Leo types are experts at discovering and unleashing human creativity—in themselves and in others.  Here’s how they do it, along with advice about how anyone (even those with only a smidgen of Leo in their charts) can do it too:

Be playful and childlike.  Have fun. Get so absorbed in what you are doing that you forget how others see you.  Engage others in the fun you are having.  Taking a playful approach to just about anything opens up creative channels and allows for relaxed, right-brain thinking.

Be a role-model. Be a leader.  Stand up, be seen, be visible.  Chief obstacles to this include embarrassment and fear of looking silly.  But don’t let them stop you!  If people don’t have other people to look to, how can they learn to live?  If there’s something you’ve figured out about how to live an excellent life, model that, be that, show that to the world.  I’ll betcha someone around you needed to see it in action.

Be self-centered–appropriately. This is a delicate balance.  Love yourself without arrogance as a flawed-but-beautiful human being: one of many, all of equal importance, holding yourself as your own special charge.  You are the shepherd of your own self, the guide of this body, this mind, this heart, this soul, this being.  Cherish this person you were given to be.

Shine on everyone. Leo knows a very special secret: that attention is the most valuable commodity in the world.  Everybody wants some and almost everybody wants more than they are getting or a different quality of attention than they’re getting.  When your Leo side is badly-behaved, it will pull you to grab attention—any attention at all.  When your Leo side is healthy, you give attention as the Sun gives sunshine—naturally, because you cannot help it and because you simply love to share.

Never underestimate the importance of your unique, authentic creativity. Leo exists to remind us that the individual point of view is important.  Modern physics tells us that the center is everywhere—and nowhere.  This means the center of the universe resides in you just as powerfully as in anyone.  Your point of view matters, and the creative flow that can come forth only from you and you alone is absolutely crucial to the workings of the whole.

You gotta give Leo credit.  It’s not easy to be your truest, most authentic self in front of God and everybody.  That’s scary stuff.  Occupy your whole social footprint—no more, no less, and the Leo in you will be happy.

Nothing fires you up or gives you purpose like a birthday reading.
Contact Jamie to schedule one for yourself or your favorite Leo.

This is a repost of an article I wrote for the San Francisco Bay Area Women’s Journal.  You can read the original here.

Solutions For Fire-Gone-Wrong

In my recent post Personality Flaws of the Four Elements I described ways the 4 Elements can go wrong, each according to its own nature.

How To Know If Fire Is Burning You Up
When all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.  Fire is at best a blunt instrument and when abused it becomes destructive quickly.  Your Fire has gone wrong when:

•   You frequently feel angry, destructive, or aggressive.
•   You always need to have the last word.
•   Your friends report that you habitually squash other people’s self-confidence by dominating them .
•    Some say your ways of being make you feel big and others feel small.
•    You feel restless and can’t settle down into a job or relationship.

Solution One:  Balance Fire With The Other 3 Elements
If your Fire is distorted, the other elements can help restore balance. Some say that anger is a disguise for grief, and for a Fiery individual this can be very true.  Are you masking sadness with your Fiery display?  Take off the armor, sink into your Watery side and let yourself feel sad.  But leave the battle zone first.

Air can also lend a useful perspective.  Draw on your Airy side to access your inner Observer, that part of you that can get healthy distance from yourself.  Step outside your anger and use logic instead.  Debate with yourself before arguing with others.

Earth reminds Fire that dominating others is impractical, because it impedes the very leadership you’re trying to create.  Why would people want to follow someone who blows up easily and loses self-control?  Earth says, have self-discipline and show them that you take practical action on your promises.

