Leo

Because of the central theme that music, poetry, healing, light and augury had in the Greek culture, Apollo is identified with Greek mythology in its entirety. And Leo is also not just Apollo or the Sun, it is the Lion, king of all beasts. This sign is about creative self- expression, the ego at its pinnacle, man at the top of the pyramid. But it is also the developing ego, and hence many Leo are hiding a wounded or weak one!

There is a certain magic, charisma and leadership that comes with the radiance of the sun. Leos both need and lavish attention. A good Leo legend is that of Parzival, the fatherless hero living alone in the woods with his mother, but dreaming of adventure. One day he sees some Knights traveling through the forest and determined to seek his future, makes an armour out of twigs and branches and rides off without telling his mother, for he knows she would just go into hysterics. What he doesn’t know is that his mother had hidden his own royal heritage from him.

So inspired by the nobility and chivalry of the knights, he is off on his adventures which brings him to a castle where an old and sick King, along with a beautiful maiden, is performing a bizarre ritual involving the Grail. Parzival, being a polite young man, asks no questions and watches silently. But then, an angry voice says that he has failed everyone because the point was that he was supposed to ask the magic question that would then restore the sick king, and give him the maiden for his wife and the castle and grail as an inheritance. The question was, “What does this mean?”

Waking from this vision and realizing he had been ignorant, he went on a 20 year quest to find the castle, and when he did, he asked the right question as a man and a true hero. But the true quest was to understand the vision was within, the quest with himself, and the creative process has nothing to do with an audience. It is about watching himself.

Return from Leo to The Signs