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
December 22 to January 19. Cardinal earth. Ruled by Saturn. 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 | 1st house |
| Moon | 9th house |
| Mercury | 1st house |
| Venus | 11th house |
| Mars | 9th house |
| Jupiter | 8th house |
| Saturn | 3rd house |
| Uranus | 6th house |
| Neptune | 3rd house |
| Pluto | 2nd 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 Pluto | trine | Return Pluto | 0.13° |
| Natal Mercury | square | Return Moon | 0.58° |
| Natal Sun | square | Return Saturn | 0.61° |
| Natal Pluto | square | Return Mercury | 1.28° |
| Natal Moon | sextile | Return Jupiter | 1.33° |
| Natal Neptune | sextile | Return Pluto | 1.87° |
| Natal Sun | trine | Return Mars | 1.90° |
| Natal Sun | conjunction | Return Mercury | 1.94° |
| Natal Pluto | trine | Return Uranus | 2.02° |
| Natal Neptune | trine | Return Saturn | 2.09° |
| Natal Mars | square | Return Jupiter | 2.44° |
| Natal Mars | trine | Return Neptune | 2.66° |
| Natal Pluto | opposition | Return Neptune | 2.72° |
| Natal Jupiter | trine | Return Moon | 2.85° |
| Natal Pluto | square | Return Sun | 3.22° |
| Natal Mars | opposition | Return Uranus | 3.35° |
| Natal Neptune | square | Return Mars | 3.39° |
| Natal Venus | square | Return Mars | 3.53° |
| Natal Jupiter | sextile | Return Venus | 3.70° |
| Natal Neptune | opposition | Return Uranus | 3.76° |
| Natal Pluto | opposition | Return Saturn | 3.83° |
| Natal Uranus | sextile | Return Jupiter | 3.92° |
| Natal Neptune | trine | Return Neptune | 4.45° |
| Natal Saturn | square | Return Moon | 4.53° |
| Natal Venus | trine | Return Saturn | 4.82° |