GlobalWoman · Find your way in the world
Sagittarius women who explored the world
Ever notice how the great explorers were almost always men? Curious, right?
The lowdown
What if it’s not fear holding you back?
Ever notice how the great explorers, those who sailed the high seas, crossed uncharted lands and ventured into the unknown, were almost always men? What if the ideas, desires and paths you’ve held back from exploring aren’t about fear at all?
What if it’s not fear holding you back,
but indoctrination?
For centuries, those of us raised as women have been told: stay in your lane. Stay in your place. Just stay. Curiosity was painted as dangerous. Asking questions that led beyond the boundaries was reserved for “the bold”, and we weren’t supposed to be bold. We were meant to be good.
To look, but never ask.
To dream, but never go.
Sagittarius, the archer, says otherwise. She nocks the arrow and lets it fly before you’ve finished deciding whether you’re allowed to aim that far. Somewhere between the release and the landing, the arrow becomes a question shot into the dark. Read about Sagittarius season.
These thirteen women, all born under the archer, aimed anyway. They explored in every one of the four worlds.
The outer world
The outer world: explorers of place and power
They went out into the world, and changed what it allowed women to be.
Margaret Mead
Born 16 December 1901 · United States
The anthropologist who lived in Samoa and New Guinea, and whose Coming of Age in Samoa changed how the West saw gender, adolescence and culture.
She went where few women were allowed to go, and came back with questions the world wasn’t ready for.
Shirley Chisholm
Born 30 November 1924 · United States
The first Black woman elected to the US Congress, in 1968, and in 1972 the first Black woman to run for a major party’s presidential nomination.
She explored territory women had never been allowed into, under her own banner: unbought and unbossed.
Valantina Abu Oqsa
Born 3 December 1967 · Palestine
Actress, theatre director, poet and playwright, born in Mi’ilya in the Upper Galilee. She co-founded the Palestinian Theater League in Jerusalem and published her first book of poetry in 1999.
Palestinians call her the “Struggler artist”: a woman who keeps making art in territory where that takes courage every single day.
Arundhati Roy
Born 24 November 1961 · India
Her first novel, The God of Small Things, won the Booker Prize in 1997. Then she crossed into activism, taking on dams, wars and governments.
A writer who refused to stay on the page.
Nine questions. Nine muses. Find the one who is showing you the way.
The otherworld
The otherworld: explorers of what didn’t exist yet
Imagination was their compass.
Ada Lovelace
Born 10 December 1815 · England
She explored by imagination. Her notes on Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, published in 1843, foresaw that a machine might one day make music and art, a century before computers existed.
She called her method poetical science.
Grace Hopper
Born 9 December 1906 · United States
A mathematician and US Navy rear admiral who worked on one of the first computers and built the first compiler, so that people could talk to machines in words rather than numbers.
She charted a field that barely existed, and dared everyone else to follow.
Julie Mehretu
Born 28 November 1970 · Ethiopia
Born in Addis Ababa, she is one of the most celebrated painters working today. Her vast, layered canvases map cities, migration, architecture and upheaval.
A painter who explores the world by drawing the forces that move through it.
Remedios Varo
Born 16 December 1908 · Spain and Mexico
The surrealist painter of mystical travellers and impossible vehicles, wandering through forests, towers and starlit rivers, as in Exploration of the Sources of the Orinoco River.
She fled war in Europe for Mexico City, where she became the closest friend of Leonora Carrington.
The inner world
The inner world: explorers of consciousness
They travelled furthest without leaving the room.
Emily Dickinson
Born 10 December 1830 · United States
She barely left her home in Amherst, and explored the furthest reaches of the inner world. Nearly 1,800 poems, almost none published in her lifetime.
Proof that the bravest journeys can happen without leaving the room.
Clarice Lispector
Born 10 December 1920 · Brazil, born in Ukraine
Her family fled to Brazil when she was a baby. She grew into one of the great explorers of consciousness, writing the mind the way others mapped continents, in books like The Passion According to G.H.
Han Kang
Born 27 November 1970 · South Korea
Winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature. In The Vegetarian and the books that followed, she explores the body, violence and history with unflinching tenderness.
The underworld
The underworld: explorers of truth
They went down for the truth, and came back singing.
Sinéad O’Connor
Born 8 December 1966 · Ireland
A songwriter of fierce truth, who in 1992 tore up a photograph of the Pope on live television to protest the abuse of children in the Church, years before the world was ready to listen.
She paid for every risk she took, and never stopped taking them. She died in 2023.
Taylor Swift
Born 13 December 1989 · United States
The Archer herself. Her song “The Archer” is about the rawness of seeking and becoming, and her Reputation era was her own trip down and back. Read her chart.
The practice
Claim your curiosity this Sagittarius season
Ask the uncomfortable question
What’s the one question you’ve been too afraid to ask yourself? This season, ask it.
Follow the curiosity you’ve denied
What if your curiosity wasn’t a threat to your safety, but the key to your freedom?
Break the rules
Everything you were told about what women are allowed to explore? Question all of it.
Claim your space
Take back the parts of your curiosity you silenced for fear of being too much.
The world is wide, wild and ready for you. This Sagittarius season, the call isn’t just to find your way in the world. It’s to create it.
What are you curious about?
Find your way in the world. Find your horizon.
Give me the wheel. Which muse is calling you to explore?
