You know you're a Leo. Do you know which Leo you are?

What is a Leo really like?

Leo is the fifth sign of the zodiac: a fire sign, a fixed sign, ruled by the Sun. The Sun is in Leo from July 22, 23 or 24 to August 22 or 23. What any one Leo is really like depends on the rest of the chart: the Moon, the rising sign, Venus and Mars.

Leo is one of twelve. What is the zodiac, and where did the twelve signs come from?

What it is

Your sun sign is the slice of the zodiac the Sun was standing in on your birthday. The zodiac here is a measuring tape, not a picture: the Sun's yearly path cut into twelve equal slices of 30°, counted from the spring equinox. Leo is the fifth slice, and the Sun crosses it from July 23 to August 22. ¹

It isn't the constellation. When the Babylonians matched twelve star patterns to twelve equal slices, the dates and the stars lined up. Earth's axis has wobbled since, so on the same dates the Sun now stands in front of different stars, and astronomers count thirteen constellations on its path, not twelve. Western astrology keeps its slices tied to the seasons, not to the stars. ¹

Leo is a fire sign and a fixed sign. Ptolemy grouped the signs in triangles of three, 120° apart; Leo's triangle is Aries, Leo and Sagittarius, the one later astrologers called fire. The modes come from the seasons: fixed signs fall in the middle month of a season, when it is simply itself. ²

A ruling planet is the planet a sign is said to belong to, its "house" in Ptolemy's word. Tradition gives Leo to the Sun. Ptolemy reasoned that Leo and Cancer, the two signs nearest the top of the northern summer sky, bring the most heat, so the Sun took Leo and the Moon took Cancer. ²

A sun sign is one placement out of many. The Moon, the rising sign and every planet sit in signs of their own, which is why two people with the same sun sign can seem to have very little in common.

This is the short version for one sign. How the zodiac was built, and its whole history, is on the master page: What is the zodiac, and where did the twelve signs come from?

Leo in the old books

The traditional portrait of the sign, the same for everyone born under it.

Leo, in the old books, is the lion in the Sun's own house, and the portrait borrows from both. Traditionally a Leo is big-hearted and proud, at home in a crowd, happiest when the room is warm and the lights are up. The books have Leos leading by instinct rather than by rota, loving loudly, and taking a friendship as seriously as a reputation. ²

The flip side the old writers never skip is pride. A lion is said not to enjoy being laughed at, and to sulk magnificently when ignored. Astrologers tie the warmth to Leo's place in the year, high summer in the north, and the steadiness to the fixed mode: a Leo's affections, and grudges, are said to stay put.

That's the sign on its own, the same for every Leo born in the last two thousand years. How it sits with a particular Moon, rising sign and Venus is a different question.

Where Leo comes from

Era by era, with sources. More in the Reading Room.

Ancientc. 1000–450 BCEBabylonian astronomers built the zodiac out of eighteen reference star groups over about a thousand years; by around 450 BCE it had settled into twelve equal zones along the path of the Moon and planets. ³
Ancient410 BCEThe earliest known horoscopes, from Babylon and Nippur, date to this year. ³
Ancient235 BCEA horoscope from Uruk for a child born in early June 235 BCE records that the Moon was "in Lion": Leo already, under its Babylonian name. ³
ClassicalRoman eraGreek and Roman star lore makes the constellation the lion of Nemea. Pseudo-Hyginus's Astronomica says it was set among the stars as the king of beasts, and that some writers told of Hercules killing it, unarmed, as his first labour. ⁴
Classical2nd century CEPtolemy, working in Alexandria, writes the Tetrabiblos. It gives each sign a ruling planet, groups the signs in triangles of three and sets out the angles between signs that astrologers still use. ^5,2
Medieval12th centuryThe Persian astrologer Abu Ma'shar (died 886) is read in Latin across Europe; the University of Edinburgh holds a 12th-century Latin copy of his introduction to astrology. ⁶
1800s1890The first number of Alan Leo's Astrologer's Magazine goes on sale in July 1890. Annual subscribers get a free horoscope with a short reading: astrology by post, for ordinary readers. ⁷
1910s1917Alan Leo is fined for fortune-telling at the Mansion House on 16 July 1917. He dies that August, working on a system of astrology without predictions. ⁷
1930s1930–1937R. H. Naylor's horoscope for the newborn Princess Margaret runs in the Sunday Express on 24 August 1930 and becomes a regular column. By 1937 it is organised by the twelve sun signs, and newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic follow. ⁸
1960s1968Linda Goodman's Sun Signs is published: a whole book built on the twelve sun signs. ⁹
1980s–90s1980–1999Computers take over the arithmetic. Astrodienst in Zürich, whose founder had been writing astrology software since 1979, starts selling colour birth charts in 1980, goes online in 1996 and adds free daily horoscopes in 1999. ¹⁰
2010s2016NASA publishes a short explainer: the Sun crosses thirteen constellations, the Babylonians picked twelve to fit a twelve-month calendar, and "we didn’t change any zodiac signs". ¹
Today2024A Pew Research Center survey finds that 30% of US adults consult astrology, tarot or a fortune teller at least once a year, mostly for fun, with whole astrology cultures on TikTok and other platforms. ¹¹

Worked out, not guessed

Calculated facts only, worked out the same way the machine does it.

Venus never gets more than about 47° from the Sun, so a Leo's Venus is always in one of five signs: Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo or Libra.
The Moon changes sign every two and a half days. Without a birth time and place, most birthdays could belong to either of two Moon signs. (91.1% of birthdays from 1950 to 2029, once every time zone on Earth is allowed for.)

Every Leo reads this page. Only your card knows you.

Your card is worked out from the day, the minute and the place you were born: your birth chart, your love chart, your numbers and the sky you arrived under. This is what it covers.