Incoming: A south node solar eclipse at 20° Leo

Exorcism or psychospiritual striptease?

The Leo stage of our development has everything to do with finding our god-like inner core—our potential for individuality in its most unfiltered form. It’s also the part of us that gets repeatedly shamed or bullied until it is mostly hidden from view; in some cases, entirely exiled.

There is something about the child’s audacity, lack of inhibition and self-consciousness that is so triggering to adults split off from their own god-like core in exchange for membership in a group; who have traded play for performance; whose own repressed leonine fire lies trapped under layers of hand-me-downs designed for compliance; burning their insides as envy, resentment or inflammation.

So the child (or the Child in the adult) is labeled “difficult” “too much” or having “authority issues” and denied their most fundamental need for belonging.

This ‘taming of the lion’ — shame, exclusion, ridicule, bullying, censorship — is not only personal but also archetypal.

Every sign has its own mythic quest and process.

This is simply the one we face at the Leo stage of the zodiacal journey.

Our burgeoning individuality is thwarted, stifled or shut down — a process helped along by collective amnesia and homogenisation; keeping us sedated with ‘love’ and rewarded with praise and applause, so we never suspect that the persona we’ve so carefully curated over the years bears little resemblance to the god-like core.

And yet something wild and forgotten keeps clawing away at us from within, leaving teeth-marks on our otherwise ‘normal,’ ‘respectable’ and even ‘successful’ life.

We don’t understand why we can’t seem to enjoy any of these things we’ve worked so hard to have; why we’re always on edge; why we feel so alone even around such lovely people; why, despite becoming exactly who we wanted to become, we simply don’t feel like ourselves.

A period of withdrawal or depression may ensue, so we can be reminded of this fire we used to have—this fire that guided us Home to our Centre. It kept us warm, gave us meaning, and lit us up with aliveness and self-trust.

What happened? How did we manage to stray this far? And how do we find our way back Home?

Well, thank God for this eclipse.

If it hasn’t already stirred the cauldron, or turned on the heat, it’s about to (unless this particular eclipse hits nothing in your chart). This is part of the mythic turning point when it becomes impossible to continue along the same path/pattern. Suddenly, your eyes open and you see the blindspot. Some aspect of your life starts feeling too small, too false, too impossible-to-inhabit.

And yet change comes at a price: the willingness to lose the comfortable lies, the conditional love, the endless masking.

Typically, leonine wounding shows up as two kinds of hiding: one is the kind where you see no trace of the solar fire in the individual; the king has left the throne; the individual appears timid and diffident and the solar essence is kept alive mainly in projections: admiration, idealisation, pedestalisation of partners, authority figures, celebrities; in relationships with domineering or narcissistic partners who convince them that they are unloveable or that there is something fundamentally wrong with them.

The other kind of hiding is trickier to spot because it looks nothing like hiding. The person has no trouble being visible; infact, they seek it out. They are comfortable on stage or when they’re performing in some way. They may even have you convinced that they are great with people.

But try relating to them personally, and you get this strange feeling— like you’re talking to a fictional character. It’s like the actor got off the stage but forgot to leave the character behind. Something feels frozen and impenetrable behind the beautiful talking head.

This is why we see so many pop astrology depictions of Leo as the attention-seeking one who must always have the spotlight. This isn’t necessarily the healthiest expression of Leo, however, as this too is a form of hiding (behind a role/performance). When our Leo/solar parts are functioning well, we possess a natural aliveness; we love life and it tends to love us back. This looks nothing like the person addicted to the applause of strangers.

This is someone whose loyalty lies with the god-like core.

Leo is a fixed sign and its fire is a steady flame. When a Leo transit illumines something in your life, there is a piercing clarity around it—a truth you cannot unsee.

It may reveal the legitimate anger or grief underneath the surface irritability, emptiness or aloneness. However it shows up, it’s a knowing, not a thought or feeling you can second-guess later.

It is never comfortable but there is a calm that comes with having access to the Center again.

There is nothing left to explain or prove. You require neither permission nor credit.

And it’s vaguely unsettling how calm you feel inside even as you survey the wreckage this will inevitably cause.

The path of the lion(ess) demands courage—the willingness to strip away every false layer that has you stuck in survival. How far would you go to have the life that feels like yours? How many layers of fear, shame and performance would have to come off before you’re ready to be seen in your true form?

There is going to be so much discomfort, considerable aloneness, so many constricted spaces you can no longer fit into but by God...you will be free.

‘A life truly lived constantly burns away veils of illusion, burns away what is no longer relevant, gradually reveals our essence, until, at last, we are strong enough to stand in our naked truth.’

- Marion Woodman, Jungian analyst, writer/teacher (born under a Leo new moon with Mercury and Neptune in Leo).

To getting naked! If this spoke to you, share this with someone who is going through it.

To request info on 1:1 readings/sessions, write to me at balan.judy@gmail.com.