The Solar Return
Every year, on or near your birthday, the Sun comes back to exactly the place it held when you were born. The sky has turned a full circle. Astrologers cast a chart for that exact moment, and read it as a picture of the year to come. It is called the solar return.
- Inside: the birth chart fixed for life
- Outside: the transits where the planets are now
- Transiting Sun conjunct natal Sun (exact)
- Transiting Moon square natal Jupiter (1° orb)
Why it is not always your birthday
Here is a detail that surprises people. The solar return does not always fall on your birthday. The calendar year is not exactly the length of the Sun's journey, so the exact return can fall the day before, the day itself or the day after, at a different time each year. A solar return chart needs the exact moment, and so a precise birth time.
Sun
The light you are here to become.
One of the two lights of the sky. It stands for your sense of self.
In each sign for about a month. Around the whole zodiac in 1 year.
- At home in
- Leo
- Exalted in
- Aries
- Detriment in
- Aquarius
- Fall in
- Libra
The birthday as a new year
Your birthday is your personal new year, the moment your solar cycle begins again. Many traditions mark it with wishes and intentions, and astrology gives that instinct a chart: the sky at the start of your year.
What is moving in your chart now?
Start with your birth chart: every transit and return is read against it.
