Alterf
Lambda Leonis — the Lion's glance, the eye fixed before the spring
- Position (J2000)
- 17°52′ Leo
- Magnitude
- 4.31
- Colour
- Orange
- Spectrum
- K5 III
- Distance
- ~330 light-years
- Nature
- Saturn · Mars
In the sky
Alterf is a faint orange giant at the very front of the Lion, the star that marks the lip or the open mouth of the figure, ahead of the Sickle and west of everything else in Leo. At magnitude 4.3 and about three hundred and thirty light-years off it is the dimmest star in the Book, and it owes its place to the Moon: together with a star across the border in the Crab it makes the ninth mansion, al-Tarf, the glance, the two eyes of the vast Lion of the old Arab sky. The name is the mansion's, carried by its leading star.
It is an old, cool, swollen star, many times the Sun's width, in the last long age of its life. It stands nearly eight degrees north of the ecliptic, well off the Moon's road, and its contacts in a chart are by longitude alone.
The myth
The Arab Lion was far larger than the Greek one. It reached from the Twins to the Virgin, and its parts were given to the Moon's mansions one after another: the forearm, the nostrils, the eyes, the forehead, the mane, the tail. The eyes are the ninth of these, and the glance they give is the look a lion fixes on the ground before it moves, the stillness before the spring. Ptolemy gives the stars at the Lion's head the nature of Saturn and Mars, patience and force, which is exactly what a fixed gaze is made of.
Alterf is the glance itself, the eye at the Lion's mouth. In a chart it speaks of watchfulness, of the look taken before anything is done, of force held behind stillness; and because the mansion it leads is the mansion of locks and strengthened doors, it speaks also of privacy, of the threshold kept and the inner life seen by few.
What it gives
- The first look Situations taken in whole before anything is done. The native is rarely surprised, and rarely caught unready.
- Force behind stillness Saturn with Mars: the lion's quiet before the spring. When this native moves, it is after watching, and the move is exact.
- The kept threshold A clear sense of where the self ends and others begin, and the strength to keep that door. People with this star are hard to invade and good at keeping what they are told.
- Foresight at the edge The watcher at the edge of a family or a company who sees trouble while it is small, and says so, quietly, to the one person who can act.
What to watch for
- Watching in place of living The look that never becomes the leap. A life at the edge of rooms, taking in what others went in and did.
- The glance read as cold Reserve experienced by others as indifference; the native who saw everything and seemed to feel nothing.
- Suspicion Every sign read as a warning. Saturn's caution over Mars's alertness becomes a watcher who cannot be reassured.
- The door that no longer opens Privacy kept so long it becomes solitude; the threshold guarded after everyone who would have crossed it has gone.
How to work with it
The native does well to give the watching a term: a set time to look, and then a decision to move or to let the matter go. The lion looks and then springs or lies down; it does not look forever.
It helps to name the one or two people allowed through the door without knocking, and to tell them so. The threshold is the native's health and should be kept, but a house no one enters is not guarded, only empty.
When the watching turns to suspicion, the remedy is a question asked aloud rather than a conclusion kept. Mars is better spent on one clear act than on a long guard.
In brief
Alterf is the Lion's glance: the first look, force behind stillness, the kept threshold, foresight at the edge. Its difficulties are the watcher's, watching instead of living, reserve read as cold, suspicion, and a door that no longer opens. The placement works best where the look is given a term and the trusted few are named aloud.