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Listen for Leo and Leo Rising

2013 Annual Horoscope by Eric Francis

Sign art by Debra Cortese.

Sign art by Debra Cortese.

Leo Part One
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Leo Part Two
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Music for LeoChoose the Sky by Blue O’Connell
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Listen for Leo and Leo Rising | 2013 Annual Reading by Eric Francis
Full minor planet list for the day that the Sun arrives in your sign.

What you experience this year is a gradual, subtle reorientation of your sense of purpose. There’s something futuristic about your charts, and also a quality of reaching back into an ancient tradition whose time has, once again, arrived. The needs of our society and your particular set of skills are meeting in a way that you can, if you want, express.

Many who sense the urgency of our particular times, and the corresponding need for trying solutions that have not been applied before, are longing to be part of such an experiment in progress. A frontier is opening up, and you’re being invited to go there, though this invitation comes with a caution: there are no set answers; there’s plenty that’s not known; there will be situations that you have to figure out for yourself, or know where to seek relevant information.

As a fixed-sign person, you crave some certainty, though your charts are offering mystery, a sense of movement and the necessity for you to move with the flow.

There’s something about your relationship to your previous mistakes, or what you perceive as mistakes; you may have the sense that you’ve been hobbled by the things you haven’t gotten right in the past, and wonder how it’s possible that you have made the same mistakes so many times. The key thing is not to identify with them as mistakes per se but as part of the experience that has prepared you for life and makes you who you are.

There’s also something about responding to a calling into service. That alone is not so unusual; acting on it in a sincere way is, though you may question whether, in the past, this impulse had led you to the right place, the best place for you or what you’re concerned about. I would say that it’s time to set those doubts aside. How you got to where you are today does not matter, though you bring with you all the benefits of what you’ve learned. Anyone who tries knows that what we think of as mistakes are often more instructional than ‘getting it right’. There is plenty that you have learned, and your knowledge will be a source of ongoing strength if you put it to work.

You may feel that what you want to do, or develop from what you’re doing, feels tenuous, and that the calling is difficult to hear clearly. If there is any potential controversy, you may be concerned that this will make your life difficult. Anything that instills or instigates changes is going to be at least a little controversial; it would help if you learned how to work with this feeling.

The Level of Values

The world is driven by values, and many of them are insane. You are driven by the quest for sane values, ones that work for you and for the world. It’s fair to say that you’re a principled person, and therefore it’s highly significant which principles you espouse; you will have to live with whatever you cultivate.

You’re now in a time of planting. The seeds of a new way of life are being planted — a way of life that’s not just new for you but also new for the world you live in. For you this requires adherence to what you know to be true, rather than what you know explicitly to be untrue.

Responding to what you know is true requires that you align with a set of values different from those that are popular at this time in history, including setting aside a whole diversity of motives that seem to be so appealing. It’s true that the values you’re espousing are not fully defined, mainly because we (as a culture) are not familiar with a way of life where there are not winners and losers.

It’s essential that in your language, your daily activity pattern, the choices you make, who you associate with and the way you initiate new projects, you factor in the values layer and emphasize what you are creating rather than what you do not want. I am not suggesting you hang out only with ‘like-minded people’ but rather those who invite, push, pull or lift you to a new level; people who challenge you to be more like yourself rather than in any way complacent.

Working on the level of these underlying values is more important than what you might actually do or express, though this astrology is more than theoretical. The action piece is vital, because as new values are defined it’s necessary to put them into action, to establish them as real and to ground them in physical existence.

Planets in the Water Signs: Saturn in Scorpio

Let’s go through the well-known planets, which set the scene, then end with the newly discovered ones that fill in the nuances. Most of these transits involve planets in the water signs. Leo is a fire sign — perhaps the most fiery of them, since it’s ruled by the Sun — however, the water signs factor prominently in your chart, and all three are now getting transits.

