Leo: Archetype of The Performer
Leo. The Lion. The fifth sign of the Zodiac. Where Cancer brought us inward, to the realm of feeling, the subconscious and the depths of the mind, Leo is that part of us that needs to take all The Lover teaches and express it outwardly. One ruled by The Moon. The other ruled by The Sun, the gravitational center of our neighborhood in the Milky Way, our true source of vitality, the reason we are here, life itself.
The Sun on your chart represents the active, physical, masculine, self-identifying half of the core of who you are. The ego. Personality itself. Its opposite, The Moon - as the feminine, receptive half of this inner polarity - is about the mind, the subconscious, instincts, reaction, and the shifting world of emotion. Active-Reactive. Masculine-Feminine. Conscious Engagement-Subconscious Instinct. Rationalizing-Feeling. This duality represents the very core of who we all are. And just as Cancer reflected the moody, silvery light of its ruler The Moon, Leo burns with a golden brightness like The Sun.
The divisions between the signs of the Zodiac are known as cusps. The change from Cancer to Leo is known as the “cusp of oscillation” - the watery, Moon-ruled sign of the crab giving way to the the fiery, Sun-ruled sign of the lion, like a coin flipping, moving back and forth between two opposites, Yin and Yang.
The glyph for the sign of Leo
Astrological symbol for The Sun
The Greek mythology associated with Leo is, like Cancer, tied to the Twelve Labors of Hercules. In the first of his Labors, he was sent to the valley of Nemea to kill a ferocious lion who dwelled there. After throwing everything he had at the lion, only to have his weapons bounce off him like nerf darts, Hercules resorted to wrestling with the lion using his bare hands. Since the blood of Jupiter (Zeus) flowed through is veins, he was fantastically strong and eventually got the upper hand, strangling the lion to death. It cost him a finger lost to the lion’s ferocious teeth, but Hercules was victorious and wound up making a breastplate from the Nemean Lion’s hide, proven to be impenetrable by human weapons, and a helmet from the lion’s jaw - armor that would serve him well in the Labors he had yet to accomplish. To commemorate this battle between two brave, powerful forces, the constellation Leo was placed in the sky.
Hercules and the Nemean Lion fighting - at least I think they are fighting…getting naked to wrestle with a lion seems risky
When it comes to the archetypal character of Leo, we are dealing with The Performer.
Leo is the fixed expression of the element of fire (read more about that here). The Performer’s season happens in the heart of summer as The Sun’s energy hits us most directly and intensely. Long, hot days, one after the other, the forecast showing no change in sight, that is the time of Leo, and it could not be more appropriate.
Leo is associated with the fifth House of Creativity & Sex. Under its domain are games, children, holidays, creative expression, and passionate sexual encounters. Planets in this house bring their energy and expression to these areas of life. The Performer is tightly connected to these concepts with motivations and traits in line with such ideas.
Leo is the part of us that seeks and creates self-expression. To put it bluntly, The Performer needs an audience. Or, maybe more accurately, The Performer needs applause.
Chinese Zodiac surrounding the Yin-Yang, ancient symbol of the Masculine (Sun) - Feminine (Moon) duality
Leo doesn’t meditate. It doesn’t want to sit in the silence of its own internal thoughts and processes. It doesn’t want to diligently work behind the scenes. The sign’s only desire is a manifested expression of all of that is going on inside, acting it out in the world to leave its mark. While we develop our feelings and inner realms under The Moon, we develop the integration and outward expression of it all through The Sun. They are two halves of the whole. To put judgements of value on them, elevating one over the other, is ludicrous. To repress or reject one half of this duality is self-defeating, throwing the whole enchilada out of balance. We have depicted this understanding through countless symbols throughout our cultural development as a species. Sun Gods and Moon Goddesses. Representations of Fire and Water. Symbols of opposition, harmony, and wholeness. We still experience the effects of our inner struggles to come to terms with this polarity, watching as they play out around us in the form of battles between the sexes, prejudice, suppression, and outright cruelty.
Baphomet, often misidentified with the Christian Devil - which it definitely is not - is actually a 19th century symbol that encapsulates aspects of the duality of universal nature, including the Masculine-Feminine polarity - notice the breasts and the phallus represented by the Staff of Hermes (Caduceus)
The Seal of Solomon is a combination of the upward pointing triangle (Fire-Masculine) and the downward pointing triangle (Water-Feminine) - the shape created in the middle is a hexagram and is the source of “putting a hex on someone” as magicians would stand in the center of this symbol on the floor as they worked their spells
There are a lot of ideas in mainline religions, new age teachings, the consciousness community, weird spiritual cults, and the like, suggesting that our goal as humans is the dissolution of our ego. To deny and destroy “the self”. That this is a “bad” part of us, something to extinguish so the “good” part is all that is left to be expressed. First of all, you can’t do it. We have observed this dual nature within us, struggled to come to terms with it, labeled it, symbolized it in all kinds of different ways, even developed modern marketing and public relations campaigns founded upon our understanding of it. To deny it is ridiculous. It is inescapable, integral to your being, and to try and ignore it is to leave it to its own devices. Strange how egotistical these anti-ego crusaders are as they express themselves while explaining that your ego sucks, right?
