The Feminine Regulus
my personal experience with the power of the royal star
Regulus is a royal star. Typically associated with power, glory and leadership, those touched by or working with Regulus, found at 0º Virgo, tend to be on the path of self-actualization in order to step into their ultimate potential. His name, originating from the Latin Rex, “king", underscores the star’s ruling power.
The star is located in the very center of Leo, the lion constellation, marking the heart of the king of the jungle. From his central position, Regulus rules and impacts all. He embodies the power of the one to shape the many, for good or for ill. To walk the path of Regulus is to embody your full strength, knowing that doing so is an act of bravery that can benefit all.
In most descriptions of the star, Regulus is decidedly masculine. But my experience, bolstered by gnosis shared by fellow practitioners, is more wobbly than that.
Over the past few months, as I’ve studied and worked with the Royal Stars for a class series I’m working on, Regulus has taken me on a wild, profoundly healing journey that resists the typical gendered presentation of the lion heart.
In this essay, I will present to you my experience with a feminine Regulus, exploring how this star plays out beyond the lofty, shiny significations.
Will you consider the heart of the lioness with me?
Contents
Female Trouble (How Regulus Healed Me)
Regulus and Blood
when ur verified shared gnosis is endometriosis
Standing Up for My Pain
Wooing Nature: Regulus and Healing
Protecting the Pride: Feminine Regulus
Female Trouble (How Regulus Healed Me)
6.13.25
Yesterday, I found out I have endometriosis. I am thirty one years old. I have been menstruating since I was 13. That is 18 years, a whole legal person’s lifespan, between being bleeding each month and finally confirming that something was, indeed, wrong with this bleeding.
Since I was thirteen, I have suffered from heavy, painful, prolonged periods. In a summer philosophy camp in high school (yes I am That Kind of Person) I somehow bled through my white capris when we all had to file outside for a fire drill, though a sweet friend had a sweatshirt to cover up the blooming stain. Until I got an IUD a few years ago, I could expect a full day of pure, shredding pain in my deep abdomen every month that could only be pacified by taking an unhealthy amount of pain medication.
Despite the many inconveniences that sprouted up around my body, I convinced myself that I couldn’t possibly have a real illness. It’s only once day a month that I can’t function, I reasoned. While I certainly was in pain for days before and after, it didn’t require 10 advils so was it really that bad? Do I really think I *deserve* to blame my ~female trouble~ on a disease that actually makes people suffer?
It feels harsh to write that all down but I know I’m not alone in turning from the body. This is how the world we are in is designed: plenty of the cogs in the machine benefit when women, femmes, people with uteruses— especially women of color and black women in particular— all work through their pain. The world functions as usual when our physical agony is wheedled down like matter spread thin — oh so thin!– until it’s just spirit, immaterial, not real, and thus chalked up to the disproportionate emotions we are forced to bear. Our pain is not an experience to be respected and honored but okay to ignore completely.
In that way, we are taught to dehumanize ourselves, consider our individual needs a burden to be ignored when possible.
Where do I find myself in the pain? How have I been taught to relate to myself when my body does as she is designed? How can my pain be a vital part of who I am and what I have to offer?
Regulus and Blood
Endometriosis is the disease of a wandering uterus. Instead of being confined to the womb, the uterine cells grow in rogue places throughout the body— the ovaries, the stomach, even within the muscles of the uterus, though they can even sprout all the way up in the head. As Johanna Hedva, fellow endo witness, puts it: “every month, those rogue uterine cells that have implanted themselves throughout my body ‘obey their nature and bleed,’ to quote fellow endo warrior Hilary Mantel. This causes cysts, which eventually burst, leaving behind bundles of dead tissue like the debris of little bombs. Yeah, the pain is annihilating”. Fortunately, I have never had a cyst burst, as far as my body can remember, but the ultrasound that confirmed my condition found 2 on my ovaries— one was 5cm and the other was 6cm. Two time bombs deep within me, filled with blood.
The first Regulus materia I made was a St. John’s Wort and Mugwort oil, turned deep red due to the oils in the St John’s Wort deceptively bright yellow petals. Like Regulus, beneath the golden exterior is blood.
I blessed the oil for help with authenticity, visibility, and power, all the normal Regulus attributes, but also added in healing, a lesser known facet of this royal star. Specifically, I asked for aid in healing my cat who had just suffered a minor tail injury at the time of my working, though I am sure Regulus was not satisfied to stop with her.
When I met Regulus another time, in the desert last month, I bled again too. Given the go-ahead to make an essence with the tall, spindly ocotillo plant, I was gently running my fingers over its spiny stalks when one pricked me, right on my soft finger pad. The plant wanted me to bleed, so I obliged, smearing my intimate offering on its tiny green leaves. When I checked the chart for the ritual, Regulus was rising.
when ur verified shared gnosis is endometriosis
A few weeks later, my friend, Kira, suggested I should get checked for endometriosis. Not a doctor, mind you, but a woman who had recently given birth and been diagnosed herself. “If you’re “nonfunctional” at all during your period on a regular basis that is an Endo Indicator,” she wrote. “It shouldn’t interfere w daily life”.
“rly cool if someone told me that before now” I replied “being a woman baby 😎”
What can you do but laugh? Given a body we’re told is important because it can sustain life, but no one had bothered to tell me that my pain wasn’t normal.
“also lolling that regulus has been such a theme for us” I add, given that we were both newly initiated in his cultus.
“Regulus is 1000% behind all of this for me personally” Kira adds.
“i was on my period during the ritual too lol” I reply.
She remembered a dream she had with Regulus featuring a rusty red substance and a wand being dipped in dried herbs. She added that, now that she’s looking at her notes, I was in the dream too, holding the staff.
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