Saturn, for example, is now in the fixed water sign Scorpio. Scorpio is your solar 4th house if you’re a Leo Sun or your 4th house by whole-sign houses if you’re Leo rising. The 4th is the foundation of the chart, and Saturn here has many expressions, one of which is about cleaning your roots and rebuilding your foundation, your security base and making sure that your home really accommodates your life.

You may over the next couple of years feel called to make physical structural changes to where you live, relocate your home and/or business, or just clear out your attics, closets and storage areas, as part of reclaiming your space. The goal is not movement for its own sake but rather finding the place that feels right. Everything can, in theory, be right.

There are many layers to this transit; it is a developing story. Saturn will take you deeper into your emotional roots, and help you purge another aspect of the emotional themes of your early childhood, which are actually not so easy to become aware of and address. Saturn makes sure this will happen in a dependable way.

Some of the layers involved here include various dimensions of confronting your emotional insecurities.

This is an aspect of your personality that you hide well from others but cannot hide from yourself, especially now that Saturn is down there stirring the pot, bringing to the surface some of your deepest insecurities.

Several other manifestations of this transit are worth mentioning. One involves a good look at the ways you grew up in an emotionally manipulative environment. You’ve likely figured this out already; however the thing to do now is to figure out what tendencies this gave you that don’t work for you. You do not, for example, need to be suspicious of people, only alert for when they reveal their motives.

One is the ‘safety’ dimension of sex. You may not quite recognize how cautious you are where sex is concerned, and Saturn is going to put you into confrontation with your boundaries. This is going to be interesting because three other major transits are suggesting that it’s time to open up sexually in a new way, and I mean this no matter how ‘old’ or ‘young’ you are.

You tend to associate sex with safety/security. It’s one thing to choose people with whom you feel safe, but sex is about exploration and creating and it cannot ultimately be guided by a value like safety or security. This transit seems to be squeezing you out of that shell. Indeed, it seems the whole purpose of Saturn is to drain the old pool, the ancient fossilized water from previous epochs in history.

This will allow in many new sources of emotional water, which are coming from two different angles in your chart. Both, incidentally, are involved with deep sexual exchange. This is emphasizing the nourishment factor of sex rather than the security factor. To get the nourishment you want, you are likely to have to step out of your comfort zone, or maybe think of it as the comfort zone of your mother and/or father, and your family in general. Truth be told, none of those people were very comfortable there anyway, and you know you need your own space.

More Planets in the Water Signs: Pisces

As for new sources of water: you have two significant planets moving through your house of partnership agreements — Chiron and Neptune in Pisces, which is where you negotiate and exchange with others. It is very, very nice to have Pisces on the 8th house, which is the house of ‘the sex you want’.

The 8th is about sharing resources of all kinds, usually through some form of sexual relationship, inheritance or contract (the original contract associated with this house being for the dowry). Modern astrology associates the 8th with deep sexual surrender, and Pisces here means that you associate this with pleasure rather than with power.

The planets now transiting your 8th are associated with fantasy and dreams (Neptune) as well as with healing and consciousness (Chiron). As you let go of whatever Saturn in Scorpio represents, you will open up to what these Pisces transits represent, which is a deepening of your relationships. This is a healing process, and that involves letting your imagination run free and then allowing yourself to follow up with some form of actual contact.

I cannot overemphasize the healing theme here. Saturn’s presence is to point out some of the places you want or need to work with yourself; Chiron is telling you how to do this: how to cultivate a new kind of trust; how to have that facilitate contact; how your creativity has to lead the way.

Speaking for a moment to the financial/contractual aspect of this house, I suggest that you need to work with a vision (Neptune) and with the hard facts (Chiron).

One last thing in the water signs, or really, many last things: a collection of planets arrives in Cancer, just prior to your birthday. On the day the Sun arrives in Leo, the following planets are in Cancer: Pallas Athene, the lunar apogee, Jupiter, Mars and Mercury. That is a lot, and it’s a diversity of influences, suggesting a diversity of experiences and the need for certain micronutrients that you will find lodged in the deep crevices of your fantasy life.

