Progressed Virgo Ascendant: The Joy of Service

I’ve written at length about the ways in which astrological stereotyping put me off of astrology for years. Stereotyping, in general, is bad news. Generalized statements about big groups of people always kick some people to the curb. Astrological stereotyping is no exception.

I do have one placement, though, that checked a lot of the stereotypical boxes at one point in my life: My Leo ascendant when I was a toddler.

Leo Ascendant: Attention Hound

Leo ascendant people have the reputation for being boisterous, attention-loving entertainers. Toddler me was a total ham. I was obsessed with Maria from The Sound of Music, and my parents have hours of home movie footage of me dancing around bellowing, “The hills are alive!” at the top of my lungs.

(Future Pagan? Quite possibly.)

At the time, in stereotypical Leo style, I was completely oblivious. I just wanted attention. All the time.

It wasn’t until my family started playing those tapes of me singing over and over that realized no one else in the family was begging to have the camera turn back on them when it looked away. In fact, everyone else seemed uncomfortable with the camera.

Maybe, I thought, I should be camera shy, too. Maybe, I shouldn’t be loud. Maybe, I shouldn’t crave attention.

I stuffed my Leo ascendant in a box and started living from my Taurus sun and Aquarius moon: Weird. But quiet about it.

Recently, I’ve started actively working on my Leo ascendant. Having an astrology practice that was built almost entirely on text was starting to feel like living in the Stone Age. I started investing time in my Instagram account, and I started taking selfies and making videos.

At first, I found the process terrifying. Sometime between preschool and adulthood, my affected camera-shyness had become genuine camera-shyness. In my first videos, I was visibly shaking, but as I practiced, I began to see that my toddler self was trying to tell me something important about who I was. Being on camera gave me energy and made me feel alive in a way that I hadn’t experienced in my adult life. I still felt shame in my need for attention, but I’ve learned enough about shadow work to know that I needed to learn to embrace it.

Progressed Virgo Ascendant: Meeting Attention Needs Through Service

It was only after I did work embracing my Leo shadow that I realized that the exuberance of my youth hadn’t only been tempered by criticism and maturity. My personality had evolved, and that evolution was reflected in my progressed ascendant in Virgo.

I was cleaning a bathroom sink when I realized how much I’d changed. I hate cleaning, but I hate a dirty house more, so I do everything I can to distract myself while I clean—listening to podcasts or asking my partner to follow me around and talk to me. It was a thing I did without thinking about it, until I found myself cleaning my boyfriend’s sink without distraction and finding joy in the way that the cleaner polished the faucet to a shine.

It may sound from this description like I’ve become a Virgo ascendant, but my basic Leo ascendant motivations are actually the foundation of this Virgo-like behavior. My joy didn’t come from cleaning itself. (I still hate the way cleaners dry out my hands.) My joy came from thinking about the smile I’d see on my boyfriend’s face when he saw what I’d done. I was still going after attention, but I’ve learned over the years that some of the best applause comes from doing unexpected things for people that make them smile. I learned that I can get my attention needs met through service.

The Progressed Ascendant: A Layered Personality

This is how the progressed ascendant works. You don’t lose the personality you were born with, but that personality adds the signs that follow the sign of your ascendant as you age. Whatever your core motivation is remains your core motivation. You simply find new ways of getting your basic needs met through the strategies of new signs. Like stage light filters, the color of the light you shine subtly changes.