Julia51423
Active member
Julia, I've been reading this thread with interest. Like you, I am a Leo who, for years, never thought I was very Leo because my surface personality doesn't match up very well with what the sun sign books describe. And, like you, I have the moon in Sagittarius, but a different rising sign: Capricorn. I was also pretty shy as a child and teen, and as an adult (late thirties), I would still consider myself introverted, but a gregarious introvert: I really enjoy being with people, and I also really enjoy being alone, and I really wouldn't consider myself shy anymore. I'm perfectly comfortable, for instance, with speaking in front of large groups.
In my case, the Leo gets somewhat muted by having Capricorn rising--that creates a very practical and serious "mask"--and by my sun being in the eighth house. The fourth, eighth, and twelfth houses are the inwardly directed houses of the birthchart. Anything placed in one of those houses has a strong influence on the development of your inner life, but its influence is not so immediately visible to others... or, often, even to yourself. It can take some deep introspection to see how you're being influenced by planets in the fourth, eighth, or twelfth house (for the purpose of astrology, the sun and moon are also planets).
While your Leo sun is in the third house, it's up against the cusp of the fourth house, so it would have some fourth house influences as well. Planets on house or sign cusps tend to have influences on, and take on characteristics of, both the sign or house that they're in and the one they're almost in.
Sun indicates the development of your ego and personality. The sign it's in indicates how your personality needs to grow and develop in this lifetime and gives some clues as to how that can happen. Planets that make aspects to your sun also give some of those clues, but that gets very complex in a hurry, so for the purpose of this post, I'll stick with signs and houses. And the house that your sun is in indicates where you need to develop--that is, in what way and what direction your personality needs to grow.
Leo's ruler is the sun. That means its message is essentially the same as the sun's message: development of personality to the fullest. The sun in any sign is a core personality that needs to grow, and the sun in Leo is a personality that really, really needs to grow, to develop itself as fully and far as it can. And the third house is the house of communication. It is closely associated with Gemini and with Mercury, and Mercury is the ruler of Gemini, just as the sun is the ruler of Leo: again, their messages are essentially the same.
It's no coincidence at all that your current shyness, sense of insecurity, and difficulties with communication are causing you so much difficulty. Those are the key issues that your personality needs in order to grow. With your sun in the house of communication, and your ascendant ruled by the planet of communication, and your ascendant's ruler in the same sign as your sun, which happens to be the sign of personality development... for you, communication is at the very center of who you are and who you need to become. Difficulties with communication are no picnic for anyone, but for someone whose core personality depends on communication, those difficulties can feel many times worse--like an outright attack on sense of self.
But communication doesn't just mean talking. It also means listening. The best communicators listen even more than they talk. Listen to others, listen to the world around them, listen to their own inner intuitive voices. And your chart shows a strong gift for that. The retrograde Mercury, Mercury in the fourth house, and fourth house influences on your sun all speak to a deep and inward type of communication. You have the natural ability to be a great listener and a deeply intuitive communicator. Those are very great strengths.
The difficulties you're having right now can also become great strengths if you let them. Personalities develop through challenges, and you have gifts that could not possibly develop to their fullest if everything in that area were easy for you. You have such a strong desire and need to communicate, to speak to others (not just literally, but also deeply and metaphorically) that if it all came easy to you, you would be joyfully running your mouth like there's no tomorrow.
If you didn't experience significant challenges to your own ability to communicate early in life, if you spent your entire youth as an outgoing "Leo" personality with a bubbly "Gemini" mask... then you would be a big talker but probably not much of a listener. You would be at great risk for becoming a prima donna with a big mouth who's so full of herself that she never shuts up and certainly never lets anyone else get a word in edgewise. And worst of all, if you didn't have any uncomfortable feelings around that, any challenges around communication, you wouldn't see anything wrong with that, you wouldn't feel any need to change, and you wouldn't develop your communication abilities in any meaningful way. That would in turn result in your personality failing to grow, because your personality needs growth in that area in order for it to grow.
Your birth chart spared you from that by giving you those challenges. It put the brakes on your talking long enough for you to develop the listening side of communication. You will probably find it easier to communicate with others as you develop your ability to communicate with yourself, to hear your inner voice, and also as you develop your ability to listen.
The very fact that you posted here in this forum shows that you are already following that path. You may be following it in other ways as well. Maybe your friends consider you a good listener. Maybe you have lots of intuitive experiences... lots of "I'll do that just because it feels right," or "I don't know why I don't want to do that, but it just doesn't feel right." Maybe you have hobbies or interests that are very creative... art, poetry, drama, or even just a creative flair on something not usually labeled creative. Maybe you just like listening to the birds sing and seeing a beautiful sunset. All of those things are communicative experiences on that deeper level.
Wow that's interesting and actually makes a lot of sense. You really need to check out this link I just found: http://www.starslikeyou.com.au/your-ascendant-is-gemini/
It is about gemini risings and if you read paragraph four it actually agrees a lot with what you are saying. I guess it's just coincidence that I came upon this right after I read your post haha.