Cancer is in your solar 12th house or your 12th house by whole-sign houses if you are Leo rising. The 12th is your house of the ‘secret self’. On the personality level, it’s the sappy, sentimental side of your nature that defies what people think of as Leo the Lion. It’s the Mama Lion aspect of Leo, and it’s a continual influence for you.

The 12th house in Vedic astrology is the house of the pleasures of the bed. This is associated with fantasy and dreams, as well as the alternate universe that is a deep erotic experience. Like the 8th it’s a deeply erotic house, and like the 8th you have a water sign here. So the emphasis, particularly with the sign Cancer, is on nourishment and exchange.

All of these planets in the 8th are a picture of how much fun you can have if you let go of your subtle fears and insecurities. Note, when there are planets in the 12th you may feel those fears more poignantly for a time, but (as other transits suggest) that is the whole point; if you notice them, you can address their origins and begin to resolve them.

The overall theme of the water signs is BUILDING EMOTIONAL CONFIDENCE. You are good at the ordinary confidence thing and you’re also too good at faking it. You know the difference between when you are acting confident and really feeling confident, and the difference involves your emotional connection to yourself. And this is the point of all of these water sign transits. You need to feel confident, not just act that way in your cat-like manner.

Sagittarius and the 5th House

There is one last transit group that helps set up the picture: it involves Sagittarius, your fellow fire sign and 5th solar house if you’re a Leo Sun (5th house by whole-sign houses if you are Leo rising). The 5th is the house of the creative experiment, which includes fun for the sake of fun (the kind that kids have), one’s tendency to reproduce, and by extension, the creative impulse.

The 5th is a significant house of sexuality because it’s where we do sex for its own sake, for fun or creative purposes — the kind of sex that most people forget exists once they move into their ‘routine’ approach to the topic. You are, however, not in danger of that happening. Note that Sagittarius is one of the inherently spiritual signs, in that it addresses the nonphysical realms, the very exotic, and in traditional astrology, matters of religion and religious faith.

There are more planets in Sagittarius than in any other sign, though if you looked at a conventional astrology chart, you would see none for most of the year. This is because the planets that are there are relatively new discoveries (with the exception of the asteroids present, all of them are post-1992). In all, including two deep space points, there are 16 planets and points in Sagittarius the day the Sun arrives in Leo, July 22, 2013.

There is something of a creative and sexual tempest brewing here for you. There is a hint that, in a sense, art and sex are the key to everything. Though I am not in the business of giving too much advice to parents, I will tell you that if you have children, they are influenced by this house, and I would propose that they are influenced for the better by your choosing to express yourself more freely.

I suggest that you use this astrology to court the unfamiliar. It’s exceptionally experimental astrology; at the same time it invites you into some of the more unworldly and soulful spiritual realms. Because several of the planets involved are centaurs, the healing dimension is opened up.

The odd thing about the 5th house is that it’s like a rabbit hole — when you start exploring there, you just go deeper. And with Sagittarius there is always deeper to go. Consider these next few statements to be in bold text — I suggest that you educate yourself about sexuality. You need a lot of information to navigate the territory you might find yourself in.

Nearly everyone thinks they know more about sex and sexuality than they do. The two books I would recommend as starting places are Eros Denied by Wayland Young and Sexual Secrets: The Alchemy of Ecstasy, by Nik Douglas and Penny Slinger.

I also suggest you listen to my interviews with Tantra teachers Mark Michaels and Patricia Johnson.

To sum up here, the three most meaningful houses associated with sexuality are positively lit up in your chart this year, and into 2014. This is about a calling; it’s something real. Were it only two of the three houses, well, we could say it’s a coincidence. But three is a pattern. You are being called somewhere new.

