you - or others around you - become strangely emotional, more expressive, or less willing to swallow what doesn’t sit right inside. You may feel a sudden urge to speak more honestly, to seek warmth, realness, and dignity. This isn’t drama - it’s the heart coming back online.
But don’t forget: when the heart rises to offer the mind comfort, the mind often panics. It knows, somewhere deep down, that it’s not meant to be running the show alone, so when the heart rises, the mind often tries to bolt the door shut. It resists the flow of love with everything it’s got, and that sensation - that inner pressure, that tightening, that fight - is what we experience as fear, anxiety, panic, and worry.
Fear is the feeling we get when the mind is trying to stay in control while the heart is trying to speak.
The mind wants certainty, strategy, logic, and control.
The heart moves by truth, feeling, and intuition.
And when the heart starts rising, the mind can experience that as a threat - as loss of order, or loss of grip. In the body, that often registers as fear, not because something’s wrong, but because something’s trying to change. Deep knowing is trying to rise.
Modern science now shows what the ancients knew - the heart’s electromagnetic field is far stronger than the brain’s. We were never meant to live from the head alone.
So if you’ve been living mostly in your head - analysing, bracing, overthinking, or arguing - this Moon might feel unsettling. But if you’ve been practicing letting the heart lead, this Moon will feel like warmth, courage, and a strange but welcome sense of homecoming.
This Moon is not creating fear, but simply revealing where we’ve been guarding ourselves from feeling. And that is its quiet, steady power.
Leo and Heart-Led Leadership
The horrific moments we’re living through right now - the atrocities unfolding in Minnesota, Iran, and elsewhere - are only possible because too many of us have closed our hearts for too long and let the mind run the show solo. This weekend’s Leo Full Moon arrives to turn the spotlight toward where love has gone missing, and nowhere will that light shine more fiercely than on the seat of false power - 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
This Full Moon lands just three degrees from Donald Trump’s natal Pluto - the planet of control, dominance, secrecy, and obsession with image. It sits buried in his 12th house, behind the curtain, and this Moon pulls the curtain open. What has been hidden in shadow is now exposed in light.
And at the same time, Uranus is squaring both his Mars and Ascendant - a double-blindside triggering shock, volatility and the instinct to lash out when the mask begins to crack and the body can’t hold the pressure anymore.
If the Moon is the people, and Pluto is power, then this Full Moon is the moment the people’s hearts - activated, visible, and dignified - press directly against the fault lines of his fear. Not as cosmic punishment, but as cosmic return. Cause and effect. Rhythm and consequence. The lion-heart rises, and hollow authority quakes.
When a leader governs by dominance instead of alignment, this kind of Moon isn’t just uncomfortable - it’s existentially destabilising. Not because someone is yelling, but because people stop pretending and stop performing. They stop tolerating what no longer honours their humanity.
This Moon doesn’t destroy Trump - it destabilises the scaffolding he’s standing on and exposes what was always waiting behind the curtain. And in his world - a world built on optics, spin, and projection - even a shift in tone can feel like a death blow.
But what he’s really standing before isn’t public opinion. It’s the ancient drumbeat of the heart. The original one - the one that beat in the chest of the lion before it wore a crown. The one that once ruled Egypt in alignment with Ma’at - truth, balance, justice - not ego.
He’s not just facing the people.
He’s facing memory.
The memory of what power used to mean.
This Full Moon doesn’t just shine.
It remembers.
America and the Moon
Under the light of this Moon, something is stirring - not loud yet, but unmistakable. And it’s not anger. It’s dignity.
This month we’ve been drowning in Aquarius energy - systems, ideologies, outrage loops, data streams, noise. This Leo Full Moon drops like a stone into the still center of the self, landing opposite the Aquarian Sun and saying: Come back to the heart.
And when we look to the United States’ natal chart, the message is thunderous. Uranus squares the Moon, jolting the emotional body of the nation. Mars burns through the South Node - old karma flaring up. And this very Moon activates the country’s North Node - the compass point of its destiny, the path forward. This is a pulse that says: We’ve been here before. We can’t keep doing this.
But it’s not protest energy. Not yet. It’s pre-protest - the breath before the crowd gathers, the moment a hundred thousand people feel, in unison, that something inside has shifted.
They don’t shout - they just stop complying.
They stop playing the part they were handed in someone else’s play.
This is not revolution by force, but revolution by realness.
The collective mind may still be screaming, but the collective heart is standing up. And for an administration that has relied on gaslighting, coercion, and force, the rising of a million hearts will not register as love. It will register as uncontainable threat.
As the Leo Moon climbs, so too does the people’s heart, and those who have led with the cold cruelty of mind - in absence of heart - will find themselves shrinking under the rising heat of a heart-led revolution.
