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 | 9th house |
| Moon | 9th house |
| Mercury | 8th house |
| Venus | 10th house |
| Mars | 9th house |
| Jupiter | 12th 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 Saturn | conjunction | Return Uranus | 0.03° |
| Natal Uranus | sextile | Return Moon | 0.78° |
| Natal Neptune | sextile | Return Saturn | 1.09° |
| Natal Venus | conjunction | Return Neptune | 1.16° |
| Natal Venus | conjunction | Return Mercury | 1.34° |
| Natal Mars | trine | Return Sun | 1.48° |
| Natal Venus | sextile | Return Uranus | 2.11° |
| Natal Mars | trine | Return Moon | 2.39° |
| Natal Uranus | square | Return Venus | 2.59° |
| Natal Neptune | sextile | Return Mars | 2.88° |
| Natal Mercury | conjunction | Return Moon | 2.96° |
| Natal Uranus | sextile | Return Sun | 3.09° |
| Natal Jupiter | sextile | Return Saturn | 3.11° |
| Natal Mercury | square | Return Jupiter | 3.18° |
| Natal Neptune | conjunction | Return Pluto | 3.20° |
| Natal Saturn | sextile | Return Neptune | 3.24° |
| Natal Saturn | sextile | Return Mercury | 3.42° |
| Natal Venus | sextile | Return Pluto | 3.78° |
| Natal Sun | conjunction | Return Moon | 3.87° |
| Natal Venus | conjunction | Return Mars | 4.11° |
| Natal Venus | conjunction | Return Saturn | 5.90° |