Leo 12: An Evening Party on the Lawn

Adults gather on a lawn lit by ornamental lanterns for an evening party, fashionable dress and fashionable company assembled for pleasure with no purpose beyond the pleasure itself. Jupiter's decan and Saturn's newly begun term, degrees twelve through eighteen, put the zodiac's most expansive planet in charge of the mood while its most restrictive one quietly governs the boundary around it, festivity contained within a defined evening rather than allowed to run past its edges.

Wheeler gave Jones this picture in Balboa Park in 1925; the reading on this page is Rudhyar's 1973 language, and escape is the operative word, naming the party as relief from something rather than as a pursuit valuable simply on its own terms. The shadow is exactly that: pleasure defined mainly by what it is not, an evening whose lanterns will be put away and whose routine will resume the next morning regardless of how bright the party felt while it lasted. Leo's love of company, display, and being seen enjoying itself is served plainly here, a sign that generally prefers its leisure lit and witnessed rather than taken quietly alone. On a natal or progressed point the degree tends to show where a person restores themselves in company, and its fair test is whether the lanterns are lit for joy itself or only against the dark of the working week.