Another opportunity to attend a free master class in projection is any election season. Here in Wisconsin we had a primary for governor last week during the New Moon eclipse in Leo.
The polls and pundits were practically measuring the drapes for a double-digit Francesca Hong victory. It was as if everyone was skipping past the 5 of Wands clashing of sticks, so to speak, and going straight to the 6 of Wands celebration. When the dust settled, David Crowley squeaked out the win.
For weeks, the collective was hypnotized by a narrative—a confident projection of how things had to go. And then, in a single evening, reality quietly dismantled the script.
It’s a classic Leo season dynamic: In its shadow, Leo remains stuck in the performative spectacle—bold assertions, the need to be front-and-center, and the fierce tribal posturing online. We project our desires for rescue, or our fears of doom, onto names on a ballot, treating political candidates less as real human beings and more as avatars in high-stakes theater.
But Leo has another face—one that never asks to be seen.
The late Jungian analyst Marion Woodman was born under a New Moon in Leo. Unlike the Sun blazing in midday, a Leo New Moon is solar light planted in the quiet, mysterious dark. It doesn’t perform. It doesn’t need applause or external validation. It’s the steady, quiet, self-contained pulse of the authentic Self.
In Conscious Femininity, Woodman offered a perspective that cuts straight through the noise of our political landscape:
I think the future of our planet depends on human beings discovering their own light, becoming conscious of the universe as one soul (p. 109).
Notice where Woodman places the responsibility. She doesn’t say our salvation depends on the triumph of our preferred political platform or in perfecting our predictive models. She points directly to the inward task: discovering our own light.
When we hand our authority over to collective projections, we trade the grounded wisdom of the body and the heart for the frantic, reactive energy of the crowd. It’s an act of individual agency carried out in silence, much like the 7 of Wands—one figure holding position while everyone else presses in. The collective needs individuals anchored in their own center, capable of seeing the whole.
As Leo season enters its final days, the invitation isn’t to dwell on the shock of external outcomes. The invitation is to call your energy back home.
What is one collective noise or expectation that consistently dims your light—and what would it look like to stop letting it?
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In depth,
Anita Ashland
AnitaAshland.com
