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The twelve sun signs, from Babylonian star lists through Ptolemy to the newspaper horoscope.

Western · sign 5 of 12 · natural 5th house

Leo

22 July – 22 August, 2025

5 claims about Leo can be traced to antiquity and are still made today. Everything else on this page arrived later, and each entry says when.

When Leo actually begins

ingress 202522 July 2025, 13:29 UTC
ends22 August 2025, 20:33 UTC
boundary drift 1925–202522 July – 23 July (37.5 h)

Computed from the Sun’s true ecliptic longitude for this year, not read from a fixed table. If you were born within a day of either boundary, a site using a table may put you in a different sign — and it is the table that is wrong.

What survives from antiquity

These are the only claims on this page that may honestly be introduced with “tradition holds”. Each is attested by an ancient or early-modern source and by a contemporary one.

  • kindattested antiquity → present5 of 12 core sources

    Marcus Manilius (trans. Thomas Creech, 1697), Astronomica IV.14 (Creech, 'Of Leo') · Alan Leo (William Frederick Allan, 1860-1917), p.23 · ZodiacSign.com · Horoscope.com editorial staff · Trusted Psychic Mediums editors · and 1 more

  • leadershipattested 17th c. → present3 of 12 core sources

    William Lilly, Christian Astrology I (Of the Nature of Leo) · The Old Farmer's Almanac · SunSigns.org editors · Horoscope.com editorial staff · Trusted Psychic Mediums editors · and 2 more

  • quick-temperedattested antiquity → present3 of 12 core sources

    Marcus Manilius (trans. Thomas Creech, 1697), Astronomica IV.14 (Creech, 'Of Leo') · Julius Firmicus Maternus, Mathesis VIII.10.1 · Raphael (house pseudonym; title page reads "The Astrologer of the Nineteenth Century, Author of the 'Prophetic Messenger'"), p.13 · The Old Farmer's Almanac

  • honestattested antiquity → present3 of 12 core sources

    Marcus Manilius (trans. Thomas Creech, 1697), Astronomica IV.14 (Creech, 'Of Leo') · The AstroTwins (Astrostyle) · Cafe Astrology

  • domineeringattested antiquity → present2 of 12 core sources

    Marcus Manilius (trans. Thomas Creech, 1697), Astronomica IV.14 (Creech, 'Of Leo') · Alan Leo (William Frederick Allan, 1860-1917), HTJN, p.87 · California Psychics editors · The Old Farmer's Almanac

What arrived with the popularisers

Claims that reach us through Alan Leo, Raphael and Sepharial — the Edwardian writers who turned astrology into a mass-market genre — with no ancient source behind them. These are usually the most familiar things said about Leo, and the page reference for each is below it.

What the tradition said and we stopped saying

Attested in antiquity, and repeated by no contemporary source in this corpus.

The fate the classical texts predicted

Firmicus Maternus and his contemporaries did not write character sketches. They predicted outcomes, and this is what they predicted for Leo. Every one of these has been dropped — across the whole corpus, no modern source repeats a single one.

  • a violent deathJulius Firmicus Maternus, Mathesis VIII.10.5

The work

Occupations are the one part of this tradition that demonstrably reaches the present. Character claims mostly do not, and physiognomy does not at all — but the trades the classical texts assigned to Leo are still being assigned to it.

Rulership

The classical scheme gave every sign one of the seven visible planets. The outer planets were discovered between 1781 and 1930 and reassigned later, so where a sign has two rulers, both are real claims from different centuries. Neither is the correction of the other.

traditional

Sun

attested antiquity → present10 of 12 core sources

modern

none assigned

No outer planet was ever assigned to this sign. That is the answer, not a gap in the data.

Correspondences

Grouped by what kind of claim each is. Element and modality are agreed by every source in every century; the lucky numbers are agreed by almost nobody. Both appear on every astrology site in the same table, in the same type, which is how one borrows the other’s authority.

structural

Agreed by every source in every century.

element
  • fire
attested antiquity → present9 of 12 core sources
modality
  • fixed
attested antiquity → present8 of 12 core sources
polarity
  • masculine
attested antiquity → present6 of 12 core sources
sect
  • diurnal
17th c. only · no modern source1 of 12 core sources

classical

Classical taxonomy. Largely dropped by modern astrology.

direction
  • east
17th c. only · no modern source1 of 12 core sources

dignity

Classical doctrine. Stable, but the outer planets are a modern addition.

exaltation
  • Neptune modern
modern only · no pre-1929 source1 of 12 core sources
fall
  • Pluto modern
modern only · no pre-1929 source1 of 12 core sources
detriment
  • Saturn traditional
  • Uranus modern
modern only · no pre-1929 source1 of 12 core sources

mythic

The sign's image. Phrasings vary; the figure does not.

symbol
  • The Lion
modern only · no pre-1929 source5 of 12 core sources
guardian deity
  • Jove (jointly with Cybele)
antiquity only · no modern source1 of 12 core sources

body

Melothesia — the sign's part of the body. Ancient, and not medical.

body part
  • heart
  • Heart
  • Shoulders
  • Spine
  • The heart
  • upper back
19th c. only · no modern source1 of 12 core sources

accretion

Modern accretion. Sources rarely agree with each other.

stone
  • Ruby
  • Carnelian
  • Tiger's eye
  • Yellow topaz
modern only · no pre-1929 source1 of 12 core sources
metal
  • Gold
modern only · no pre-1929 source1 of 12 core sources
colour
  • Gold
  • Orange
  • Yellow
modern only · no pre-1929 source3 of 12 core sources
flower
  • Sunflower
  • Chamomile
  • Marigold
modern only · no pre-1929 source1 of 12 core sources
day
  • Sunday
modern only · no pre-1929 source1 of 12 core sources
number
  • 1
  • 10
  • 19
  • 24
  • 3
  • 39
  • 59
  • 6
  • 83
modern only · no pre-1929 source1 of 12 core sources

The body the old books describe

William Lilly, Raphael and Sepharial all told you what a Leo looked like. Modern astrology dropped this entirely: across the whole corpus, not one physical description is repeated by a contemporary source. It is reproduced here as what those writers said, in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, and for no other reason.

stature
tall 4middle 1
build
large-boned 4strong 2square 1
hair colour
fair 4brown 1
hair texture
curling 1
hair volume
balding 1
eye colour
grey 3blue 1
eyes
quick-sighted 2large 1
complexion
ruddy 3fair 1
head
round 4large 3small 1
brows
light 1
shoulders
broad 4
hips
narrow 1
limbs
strong 1
gait
upright 2
aspect
fierce 1refined 1
constitution
strong 1
voice
harsh 1
previous Canceropposite Aquariusnext Virgo

Bodhastra documents what astrological traditions have said, and when they started saying it. It is presented as cultural history and entertainment. Nothing here is medical, psychological, financial or predictive advice, and nothing here is a claim about what will happen to you.

Every source, listed

Place data from GeoNames, used under CC BY 4.0.