Leo

The sign at a glance

Place in the zodiac

5

Persian month

Mordad

Element

Fire

Quality

Fixed

The element and the quality are the classical groupings: every fourth sign shares an element, and every third shares a quality.

Leo among the twelve borj

The borj are the twelve signs of the zodiac as the Persian astronomical tradition received, translated, and used them. They are not only sky divisions. When the solar calendar was regulated so that the year opened at the vernal equinox, the twelve months were laid out to follow the twelve signs in order, and each month simply took the name of the sign standing over it. Sign and month became one word.

Asad, the Lion, is the borj that English calls Leo. Counting from the sign that opens the year at the equinox, it stands fifth, which makes it the fifth month as well. In the northern hemisphere that places it in the deep heat of summer, and much of what the tradition says about it turns on that heat and on the sun.

The borj names are still in everyday civil use: they serve as the month names of the Solar Hijri calendar in Afghanistan, where the fifth month is Asad. In Iran the months of the same calendar carry older Persian names instead, and the borj names live on in astronomical and astrological writing, in classical poetry, and in ordinary figures of speech.

What the tradition associates with Asad

In the tradition, this borj belongs to the Sun. Where the other signs are assigned to a planet that visits them, Asad is described as the Sun's own house, the place where its nature is least diluted. From that assignment nearly everything else in the reading follows: the tradition speaks of this borj in terms of light, warmth, visible presence, and the kind of authority that does not need to be argued for.

In the tradition, the element given to this borj is fire, and its quality is the one the classical texts call fixed. Fire here is read as steady radiance rather than sudden flare, and the fixed quality is taken to mean constancy: a heat that holds through the middle of the season instead of rising and passing. The traits the tradition attaches to the sign are gathered along that line — generosity, magnanimity, loyalty once given, courage in the open, dignity of bearing, and a warmth that others are said to gather around.

In the tradition, the Lion also lends the borj its associations with rule and with the centre of things: the seat rather than the margin, the one who is looked to. Older Persian sources connect the sign with high station, with display in the honourable sense, and with a liking for what is noble and well made. The same texts record, plainly, a strong attachment to honour and to being thought well of, which they treat as inseparable from the sign's generosity rather than as its opposite.

Beyond the readings, Asad is a figure of speech in Persian letters long before it is anything else. The lion of the sky, the Sun in its own house, the month when the year is at its hottest — poets used these as images of splendour and of a strength that is expected to be gentle with what is weaker than itself.

These are readings the tradition carries, recorded and retold over centuries. They describe the sign, not any person born in its month.

The sign, the month, and the moving dates

The Persian solar year begins at the vernal equinox, at the moment the sun crosses the celestial equator. The months were then cut to follow the zodiac in order, so the fifth month is the month of Asad. That order of dependence matters here: the month is not fitted to the sign afterwards. The sign follows the month, and this page treats the month's own boundaries as the boundaries of the sign. There are no degrees, decans, or times of day in that mapping, and a civil birth date could not carry them.

This is also where the sign's classical quality can be put in plain words. Asad is a fixed sign, which in the old scheme means it sits in the middle of its season rather than at either end. It neither opens the season nor hands it on; it holds it at full strength, which is the natural place for the sun's own house in the hottest stretch of the year.

Because the year starts at an astronomical event and not on a fixed Gregorian date, the equinox falls a little differently from one year to the next, and the whole month structure shifts with it. The day the month of Asad begins therefore lands on more than one Gregorian date across a long run of years. A printed table that gives a single fixed range will match many years and disagree with some. Where this page and such a table differ, the difference is the table's approximation, not an error here: the dates below are computed from the calendar itself, year by year.

Why a printed table disagrees

What Mordad, the month itself, is called in Iran and in Afghanistan

When Leo began

The Persian year starts at the spring equinox, so each month starts on whichever Gregorian day the equinox falls on. That is why these dates move.

Across the 101 years below, Leo began on 3 different Gregorian dates. A printed table prints one of them.

From 1950-07-23 to 2050-08-22.

1. July 22

   20 yearsEnded August 21.

   1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020, 2024, 2028, 2029, 2032, 2033, 2036, 2037, 2040, 2041, 2044, 2045, 2048, 2049

2. July 23

   78 yearsEnded August 22.

   1950, 1952, 1953, 1954, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2025, 2026, 2027, 2030, 2031, 2034, 2035, 2038, 2039, 2042, 2043, 2046, 2047, 2050

3. July 24

   3 yearsEnded August 23.

   1951, 1955, 1959