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.
Friends. Community. The group. The future. The hopes and wishes. 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 | 9th house |
| Venus | 10th house |
| Mars | 8th house |
| Jupiter | 10th house |
| Saturn | 6th house |
| Uranus | 8th house |
| Neptune | 6th house |
| Pluto | 4th 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 Jupiter | sextile | Return Jupiter | 0.04° |
| Natal Mars | sextile | Return Pluto | 0.12° |
| Natal Mercury | sextile | Return Neptune | 0.18° |
| Natal Saturn | square | Return Pluto | 0.25° |
| Natal Neptune | trine | Return Jupiter | 0.34° |
| Natal Mercury | trine | Return Pluto | 0.69° |
| Natal Moon | square | Return Neptune | 0.73° |
| Natal Mars | trine | Return Neptune | 0.75° |
| Natal Mercury | conjunction | Return Uranus | 1.57° |
| Natal Mercury | sextile | Return Venus | 1.86° |
| Natal Pluto | trine | Return Mars | 1.91° |
| Natal Pluto | square | Return Sun | 2.14° |
| Natal Mars | opposition | Return Uranus | 2.15° |
| Natal Moon | conjunction | Return Moon | 2.29° |
| Natal Jupiter | square | Return Sun | 2.33° |
| Natal Mars | trine | Return Venus | 2.44° |
| Natal Saturn | sextile | Return Moon | 2.68° |
| Natal Uranus | sextile | Return Venus | 2.70° |
| Natal Saturn | square | Return Venus | 2.81° |
| Natal Uranus | square | Return Moon | 2.83° |
| Natal Uranus | sextile | Return Jupiter | 2.95° |
| Natal Uranus | trine | Return Uranus | 3.00° |
| Natal Pluto | sextile | Return Mercury | 3.37° |
| Natal Venus | square | Return Pluto | 3.73° |
| Natal Uranus | opposition | Return Neptune | 4.39° |