So, if you have fallen under the spell of some belief that demonizes your ego, stop it. You’re only hurting yourself. You might as well be trying to throw a tarp over the Sun.
Though we may not think so, the need to express this energy is in all of us. That particular thing that puts us in the spotlight and makes us feel truly alive, totally in the moment. You might be a shy introvert in virtually every area of life, but when you teach a yoga class, your demeanor is very different. Or, maybe mentoring math students in an after school program is where it happens for you, or in the break room at work recounting the tales of your crazy toddler. People may even be shocked to see this side of you. Confident. In control of the room. Even showing off a little. Leo, The Performer, is lifting its head to roar to the thrill of the crowd. It might not be standing alone on a stage in front of thousands of people, but it provides the same kind of necessary and potent expression of your true self.
The question is, how do we indulge The Performer in a constructive way? There are reasons why the ego has become a villain to many. When out of control, an ego can range from annoying to outright dangerous. Rather than over-reacting and vowing to destroy your ego, The Performer requires the development of the ego. Ignoring and suppressing it keeps this vital evolution from happening, it doesn’t go away, you are only dooming yourself to prideful outbursts followed by periods of guilt and pseudo-growth, trying to stamp out the Sun, only to have it burn through whatever you try and trap it in, creating another immature ego explosion to repeat the cycle over again. Self-defeating to say the least.
Developing your ego means paying attention to it. Shaping it. Using it. It means exercising and refining it. And most of all, it means ensuring that what it needs is being supplied, that it is being fed. Now, you probably hear that and have negative reactions to the idea of “feeding your ego”, but in order for The Performer to be expressed constructively, it does need something. It needs love and acceptance. Why else would we do all of the prideful, arrogant, egotistical things we do? We want to be recognized, to leave an impact of who we are on the world and the people in it, to demonstrate our creative impulses and have them appreciated and valued. In short, our ego is looking for love, and yes, many times, in all the wrong places.
The Performer’s temptation is to get the love it needs, the feeling of being valued by the world, by impressing others. This creates patterns and a presence that communicates arrogance and superiority, not exactly qualities that inspire love and adoration. So long as we attach this hunger to the response of the crowd, we will be disappointed and the applause will slowly fade as people grow tired of our antics and weary of our posturing. The ego needs to be expressed and appreciated, but this needs to come from an evolved sense of creative self-expression, not a desperate attempt to be loved.
We are all familiar with this more shadowy nature of Leo’s energy. We even refer to a group of lions using the word for this trait - pride. When you shine like The Sun, you can also wind up projecting a very grandiose and overpowering presence. To combat these darker outlets of our ego, The Performer needs to learn an important lesson. It needs love. So it has to learn how to actually, and simply, ask for it. To not hide its vulnerability behind a veneer of magnanimity. We all know the experience of watching a performer do their thing for the pure joy of it. Sure, we are amazed and maybe even very aware of our own limitations in the burning light of them shining on stage, but we are also ushered into a state of joy and the thrill of being alive right then at that moment. We also all know the experience of watching as a performer tries too hard, buys into their own celebrity too much, acting like a psychic vampire trying to feed off of our admiration. Totally different experience.
The Performer is not bad. This is not a part of us that we can treat as frivolous or some vestigial leftover that we should shed. If anything, Leo reminds us that we are not transcendent beings who live in some imaginary dimension. It shows us that we are truly alive, and that we are meant to enjoy it.
“Let’s celebrate the fact that we are alive and have an amazing time!”
Leo brings a flair for the dramatic, charisma, leadership qualities, flamboyance and a generous, tolerant nature to your chart. The house in which it dwells defines the arena of life this archetype is most active in. Any planets or points - especially the Sun, Moon and Ascendant - that fall in the sign are colored with this exuberant, performative, onstage energy.
Regardless of how much influence the sign of The Performer wields in your profile, we are all a composite of the collaboration, competition and relationships between all twelve of the Zodiacal archetypes. All distinct, yet each a piece of the whole. No one is devoid of Leo, and everyone has the Sun burning in their chart somewhere. We all have an ego, and we all need to tend to its energy so we can experience the wholeness that comes from integrating our inner development and creativity with our outer self-expression. Wherever your ego is represented in your chart, don’t suppress it, develop it.
Wherever Leo roars in your profile defines channels and areas by which you can find the creative outlets and physical manifestation of your inner development that is crucial to your wholeness.
Where do you find yourself onstage, even if only metaphorically, in your life? Do you fear this part of yourself? Are you caught in thinking that says expressing your ego is a lesser pursuit than more inward and “spiritual” growth? Maybe it is time to embrace the archetype of The Performer and find an outlet for your own, vital, self-expression.
