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Mane shaking, throne claiming Leo rules the skies from July 23rd to August 22.
Leo energy commands attention, demands respect and requires worship. It will not be ignored. It will not play tambourine in the family band. It will sing lead, and sometimes lead guitar but only if it can wear a top hat, have a pet mountain lion named Curtis and steal the goddamn show every time like leather loving, sleeve banishing apex Leo, ladies and gentlemen, Slash.
To encapsulate Leo I offer a parable from fellow lion Steve Carrell, “Would I rather be feared or loved? Um easy. Both. I want people to be afraid of how much they love me.”
While Leo is the sign voted most likely to masturbate to their own sex tape, they are also most likely to donate to a charitable cause or post bail for an attractive stranger. As a fixed sign, Leos excel at both creating and stabilizing dramatic situations.
Leo energy is, above all else, regal AF. It wants recognition but not ultimate power or autocratic rulership. Conquering is curative to Leo but it wants to rule magnanimously.
An initial interaction with a Leo can feel a bit like an audition or a royal appointment, you will be received warmly, estimated carefully and sorted accordingly. Being consulted is wildly gratifying for a Leo. They like to feel like they matter and are held in high regard. Sometimes a Leo is so regal they pull a power move, relocate to the US with the hotter of the two princes and reject their royal title and the fraught lineage of the monarchy, all while dressing impeccably la Leo native Meghan Markle.
Even when a Leo serves time, they can make the time serve them, case in point lifestyle magnate Martha Stewart whose stint behind bars made her a vocal advocate for prison reform, a skilled ceramicist and lent her a newfound humility that ultimately benefitted her brand. If there’s anything the world loves more than a fall from grace, it’s a gritty return to it.
Fire signs though they are, lions prefer to temper their tempers, controlling their energy and dispensing it in ways that benefit others and support their image as benevolent rulers. As doomed romantic poet and Leo PB Shelly mused, ““A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.” Although Leo gets a bad rap for being self-centered the best among them understand and regularly execute this moral imperative.
For all their warmth and extroversion, Leos keep the details of their love affairs closely guarded. If you ask a them what their love language is they will inevitably admit, “all of them.” These folks despise indiscretion and cheap romance. Sentimental, they are easily swayed by grand gestures and easily lubricated, emotionally and otherwise by praise.
Leo is ruled by the sun, the largest and brightest of all celestial bodies. Leo is rightly associated with creativity, as solar energy encourages growth of the literal and metaphorical variety. Light will always find, and follow, a Leo. The best of them will use this attention to galvanize; to support causes, bolster others and illuminate information that stands to benefit their fellow man. A prime example of this is found in lion king Carl Jung whose psychological scholarship and theories of archetypes and the unconscious mind have widely and wildly influenced the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, religious study, archeology, literature, philosophy, astrology and art.
The Leo constellation is born from the death of a lion, specifically the Nemean lion, slain by the Greek hero Hercules as the first of his twelve labors of atonement. As the name implies, the Neman lion wreaked toothsome hell on the denizens of Nemea. Larger and more fearsome than his feline contemporaries, his golden skin was impervious to metal, steel or wood, making him a hard cat to kill. After cornering him in his gold laden cave, Hercules wrestled the lion, eventually strangling it to death with his bare hands. Wanting a trophy for his efforts, he used the lions own claw to skin him, wearing the hide and the lion’s head as a kind of bestial armor. The goddess Hera, a sworn enemy of Hercules and a psuedo den mother to the Nemean lion, placed him in the night sky where he shines, impenetrable and eternal as the constellation Leo.
Because Leo represents the child within, there’s an emphasis on fun and a commitment to play. These folks have a well earned reputation for being something of a contagion that encourages others to let loose and set free. Consequently, Zelda Fitzgerald, the uncontested life of the party, who became synonymous with the decadence of the flapper era, was a Leo. Mae West who’s subversions of the status quo were always made with a loquacious wink and a smile is a fellow lion queen. Sometimes the play and the performance take on higher stakes as was the case with Leo Mata Hari whose good looks and casual love affairs gave way to claims of espionage that ended in her execution.