The People’s Heart
On an individual level, each of us will feel this Moon differently, according to our own charts. As a very broad overview:
Air Sun signs - Aquarius, Gemini, Libra - may feel the tension between mind and heart more strongly. Let the emotional truth have the mic for once.
Fire Sun signs will feel lit up. For Leo, Aries, and Sagittarius, this Moon energises you and calls you to lead from the heart, not the head. Don't hold back.
Water Sun signs feel this Moon deeply, like a pulse under the surface. Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces - don’t run from the emotion. Let it guide you home.
Earth Sun signs - Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn - may feel vulnerable under this Moon, but it’s not weakness - it’s the gift of cracking open. Let the emotion rise. There’s gold underneath.
But your Sun sign is just one element of your chart - you really can only know how a Full Moon will land for you by taking in all the planetary positions listed on your natal chart.
If you want to understand the composition of your own unique natal chart and find out specifically how this major shift will play out for you, you can Ask Arion - an astrology website I was a part of building that uses your birth details and cutting edge AI technology so you can literally ask Arion any questions you have about your chart. It’s free to sign up, and when you do, simply ask Arion “How does the Leo Full Moon affect my chart?”
If you’ve been living from your head - bracing, strategising, scrolling, and rationalising - this Moon may feel like a wave you weren’t ready for, not because something is wrong, but because the heart is rising, and the mind doesn’t want to give up control.
You may feel it in your body as fear, and it would be easy to misinterpret it as fear of danger, when what it really is is fear of honesty.
This is a Moon that reveals what you’ve outgrown by stirring the part of you that’s tired of pretending. It reactivates the sovereign centre inside you that says, “I am not just a function. I am not just a role. I am a living, feeling, dignified being.”
This Moon isn’t here to break you down, but bring you back.
Back to your chest.
Back to your truth.
Back to the lion you were never meant to silence.
You may cry.
You may speak.
You may decide.
Whatever rises, honour it.
Because the Sphinx is not just waiting for Leo to rise in the sky again.
It’s waiting for Leo to rise in you.
And when it does, the world will no longer look the same, not because it changed,
but because you finally showed up in it.
The Return of the Roar
The Sphinx still watches the eastern sky, her body of Lion long predating the head of the Pharaoh. She remembers what we forgot: that true leadership begins in the heart. Before empire, before ego, before mind-over-matter dominance, there was the Lion. Heart-led. Solar. True.
But we re-carved the head to suit the age of man.
We whittled down the heart to elevate the mind.
And what we got was a species with a head too small for its body, a civilisation top-heavy with intellect but starving for soul.
This Moon, rising now in Leo, doesn’t just shine in the night sky - it knocks on the ribcage and rouses the memory in our blood that we were never built to live from fear or function. We were born with a compass that pulses truth through our chest, and it’s pointing due east.
To the Sphinx.
To the Sun.
To the ancient drumbeat of dignity.
As America wrestles with its own reflection and Trump faces the erosion of the illusion he’s built, something older than all of it is stirring: the quiet but unmistakable sound of the people’s hearts coming back online.
And when the people remember who they are - dignified, divine, ungovernable by fear - the age of heart-led leadership begins again.
It won’t look like protest.
It will look like presence.
It will feel like truth.
And it will begin within each of us.
The Lion does not roar from its head, but its heart.
And when it roars, the world remembers.
This is not a time to roar for attention.
It is a time to roar from the core of who you are.
Not to impress or convince or explain.
Just to be. Just to stand.
Like the Sphinx, unmoved by the storm.
Like the Lion, sure of its place.
Because when the roar of the heart rises, the future listens.
My intention in my writing is to lessen the climate of fear around world events by offering clarity and cosmic context for what’s unfolding; to bring context to the chaos. I believe our highest calling right now is to anchor in the vibration of love & truth and call in a more beautiful world, and to do that, we must lean out of fear. I hope you read this with an open, uplifted heart.
This is beautiful. I got chills reading it.
The 1st is also the ancient Irish fire festival of Brighid. She is a triple goddess- sisters, not maiden, mother and crone. Of healing, poetry and smith craft. The matron saint of Ireland for fifteen hundred years and still deeply beloved. She is a liminal being, the woman who embodied those qualities and became a saint straddled the world between paganism and Christianity. She was the daughter of a druid and his pagan serving woman and the legends say she was born at midnight on the doorstep.
I find it glorious that this very special year of the Genesis reset, and in the same month weeks preceding it, her feast falls on the rising of the heart in Leo. 💚💚💚
Sat against the sphynx. For a moment, I could feel its heart beating.