Solar Return · year chart · Solar Arc · directions
How the Solar Return works
Once a year the Sun returns to its natal degree, near your birthday. Asteria casts a chart for that exact moment and layers it over your natal wheel.
The return Ascendant is how you meet the year: the face, the body-tone, the way the chapter greets you. The return Sun's house is where vitality and focus pool for twelve months. The return Moon is the emotional current underneath those two.
The house-overlay table shows which natal houses this year's return planets activate. The return-to-natal aspects name which birth stories the year reopens, tightest first.
Solar Return is the weather of the year. Solar Arc (the other tab on this hub) is the architecture of turning-points. They share a word and almost nothing else.
The year's chart
August 23 to September 22. Mutable earth. Ruled by Mercury. It sets the tone the year is met through.
The wide world. Philosophy. Long-distance travel. The search for meaning. This is where the year's vitality and focus concentrate.
The emotional current of the year: what will need tending and where the feeling-life is drawn.
House overlay
Where each return planet falls in your natal houses: the areas of life this year's chart switches on.
| Return planet | Lands in natal |
|---|---|
| Sun | 10th house |
| Moon | 2nd house |
| Mercury | 10th house |
| Venus | 11th house |
| Mars | 9th house |
| Jupiter | 11th house |
| Saturn | 9th house |
| Uranus | 10th house |
| Neptune | 8th house |
| Pluto | 6th house |
Return-to-natal aspects
Every aspect the return chart makes back to your birth chart, tightest first.
| Natal | Aspect | Return | Orb |
|---|---|---|---|
| Natal Sun | conjunction | Return Sun | 0.00° |
| Natal Mars | square | Return Mars | 0.10° |
| Natal Saturn | sextile | Return Moon | 0.35° |
| Natal Mars | opposition | Return Pluto | 0.37° |
| Natal Sun | sextile | Return Neptune | 0.42° |
| Natal Mars | sextile | Return Sun | 0.71° |
| Natal Uranus | opposition | Return Mars | 1.05° |
| Natal Sun | trine | Return Pluto | 1.08° |
| Natal Mars | trine | Return Neptune | 1.13° |
| Natal Neptune | trine | Return Saturn | 1.15° |
| Natal Pluto | square | Return Venus | 1.33° |
| Natal Venus | trine | Return Moon | 1.38° |
| Natal Uranus | square | Return Pluto | 1.52° |
| Natal Moon | square | Return Jupiter | 1.66° |
| Natal Mercury | trine | Return Moon | 2.40° |
| Natal Pluto | opposition | Return Saturn | 2.59° |
| Natal Sun | conjunction | Return Uranus | 2.66° |
| Natal Saturn | sextile | Return Uranus | 2.74° |
| Natal Mars | sextile | Return Uranus | 3.37° |
| Natal Pluto | trine | Return Pluto | 3.66° |
| Natal Venus | conjunction | Return Uranus | 3.77° |
| Natal Uranus | trine | Return Venus | 3.84° |
| Natal Neptune | opposition | Return Mercury | 4.31° |
| Natal Pluto | trine | Return Sun | 4.73° |
| Natal Mercury | conjunction | Return Uranus | 4.79° |
| Natal Saturn | trine | Return Neptune | 4.98° |
| Natal Pluto | opposition | Return Neptune | 5.16° |