Executions not withstanding, Leo excels at finding the levity in life, they make for natural comedians. Kritsin Wiig and Maya Rudolph are lions as is James Corden whose Carpool Karaoke combines the Leo hallmarks of riotous laughter, vocal showboating and a camera crew. This sense of humor easily and expertly extends to the world of art where such Leo masters as Andy Warhol, Andres Seranno and Marcel Ducahmp created works that provide social critique through satire and playful provocation. I’ll bet a fistful of gilded pubic hair that Banksy’s birth chart is rife with Leo placements.
Astrology 101: Your guide to the stars
On a more serious note, Leo innately understands PR; how to promote themselves, make use of their platform and shine a light on dark deeds. Case in point lion and American royalty Jackie Onassis who, despite being the most famous woman in the world, maintained an air of dignified mystery and self mastery. Ever mindful of the power of image, in the aftermath of JFK’s assassination, the first lady agreed to be present for the swearing in of LBJ but refused to remove the pink suit that carried the blood stains of her slain husband. She famously said of the blood she wore, “Let them see what they’ve done.”
Indeed her decision created an image that endures as a revenant of personal loss, a call to bear witness and a command to remember. To quote the astrologer Elise Wells of Planet Poetica, Onassis, in her lived and projected grief, fulfills the archetype of a death queen. When Onassis finally removed her stained suit, blouse, stockings and shoes they were sent to the National Archives where they remain today as a testament of her power to stand within and ultimately shape our collective history.
Be it in images like the one above or in voiced opinion, Leos do not shy away from bold declarations. Among their more aspirational qualities is that regardless of any insecurity Leos never let on that anyone or anything intimidates them, even if that someone is Sagittarius sex god Jim Morrison. Leave it to a lion, IE David Crosby to denounce the Lizard King as a “dork.” Burn, indeed. Crosby aside, one of the many merits of Leo is the wide net they cast when it comes to friendship. While they hunger for admiration they are committed to inclusivity, never leaving a stranger on the fringes or an underdog under the underpass when they could be sharing the stage.
Just as the sun illuminates the earth, so too does an actualized Leo burn bright as an example of what can be achieved when you live with the attitude that you are deserving. To paraphrase Madonna, patron saint of Leos, people don’t get what they want because they don’t say what they want. Perhaps the greatest gift that Leo offers is permission; permission to ask for more and refusal to settle for less , permission to move through the world like it belong to you and you to it, permission to fill a room and fill your cup, permission for plenty.
Leo energy edges towards the extreme, evident in the fact that lions eat until the point of immobility, including but not limited to, their own young. Conversely, the dark side of Leo energy is found in egotism, petty competition, and the propensity to feed off of drama as though it were an antelope carcass.
There is an 85% chance all lions reading this article will glaze over or all together skip this section which brings me to my next challenge/weakness/thorn in the paw, these people are easily and deeply wounded by criticism. The only thing that ails them more is apathy. In this sense it is helpful to imagine Leo as a child; if you pay them plenty of attention and never object to their desires or demands you are stunting rather than supporting their growth.
Similarly, If a Leo fails to integrate constructive criticism or balance the needs of the ego with the needs of the collective, the results can take the shape of boot wearing, genocide waging dictator vibes like that of Leo Benito Mussolini who let his megalomania pitch his country into chaos. He was ultimately destroyed by the same people he portended to protect, a darkly poetic ending for a lion gone astray and out of mind.
Another example of the pitfalls of an unchallenged Leo can be found in Napoleon whose hubris during his later military campaigns cost him his freedom and many, many French soldiers their lives. A complex cat, Napoleon was as robust in romance as he was in warfare, penning many a love struck letter to his wife Josephine.
As we’ve established, Leo loves play but they also play to win and when made to lose, no sign suffers failure more deeply or takes rejection more personally. At its darker expression this manifests as an ugly competitive streak, one that takes undue credit and celebrates the failure of others. Though Leo is adept at drawing attention where it is due, sometimes they draw it gratuitously as Leo Demi Lavato did when they decided to wage unholy and wholly unnecessary war on her neighborhood fro yo shop.
Leo is by nature both powerful and creative but those qualities can easily bubble into self-important, artistic tyranny. For your consideration I bring you impossible genius and full bore Leo, Stanley Kubrick. The man had a 15 page manual for how to care for his pet cat, whom he believed could read his mind. His fanatical filmmaking knew no limits; “Eyes Wide Shut” filmed without pause for 400 days, Malcolm McDowell went temporarily after shooting an iconic scene in “A Clockwork Orange,” Matthew Modine nearly missed the Caesarean birth of his son during “Full Metal Jacket” and Kubrick halted the production of “Dr. Strangelove” until a scene could be filmed with a specific green table, despite the film being shot entirely in black and white. Insufferable? Often. Inspired? Always.
