The Sign of the Lion
The Leo constellation represents the fires of love, which warm the heart as the Sun warms the Earth. Leo signs are beneficent, tenacious, and notoriously confident, even, at times, to the point of pride.
The 20 Days of Leo ranges through most of August.
Fire Sign
Leo, the 2nd Fire Sign in the Zodiac, radiates like a brilliant and dazzling light, illuminating the world around them. Just as a flame attracts attention and commands the room, Leos possess a natural magnetism that draws people in. They are the shining stars of the Zodiac, exuding confidence, charisma, and a captivating presence.
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They have an innate ability to take center stage, effortlessly captivating an audience with their radiant energy. Like a beacon of light, they inspire and uplift those around them, igniting the flames of passion and creativity, always striving to leave a lasting impression on the world.
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But their constant radiation and desire for validation can sometimes lead to burns. At their worst, they have an insatiable need to be seen and admired, occasionally overshadowing others with their larger-than-life persona.
So bask in the brilliance of their light, for they bring illumination wherever they go. Their fiery spirit is an inspiration to us all, reminding us to shine our own light brightly into the world.
Love Sign
The Love Motivation, being concerned with the social scene or surrounding environment, drives people to invest their time and energy making the places they spend the most time in reflect and facilitate them. The Fire element strives to do this by making things warm and inviting wherever they go. Temperature is a key concept here, because Love signs correspond to the laws of thermodynamics in physics. For Leo, this is the first law which can be called Transfer, wherein heat and work are methods of exchange. Again this brings to mind the concept of service, and the value of energy injected into a system to excite things and get them moving. Not only do you need to have the right ingredients, in order for a reaction to occur, but you must also achieve the right temperature!
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Bearing this in mind, Leo does this by regulating vibes. What might seem to be a huge waste of energy to a Power motivated sign, is a transfer of heat which the Love sign is highly attuned to. The ambiance, mood, and attitude may be abstract concepts but they play a huge role in the outcome of situations. Love signs are highly social, and prioritize cooperation over individual strength or thought. This ‘ape together strong’ mentality leads them to involve themselves in hierarchies or pecking orders to enforce their ideas about optimal interaction, which may or may not go over well with others. Too domineering of a stance can lead to harsh rejection and ostracism from the group, but too little participation in their calling could make them feel unappreciated, replaceable, or obsolete.
The urge for inclusion drives them to try to bring people together, but playing matchmaker is a dangerous game! Overstepping or speaking on behalf of others too much can damage trust, destroy authenticity, and run the risk of becoming shallow or fake. Instead, they must learn to truly listen, and be of service in ways that the receiving party actually asks for rather than something imagined or generalized.
Personality
Personal Life / Personality
Those born under the Leo constellation or with a Leo influence in their Star Chart tend to have an aura of warmth about them. Leos don’t always tend to be the bombastic, egocentric, and outgoing caricatures that one might think a sign of the Sun would be. On the contrary, they tend to be quite subdued, focused on others, and picky about who they choose to spend time with.
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Nonetheless, they’re naturally confident and independent, although this may also make them detached and lonely at certain phases of their lives. But so long as they are willing, and they often are, they will find their way through tough times.
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Their passion is very evident at an early age, so they have to learn healthy ways to direct and express their intensity. They must be careful not to take things too seriously, usually by finding and cultivating positive influences and relations in their lives.
Interpersonal Life / Relationships
Although Leos are truly warm and light with almost everyone they meet, they generally only give their full radiance and heat to those they know can handle it. This is where their profound sense of loyalty and faith comes from. Sometimes, this dissonance between public and private persona goes to their head, leading to textbook narcissism, whereby their public image is merely a performance, put on by their backstage insecurities. In terms of a relationship, this would mean that the public appearance of their relationship is an act, and the backstage reality is abusive, controlling, or manipulative.
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Because of their legendary selectivity, they tend to have few real friends, but the ones they do have are very close. With their closest friends, they often provide an honest, reflective, and sober perspective. For these same reasons, they may come across to some as insensitive, conniving, or bland, but to see them that way is to mistake their virtues for vices. On the contrary, their interactions are usually quite thoughtful, considerate, and deliberate.
Leos must guard against becoming too reclusive, close-knit, high-strung, or defensive of their particular group, family, or relationship. They don’t need to be so exclusionary. When cut off from outside perspectives, they tend to become needy, paranoid, overcritical, spiteful, demanding, argumentative, and judgmental. This goes against their deeply social nature, and can be prevented by putting themselves in situations that allow them ample exposure to new people, different perspectives, and opportunities for giving. It’s not that they need more attention; they need to give more of their attention.
