Leo

Leo is the Sun’s own sign, and this year the Sun is in it from 22 July to 23 August 2026. When Ptolemy hands out the signs to the planets he begins here, with the two lights: “Leo for the Sun, as being masculine; and Cancer for the Moon, as being feminine”.

The one house of the Sun

Ptolemy’s reason is the height of the two signs in the sky. Cancer and Leo, he writes, “are the most northerly of all the twelve signs”, and they “approach nearer than the other signs to the zenith of this part of the earth, and thereby cause warmth and heat”. The reasoning is northern: it describes the sky from his own part of the earth, where the Sun is in Leo in summer.

The other planets are then arranged around this starting point. The half of the zodiac “from Leo to Capricorn has been ordained solar”, so that each planet can hold one sign on the Sun’s side and one on the Moon’s. Saturn, whom Ptolemy calls “cold and inimical to heat”, is sent to the signs opposite Cancer and Leo. The sign opposite Leo is Aquarius.

Heat that has settled in

Leo comes straight after Cancer, the sign in which, for Ptolemy, summer starts. Signs in that position he calls fixed, and he is careful about what the word means. It is not, he says, “that the temperament of the season has in itself actually increased in vigour”. The season has simply lasted long enough that, “having continued for some time in operation, it then renders all things more strongly affected by its influence”. Applied to Leo, that is the heat begun in Cancer and now established. Applying his rule to this one sign is our step; he states it for the fixed signs together.

Leo also belongs to his first triplicity, with Aries and Sagittarius, and there the Sun appears again: “By day, therefore, the Sun claims the principal co-regency of it, and Jupiter by night.” So the Sun has Leo by house and shares in it by triplicity. Ptolemy’s chapter on exaltations, by contrast, places no planet’s exaltation or fall in Leo.

The Leo character, as the old books give it

William Lilly’s line on the sign opens with the same fact as Ptolemy: Leo “Is the onely house of the Sun”. He goes on to call it “Fiery, Hot, Dry, Cholerick, Diurnal, Commanding”. Lilly is listing qualities to be used in judging a chart, not describing people.

Alan Leo, writing at the end of the nineteenth century, does describe people. Of those born under Leo he writes: “They are genuinely kind, warm-hearted and loving, but usually like to express their love in action, their emotional nature being deep and of the heart.” He ties this to the sign’s place among the fire signs: “Being the centre of the fiery triplicity they possess a very strong love nature, which makes them very ardent and sincere in their affections.”

On command, the quality Lilly names, Alan Leo has his own sentence: “The Leos love to rule, but it is more from the heart and motive than from the head.” Setting the two lines together is our doing, not his. He allows a fault, and softens it at once: “They can be impulsive and diffusive, but it is usually the impulse of a generous nature.” And he allows for extremes within the sign: “It is sometimes found that the weakest and the strongest individuals come out of this sign.”

The middle sign of fire

Leo is a fire sign, and the two signs that share its element, Aries and Sagittarius, come first and second in the list of matches below. Leo paired with itself comes third. Cancer and Pisces come last, level with each other. How those places are worked out is on how we score.

Alan Leo links the first of those pairs himself. In his chapter on Aries he says the Aries person “would benefit most by union with those born in Leo”. That is one astrologer’s opinion about signs, kept here as a piece of history, and not advice about anyone’s relationship.