GlobalWoman · Find your way in the world
21 Sun in Leo muses
Twenty-one women, twenty-one suns, and the light each one dared to carry into the world.
The lowdown
Each of us carries a new sun
Each of us carries a new sun, a unique light and story to bring into the world. These changing, sometimes challenging times call on you to be that new sun.
“There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.”
Octavia E. Butler
Leo season invites you to embody that light with courage and authenticity. To live not from ego, but from the heart. To shine not to dominate, but to radiate, from a place of deep alignment with who you are becoming.
At the heart of courage is authenticity.
And each of these 21 Sun in Leo muses is a lesson in it. These muses are not carbon copies of each other. They are wildly different: soft and loud, slow-burning and instant. Some shattered the status quo. Others rewrote its rules in silence, in sculpture, in paint, in poetry.
Each one is a sun of her own.
The voices
Sun in Leo radiant creators and performers
They don’t wait for the spotlight. They become it.
Kate Bush
30 July
Weaving the surreal and the spectral, with a voice that lives in the dreamspace.
Rina Sawayama
16 August
A genre-bender and pop futurist, a voice for the queer and the misfit.
Viola Davis
11 August
A groundbreaking actor and fierce truth-teller whose presence commands any room.
Madonna
16 August
The queen of reinvention, provocateur of pop, and a trailblazer who transformed music and culture.
Dua Lipa
22 August
Optimistic, confident, cosmopolitan and always evolving. A Leo at the peak of modern pop stardom.
Tori Amos
22 August
With her mane of red hair, she embodies the mythic, the mystical and the raw. Her music is ritual, revelation and rebellion.
Nine questions. Nine muses. Find the one who is showing you the way.
The witnesses
Sun in Leo writers who bear witness
They write by their own light, so the rest of us can see.
Celeste Ng
30 July
Quiet fire and razor-sharp prose. She writes what society whispers and suppresses.
Goretti Kyomuhendo
1 August
Ugandan writer and founder of the African Writers Trust, building literary futures.
Warsan Shire
1 August
Poet of migration, memory and the feminine interior. Language as invocation.
Isabel Allende
2 August
One of the world’s most beloved novelists. History, heart and myth are braided into every book.
Diane Wakoski
3 August
Confessional and sharp, her poetry pierces the heart.
Gish Jen
12 August
With wit and clarity, she explores identity, belonging and the American narrative.
Andrea Gibson
13 August
A Leo who burned with tenderness. Their poetry is both balm and battle cry. Listen to Andrea Gibson on “The Blessings of the Wound”, a deeply moving conversation from the For The Wild podcast: tender, honest and lit with courage.
The torchbearers
Sun in Leo visionary leaders
Power, carried like a lantern rather than a sword.
Jacinda Ardern
26 July
Former New Zealand Prime Minister who led with compassion and strength. A new kind of power.
Greta Gerwig
4 August
Writer, director and actor bringing nuance, feminism and emotional intelligence to the big screen.
Martha Stewart
3 August
Matriarch of the curated life. Her empire? Built on taste, precision and strategy.
The makers
Sun in Leo artists and sculptors
Light, given form: in paint and clay, in sculpture and found treasure.
Judith Leyster
Baptised 28 July
A 17th-century Dutch painter who claimed her space in a male-dominated world.
Betye Saar
30 July
An assemblage artist reimagining Black identity, ancestry and spirituality.
Audrey Blackman
28 July
A British sculptor known for works evoking sensuality, form and feminine strength.
Marlene Dumas
3 August
A South African artist whose work wrestles with the body, politics and vulnerability.
Nicolette Johnson
12 August
An Australian ceramic artist crafting vessels that feel like relics of a future mythology.
Why now
Why Leo season, why now?
Because you need the sun, and not just outside of you.
Leo season reminds you that being seen isn’t vanity. It’s vitality. Your gifts are not meant to stay hidden. These muses show how voice, vision and presence become acts of self-trust and cultural transformation.
When you show up as your true self, without ego but with openness, you light a path not only for yourself, but for others finding their way.
Living authentically without ego is where the challenge and the complexity lie. Knowing you’re not alone in radiating, that your light exists in harmony with the lights of others, is part of the true courage Leo asks you to claim.
The invitation
Reflection prompts for your Leo season
The light
Let the light of the muses lead you
Whether you’re an artist, a writer, a woman in the midst of reinvention, or simply trying to navigate your next steps, let these Leo muses be a mirror, a map and a spark.
Because the truth is, you find your way in the world
by shining from the inside out.
Find your way in the world. Be a new sun.
Twenty-one suns have risen. Which muse is rising with yours?
