Hair down, paws up, it’s Leo season. After the oceanic emotional depths of Cancer, the energizing lion heart of summer is a welcome reprieve and a reason to rejoice.
Lion folk are at their best when on some kind of noble quest, when their fierce fire burns in defense of others rather than in homage to themselves. Leo energy is flattering, infectious, magnanimous and warming. The sun never sets on a Leo and the more evolved of the pride are happy to share the shine. The shadow side of Leo is vanity, ruthlessness, a lack of self-reflection and an incorrigible need for validation. Be bold, but not brash. Be fearless in asking, but stop short of demanding. If Leo season had a patron saint it would be Madonna, and its creed would be her statement, “A lot of people are afraid to say what they want. That’s why they don’t get what they want.” Go and get yours, as gracefully as possible.
Leo
July 23 to Aug. 22
Happy return of the sun to you, lion folk. While your sign is sun ruled, you may spend the first few weeks of your season tending to the shadows. Usually a social animal, you might crave the comfort of your own company. There is work to be done in the realms of spiritual devotion. You won’t fear the dark if you have faith in what can’t be seen.
Notable Leo: Andy Warhol / Aug. 6, 1928
Virgo
Aug. 23 to Sept. 22
Novelist and fellow Virgo Jeanette Winterson was raised by zealous Pentecostal missionaries in Northern England. As a teen, Winterson left the church and her family home when she fell in love with a woman. She writes of her life since, “I am colored glass from a church window long since shattered. I find pieces of myself everywhere, and I cut myself handling them.” I urge you to similarly shatter your own limitations, but be careful, gentle, with how you collect yourself.
Notable Virgo: Fred Hampton / Aug. 30, 1948
Libra
Sept. 23 to Oct. 22
You’re a fixer and a pleaser, Libra, trying to balance the needs of others against your own habitual overpromising. This fulcrum of existence may keep you in a state of anxiousness, forever fearful that you are not doing enough, or worse, that you yourself are not enough. The first step in undoing your unnerving? Practice saying no without explanation or apology.
Notable Libra: Ilhan Omar / Oct. 4, 1981
Scorpio
Oct. 23 to Nov. 21
Come on out of your cave of solitude and regeneration, Scorpio. The coming weeks are deeply tied to communication and human communion for you. Collaborations are imminent, be they creative, industrious or carnal. You are giving live birth to the words of Malcolm X who wrote, “When ‘I’ is replaced with ‘we,’ even illness becomes wellness.”
Notable Scorpio: John Gotti / Oct. 27, 1940
Sagittarius
Nov. 22 to Dec. 21
Beneath her veneer of hoop skirts and lace collars, poet Emily Dickinson ran hot with wanderlusting, Sagittarian blood. She wrote, “Wild nights should be / Our luxury! / Futile – the winds / Done with the Compass – Done with the Chart!” The message: Stay the course, enjoy the ride, and cast off the conventions of the getting there.
Notable Sagittarius: Jay-Z / Dec. 4, 1969
Capricorn
Dec. 22 to Jan. 19
You tend to lean more insular than inclusive, Capricorn, but the time is nigh to try your luck at winking at strangers, saying yes to social engagements and expanding your spheres of camaraderie. As Stephen Richards (the guru, not the serial killer) wrote, “When we make friends, we change from being animals to being human.”
Notable Capricorn: Thereza de Orléans e Bragança / Jan. 11, 1929
Aquarius
Jan. 20 to Feb. 18
Prison abolitionist and fellow water bearer Angela Davis writes, “radical simply means grasping things at the root.” You naturally require very little provocation for radical thinking, Aquarius, yet, with the sun in galvanizing Leo, you are being called to activate those thoughts. What ills and truths are you going to shake loose from the soil of your imagination?
Notable Aquarius: Axl Rose / Feb. 6, 1962
Pisces
Feb. 19 to March 20
Make something this week, Pisces. It doesn’t have to be grand, it doesn’t have to be lasting, it just has to exist beyond your normal limits. Paint a bathroom, smash a mirror, bake a pie, knit a single sock, compose a symphony. If you’re actively creating you will have considerably less time to commit to destructive patterns. The revelry isn’t in the action itself, but in the thinking it will inspire.
Notable Pisces: Steve Jobs / Feb. 24, 1955
Aries
March 21 – April 19
After decades of battling drug addiction, Iron Man actor and fellow Aries Robert Downey Jr. credits an unlikely moment of revelation behind a Burger King Dumpster with finally helping him get clean. The lesson? Divine reckoning can happen anywhere and temperance, no matter how late it arrives, is a fine form of self-care.
Notable Aries: Nancy Pelosi / March 26, 1940
Taurus
April 20 – May 20
In the height of the hedonistic 1970s, actor and fellow bull Jack Nicholson had a kind of caste system for his drugs. He kept the best of his stash on the second floor, dubbed it “upstairs cocaine” and reserved it for his favored folks. I’m not encouraging drug use, Taurus, but I do suggest you cut loose anyone that doesn’t treat you like the top-tier company that you are.
Notable Taurus: Ella Fitzgerald / April 25, 1917
Gemini
May 21 – June 20
Fellow Gemini and prophet of the Midwest, Bob Dylan, christened his 1975 tour, “The Rolling Thunder Review” after learning the sound of thunder was, to certain Native American tribes, a sign that truths were about to be told. I urge you to welcome that same weather into your own life and get to speaking the truth, as quakingly and unmistakably as a storm foretold.
Notable Gemini: Wallis Simpson / June 19, 1896
Cancer
June 21- July 22
Slash, guitarist, top hat enthusiast and fellow Cancer, lived for a time in a Los Angeles hotel suite with his pet mountain lion. I like to imagine the pair of them casually taking the elevator together and I’d like you, moon children, to take a cue from Slash and keep close to whatever or whomever keeps you wild.
Notable Cancer: Alexander the Great / July 20, 356 BC
