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
January 20 to February 18. Fixed air. Ruled by Uranus. Co-ruled traditionally 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 | 5th house |
| Moon | 1st house |
| Mercury | 4th house |
| Venus | 5th house |
| Mars | 5th house |
| Jupiter | 11th house |
| Saturn | 7th house |
| Uranus | 9th house |
| Neptune | 7th house |
| Pluto | 5th 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 Sun | conjunction | Return Mars | 0.05° |
| Natal Mars | square | Return Neptune | 0.11° |
| Natal Saturn | conjunction | Return Uranus | 0.25° |
| Natal Uranus | conjunction | Return Pluto | 0.29° |
| Natal Mercury | square | Return Neptune | 0.38° |
| Natal Sun | conjunction | Return Venus | 0.71° |
| Natal Saturn | sextile | Return Saturn | 0.76° |
| Natal Sun | opposition | Return Jupiter | 0.80° |
| Natal Pluto | square | Return Neptune | 0.98° |
| Natal Pluto | square | Return Saturn | 1.92° |
| Natal Neptune | trine | Return Saturn | 1.96° |
| Natal Jupiter | square | Return Neptune | 2.04° |
| Natal Saturn | sextile | Return Neptune | 2.15° |
| Natal Neptune | sextile | Return Uranus | 2.97° |
| Natal Mars | square | Return Saturn | 3.02° |
| Natal Uranus | sextile | Return Neptune | 3.06° |
| Natal Mercury | square | Return Saturn | 3.29° |
| Natal Neptune | conjunction | Return Jupiter | 4.57° |
| Natal Neptune | opposition | Return Venus | 4.66° |
| Natal Neptune | trine | Return Neptune | 4.86° |
| Natal Jupiter | square | Return Saturn | 4.94° |
| Natal Uranus | trine | Return Uranus | 4.96° |
| Natal Neptune | opposition | Return Sun | 5.37° |
| Natal Neptune | opposition | Return Mars | 5.41° |