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They are a force of benevolence in groups: charming, generous, charitable, and protective. They’re also potentially malevolent: manipulative, overbearing, sacrificial, and overprotective. The difference between the two is between an open and a closed system. Keep the system open, and it won’t implode in on itself. This is also true of the Sun; if it weren’t for its immense radiative, expansive force, its immense gravity would cause it to implode.
As parents, they’re compassionate, nurturing, caring, and benevolent, even to the point of being sacrificial, at times. But they may also become distant parents, if their judgmentality turns on their own children. They may feel unconditional love, regardless, but their respect is often conditional. They must learn to listen to and learn from alternative perspectives and experiences. If they can do that, they will bring warmth and enlightenment to all who cross their path.
Social Life / Society
Leos tend to be excellent performers, entertainers, and speakers, because they want to make a good impression. They value good relations with everyone, which motivates them to be what everyone wants them to be. I do not need to repeat myself as to the risks involved with that... It’s actually what makes Leos so noble. For ages, Leos have been associated with regal governance, and this is why. People are attracted to a leader who wishes to transcend all of their differences and shine upon all, like the Sun in the center of the Solar System.
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Astrologers continue to collectively bolster the egos of Leos by telling them to run for office, seek fame, and empower themselves at the expense of others. This has to end… Leos are not meant to be tyrants. They are meant to help other people, and they know it. When they only help themselves, their determination becomes righteousness, their optimism becomes delusional, their idealism becomes uncompromising, and their boldness becomes ruthlessness. All of their talents and ambitions become vices. They should stay far away from any position which gives them judgment over others.
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They are good at maintaining systems, not creating or criticizing systems when that is necessary. They’re good at representing general interests, but not often their own interest as leaders; it is not often possible to please everyone, and it is not always desirable to, either. And they’re great at mediating between people and shining light on new perspectives, but not at providing truly enlightening perspectives on their own. This does not mean that they cannot be great leaders; actually, it means that they must be a particular kind of leader in order to be great. They are meant to help, not be helped.
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That being said, they have more to offer on the streets of the everyday people than on stage or in the halls of some bureaucratic labyrinth. They deeply desire to help others and make people happy. Give them a community, and they’ll volunteer. Give them a battle, and they’ll fight it. Give them a problem, and they’ll solve it. If they do all of these things together with others, on the ground, their determination, optimism, perfectionism, and decisiveness will convince everyone to believe that they can accomplish what must be done.
Archetypal Story of Leo
The common assumption about princes is that they all long to be king, but our Leo protagonist, Dastan, truly does not. He is not a prince by blood, but by honor; spared from punishment for his small crimes after bravely defending another child from guards, he is instead adopted by the king into the royal family, an incredible rags-to-riches story. He is overwhelmed with gratitude for finally having kin, having lived on the streets as an orphan, and not having to steal food anymore to survive. His learned humility characterizes him in adulthood.
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As the king grows older, the princes come of age and must now prove their worthiness to ascend to the throne. Despite not considering himself to even be in the running, prince Dastan gives a valiant showing in battle which results in saving many lives, making his adoptive father proud. But things quickly get out of hand when the king is assassinated, and Dastan is implicated in the murder; a conspiracy starts to unravel. As our hero evades capture from his furious brothers, he must also chase after the truth, and uncover the real killer.
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To make matters more wondrous, at the center of the mystery lies an artifact he uncovered during the siege. A peculiar dagger with a hatch full of sand has incredible power over the flow of time. Through his travels, he comes to learn of a covenant made long ago to protect humanity from a scouring sandstorm that threatened to wipe us off the face of the earth. The voluntary sacrifice of an innocent soul allowed the sands to be locked away, and her descendants formed a lineage of guardians who look after the ancient secret, and the dagger which is its key. The guardians had been able to keep the dagger out of unworthy hands for centuries, but the siege of the holy city where it was kept turned out to be a concerted effort to seize its power for selfish ends.
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When Dastan realizes that this time-turning magic could be used by his uncle to go back in time and prevent himself from saving the king from a lion, thus putting himself in line to become king, he rushes back to alert his brother about the plot. He exhibits Loyalty to his adoptive family, and puts himself at the mercy of their trust. To demonstrate this, he offers the dagger to his brother, stabbing himself through the heart, and instructing him to rewind time in order to save him. This he does.
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But the corruption of their uncle runs deep, seething with resentment all of these years after being passed over for rulership. Dastan must race his uncle to the original hourglass containing the Sandstrom and prevent him from breaching it. He prevails in the struggle, preventing not only the world ending, but going back in time far enough to prevent the murder of his father, the true king. His love and dedication to his family enable him to reveal the corruption of his uncle, and immediately sets about setting things right from the siege he had laid on false pretenses. The recipient of this reparation is Princess Tamina, guardian of the magic sand dagger, who had accompanied him on this quest.
