we’re officially in the eclipse window, given the new moon solar eclipse in leo we just had, and i’ve been thinking about the cowardly lion in both the wizard of oz and wicked.

which is probably not the first place most people would begin when talking about a total solar eclipse in leo, but stay with me.

if you only know the wizard of oz, the cowardly lion’s story is pretty simple. he believes he’s missing courage. he joins dorothy on her journey to oz because he’s convinced the wizard can give him the thing he doesn’t have.

except, of course, he spends almost the entire journey being courageous.

he protects his friends. he walks toward things that terrify him. he keeps going despite being afraid. by the time he finally reaches the wizard, the revelation isn’t that he’s suddenly been given courage.

it’s that he had it all along.

i’ve been thinking about how much sadder that story becomes when you place wicked beside it.

before he was cowardly

in wicked, we meet the cowardly lion before he becomes the cowardly lion. he’s a cub. small. innocent. caged.

elphaba finds him being used in a classroom experiment and decides to free him. from her perspective, this is obviously the loving thing to do. an animal shouldn’t be imprisoned. he belongs in the wild.

so she releases him…“to freedom!’ lol.

except freedom doesn’t necessarily feel like freedom when nobody has taught you how to survive it. the lion later carries resentment toward elphaba because, from his perspective, she didn’t simply save him.

she abandoned him.

he was released into a world he didn’t understand without parents, protection, guidance, or anyone to teach him how to become what he was supposed to become.

i’ve been sitting with that because how many of the identities we carry were actually formed this way? not because something was inherently wrong with us but because at some point we found ourselves in a world we weren’t prepared for, and had to become something in order to survive it.

the lion eventually decides that something must be cowardice. he thinks, maybe the reason he doesn’t know what to do is because something is missing from him. maybe everyone else received some internal instruction manual that he somehow didn’t.

so he goes looking for someone who can give him courage.

he doesn’t realize that the search itself is evidence that courage is already there.

a solar eclipse in the sign of the sun

on august 12th, we had the total solar eclipse at 20° leo.

leo is ruled by the sun.

in astrology, the sun speaks to identity, vitality, creative expression, visibility, and the organizing center around which so much of the self revolves.

and during a solar eclipse, that light temporarily disappears.

astronomically, the moon passes between us and the sun. astrologically, eclipses have long been treated as interruptions to the ordinary order of things… moments when something usually visible becomes obscured.

this one is especially interesting because it happens on the south node side of the leo–aquarius axis.

the south node is often associated with what has already been developed: patterns we know intimately, identities we’ve inhabited, instincts we can perform almost automatically.

which makes me wonder if this eclipse isn’t necessarily asking us to become more leo. maybe it’s interrupting our relationship to the leo we’ve already learned how to perform.

the version of confidence that needs an audience.
the version of strength that cannot admit fear.
the version of individuality built around being exceptional.
the version of creativity that became inseparable from recognition.
the version of leadership that requires being the person with all the answers.
the version of self-expression that slowly became self-presentation.

none of these things are inherently bad…. but eventually, even the identities that once protected us can become cages.

the costume of courage

i think we sometimes confuse courage with the absence of vulnerability. we imagine the courageous person as someone who knows where they’re going.

someone decisive. certain. unbothered. strong.

but the cowardly lion is almost never any of those things, he’s literally terrified. he’s super dramatic. he wants to turn around at almost every second

and then he goes anyway.

which makes his story such a beautiful contradiction. the character most convinced that he lacks courage is constantly practicing it.

that’s because courage isn’t an identity at all. it’s a relationship with fear.

and if that’s true, some of us may have spent years building elaborate identities around proving that we’re not afraid.

achievement. independence. beauty. status. productivity. being needed. being admired. being the strong friend. being the one who always figures it out. being the one who doesn’t need anybody.

sometimes those things are genuine expressions of who we are.

sometimes they’re costumes.

and sometimes we’ve worn the costume for so long that we don’t know where it ends and we begin.

an eclipse in leo feels like an interesting moment for the lights to go out.

because when nobody can see you for a second…. you get to find out what’s still there.

what happens when the sun disappears?

there is something almost too perfect about the symbolism of a solar eclipse. for a few moments, the thing responsible for illuminating everything else becomes obscured. the sun hasn’t actually gone anywhere, we just can’t see it.

i feel like that’s the part of the cowardly lion’s story that keeps pulling at me. his courage never disappeared either, his relationship to it did.

life happened. fear happened. abandonment happened. confusion happened.

and somewhere along the way, he developed a story about himself:

“i am cowardly.”

then he organized his life around trying to solve a problem that may never have existed in the first place.

i wonder how many of us have done the same.

