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
February 19 to March 20. Mutable water. Ruled by Neptune. Co-ruled traditionally by Jupiter. 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 | 9th house |
| Moon | 7th house |
| Mercury | 9th house |
| Venus | 8th house |
| Mars | 7th house |
| Jupiter | 6th house |
| Saturn | 1st house |
| Uranus | 3rd house |
| Neptune | 1st house |
| Pluto | 12th 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 Pluto | conjunction | Return Mercury | 0.01° |
| Natal Sun | sextile | Return Moon | 0.12° |
| Natal Moon | opposition | Return Pluto | 0.52° |
| Natal Venus | trine | Return Neptune | 0.74° |
| Natal Moon | sextile | Return Uranus | 0.79° |
| Natal Pluto | square | Return Jupiter | 0.82° |
| Natal Mercury | conjunction | Return Mercury | 0.98° |
| Natal Jupiter | square | Return Pluto | 1.16° |
| Natal Saturn | square | Return Mercury | 1.28° |
| Natal Mercury | square | Return Jupiter | 1.82° |
| Natal Jupiter | sextile | Return Mars | 1.86° |
| Natal Venus | square | Return Mars | 2.03° |
| Natal Saturn | opposition | Return Jupiter | 2.12° |
| Natal Venus | opposition | Return Uranus | 2.45° |
| Natal Moon | trine | Return Neptune | 2.50° |
| Natal Venus | sextile | Return Pluto | 2.72° |
| Natal Sun | trine | Return Saturn | 3.57° |
| Natal Moon | trine | Return Saturn | 3.84° |
| Natal Venus | square | Return Jupiter | 4.01° |
| Natal Moon | square | Return Venus | 4.53° |
| Natal Venus | conjunction | Return Mercury | 4.85° |
| Natal Saturn | trine | Return Venus | 4.85° |
| Natal Jupiter | conjunction | Return Venus | 5.17° |