What are the Leo dates?

In the tropical zodiac, the Sun is in Leo from about July 23 to August 22, the fixed middle of northern summer. The boundary shifts by about a day year to year, so cusp births need a calculated chart. Indian sidereal astrology places Simha, its Leo, from roughly mid-August to mid-September.

What element and mode is Leo?

Fixed fire: the element of energy and will in the mode that sustains. Leo is the hearth of the zodiac, constant, radiant, warming a gathered circle, where Aries is fire igniting and Sagittarius fire travelling. Its fixed siblings are Taurus, Scorpio and Aquarius.

Which planet rules Leo?

The Sun, and Leo is his only rulership, mirroring the Moon's sole rulership of Cancer. No planet is exalted in Leo, the tradition's throne room honours one occupant, so charts with Leo prominent are read first through the Sun's own condition.

What are typical Leo traits?

Bright side: generosity, warmth, loyalty, courage, creativity and natural authority. Shadow: pride, theatricality, hunger for approval and difficulty sharing the stage. As throughout astrology, these describe how planets placed in Leo behave, most visibly the Sun, Moon or ascendant, not a box every Leo-born person fits.

What is the myth behind Leo?

The Nemean Lion, first labour of Heracles: a beast whose hide no weapon could pierce, strangled bare-handed and worn afterward as the hero's armour. Behind the Greek story stands Babylon's Lion of the star lists, whose chief star was already named the King centuries before the zodiac was cut.

The Lion's brightest star, 'the little king': Babylon's LUGAL, one of the four royal stars of Persian tradition, and the brightest star lying almost exactly on the ecliptic. Tradition read honours from it, with the rider that the glory lasts as long as the magnanimity. Precession has recently carried it into tropical Virgo's degrees, which changes the star's address but not the sign's meaning.

What does Leo rule in the body?

The heart and the spine: vitality and uprightness, the fifth station of the zodiacal body. Traditional medicine read the heart's strength under the Lion, and the association survives in language, courage is literally heartedness.

What does a Leo rising (ascendant) mean?

The world is met with presence: warmth, visibility and an air of being expected. The Sun becomes the chart's ruler, so his sign, house and aspects crown the whole life, a Leo rising with the Sun in modest Virgo reads very differently from one with the Sun in Aries, exalted and armed.

Who is Leo most compatible with?

Tradition looks first to the fire signs, Aries and Sagittarius, and to the air signs Gemini and Libra, with opposite-sign Aquarius as the great complement. But sign pairs are the shallowest layer of synastry: real compatibility compares whole charts, and this platform treats compatibility as self-understanding rather than verdict.

Why does Leo host no exaltation?

The classical scheme of exaltations, inherited from Babylon's 'secret places', installs honoured guests in seven signs, and Leo is not among them. The traditional gloss is that the Sun's own palace admits no second dignitary: the sign's royalty is entirely its ruler's, which concentrates rather than weakens it.

The fifth sign ♌

Leo, the Lion

The Sun's one home on the wheel, held at the height of summer. Fixed fire, the hearth that does not go out, Leo is the principle of radiance: identity made visible, generosity from abundance, loyalty from pride. Its constellation carried royalty before the zodiac existed, and its brightest star, Regulus, the little king, sits almost exactly on the sun's own road.

Jul 23 – Aug 22: tropical dates
Fire: element
Fixed: mode

The sign in twelve facets

One sign, read from every side: its ancestry, its ruler, its season, its body part, its myth and its meanings in the chart.

⭐

Babylon's Lion

the ancestor UR.GU.LA

The Lion prowled the Babylonian sky as UR.GU.LA, the Great Dog-Lion, stationed on the moon's path in MUL.APIN and read in the omens for kings, the beast and the throne were already one thought. It entered the zodiac's twelve with its royalty intact and its star named for the king.

🦁

The Nemean Lion

the myth Greek dress

Greece gave the Lion its labour: the Nemean beast whose hide no weapon could pierce, strangled by Heracles as his first task and worn ever after as armour. Invulnerable pride, conquered only by bare-handed courage, becoming the hero's own protection: the sign's economy in one story.

☀️

High summer

the season the year's full blaze

Leo holds the fixed middle of summer: the season no longer arriving, simply reigning. Grain ripens, light stands at full strength, and the sign inherits that settled sovereignty, the part of the year that does not strive because it has nothing left to prove.

🔥

Fixed fire

element & mode the hearth

Fire that sustains: not Aries' struck match or Sagittarius' travelling beacon, but the hearth, burning steadily in one place, warming a circle that gathers to it. Fixed fire is loyal, radiant and constant, and it goes out only when no one is watching, which it arranges never to happen.

☉

Ruled by the Sun

the ruler the one solar home

The Sun rules a single sign, and this is it, as the Moon's is Cancer next door: the two luminaries hold the summer heart of the wheel. The Sun gives Leo identity as vocation, the need to shine as a way of being, and the warmth that makes the shining generous rather than cold.

