Solar Return · year chart · Solar Arc · directions
Your year
Gemini
Mercury is the chart ruler.
In shortThis return was exact on January 7, 2026, birthplace time, and runs until the next one, around January 7, 2027. This year Saturn asks for work in the 11th house, the room of allies and the long future; Jupiter opens the 3rd, the room of speech and the near world.
The year arrives through Gemini. Mercury is the chart ruler. The interface is information that can be used. What the year takes is the version of connection that only existed as scattering. What the year builds is the version that can carry a single thread all the way through.
- Sun17° Capricorn
- Moon11° Virgo
- Mercury8° Capricorn
- Venus17° Capricorn
- Mars17° Capricorn
- Jupiter20° Cancer, retrograde
- Saturn26° Pisces
- Uranus27° Taurus, retrograde
- Neptune29° Pisces
- Pluto2° Aquarius
Asteria · the year in real lifeWhat this year tends to look likeSaturn in the 11th · Jupiter in the 3rd · Moon in Virgo
Saturn shows where the year asks for work, Jupiter where it opens room, the Moon how it feels.
The audit · Pisces, 11th house
Saturn
Saturn spends the year with allies and the long future. Friendships, groups, and long-range plans get sorted by who shows up. What the year takes is the pact that cannot be kept. What it leaves is a smaller circle that holds.
The expansion · Cancer, 3rd house
Jupiter
Jupiter spends the year in the room of speech and the near world. Classes, writing, good conversations, and short trips open doors close to home. One subject followed well will carry further than ten started.
The Moon is in Virgo in the room of making and risk. That is the emotional weather of the year.
Asteria · to sit withQuestions for this yearSaturn, 11th house: Who actually shows up for you, and for whom do you show up?
Drawn from this return's Saturn, Jupiter, and rising.
Saturn, 11th house: Who actually shows up for you, and for whom do you show up?
Write about thisJupiter, 3rd house: Which one subject would you follow if you only had time for one?
Write about thisThe year's method is "Gemini names one thread." What would that look like in ten minutes a day?
Write about this
Asteria · the methodWhat a Solar Return doesOnce a year, when the Sun comes home
A Solar Return is cast the moment the Sun returns to the exact degree it held when you were born. That happens once a year, near the birthday. Asteria draws it as a full chart, the same wheel as when you cast a chart of your own: rising, houses, planets, and the aspects between them.
It does not replace the natal chart. The natal chart is the life. The return is that life's assignment for twelve months. The rising sign is how the year meets the world. Planets on the angles are who has been given the stage. Saturn is the year's audit. Jupiter is where the year offers room. The Moon is the emotional weather.
Asteria · the glossaryWords on this pageSolar Return, Return rising, Chart ruler, Angles
- Solar Return
- A chart cast for the moment the Sun comes back to its exact birth degree, once a year near the birthday. It reads that year.
- Return rising
- The sign on the eastern horizon at the return moment: how the year meets the world. It needs a real birth time.
- Chart ruler
- The planet that rules the return rising. It runs the year.
- Angles
- The Ascendant, IC, Descendant, and Midheaven. A planet within a few degrees of one is loud for the year.
- Return house
- One of the twelve areas of life, counted from the return rising. It shows where a planet does its work this year.
- Profection
- A one-house-per-year clock that names the year's room and its lord.
- Progressed Moon
- The Moon moved forward about a degree a month after birth: the slow emotional chapter, about two and a half years per sign.
Take it with you
PDFs come with Plus. See what Plus includes
How the Solar Return works
Once a year the Sun returns to its natal degree, near your birthday. Asteria casts a full chart for that moment, the same wheel as a birth chart, at the place you were born.
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.