Leo New Moon (+Eclipse) 2026

The Chickens are Restless

When the Chickens Try to Fly

The Total Solar Eclipse in Leo and the Intoxication of Becoming

There is something deeply reassuring about the fact that one of the most significant astrological events of the year is symbolized by a bunch of drunk chickens trying to fly.

On August 12, we have a total solar eclipse at 20° Leo, activating the 21st degree of Leo. The Sabian Symbol, in Rudhyar’s formulation, is:

“Intoxicated chickens dizzily flap their wings trying to fly.”

Perfect.

No notes.

We could make this terribly solemn. This is an eclipse, after all. We could talk about portals and destiny and cosmic downloads and the sudden opening of previously inaccessible dimensions of consciousness. We could probably work Atlantis and light codes in there somewhere as well..

But that might be missing the point. Because the image is funny. The symbol is honestly the funniest one I’ve come across doing these hybrid Moon and Sabian symbol write-ups this year.

A chicken has gotten absolutely fucking twisted, looked at its wings, and suddenly realized something.

Wait a minute.

These are WINGS.

And off it goes.There is actually a rather beautiful description of ego inflation hiding inside that ridiculous image. It’s instructive and funny, what’s not to like. So I won’t be talking about portals or how the ancients used to twig out at eclipses. I’ll be talking about chickens. They aren’t coming home to roost, they are ready to take off.

The Chicken Has a Point

The most interesting thing about the intoxicated chicken is that it isn’t completely wrong. It does have wings. Not particularly useful ones, but when the snakes were out when I was raising them in my backyard, they got up on the tree branch somehow. They can fly. It’s just not very graceful, and they’ve mostly been bred to be a walking meal, or a walking meal producer, not for their most avian qualities. So, when a chicken thinks it can do something interesting, I sit my human ass down and listen.

If we’re being honest inflation rarely begins with absolutely nothing. Usually there is some genuine experience underneath it. We discover a talent. We experience a spiritual breakthrough. We make something beautiful. We become more comfortable with ourselves. We finally stop apologizing for taking up space. Other people begin responding to us differently.

Something opens up inside of us and yearns for the stage. For the horizon.

This is especially relevant to Leo because healthy Leo is not simply attention-seeking. Yeah, most of them do that at times. I personally like to gas them up, because they’re fun when they’re puffed up. They can bring a party to life. They’re the central fixed fire. It’s warm, it’s infectious, it’s inviting. At its best, Leo represents the development of a center. There is something extraordinarily attractive about someone who has learned how to inhabit themselves.

They don’t have to constantly look around the room asking:

Is this okay?

Am I allowed to say this?

Do you like me?

They become embodied. When they become embodied, their energy stops leaking everywhere, and when their energy stops leaking, their personality becomes more coherent. Even in a state of inebriation.

We tend to call the end result charisma.

Charisma is difficult to manufacture precisely because the manufactured version tends to smell funny. Sometimes even sulfuric. Real charisma often emerges when somebody becomes connected enough to themselves that they no longer have to work quite so hard at producing an effect.

They become more present. People start noticing, then something really interesting happens. People start responding.

Unfortunately, the Ego Is Also Taking Notes

This is where things can get a bit more slippery.Say you (yes you, the reader of this piece) discover your voice. Maybe some people will start to like your voice. You make something. People respond to it. You say something insightful.

Someone tells you that it changed their life or that your latest work was absolutely brilliant. Maybe you have a genuine spiritual experience, maybe you begin noticing things you couldn’t see before.

None of this is necessarily imaginary. The chicken really does have wings. The problem begins when the ego starts drawing conclusions from the evidence.

People listen when I speak.

People tell me I’m insightful.

People seem affected by my presence.

Maybe I’m onto something.

So far, so good.

Then we get into the tougher part:

Maybe everything I think is profound.

Welcome to the chicken coop.

This is one of the strange hazards of charisma. The healthier and more connected we become, the more powerful our presence can become. Yet the stronger that presence becomes, the more feedback we receive from the world. Eventually it becomes possible to confuse the feedback with the source.

There is a difference between:

I know who I am well enough that I don’t need you to confirm it.

and:

I know who I am because you keep confirming it.

From the outside, those two people can look remarkably similar. Both may be confident. Both may be charismatic. Both may have followers. Both may walk into a room and change its temperature. One is standing in their center. The other has become intoxicated by the reflection. Leo has always had an interesting relationship with the mirror.

Spirituality Has Some Truly Excellent Chickens

This gets particularly funny around spirituality because spiritual experiences can actually be profound. People really do experience things that rearrange their understanding of themselves. You can encounter something in meditation, astrology, ritual, psychedelics, prayer, art, grief, love, sex, trauma, nature, or plain old inexplicable human experience that makes the boundaries of your ordinary personality suddenly feel inadequate.