Solution Two:  Emphasize Healthy Fire
If you emphasize healthy Fire and fill your life with positive expressions of Fire, there will be no room for unhealthy Fire.  This elegant solution gently allows negative Fire traits to fall away as a side-effect of your emphasis on positive Fire.  You might call this solution “Fire-Fu.”  Here are some examples:

•    You’re prone to overindulging in physical pleasures to compensate for how hard you work or how boring youHave a regular athletic routine that allows you to “blow off steam.”  Then you don’t explode unexpectedly.
•    You’re prone to overindulging in physical pleasures to compensate for how hard you work or how boring youEncourage mental self-talk that builds your confidence, instead of undermining it.  Then you don’t need to dominate others to get your way or express your needs.
•    You’re prone to overindulging in physical pleasures to compensate for how hard you work or how boring youEnjoy healthy competition with strong people you respect.  Then you’ll find the patience you need to get you through the times when you have to tread delicately with people you wouldn’t choose, but have to relate with.
•    You’re prone to overindulging in physical pleasures to compensate for how hard you work or how boring youAssert yourself early and often, so you don’t build up a head of steam and blow.
•    You’re prone to overindulging in physical pleasures to compensate for how hard you work or how boring youExamine the beliefs that make up your philosophy of life—create a world-view that expands (not contracts) you.

The Four Elements are a fascinating part of human temperament.
Find out about yours in a reading with Jamie:
Contact Jamie to learn how.

Coming in a few days:  Has Earth Grounded You–Permanently?

Leo types have a deep ambivalence about their public reputation and audience response to their creativity.  They crave audience response—their creativity thrives on it—but this gives them a corresponding extreme sensitivity to the audience.  A Leo will vacillate between extreme self-consciousness and a self-imposed blindness to audience reaction, just to cope on their journey to self-expression and individuation.

Leo’s Time In The Sun
Leos need to bring what’s inside them outside & share it with the world as liberally as the sun shares sunshine.  Their process of expressing their creativity requires the mirroring of an audience.  They are engaged in self-discovery by way of performance.  Audience response helps them to see themselves more clearly and adjust their performance.

While this is a fine mode of self-discovery and individuation, sometimes a Leo type
needs to shift his focus from audience reaction (how am I doing?) to self-expression (am I saying what I want to be saying?).  That’s where true confidence comes from.  If you’ve said what you really wanted to say, if you really got it out there into the world, then if some people didn’t get it, that’s their problem, not yours.

How sad it is when a Leo has a morbid self-consciousness that prevents them from taking center stage.  Sometimes a Leo type has a distaste for looking like other Leos, who can be attention hounds, showoffs and exhibitionists in the extreme.  Leos are drawn to the limelight because Leos crave to move beyond showing off into true creative expression.  Encourage your Leo friends who take up too much stage time to scale it back a little, and encourage your Leo shrinking violets to get a little bigger and louder.

Every Creator Needs An Editor—Accept Criticism With Grace
Like all fire signs, Leo can be brash on the outside, but easily deflated.  Leo has a fragile ego, easily crushed, but also capable of quick recovery and bouncing back just as strong or stronger.  Fire is the element of inspiration and hope—and all 3 fire signs have these qualities in abundance, giving them tremendous resilience in the face of defeat.  But sometimes this ability to bounce back comes at the cost of self-awareness.  Sometimes a Leo type simply ignores the audience’s reaction and goes on looking for praise and encouragement when what the audience actually has to offer is a reality check.  When the gong sounds, it’s best to get offstage quickly, rather than trying to improve a truly bad performance.  The Leo type who can accept criticism in a balanced way, rather than being either crushed (like a shrinking violet) or explosive (like an entitled diva), will grow much faster as a performer and a person.

Learning to accept criticism with grace also eliminates another Leo flaw, which is susceptibility to flattery.  When a Leo craves praise too much, she opens herself up to manipulation by anyone who will praise her, whether she’s producing quality or not.  This has the effect of preventing any useful reality checks that would allow the Leo to improve herself.  And, as any Scorpio or Capricorn type will tell you, when someone praises you too much, they probably want something.

This Leo Is Under Construction
So the next time your friendly neighborhood Leo grabs center stage, remember what they are really doing.  It’s not just a bid for attention, it’s individuation happening, right before your eyes.  And if that involves a teeny bit of ego-grooming along the way, so what?  Leos need to show-not-tell, and are willing to be seen making their mistakes.  They are role models for whatever aspect of life they are working on.  Hiding is not in their nature and their transparency is their gift.

Leos, how about a special birthday present?
Your birthday is your own personal New Year’s Day.
Having an astrology reading at this time can center you
and expand your creativity in the coming year.
Contact Jamie at Pandora@pandoraastrology.com
or 510-816-2504 to schedule a reading.

