Francesca Lisette is a poet, astrologer, interdisciplinary artist, and creativity mentor based in London. They are the author of two collections of poetry, performance writing, and artistic ephemera: Teens (Mountain, 2012) and sub rosa: The Book of Metaphysics (Boiler House Press, 2018). They have performed their work in the UK, Europe, the US, and Australia. Work is forthcoming in the 2021 Athens Biennale catalogue and featured in the recently-released anthology Anthropocene of the Everyday (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2020). In Fall 2021, they are starting a PhD in Creative Writing & Literature at the University of Denver. Follow them on Instagram @fountainofiris.
MB How did you first become interested in astrology?
FL I grew up in an Air-sign (Gemini & Libra) family. My mother and sister share a birthday, and I was due on my father’s birthday. I arrived early, on-brand for someone with the Moon in notoriously impatient Aries! As a teenager obsessed with Buffy, nature & mythology, I started practising witchcraft and Wicca, collecting crystals and reading magazine horoscopes. But astrology really started to resonate with me when I looked up my own birth chart shortly before I turned 21. I’d had a tumultuous, life-changing year in which I was diagnosed with debilitating chronic pain, and this was the first opportunity to learn more about myself which came from a perspective which seemed truthful, empowering and kind. I felt seen objectively for the first time. From then on, I was constantly looking up charts, horoscopes and the meanings of placements online and reading classic books of modern psychological astrology, like Liz Greene and Steven Forrest. Around 2013 it occurred to me that I might actually be obsessed enough to practise astrology professionally, and a couple of years later when Chani Nicholas told me my chart indicated a strong natural affinity for divination, that sealed the deal.
MB Could you tell us a little about the "style" or tradition of astrology that you practice?
FL My style is always evolving. I continually study as I practise, and use what works. When I first started, I was working in a modern psychological style because that was what I knew. Since studying at Nightlight Astrology School, I’ve shifted towards traditional astrology, incorporating whole sign houses and traditional rulerships. When I say ‘traditional’, I mean through the framework of ancient Hellenistic techniques which have only become more widely available through translation in the last 25 years or so, as well those which survived in altered form into the Renaissance era. These techniques provide a wealth of predictive and evaluative information. However, I continue to be guided by intuition in my work. I am less interested in technique for the sake of it, and more in developing a dialogue with the person in front of me to find solutions to the issues and questions they’ve come in with.
The real magic of astrology happens in the consultation, at the intersection of intuition, inquiry and presence. Before a session I’ll often feel drawn to look up certain asteroids, fixed stars or other configurations in someone’s chart, based on what they said in a couple of sentences on their intake form. When we talk, it turns out that the symbolism and themes of that astrological point coincides with their recent experiences or current dilemmas to a degree which is frankly astonishing. I have similar uncanny flashes of knowledge and insight - claircognizance and clairsentience - when reading tarot as well. So while astrology can often be about rules, angles and foundational principles, what we’re really doing when meeting for a reading is creating a portal for radical and spontaneous insights to flow forth.
MB I find it fascinating that you are both a poet and an astrologer. What do you believe can be found at the intersection of poetry and astrology? How do these two practices inform each other and how do they differ? In what way does your poetry practice influence your astrological readings?
FL This is a great question, thank you for asking it! For me, poetry has more in common with painting and music than it does with prose, focused as it is on the subtle music and hidden resonances of language. Astrology is itself a poetic art: leaning heavily on mythology, precision and calibration to understand a unique moment in time, and by extension, an individual as an expression of that moment. I think poetry similarly arises at instances of inexplicable confluence, or at least, it does for me: sometimes I want to write because of a shape I saw, a song lyric, or unusual light. Often it’s the culmination of a strange brew of sensory information. It’s defined by a yearning to communicate with the numinous and elemental.
Astrology came into my life around the time I started publishing my poems, so it has pervaded my work from the very beginning. In my consultation practice I often reach for an image to describe the experience of certain placements or transits, and no doubt the practice of writing poetry makes those sensory expressions more accessible to me.
I often think of Keats’ negative capability as a general compass for navigating life. He says that a poet must be capable of being in the presence of uncertainty and mysteries, and what better principle could there be for an astrologer to grasp, given that our art is such an odd mixture of precise calculations, and the unknowable quantity that is any human being?
MB Your take on astrology is also informed by your interest in somatics - how are these two related, for you?
FL I became interested in movement as an adult when I made a performance piece which tapped into some of my experiences with the medical establishment as a gendered and inexplicably symptomatic body. Through movement I initially hoped to heal my physical pain; it was also an attempt to return my body to the process of writing.
I now teach a course combining literature, astrology and movement practices called Draw Down the Stars. It takes the ‘outer’ planets – the social planets Jupiter and Saturn, and the transpersonal planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, plus rogue comet-asteroid Chiron – as a complete roadmap for the creative process. The initial idea for this came from a moment in a dance class in 2016, when my teacher Kathleen Hermesdorf asked us to dance with Impulse, Imagination and Instinct, three specific modes which we had practised that day, which she now wanted us to combine. I said something like, ‘oh, like: Uranus, Neptune, Pluto’ – and then she asked me to explain what I meant by that to the class. Kathleen passed recently, and so it is more important than ever for me to stress the impact of her generous pedagogy, rapt attention, and inspirational genius without which my work simply wouldn’t exist – and to strive to follow her example in my own teaching.
The archetypal forces which the planets represent exceed us, romance us, impel us, command us, evade us, throughout and across time. The birth chart is like a sketch of our personal connections to these ancient divinities. Somatics allow that which is latently present to come to the surface, and astrology can reveal and articulate the full dimensions of those capacities. Bringing these two practices together connects body, spirit and the ineffable – opening new avenues for creativity, self-knowledge and adaptability which changes how we show up for each other, ourselves, and to the wild opportunity of life itself.