In Leo, the Call takes the quality of the sign: making visible, and radiating, what is unique from one's own center. I would like to show what this lack demands of each of the three Black Moons, and where it finds a livable form.
What Leo does to the Call
Leo is the sign of fire that radiates: creating, loving, playing, appearing. When a Black Moon stands here, the lack lodges in light itself. I meet, with this placement, people whose demand for singularity has turned into a need to be recognized, admired, confirmed, as if the absence of a gaze annulled the worth of what they carry; and others who dare not radiate at all, for fear of what they would be if seen. The lack is not vanity. It is a place left open in the light, and that place calls.
I then read the three Black Moons separately, because they do not ask for the same thing in the same sign: the Mean seeks a course there, the True brings up what calls in the body, the Corrected seeks attunement between the two. For each, here is what I wrote in volume 1.
Mean Black Moon in Leo: the Alicorn
The Mean holds the course, and in Leo that course takes the quality of the sign. The demand is fine and it is formidable, and the answer is never to reach the absolute perfectly:
In Leo, the Alicorn indicates a direction in which something unique asks to become visible and radiate from its own center. The demand for uniqueness can become a need to be recognized, admired, or affirmed, as though the absence of an outside gaze canceled the value of what seeks expression. The response is to give one’s light a form without making it a throne: to create, love, and radiate because something deserves to be offered, without seeking proof of one’s own importance in it.
The Black Moon, the three faces of the Call, volume 1
True Black Moon in Leo: Athena
The True shows what calls in the instant, in the body. In Leo, matter rises in its own way, and Athena reveals what can no longer be deferred:
In Leo, matter appears as a need to create, love, play, or make visible something that can no longer bear to remain in the shadows. Frustration can become intense when the creative impulse finds no place for expression or its value depends entirely on others’ eyes. Athena then reveals a power of radiance, and the response is to give it a work, a gesture, or a presence that can exist without constantly awaiting affirmation.
The Black Moon, the three faces of the Call, volume 1
Corrected Black Moon in Leo: the Unicorn
The Corrected seeks attunement between the course and the push. In Leo, that attunement has its own terms:
In Leo, attunement is sought between the need to radiate and the reality of what can be offered to others. The need for expression can turn into a search for recognition, or self-effacement prevent a real uniqueness from taking form. The Unicorn seeks a way of creating from one’s own center without making others’ eyes the measure of one’s worth: radiating without reigning.
The Black Moon, the three faces of the Call, volume 1
The open cross in Leo
Each Black Moon unfolds a cross: four stations that go from the call to the trial of the return, and that occupy the four signs of a single cross of the zodiac. The one starting from Leo passes through Scorpio, Aquarius and Taurus: the call in Leo, the price of passage in Scorpio, the response at the point in Aquarius, the trial of the return in Taurus.
In volume 2 I set side by side, station by station, the two respondents that travel this cross, Apollo for the Corrected, the form made habitable, and Priapus for the True, the power made present. At the first station, I have Priapus say, in Leo:
"I want to be looked at, me, entirely. I don't shine beside another sun: I am the center, or nothing."
The Black Moon, the three faces of the Call, volume 2
And Apollo:
"I want to shine to illuminate others, to create works that lift them up, and to love with a warmth that warms them. My glory is a service."
The Black Moon, the three faces of the Call, volume 2
The three other stations, and what each one costs, are read in the book.
What the book adds
Volume 1 gives for each Black Moon the complete portrait of the sign, and volume 2 unfolds the open cross in Leo over its four stations, for Apollo and for Priapus, with the relationship to the world, to constraint, to otherness and to the future that each one engages. That is where the reading becomes precise, and that is where I left it.
Frequently asked questions
What does Lilith in Leo mean?
That the Call of the Black Moon takes the quality of Leo: making visible, and radiating, what is unique from one's own center. I do not read it as a shadow, but as a demand seeking a livable form, and that form is not the same for the Mean, the True and the Corrected.
Are my three Black Moons in the same sign?
Not always. The True can stray from the Mean by up to about thirty degrees, and the three are often found in two different signs. The application tells you which ones are in Leo.