Art by Christy Grandjean, aka Goldenwolf.

Ever wonder why sun sign astrology became so popular, when it’s so silly?  It’s because sun signs are easy to use.  Everybody knows their birth date, so everybody knows their sun sign.  It gives people something to schmooze about in bars and at parties—“I’m a Pisces!”  “I shouldn’t date Sagittarians—they’re my downfall!” and so on.  This makes for fun conversation, but it also has the unfortunate side effect of categorizing us and giving us preconceived notions about people—notions not true enough to be useful and true enough to do damage.  Sigh.  It’s a shame, really, that astrology got diluted this way, but it did get astrology into popular culture, which in my mind is a good thing, being a far cry from olden days when only kings had access to astrology.

As I mentioned in my article You Are Not Just Your Sign, the Sun is just one part of your astrology chart.  But it is an important part.  And here we come to the reason why sun signs are useful at all as conversation starters:  they do work.  Your sun sign is an important and central part of your personality.  The Sun in your chart is the gravitational center of your personality and the sign it’s in shows how you go about the process of individuation, ego formation and discovering your own identity.  The Sun is the center of you in the same way it is the center of our solar system:  it gives light, heat and life force energy to everything it touches.  Your sun sign is the source of your creativity—it’s where you want to shine.

Let’s take a whirlwind trip through the sun signs to answer the questions “How does your process of individuation go?” and “where do you need to express creativity and shine?”  Since we’re in August right now, I’m starting with Leo, the Sun’s very own sign.

Sun in Leo: Ego formation happens via the process of performance and using the response from the audience to revise one’s own behaviors.  Creativity is natural to Leos and expressing themselves is something they must do if they are to be happy.

Sun in Virgo: Individuation is not difficult for Virgos—their natural discriminatory abilities easily detect where their boundaries are.  Virgo’s challenge lies in creativity, because Virgo must learn to be comfortable taking credit and being seen.

Sun in Libra: Libra’s desire for fairness and symmetry will too often have Librans waiting for others to notice them before really allowing themselves to shine and individuate.  This is a shame, because Librans have style and artistry.

Sun in Scorpio: Scorpio, like all water signs, would rather operate under the radar than have attention drawn to itself, posing a challenge for this sign’s individuation.  Scorpio’s creativity is likely to be expressed internally, rather than displayed.

Sun in Sagittarius: Like the other fire signs, Sagittarius is comfortable with visibility and display but can scatter its creative energies.  Sag casts a large aura and tends toward leadership as a form of creativity—when Sag gets focused & chooses a direction.

Sun in Capricorn: Ah, how Capricorn does hold itself back!  Cap types tend to crave the public recognition they need to help them individuate, but they are late bloomers and have trouble accepting praise until after 30, when their finest years begin.

Sun in Aquarius: The challenge to Aquarian ego formation is the deep-seated Aquarian belief that the group is more important than the individual.  Aquarian creativity does best in the form of intellectual genius and sharing of ideas with those of like mind.

Sun in Pisces: How do you individuate when you feel you are not an individual, but a crowd?  So many voices, and Pisces is listening to them all.  But the Piscean imagination is strong, leading to abundant creation & potential mastery in all the arts.

Sun in Aries: Individuation is easy for assertive Aries, the sign voted most likely to fall flat on its face multiple times on the way to success.  The message is clear:  get used to failing fast and draw on Arian hope.  Then watch your creativity soar.

Sun in Taurus: Like Virgo, Taurus doesn’t care about flash and glamour.  Taurus does care about beauty and quality though, and in its deliberate way, will produce fine creative product given time.  Taureans sometimes self-identify with their income.

Sun in Gemini: Geminis can be scattered, losing themselves in an overabundance of ideas, but formidable when focused.  Geminis tend to identify with their intellect, to see themselves as a head with a body attached.  Communication is central to Gemini.

Sun in Cancer: The tendency to identify with one’s feelings or intuitions is strong in Cancer.  The Cancerian form of creativity is in nourishing things, helping things grow from small and weak to strong and formidable.  Cancer, nourish yourself too!

