In this series, I’m going to break down each and every rising sign and every house of your chart, based on the rising sign. I’m going to be using whole sign houses, which is a house system where every sign is a separate house.
This isn’t so much of a breakdown, actually, and more of a synthesis. When you look at everything in a chart isolated and dissected, ultimately you’re not going to get much of a narrative about your entire chart. By relating every house back to your rising sign, you can understand your entire chart in a more holistic way.
If you’re not using whole sign houses already, I highly encourage you to apply it to your understanding of your chart. While Placidus is still the most popular house system being used, it’s actually more relevant to electional astrology than using your natal chart to understand your personal drives. Whole sign houses are more relevant when you use astrology to build self understanding.
Leo Rising, Aquarius Descending: I’m strong enough to love you without needing you
Leo Risings are warm, spontaneous, and huggy people when you see them but, with Aquarius on the descendent, you might be surprised that you get to see less of this person who seems to move through the world with so much intimacy than you’d expect. That’s not because Leo risings don’t show up for people—they do. It’s because they only show up intentionally—when they think that their relationship with you is transformative for the world. Leo is a sign that’s about creating new futures and Leo risings want their relationships to collaborate with them in creating new futures.
The descendent can also, like the rising sign, be a placement that serves to protect the person from the world. It’s a defense mechanism. Leo risings can protect themselves by giving off an air that reads “I don’t really need you” and “I’m strong enough to exist without you.” Leo is about projecting strength. Aquarius in the seventh house means that Leo rising doesn’t want to approach their relationships from a place of need. They want relationships to be something that strengthens everyone—not just people in the relationship but everyone around them as well.
Virgo Second House, Pisces Eighth House: I'm capable enough to always give more
Pisces in the eighth house makes Leo risings extremely generous. These are people who will give and give and give. They want to give without boundaries and idealistically. They don’t have a problem with owing someone else or letting someone owe them. And Leo rising doesn’t just want to give to one other person or a few other people. They want to give to the world endlessly.
With Virgo in the second house, Leo risings strive to be someone who is in charge of their own shit. They want to be people who are capable of almost anything and can do difficult tasks perfectly. They might have some kind of idealized figure who seems incredibly capable and constantly measure themselves up against that person or idea. Being a Leo rising is a lot of work. Because they want to be in charge of themselves, they want to be able to control their stuff.
Sometimes, what this can mean is that Leo rising becomes a person who gives their time and energy in a way that people usually do when they feel stable themselves even when Leo rising does not feel stable themselves. Leo rising can be a person who seems like they’re thriving even when they’re not. They might want to be there for people even when it jeopardizes their own well being. It can be hard for Leo rising to remember that there are no perfect accountability systems and that it’s okay to let people down.
Libra Third House, Aries Ninth House: Steal the politics from the institution
Leo rising is not someone who likes to sit in an ivory tower and learn from all the books that they have gathered. They’re people who want to learn from conversations, from jokes, from memes, and from real relationships. With Libra in the third house, Leo risings need their real relationships to be learning places. They need their impact on their communities to be an impact that delivers justice where justice is due. Leo risings expect politics to be delivered on the level of ground communities.
A Mars ruled ninth house means that Leo risings see political struggles on a larger level to be power struggles. They might witness politics like a boxing match where powerful people duke it out without caring at all about the actual struggles of the people they represent. While Leo risings experience conversations as a place of learning, they experience politics as an ego battle.
Leo risings are not institutional people but they are political people. When they engage in politics, they do so with the understanding that politics is about power and not cooperation. They save their cooperation and their listening ear for grassroots stuff—for local politics without slogans.
Scorpio Fourth House, Taurus Tenth House: Change at the speed of trust
Again, Leo rising is a sign that wants to birth future worlds into the present. You don’t get to do that while sustaining the status quo. You can only do that when you are willing to transform your present and your relationship to your past. With Scorpio in the fourth house, Leo risings are not people who are satisfied with the places where they come from. They are people who want to burn the places they come from down and build something new in its place.
Leo risings also have Taurus in the tenth house. The changes that Leo rising wants to see in their environment never seems to come fast enough. This is not because Leo rising is doing anything wrong but because the changes that they want to see are so big that it is not possible to move unless everyone is on board. Leo rising’s work is done slowly, must be built and nurtured, and must move at the speed of trust and not will.
This is the basic tension of a Leo rising—they seek to assert independence by transforming themselves but they can only transform themselves by transforming the world. No one is able to transform the world on their own. The changes that Leo rising is here to enact and witness is both personal and generational. Their life work can take a whole lifetime to do.
Sagittarius Fifth House, Gemini Eleventh House: Expect unexpected things
Leo is a really fun sign and Sagittarius in the fifth house of Leo rising is a fun placement. A fifth house ruled by Jupiter is a fifth house that wants to experiment and play. Leo risings want to try new things. They want to find new aesthetics and pleasures that don’t exist yet. In sex and fun, they’re adventurers who are always down to try things that no one has heard of before.
The eleventh house is who you want to play with. Gemini in the eleventh house wants to play with people who are able to challenge Leo rising’s existing value systems. Leo rising is not looking for people who reinforce them but for people who contrast them. Community is not supposed to be a place where everyone just agrees with each other. For Leo rising, it’s a place where difficult conversations can happen.
Leo rising needs pleasure to be a learning place. They need their relationships to be places where they are challenged. They need the people around them to tell it like it is. They need their pleasure to create new ways of being in the world that, to do that, they need people who can expect unexpected things with them.
Capricorn Sixth House, Cancer Twelfth House: Healing is work
The twelfth house is something that we might hide because it contradicts the parts of ourselves that other people can see. Leo risings are strong people and Cancer is about vulnerability. Cancer in the twelfth house of a strong person is someone who hides their fear and their anger because they want to be a positive role model. A lot of the time, Leo risings are people who don’t want to act out emotionally. They prefer to cry alone or leave to deal with their emotions on their own.
The sixth house is where the twelfth house becomes integrated into our lives. Wherever we have Capricorn in our charts, we have to reckon with the old. Leo risings are not just about strength—they’re about transforming vulnerability into strength by reckoning with inherited trauma. Because of this, Leo risings know and understand the cycles of trauma that they inherited from their families (this is also Scorpio in the fourth house). With Capricorn in the sixth house, Leo risings want their labor to confront history directly. They don’t need work that feels superficial. They need work that they can commit to and they need this work to set up networks of care that address the needs that they put away.