👑

The throne needs no guest

the dignities no classical exaltation

Leo hosts no classical exaltation: no visiting dignitary is installed in the Sun's own palace. The old astrologers found the vacancy fitting, a throne room honours one occupant, and the sign's affairs answer to the Sun alone, wherever he stands in the chart.

✨

Regulus, the King's star

the stars on the ecliptic itself

The Lion's heart is Regulus, 'the little king', Babylon's LUGAL, the King, one of Persia's four royal stars and the brightest star that sits almost exactly on the sun's road. Kingship written into the sky's geometry: no other sign carries its title star so literally on the ecliptic.

🧍

The heart and spine

melothesia Leo rules the heart

Fifth sign, fifth station: Leo governs the heart and the spine, the organ of vitality and the column that holds one upright. The old medicine read the heart's strength under the Lion, and the language remembers: courage, from cor, is literally heartedness.

📋

Leo in the chart

the placements Sun, Moon, rising

The Sun in Leo, at home, identifies through creation and performance, life as a work signed by its author. The Moon in Leo feels in ceremony and needs its warmth witnessed. A Leo ascendant enters every room as if expected, and hands the chart to the Sun. Any planet here brightens, dramatises and takes the stage.

🕉️

Simha, the Vedic Lion

in Jyotisha sidereal dates

Jyotisha keeps the Lion as Simha, Sun-ruled, running sidereally from mid-August to mid-September. Its mansions include Magha, the throne room of the ancestors at Regulus itself, royalty inherited rather than seized, held in trust for the line that granted it.

🏺

Aquarius, the mirror

the polarity the one and the many

Opposite the Lion stands the Water-Bearer: the sovereign self against the collective, the heart against the network, warmth for the circle against principle for everyone. Leo learns from Aquarius that others shine too; Aquarius learns from Leo that the crowd is made of hearts.

🔑

The Leo vocabulary

the keywords light and shadow

Bright side: generous, loyal, warm, courageous, creative, magnanimous. Shadow side: proud, theatrical, approval-hungry, unable to share the stage. The work of the sign is shining so that others are lit, not eclipsed, sovereignty as service rather than display.

The sign of radiance

Leo is the zodiac's fifth sign and the Sun's only home: fixed fire holding the height of summer. Its principle is radiance, identity made visible, warmth given from abundance, the life lived as a signed work. In the chart Leo describes how a planet shines and is seen; its gifts are generosity, loyalty, courage and creative force, and its risks are the same gifts curdled, pride, theatre, the hunger for applause. No sign is easier to caricature or harder to replace: every chart needs somewhere to be magnificent, and Leo is where the wheel keeps that need.

A royal beast from the beginning

The Lion's royalty predates the zodiac. Babylon's UR.GU.LA prowled the moon's path in the star catalogue MUL.APIN, and the omen scholars read lion and king in one breath; the constellation's chief star was simply LUGAL, the King. When the twelve signs were cut, as the invention of the zodiac page recounts, the Lion kept both its place and its politics. Greece added the labour: the Nemean Lion, whose hide turned every weapon, strangled by Heracles bare-handed as the first of his twelve tasks and worn afterward as his armour. The myth is the sign's economy stated once: invulnerable pride is conquered only by naked courage, and mastered pride becomes protection for the one who mastered it.

Fixed fire, ruled by the Sun

Leo's coordinates are the zodiac's definition of constancy in flame. As fire it acts, wills and shows; as fixed it sustains: the hearth to Aries' match and Sagittarius' beacon, burning steadily in one place while a circle gathers to its warmth. The Sun's rulership completes the definition. Leo is the one solar home, mirroring the Moon's sole rulership of Cancer next door, the luminaries holding the summer heart of the wheel from which the whole rulership scheme fans out, as the planets library shows. And Leo hosts no exaltation: no visiting dignitary is installed in the Sun's palace, a vacancy the old astrologers found perfectly proper. The sign's affairs answer to the Sun alone, which makes his condition, by sign, house and aspect, the first question for any chart with Leo prominent.

Regulus on the sun's road

The Lion's heart is Regulus, 'the little king': Babylon's King-star, one of the four royal stars of Persian tradition, and the brightest star lying almost exactly on the ecliptic, the sun's own path. Kings, in other words, are written into the sky's geometry at this sign: the sun passes annually within a fraction of a degree of the star of kingship. Traditional astrology treated Regulus as a star of honours with a warning attached, glory that lasts only as long as magnanimity does, which is the Lion's own clause. Precession has lately carried Regulus over the tropical border into Virgo's degrees, a fact star-watchers note and the sign, being a segment and not a picture, serenely survives.

