Sacred Secretion Dates for Leo: The Lion's Monthly Chrism Fast Window

Moon at 90° — enters Cancer · 120° — enters Leo · 150° — enters Virgo

The Leo arc is 90° to 150° of the ecliptic. Phase one, the modern addition, is the Moon's transit of Cancer, from the solstice degree to 120°; the midpoint is the Moon's entry into Leo; phase two is the Moon crossing Leo to 150°, where Virgo begins. The Moon's speed varies over its orbit, so the twelve windows below range from 3d 23h to 4d 6h, averaging 4d 2h.

Leo's cusp days fall around July 22–23 and August 22–23. If you were born within two days of either, the Sun's sign change — which shifts by up to a day between years — may leave the date ambiguous between Cancer, Leo and Virgo. The calculator settles it from your birth time and birthplace timezone; check there before relying on these dates.

Leo is Fire ruled by the Sun, and in the body-map it holds the heart and the upper spine — the dorsal vertebrae, the place where the back straightens when pride arrives. Carey's Leo salt was magnesium phosphate, which he called the “heart cell-salt” that gives the “Lion's spring” to the blood throbbing through the heart (The Zodiac and the Salts of Salvation, p. 31). Take it as symbol. The heart is the point: a Leo body organizes itself around the heart the way a solar system organizes itself around a star.

The modern window puts a Leo through Water first. The Moon in Cancer is tidal, moody, private, and astrologers read a Sun-ruled sign as meeting that as a loss of light — the days when you would rather not be seen. Later practice fasts through these days; Carey rejected fasting (God-Man, p. 103). What the sign's reading asks instead is to notice how much of your appetite is appetite for being witnessed. In this reading a Leo can go without almost anything more easily than without an audience.

When the Moon crosses into Leo the seed is said to be born and to begin its climb toward the head, passing — on the tradition's map — through your sign's own region, the heart and the spine behind it. This half is Carey's own, and in the sign's reading the one that suits you: warmth returns, the back straightens. The discipline now is not to spend that warmth. Retention in the Leo sense means keeping the fire inside the ribs instead of radiating it outward for effect. Sit up unsupported. Let the spine hold itself. That posture is the whole teaching.

Sources: George W. Carey & Inez Eudora Perry, God-Man: The Word Made Flesh (Los Angeles, 1920); George W. Carey & Inez Eudora Perry, The Zodiac and the Salts of Salvation (1932). Their physiology is their own description, not established medicine. God-Man is quoted from the archive.org scan.

Tonight, sit on the floor or the edge of a chair with nothing behind your back. Let the spine find its own vertical — not military, just unsupported. Then put your attention on the heartbeat. Find it without touching anything: in the chest, the throat, the fingertips. Count thirty-three beats without moving. If you lose count, begin again without commentary. Leo lives in the heart and the upper spine; during the window this is where the tradition asks you to keep your fire. Thirty-three beats, alone, nothing to buy.

Every Sun sign has its own window. Yours opens when the Moon enters Cancer and closes when it enters Virgo. The pages for all twelve signs are below.