Leo. ♌︎

The lion of Nemea could not be cut. Arrows bounced off the hide; bronze bent. Heracles, assigned the beast as his first labour, cornered it in its own cave, dropped club and bow, and strangled it with his hands. Then he skinned it with the only edge that worked, the lion’s own claw, and wore the pelt as armour for the rest of his career.

The lion went up among the stars as trophies do, and midsummer belonged to it ever after. When the Sun stood in Leo, the Nile rose; fountains across the Mediterranean still pour water through lion mouths for that reason. Of all the signs, this one has done the least shape-shifting: a king’s beast, filed under royalty from the beginning.

Babylon needed no persuading: these stars were UR.GU.LA, the Great Lion, and the bright star at its breast was LUGAL, the King. Greece kept the lion, Rome kept the king, and a later age gave the star its diminutive Latin name, Regulus, the little king. Few ideas in the sky have held office so long.

The Sickle, a backwards question mark of six stars, draws the head and mane; Regulus dots the question. It sits almost exactly on the ecliptic, so the Moon and planets run it over on schedule, and Denebola, ‘the lion’s tail’ in Arabic, closes the hindquarters. Find the Sickle once and you will never lose the lion again.

Sources: MUL.APIN I · Catasterismi 12 · Aratus, Phaenomena 148 · Hyginus, Astronomica 2.24