“i’m not disciplined.”
“i’m too sensitive.”
“i’m bad with money.”
“i’m not creative anymore.”
“i’m difficult to love.”
“i’m not a leader.”
“i’m behind.”
“i’m not confident enough.”

maybe some of those things contain useful information, but maybe some are simply conclusions we reached during seasons when we were trying to survive without enough context.

the question becomes:

who would you be if you stopped treating an old adaptation as a permanent description of yourself?

and then there’s aquarius (me, lol)

across from leo sits aquarius, where the north node is beginning a new chapter.

and i think that’s important.

because if leo asks, who am i?

aquarius complicates the question:

who are you when you don’t have to be the center of everything happening around you?

who are you when you belong to something larger?

who are you when you let other people have answers too?

who are you when your uniqueness doesn’t have to separate you from everyone else?

who are you when you stop performing individuality and start contributing from it?

there is something deeply relieving about that.

because maybe finding ourselves doesn’t always require more self-focus. sometimes we find ourselves through relationship.

through conversation, community, experimentation, witnessing other ways of being and through realizing that we don’t have to figure everything out alone.

the cowardly lion didn’t discover his courage sitting alone somewhere trying to become courageous, he discovered it while traveling with other people.

dorothy needed something.
the tin man needed something.
the scarecrow needed something.

and somewhere along the yellow brick road, each of them kept accidentally demonstrating the very quality they believed they lacked.

that’s part of the aquarius medicine here. sometimes other people help us see ourselves more clearly. life alongside the right people gives us opportunities to discover who we already are.

maybe elphaba wasn’t wrong

i keep coming back to elphaba releasing the lion because i don’t think she was wrong. the lion would’ve never learned to talk or anything had he been held captive forever.

but the lion wasn’t wrong it his experience either.

freedom without orientation can be terrifying and i think adulthood contains a lot of moments like this.

we leave the religion, or the relationship, or the hometown, or the career, or the family structure, or the identity, or all the expectations.

and initially, freedom can feel exhilarating.

until we realize:

oh.

now i have to decide.

nobody tells you enough about that part!!!

removing the cage doesn’t automatically teach you how to live outside of it. sometimes there is an entire wilderness between liberation and self-trust. that wilderness is where courage is actually developed, and not the shiny kind.

the quieter kind.

the courage to not know.
the courage to change your mind.
the courage to admit that something you once wanted no longer fits.
the courage to let people misunderstand you.
the courage to stop proving.
the courage to need people.
the courage to begin again without immediately turning the new beginning into another identity you have to maintain.

eclipse of the heart

that’s why i keep thinking of this as an eclipse of the heart.

not because leo is losing its light. but perhaps we’re being invited to reconsider where we’ve been looking for that light in the first place.

there are versions of ourselves we’ve spent years constructing. some were necessary. some got us here. some protected very innocent parts of us when we didn’t have better resources.

we don’t have to hate them and we definitely don’t have to dramatically destroy them. we can simply recognize when they’ve finished their job.

because the south node isn’t only about release. i think it’s also about recognition.

i’ve already learned this.
i’ve already survived this.
i’ve already proven this.
i don’t have to keep performing it.

and then comes the much stranger question:

who am i when i no longer need to prove that i am who i say i am?

i don’t think courage isn’t something we acquire after becoming confident enough. courage is what remains when the performance of confidence falls away.

the lion wanted someone powerful to hand him proof that he was brave. instead, his journey gave him enough experiences to recognize what had been true all along.

he was scared.

and he went anyway.

maybe that’s enough.

under this leo eclipse, we don’t need to manufacture a newer, shinier, more confident version of ourselves. the lights are going out just long enough for us to stop looking at the costume. and when they come back on, perhaps we’ll notice something familiar underneath it.

the heart was still beating.

the courage was still there.

we just couldn’t see it for a while.

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