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
July 23 to August 22. Fixed fire. Ruled by the Sun. 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 | 4th house |
| Mercury | 9th house |
| Venus | 10th house |
| Mars | 9th house |
| Jupiter | 12th house |
| Saturn | 9th house |
| Uranus | 11th house |
| Neptune | 9th house |
| Pluto | 7th 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 Uranus | sextile | Return Jupiter | 0.03° |
| Natal Venus | sextile | Return Venus | 0.15° |
| Natal Pluto | sextile | Return Uranus | 0.45° |
| Natal Mercury | conjunction | Return Sun | 1.13° |
| Natal Mars | square | Return Saturn | 1.15° |
| Natal Uranus | sextile | Return Mercury | 1.41° |
| Natal Moon | opposition | Return Mars | 1.54° |
| Natal Mars | square | Return Moon | 1.81° |
| Natal Jupiter | conjunction | Return Mars | 2.20° |
| Natal Neptune | opposition | Return Mars | 2.32° |
| Natal Mercury | square | Return Jupiter | 2.64° |
| Natal Pluto | trine | Return Neptune | 2.99° |
| Natal Pluto | square | Return Venus | 3.38° |
| Natal Sun | opposition | Return Moon | 3.46° |
| Natal Sun | square | Return Jupiter | 3.77° |
| Natal Venus | square | Return Uranus | 3.98° |
| Natal Saturn | square | Return Jupiter | 4.03° |
| Natal Mars | trine | Return Venus | 4.18° |
| Natal Mars | square | Return Neptune | 4.56° |
| Natal Mercury | opposition | Return Moon | 4.59° |
| Natal Pluto | opposition | Return Pluto | 5.99° |