Neptune in Leo

Neptune in tropical Leo; because Neptune moves so slowly, the tradition reads a sign placement like this one for a whole generation as much as for any one person

What the tradition reads

Neptune takes some one hundred and sixty five years to cross the whole zodiac and spends around fourteen years in any one sign, shared by everyone born while it crossed that stretch of sky and felt personally only where it lines up with the Sun, Moon or another personal point. Cafe Astrology's own delineations of Neptune in the signs begin only at Virgo, so a placement this old is read instead through the AstroTwins' account, which also names Leo, with Cancer, as one of Neptune's two signs of exaltation, and dates its last passage through Leo to 1914 through 1929, an era it credits with the Golden Age of Hollywood, adding that the planet will not return to Leo until 2078. Leo is a fixed fire sign, ruled by the Sun, read as the sign of self expression, generosity and the wish to be seen. Neptune there is read as a master of illusion who captivates through performance or a shifting look, more at ease shaping a bold production from behind the scenes than standing fully in front of it. The same placement is read as prone to hedonism and peer pressure, its romantic feelings swinging between idealisation and disappointment. A generation carrying the placement is read as one whose relationship to glamour and self expression was shaped by that same all or nothing intensity, atmosphere more than any one chart's private signature, an excess credited with eventually turning toward a harder won, more honest kind of self expression.

The story

Neptune, the Roman god of the sea and fresh water, is remembered as a brother of Jupiter and Pluto, the three of them presiding jointly over the realms of heaven, the earthly world with its underworld, and the seas; before the sea claimed him fully, Neptune was linked especially to freshwater springs, worshipped by the Romans also as a god of horses. Leo's own lion was, in Greek myth, the Nemean lion, a beast whose hide no weapon could pierce, so that Heracles was forced to enter its cave and fight it with his bare hands alone, catching it in the air and breaking its back to win the first of his twelve labours; Zeus then placed the lion among the stars to commemorate that victory. A god who received his own share of the world simply by being one of three brothers who ruled it jointly meets, in Leo, a beast that earned its single fixed place in the sky only by being beaten in a contest no ordinary weapon could win; a generation under Neptune here is read as one that dreams of a radiance so effortless it need never be fought for at all, the very ease the lion itself was never permitted.

Written from

Corpus key planet-in-sign:Neptune:Leo.