This can place challenges on relationships by the way — if your partner is not ready, you may feel like you have to hold back. I would ask, however, how long that’s been going on. There seems to be a necessary dimension of challenging partners to give you the space to let you do what you know it’s time to do. This may involve you taking a chance on the relationship. Either way there is a risk: if you don’t challenge the relationship by being who you are, you are sacrificing something inherently about you, to no useful or creative end.

In support of this idea, I offer the frequently quoted passage of Marianne Williamson:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

I don’t know if that liberation is automatic, but our liberation definitely facilitates that of other people. We have spent many millennia holding ourselves down so that we don’t ‘threaten’ others. In our society, anyway, it has never been safer to open up, and there are very few valid excuses to hold yourself back.

Note, this article, called The One and the Many, may give you some new ideas how to think of relationships outside a strictly traditional format.

1992 QB1 and The Threshold

As a point of background, I need to explain a bit about how the sign Taurus works with your chart. That’s the context. Taurus represents your 10th house — solar house if you’re Leo Sun, or whole-sign house if you’re Leo rising. The 10th is the house of reputation, accomplishment, honor and authority; in the most basic mundane terms, it’s your goals and your career.

With Taurus here in your chart, you want something rock solid. You are not a job hopper and the work you do has to be grounded in your authentic values. You have to do what is real, and you want what you do to last and have lasting impact.

Venus, associated with Taurus, is the planet that rules this sector of your chart. On the day the Sun enters your sign, Venus is newly arrived in Virgo. That’s the sign associated with healing, service and ideas, which fits our subject matter perfectly. Venus is making many aspects as well — an opposition to Neptune, a wide but useful opposition to Chiron, a sextile to Saturn and a sextile to Mars and Jupiter.

Venus is making a lot of connections. Part of what you will be doing is branching out and weaving those very connections in real life. By the way — if you can keep your focus on self-esteem, as Venus is suggesting here, you will find your journey a lot easier.

Now for one last transit. In 1992, a new planet was discovered that confirmed the existence of a new realm of space. That planet does not have a name; it’s called (15760) 1992 QB1. I recently wrote a full-length article about it here.

This discovery was the first planet orbiting our Sun beyond Pluto. It was a major discovery for astronomers, and it has gone 99.9% unnoticed and unacknowledged by astrology.

As you will read in this article, there are many dimensions to this planet’s themes. This planet is about to become the most elevated in your solar chart, arriving in Taurus this year and changing signs for the first time since its discovery 20 years ago.

To my eye, this transit is the physical embodiment of everything else I have described in this reading. QB1 has a sexual dimension, in that it’s the aspect of sexuality that takes us beyond the power and death realm of Pluto. It’s as if this holistic, life-affirming erotic awareness gradually informs everything that you do, and has an influence on every relationship, whether sexual or not. We live in a society where sex is used to sell everything and is said to motivate everything. It’s time we take this to heart.

The presence of 1992 QB1 is a comment on what you do in the world — your calling. Your calling is about to reach far beyond any one activity, job or goal. But it’s about much more than that: it’s an invitation to biophilia; that is, living in harmony with, and with deep sensitivity to, the biological realm. Every other transit in your chart is leading you in this direction.

Without saying what QB1’s movement ‘means’ for you per se, I will say this: it’s an invitation to be open to fully engaging with the experiment that is life, and for counting no aspect of your existence as separate from any other.

Eric also offers birthday readings and other audio reports here.

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Leo Chart.

Chart for the Sun’s ingress of Leo.

Leo chart.

Handwritten chart for the Sun’s ingress of Leo.

Leo minor planets.

90 degree sort of all planets in early cardinal signs at the Sun’s ingress of Leo.

Leo minor planets.

List of minor planets in Aquarius and Pisces, opposite Leo at the Sun’s ingress.

Leo minor planets.

List of planets in early and mid fixed signs at the Sun’s ingress of Leo.

Leo minor planets.

List of minor and major planets in Leo (and Virgo) at the Sun’s ingress.

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