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 hidden. The unconscious. The retreat. The dissolution. The behind-the-scenes life. 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 | 3rd house |
| Moon | 10th house |
| Mercury | 1st house |
| Venus | 4th house |
| Mars | 12th house |
| Jupiter | 2nd house |
| Saturn | 11th house |
| Uranus | 12th house |
| Neptune | 11th house |
| Pluto | 8th 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 | sextile | Return Neptune | 0.00° |
| Natal Mars | trine | Return Pluto | 0.09° |
| Natal Venus | sextile | Return Mars | 0.34° |
| Natal Uranus | square | Return Saturn | 0.35° |
| Natal Moon | conjunction | Return Venus | 0.43° |
| Natal Pluto | trine | Return Mercury | 0.47° |
| Natal Mars | conjunction | Return Uranus | 0.81° |
| Natal Saturn | sextile | Return Saturn | 0.82° |
| Natal Mercury | conjunction | Return Sun | 1.38° |
| Natal Moon | square | Return Mars | 1.88° |
| Natal Neptune | square | Return Saturn | 2.24° |
| Natal Pluto | trine | Return Moon | 2.30° |
| Natal Sun | conjunction | Return Jupiter | 2.77° |
| Natal Mars | sextile | Return Jupiter | 3.01° |
| Natal Mercury | trine | Return Saturn | 3.33° |
| Natal Moon | opposition | Return Moon | 3.37° |
| Natal Neptune | opposition | Return Mercury | 3.67° |
| Natal Mercury | conjunction | Return Jupiter | 4.14° |
| Natal Sun | trine | Return Saturn | 4.70° |
| Natal Saturn | opposition | Return Sun | 5.53° |
| Natal Uranus | opposition | Return Mercury | 5.56° |
| Natal Sun | opposition | Return Pluto | 5.86° |