For a moment, you touch something larger. You find the thing that you touched to be beautiful. Then the ego, which has been patiently waiting nearby with a clipboard, clears its throat.

Excellent. I will take it from here.

“I experienced something larger than myself” quietly becomes:

“I have unusual access to something larger than yourself.”

That is an extremely important change in pronouns. Suddenly the insight that should have made us larger becomes evidence that we are special. Sometimes the audience helps.

Because if you’re charismatic enough, people begin reflecting your inflation back at you. The spiritual teacher has followers. The astrologer has clients. The artist has fans. The writer has subscribers. The influencer has comments. The charismatic friend has an entire social circle organized around their emotional weather.

The chicken flaps.

Everybody applauds.

The chicken thinks:

Holy shit. I’m flying.

Nobody wants to mention that it’s standing on a picnic table.

The Eclipsed Sun

Which brings us back to Leo.

The Sun is the center of the solar system, and symbolically the Sun describes the organizing principle of the personality. It is our sense of authorship, vitality, purpose, creative identity and the strange internal experience of being the person at the center of our own life.

Leo is the Sun’s sign. Then, on August 12, the Sun disappears. Not metaphorically.

For those inside the path of totality, the Moon moves directly across the face of the Sun. Daylight collapses. The corona appears. The thing that is normally too bright to look at becomes briefly visible because its central light has been obscured.

That’s a hell of an image for ego. Because eclipses remind us of something the ego has enormous difficulty remembering:

The center is real, but it is not everything.

There are forces moving around us that we do not control. There are unconscious processes moving through us that we do not author. There are relationships, histories, inheritances, communities, bodies, accidents and circumstances constantly participating in the creation of this thing we confidently call me.

That doesn’t mean the self is false. It simply means the self is not the entire cosmos. Leo needs a center. We all do. The problem begins when the center mistakes itself for the whole.

Please Do Not Bully the Chicken

There is another trap here, though. It would be very easy to turn this symbol into an argument for humility in the most boring possible sense.

Sit down.

Don’t get too big.

Don’t think too highly of yourself.

Know your place.

Stop showing off.

But if we’re honest with ourselves that’s just the other polarity of that pathology. The intoxicated chicken is ridiculous, but there is something magnificent about the little bastard too.

It looked at those wings and thought:

Why the fuck not?

We need some of that.

Art requires unreasonable confidence. Love requires it. Leadership requires it. Starting something requires it. Changing your life requires it. Walking onto a stage requires it. Publishing your work requires it. Telling someone what you actually believe requires it.

Sometimes psychological development requires us to become more inflated before we find the appropriate size. People who have spent their lives making themselves tiny may need to experience themselves as enormous for a while.

Fine.

Flap.

See what happens.

The point isn’t to murder the ego. That way lies madness.The point is to develop a strong enough ego that it doesn’t need to pretend it is God.

Two Wings

The interpretation accompanying this Sabian Symbol makes an interesting observation. It describes spiritual evolution and psychological healing as two wings.

You need both.

Spiritual development without psychological development can produce someone who has experienced genuinely extraordinary things but remains completely unconscious of the ordinary human machinery through which those experiences are being interpreted. That’s how revelation can transform into grandiosity.

Psychological development without any connection to something larger can produce the opposite problem. We become extraordinarily well-adjusted inhabitants of a universe we’ve stripped of mystery.

One gives us altitude.

The other gives us navigation.

Without both, apparently, we become intoxicated chickens. Which may actually be one of the better descriptions of the human condition anyone has come up with.

August 12

So I’m not particularly interested in telling everyone that this eclipse means something enormous is definitely going to happen to them.

That would be a little too chicken.

I am interested in what becomes visible when the solar light goes out.

Maybe you glimpse a version of yourself you haven’t allowed yourself to imagine.

Maybe you discover an ambition.

Maybe something cracks open creatively.

Maybe you realize you’ve outgrown an identity.

Maybe you recognize that you’ve become a little intoxicated with one.

Maybe the applause has gotten loud enough that you can no longer tell whether you’re expressing something because it’s true or because you’ve learned which version of yourself receives applause.

Those are useful questions.

Just don’t assume you need to answer them immediately.

An eclipse can reveal something without explaining it.

Potential is not mastery.

Insight is not integration.

Charisma is not wisdom.

Attention is not authority.

Having wings does not necessarily mean you can fly.

But neither does falling out of the sky mean you were wrong to look up.

So when the Sun disappears in Leo, pay attention to whatever suddenly feels possible.

Then maybe give it a minute before announcing your ascension.

After all, the chicken may have discovered something real.

It just probably shouldn’t start a Substack until it sobers up.