Leo in the chart

The Sun in Leo, at home, identifies through creation and performance: such people experience life as authorship, and their work, whatever it is, carries a signature. The Moon in Leo feels in ceremony: emotion needs expression and witness, and dignity is a genuine need, not a vanity. A Leo ascendant enters rooms as if expected, and gives the chart to the Sun, whose placement then crowns or burdens everything. Mercury in Leo speaks to move hearts; Venus here loves grandly and requires devotion; Mars in Leo fights for honour and in view. Saturn, in detriment, does authority the hard way, earning the crown it cannot simply wear. Any planet in the Lion is brightened, dramatised and pushed on stage.

The heart, the throne, the mansions

In the zodiacal body Leo takes the heart and spine, the organ of vitality and the column of uprightness, fifth station of the frame whose Babylonian roots the micro-zodiac page traces; the language itself remembers that courage is heartedness. In India's sidereal wheel, Simha the Lion runs mid-August to mid-September and opens with Magha, the mansion of the throne at Regulus, ruled by the ancestors: royalty as inheritance, held in trust for the line that granted it, a reading that deepens rather than contradicts the Western Lion. Both traditions agree on the sign's business, sovereignty, and both attach its price: the throne is kept by what it gives.

The mirror of Aquarius

Leo's axis runs to Aquarius: the one and the many, the heart and the network, the sovereign self and the collective principle. The Lion warms a circle; the Water-Bearer irrigates a system, and each alone is incomplete, warmth that needs an audience, principle that forgets faces. Traditional astrology encodes the exchange: the Sun is in detriment in Aquarius, Saturn in detriment in Leo, each king uneasy in the other's country. The Lion matures by learning that other lights are not rivals; the Water-Bearer by learning that humanity arrives one heart at a time. Between them the wheel holds its politics: the person and the people.

How to read this page

The cards above give the sign's twelve facets: ancestry, myth, season, element and mode, ruler, the vacant throne, Regulus, body, chart placements, the Vedic parallel, the polarity and the working vocabulary. For the ruler's own page, see the Sun in the planets library; for the system, the twelve signs library; for the deep history, the Babylonian pages. Leo and its eleven companions are part of the Tarot Academy compendium in all fifty-two languages.

Frequently asked questions

: In the tropical zodiac, the Sun is in Leo from about July 23 to August 22, the fixed middle of northern summer. The boundary shifts by about a day year to year, so cusp births need a calculated chart. Indian sidereal astrology places Simha, its Leo, from roughly mid-August to mid-September.
: Fixed fire: the element of energy and will in the mode that sustains. Leo is the hearth of the zodiac, constant, radiant, warming a gathered circle, where Aries is fire igniting and Sagittarius fire travelling. Its fixed siblings are Taurus, Scorpio and Aquarius.
: The Sun, and Leo is his only rulership, mirroring the Moon's sole rulership of Cancer. No planet is exalted in Leo, the tradition's throne room honours one occupant, so charts with Leo prominent are read first through the Sun's own condition.
: Bright side: generosity, warmth, loyalty, courage, creativity and natural authority. Shadow: pride, theatricality, hunger for approval and difficulty sharing the stage. As throughout astrology, these describe how planets placed in Leo behave, most visibly the Sun, Moon or ascendant, not a box every Leo-born person fits.
: The Nemean Lion, first labour of Heracles: a beast whose hide no weapon could pierce, strangled bare-handed and worn afterward as the hero's armour. Behind the Greek story stands Babylon's Lion of the star lists, whose chief star was already named the King centuries before the zodiac was cut.
: The Lion's brightest star, 'the little king': Babylon's LUGAL, one of the four royal stars of Persian tradition, and the brightest star lying almost exactly on the ecliptic. Tradition read honours from it, with the rider that the glory lasts as long as the magnanimity. Precession has recently carried it into tropical Virgo's degrees, which changes the star's address but not the sign's meaning.
: The heart and the spine: vitality and uprightness, the fifth station of the zodiacal body. Traditional medicine read the heart's strength under the Lion, and the association survives in language, courage is literally heartedness.
: The world is met with presence: warmth, visibility and an air of being expected. The Sun becomes the chart's ruler, so his sign, house and aspects crown the whole life, a Leo rising with the Sun in modest Virgo reads very differently from one with the Sun in Aries, exalted and armed.
: Tradition looks first to the fire signs, Aries and Sagittarius, and to the air signs Gemini and Libra, with opposite-sign Aquarius as the great complement. But sign pairs are the shallowest layer of synastry: real compatibility compares whole charts, and this platform treats compatibility as self-understanding rather than verdict.
: The classical scheme of exaltations, inherited from Babylon's 'secret places', installs honoured guests in seven signs, and Leo is not among them. The traditional gloss is that the Sun's own palace admits no second dignitary: the sign's royalty is entirely its ruler's, which concentrates rather than weakens it.

All twelve signs

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