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.
Worth. Resources. What is owned. What is valued. The body as instrument. 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 | 10th house |
| Venus | 10th house |
| Mars | 7th house |
| Jupiter | 8th house |
| Saturn | 3rd house |
| Uranus | 5th house |
| Neptune | 3rd house |
| Pluto | 1st 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 Mercury | trine | Return Uranus | 0.01° |
| Natal Mercury | conjunction | Return Moon | 0.21° |
| Natal Neptune | sextile | Return Saturn | 0.45° |
| Natal Neptune | square | Return Mercury | 0.87° |
| Natal Pluto | sextile | Return Sun | 1.27° |
| Natal Mercury | sextile | Return Mars | 1.36° |
| Natal Jupiter | sextile | Return Venus | 1.48° |
| Natal Moon | opposition | Return Sun | 1.62° |
| Natal Saturn | trine | Return Mercury | 1.70° |
| Natal Saturn | square | Return Saturn | 2.11° |
| Natal Jupiter | sextile | Return Mercury | 2.16° |
| Natal Mercury | trine | Return Pluto | 2.26° |
| Natal Venus | square | Return Pluto | 2.61° |
| Natal Mercury | opposition | Return Neptune | 2.71° |
| Natal Neptune | square | Return Venus | 2.77° |
| Natal Pluto | trine | Return Jupiter | 3.39° |
| Natal Saturn | square | Return Sun | 3.43° |
| Natal Neptune | opposition | Return Mars | 3.75° |
| Natal Jupiter | square | Return Uranus | 3.80° |
| Natal Moon | conjunction | Return Saturn | 3.93° |
| Natal Mars | square | Return Uranus | 4.14° |
| Natal Sun | opposition | Return Saturn | 5.55° |
| Natal Mercury | opposition | Return Saturn | 5.55° |