Being overlooked does not sting you. It erases you.
What it looks like in a life
Pluto crossed Leo from 1939 to 1957, so the sign is shared by everyone born through the war and the decade after it. The house it sits in and what aspects it are what make it yours. In one life it looks like this: you decided young that you would not be small, and you built a self strong enough to be seen from a distance. You have remade your image in public at least once, after a failure you did not get to hide. Praise moves you more than you admit, and criticism lands somewhere ancient. You fill the room you are in, and people either follow you or brace against you.
The gift
You can rebuild an identity in front of an audience and make it look deliberate. Very few people can. Pluto in Leo carries real creative force: what you make has heat in it, and it changes the people who receive it. You also refuse to shrink for anyone's comfort, which gives everyone quieter than you permission to stop shrinking too.
The friction
The pride guards a wound. You would rather run the room than be honestly seen in it, so you perform the strength instead of admitting the need underneath it. Being needed becomes a way of holding power over people who already love you. When the attention stops, the drop is steeper than it should be, and you go looking for the next stage instead of sitting still.
The esoteric layer
Pluto was discovered in 1930, nine years before it entered Leo, and no ancient author ever wrote a word about it. In Bailey's esoteric astrology Pluto is non-sacred and carries the destroyer aspect of the first ray. Leo transmits that same first ray, ruled by the Sun at every tier, and she reads it as the sign of individualization: the whole point of building an ego is to have something worth giving up. Pluto in Leo is that curriculum with the heat turned up. The self gets built, then taken, then handed back on different terms.
Where this goes
The house says which stage this plays out on, and your Sun says who you are when nobody is watching. A full natal reading works out which of the two is actually running things.
Related
See it in your own chart
Cast your chart free and read this placement next to everything else you carry.