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Tamina has game. She is not a damsel in distress, by any means. She has been raised with a nobility both of stature and spirit. But she doesn’t necessarily like getting her hands dirty, and things seem to make more sense in her head than in reality. Where Dastan is loyal to his family, she is loyal to her charge, to protect the sands of time over the value of her own life. But her mental strategizing did not suit desert survival. Over the course of their journey together, she picks up some grit that was absent in her previously sheltered life.
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Her idealism and self-sacrificial insistence come to be a hindrance when the two must actually prevent the apocalypse, however. Giving herself up is supposed to be a hail-mary trump card against total annihilation, but would not have actually worked in the situation they found themselves in. Her black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking prevented her from seeing other possibilities, and within the crisis, her Aquarian virtue of Adaptability was compromised. The Prince of Persia embodies Tenacity, unwilling to give up on the mission or on her; his refusal to see them as mutually exclusive enables him to win both.
When they return through space and time to the palace of the holy city, he remarks on her gift to him of Receptivity, as his previous tactic left him both too humble to accept praise and too uninvolved to hear criticism.
“You have an unfortunate lack of curiosity.”
“No doubt one of my many flaws.”
“Please don't mock me, Prince.”
“Oh, I hardly think we know each other well enough for that, Princess, but I look forward to the day that we do.”
♌︎ Leo
Energy Generation, Sustainable Fuel, Carbon Sequestering
Leo people are easily recognizable when they walk into a room because they seem to ‘light it up’. I think when it comes to generalizations about personality and the zodiac, this is largely where it comes from because some of the signs are just… So obvious. But it makes perfect sense why this would be so, the very act of illumination is in the nature of the motivation at the core of this sign, so there is very little blockage between the motive and embodiment. The same is true for the mission, Leo in a lot of ways seeks to shine light on the problem and thus could be interpreted as having a priority of energy generation. We can take that in a very literal sense, in the task of exploring sustainable energy sources to power future progress, and also as social energy and momentum towards improvement in our interactions.
Applying creativity to passive/automatic energy generation systems could allow us to fully replace fossil fuels, not just for our energy consumption needs, but to approach levels of energy generation that are so in excess of what we can feasibly produce right now that they can be used to do other things such as sequester carbon. What we need is actually the reverse of the alchemical metaphor of turning lead into gold: taking gold from the form of sunlight, into lead in the form of carbon solids through photosynthesis, or even by splitting water into hydrogen and carbon. The hydrogen is used as a more efficient fuel source to replace petroleum, and in a solid form the carbon can be easily used for things like artificial diamonds or simply buried and sequestered as a non toxic byproduct. This might be likened to something like a Genesis allegory, ‘dividing the light from the darkness’. Ability to ‘discriminate’, to distinguish between things is basically first principles thinking, and when we talk about the atomic that’s exactly the level we are on. That’s not to say, every Leo should strive to be a nuclear physicist, it’s just to clarify the mission as fundamentally changing the way we think about these alchemical conversions.
Producing a surplus of electricity isn’t going to do us any good if it isn’t going towards something that is going to actually be restorative, so it may be that we need a surplus to start doing things like desalination or somehow refreezing the ice caps. Intense synergy and cooperation will be needed with scientists from all fields to find the best outlets for these technologies, and so far conversation on the topic has been quite limited because it’s hard enough to get past climate change denial and resistance to move forward on dissolving fossil fuel use. I think if we can start to envision the possible applications later down the line, profitable byproducts and potential job creation through clean energy, we can potentially bypass any of the unproductive ideological arguments. That might be part of the illuminating power of Leo, through charisma and optimism, outlining bright possibilities and driving out the darkness.
Leadership is a quality often associated with Leo, and it is fitting that this is also what our current focus in understanding human impact on the environment calls for. Sustainability is an ideological problem more than a technology problem. Our limitations lie largely in our imaginations, and the creative movement which has emerged in response to challenging that perception is aptly called ‘Solarpunk’. A unique synthesis of art and science, the creators at its forefront strive to weave a compelling narrative not only of survival but triumph, and stepping into an even brighter future where we are able to take a leading role in environmental recovery. While much of scifi is colored by a dark, dystopian hue, Solarpunk sports an infectious vibrance and creates a sense of exciting possibility rather than the daunting, obligatory sacrifice which has surrounded the topic for several decades. Artists, writers, creatives of all types are leading the charge on making people feel empowered to enact the changes they want to see in the world, and make them beautiful in addition to functional.