I hope you enjoyed this brief and extremely superficial look at the sun signs.  It’s just a teeny taste of what you’d get in a full, sit-down astrology reading.

To understand the Leo type’s nature, you need look no further than the closest feline—the cat (whether great or small) is a very apt symbol for Leo.  In honor of the fabled 9 lives of  cats, here are 9 ways Leo is like them.

1. Cats love attention.  They love to place themselves in the human visual field.  Have you ever seen a cat get into the middle of a project you have spread out on a table, or crawl into your lap at the most inconvenient time or curl up on top of the television?  Have you ever seen a Leo who is getting the attention she wants and a Leo who is . . . not?  Getting the right amount of attention (not too much, not too little) and in the right area (not, God forbid, the wrong area!) is a central pursuit of Leonine existence.

2. A Leo, like a house cat, is self-possessed and autonomous.  This feline trait can be off-putting to dog people, who are used to their pets licking them enthusiastically in greeting.  Cats are more subtle and hard to read and more comfortable on their own.  Leos too, are subtle in their enthusiasm.  A Leo would never think of embarrassing herself with puppyish behavior.  Self-consciousness and dignity prevent it.

3. A Leo is easily embarrassed.  Every Leo has behaviors that mask their embarrassment—as do cats.  There’s a novel about the inner life of cats, called The Abandoned (by Paul Gallico) that shows a boy who was recently turned into a cat learning how to behave like one.  His feline mentor says, “When in doubt, wash!” and if you watch cats, you’ll see this is exactly what they do.

4. Leos love being petted.  Cats (and Leos) are very sensual creatures and capable of great enjoyment.  Anyone who lives with a cat learns from that cat how to relax, receive affection and simply enjoy being in a body.  Leos share this trait and love to luxuriate in sensory experience.  And praising is merely verbal petting which Leos are also pleased to receive.

5. Leos radiate confidence.  Does your cat remind you of a lion or panther?  Your cat is a domestic version of its greater-sized relatives, carrying all the arrogance and self-possession of that species.  As the arrogance of a domestic cat outsizes itself in ways reminiscent of their great cat relatives, so also can a Leo sometimes appear confident beyond the social footprint they actually occupy.  Deep in the heart of every Leo type (and with some it’s right on the surface!) there’s a longing to be famous.  Your friendly neighborhood Leo likes to indulge his tendency toward fame by dressing for attention, eliciting preferred treatment or obtaining rock star parking.

6. Like a cat, a Leo type looks like a loner but is in fact social.  There may be much of hierarchy in Leo social behavior, but Leos are profoundly social and care deeply about how others respond to them.  Cats form colonies—given the chance, they do not prefer to live isolated from their own kind.  Like cats, Leos are territorial and will defend their turf fiercely.

7. Leos, like cats, prefer high places.  Cats put themselves where they can have a lofty view of their surroundings; similarly, Leos like to place themselves high up also, but in a more metaphorical sense.  Every Leo knows she belongs at the top in at least one area of life, and he won’t stop till she gets there and garners the recognition she deserves.  A Leo,  like the Sun, (Leo’s planetary ruler) is a gravitational force and will eventually end up at the center of things.

8. The love of a cat is marked by choice, not compulsion.  A dog cannot help but love you (and this is exactly what dog-lovers appreciate about them) while a cat seems to have the choice whether to love you or not.  For this reason, cat-lovers find the love of a cat special.  Like a cat, Leos love by choice and where they choose, they love thoroughly, proudly and in a large way.  When a Leo (or a cat) loves you, you cannot help but know it and find it special.

9. Obviously, a Leo is king of the jungle.  Somehow, felis domesticus seems to maintain this attitude despite their small size.  Deep down, a Leo senses his own royal nature and understands noblesse oblige, i.e. his “nobility obligates” him to be kind and generous with all that he has and is.  And a generous Leo is a gift to the world.

Leos, how about a special birthday present?
Your birthday is your own personal New Year’s Day.
Having an astrology reading at this time can center you
and expand your creativity in the coming year.
Contact Jamie at pandora@pandoraastrology.com or 510-816-2504
to schedule a reading or put one on your wishlist.