Leo and the Lonely Child
We all participate in all of the archetypes. Your astrology may emphasize some archetypes more than others, but you have every sign and every planet somewhere in your natal chart. They are there for you to access in the moments when you need to put on an unfamiliar archetype like a cloak.
Maybe you’re normally gentle and kind, but when your child is in danger, you step up and become the Warrior. Maybe you’re literal and blunt until you find yourself awed by a beautiful sunset, and, for a few moments, you have the mind of the Poet. You have been the Child, the Student, the Lover, the Witness. If you live a long, full life, you will be the Elder, too.
Why is Leo the Child archetype?
Becoming a mom has taught me a lot about Leo and the Child archetype. My daughter doesn’t have any planets in Leo, but she is full of Leo energy. She loves to perform. When we applaud, she shines like a star. She loves clapping so much, she randomly drops what she’s doing periodically to initiate a clapping break. Whenever we pass the photo collage in the hall, she asks to stop and point at all the people she knows. And she points at herself the most. Mostly, we see Leo the Child in her, but she has moments of quiet dignity when she reminds me that Leo is the King and the Child simultaneously, and it’s not because putting on airs is childish.
Children are associated with the Leo archetype because Leo is the part of us that needs to be seen and recognized by the people we care about. Children cannot thrive without attention. Psychological studies have demonstrated that children need attention as much as they need food. Neglected infants get sick. They develop poorly. They could even die.
The Still-face experiment established that even a few moments with a parent who is present but doesn’t engage is profoundly distressing to infants. The child tries to get attention. If that doesn’t change their parent’s behavior, they cry. If the parent doesn’t respond to crying, the child tries to escape. If escape isn’t possible, the child withdraws into themselves. If a parents’ neglect becomes habitual, the child’s withdrawal becomes habitual, too.
For a long time, we didn’t know about the importance of attention for children. Children were expected to be seen but not heard. Making an infant “cry it out” when they needed attention at night was supposed to teach them resilience. We’ve come a long way in our understanding of human development, and it is becoming popularly understood that neglect is abuse.
It’s one thing to acknowledge that a child needs attention to thrive, but adults are expected to outgrow the need for attention. It’s acceptable to talk about having an inner child as long as that means embracing playfulness and creativity, but adults are pressured to behave as if expressions of love from the people around us don’t matter to us.
Leo is a silent rebuke of this narrative. It is controversial because it constantly reminds us that human beings are not solitary creatures. We need each other. We need the physical presence of others around us because our ancestors found safety in numbers, but we have social needs that are just as important as our physical needs. We need love and attention from our community to thrive.
The Sun Is a Lonely Star
“Community” doesn’t come up often in conversations about Leo. Leo is ruled by the sun, and so descriptions of Leo tend to revolve around solar metaphors.
The sun is our star, the center of the solar system. Its light is the source of all life. Its gravity holds all the planets and comets and asteroids in its orbit. It rules alone at the center of everything.
Because of these stories we tell about the sun, Leo is commonly seen as needing to be in the center of things. Leo needs to rule–or believe that it rules. It is endlessly self-referential, unable to cooperate with others. The people in Leo’s orbit are so small, Leo is barely able to perceive them at all.
There are people like this. Otherwise, these myths about Leo wouldn’t survive, but that kind of behavior isn’t what Leo is. It isn’t even the whole story of what the sun is. Since the discovery of Sedna in 2003, the scientific consensus has shifted, and we’ve learned the sun may have something to do with community after all.
The Discovery of Sedna and the Sun’s Missing Family
Around the turn of the 21st century, astronomer Mike Brown was convinced that there were planets beyond Pluto. This was a heretical belief for an astronomer to have at the time. Scientists had looked at all the possible places where planets could exist according to the current working theories at the time, but he suspected there was something they were missing.
He started looking in impossible places, and it was in one of those impossible places that he found the dwarf planet Sedna in 2003.
Confronted with the existence of an impossible planet, the scientific community came together to rewrite their models to make Sedna’s existence possible. In the end, they concluded that Sedna could only exist if the sun hadn’t always been alone.
The best theory we have for Sedna’s existence is that the solar system was formed in the sun’s infancy. In those days, the sun was part of a nursery of stars who danced with each other. Over time, the sun’s family drifted apart, but Sedna was close to the other stars in the nursery. She still flies out into space–halfway to the next star!--pulled by the gravity of the sun’s lost family.
Today, the sun stands alone, surrounded by acolytes but alone without peers. Because of its position, we projected stories of kingship onto it. We assumed that it stood alone because its power had pushed all its rivals away. It never occurred to us that the sun could be lonely.
What if the sun is a neglected child, shining in the dark alone. What if Sedna is the sun’s emissary, searching for the sun’s missing siblings?
Leo Is Always Looking For Friends
The discipline of astrology is a celebration of the subjective. The empty circle in the center of your birth chart is waiting for you to step into it. When an astrologer reads your chart, they are stepping into the circle with you, helping you see more clearly how reality looks from your unique perspective.
For as long as humanity can remember, we have used the sky as a mirror. We told stories about the stars that were really stories about ourselves. But astrology is not a human-centered monologue. The universe is alive, and the sky talks back to us. The stars and planets reveal themselves in unexpected ways, showing us our assumptions and biases, expanding our understanding of ourselves and others.
As a narrative astrologer, I believe it’s an important part of my job to celebrate the subjectivity of astrology. When I write about astrology, I am not presenting the absolute objective truth. I am merely describing the world as I see it. Every astrologer is doing the same.
Because I write this way, I have attracted a lot of clients with birth charts that are similar to mine. I have a Leo ascendant, so I spend a lot of time talking with Leos. What I have learned from my work with Leos is that the people who live on a stage blinded by their own brilliance either aren’t that common or they don’t have much use for astrology. I rarely meet egotistical, self-confident Leos who have no use for anyone but themselves.
It is much more common for people with strong Leo placements to feel like lonely children, left alone in their crib to cry in the dark. They may shine. They may be natural performers, but those qualities are the least of their concern. What they want more than anything is to belong in a constellation of stars, to dance and play with the others forever.
This is the reason why it is so important for Leo to find the others, to not waste time on people who don’t appreciate them. It isn’t because of some ill-conceived need for worship. It is because the need for the others who love us is real. Without friends, the sun is a lonely child, abandoned and alone with no reason to shine.
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