In the Major Arcana, Leo corresponds to the card of Strength, the iconography of which reflects the complex nature of the sign. A fierce lion is depicted under the serene presence of a woman, a marriage of physical ferocity and gentle power. The lion represents passion, the ego and the search for human connection. The cat also expresses the shadow side of Leo energy that can manifest when needs go unmet, deeds unnoticed and the self unexplored. In contrast and compliment, the woman in white symbolizes the self-love required to cure, or tame, these destructive impulses. The Strength card and Leo energy en masse show us the balance that must exist between fire and fortitude, as the lion and woman are not separate entities but different expressions of the same spirit, ever seeking resolution.
The fifth house is the house of pleasure. It is associated with romance, self-expression, creativity and children, as children are the ultimate creation and absolutely unapologetic in their pursuit of joy. For these reasons, Leo and the fifth house are tied to the concept of the inner child and as the brilliant astrologer Alice Sparkly Kat notes, the power of play, “Leos like to play. Play is not expenditure. Play is far deeper and far richer than that. And, so too, are Leos because Leos live to play. There is silliness to play but there is seriousness too. Play can be a part of grief work and play informs us what is important to us… Leo is not afraid to be a child and they are angry for any childhood at all that they may have been deprived of.” In this sense, the fifth house and in turn, the lion pride, teach us what it means to examine pleasure, exalt in play and honor our right to receive and reciprocate love.
In terms of the physical body, Leo rules the heart, spine, spinal column and upper back. Because Leo rules the heart, matters of it are of utmost importance. Leos take heartbreak hard, especially if their pride is compromised in the emotional fallout. Expressing, understanding, seeking and recovering from love are the ways they make sense of themselves and the world they move through. As Leo luminary James Baldwin writes, “Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle; love is a war; love is a growing up.” Indeed for many Leo natives, love relationships serve as the most marked milestones of their becoming.
True astrological compatibility is divined through synastry, a kind of birth chart cross-examination that takes into account the entire astrological scape of two individuals. For general, expedited purposes it’s safe to say the following signs stand a good chance of going the distance with a lion:
In Aries, Leo finds a fellow fire sign and a kindred, kindling spirit. In this match, neither party has to apologize for being themselves or for wanting more. This relationship is like a never ending round of truth or dare but with more sex and cars and sex in cars. The same is essentially true of a Leo X Sagittarius match though archers may tire of Leos bombast and lions will yawn at Sag’s proselytizing.
Space cowboy grade A weirdo Aquarius is Leo’s zodiac opposite and the sign they stand to learn the most from. While attraction may not be immediate, intrigue is enduring. Leo loves a challenge and Aquarians are nothing if not a plethora of quirks and mysteries. In turn, Leo warms Aquarius and tethers the star child to the home fires of the body. We see this dynamic at work with Leo mega babe Mila Kunis and her Aquarius husband and suspected extraterrestrial Ashton Kutcher.
Warm, affectionate and prone to grandeur, no one knows how to love as dramatically or fully as a pair of Leos. Case in point Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, two big cats on the world’s stage who seem unable to quit each other. We love to see it and they love to know we’re watching. Of course when fire and fire get together there is always a chance for serious crash and burnout as was the case for twin Leos Madonna and Sean Penn.
“This Used to be My Playground” – Madonna
“6s to 9s” – Big Wild
“Neon Guts” – Lil Uzi Vert
“100 Years Ago” – The Rolling Stones
Astrologer Reda Wigle researches and irreverently reports back on planetary configurations and their effect on each zodiac sign. Her horoscopes integrate history, poetry, pop culture and personal experience. She is also an accomplished writer who has profiled a variety of artists and performers, as well as extensively chronicled her experiences while traveling. Among the many intriguing topics she has tackled are cemetery etiquette, her love for dive bars, Cuban Airbnbs, a “girls guide” to strip clubs and the “weirdest” foods available abroad.
The Sun leaves your birth sign today but that is not an excuse to slow down. Use the momentum you have built up in recent weeks to keep moving towards your ultimate goal. If your rivals are smart they won't stand in your way!