Solar Return

Definition

A solar return is a chart drawn for the exact moment, each year, when the Sun comes back to the precise degree, minute, and second it held when you were born. It is cast for wherever you are at that moment. Because the year is not a whole number of days, that moment falls roughly six hours later each year.

In Tradition

In Western practice, the solar return is read as an extra chart for the year ahead, with its themes running from one birthday to the next — a snapshot of what the coming year tends to hold.

In Practice

An astrologer casts a solar return chart for each birthday. One key choice is whether to use your current location or your birthplace: where you are changes the house cusps, even though the planets sit at the same zodiac degrees. Some people deliberately travel near their birthday to shift where the angles fall. Interpretation leans on the houses rather than the signs, since the Sun is always in the same sign and Venus, over a whole lifetime, only ever lands in eight.

Historical Origin

The solar return is a long-established technique in traditional Western astrology, and the practice of casting an annual return chart is documented across many historical periods.

Etymology

Origin: Latin. Meaning: From solaris ("of the Sun") and re- + venire ("to come back"), describing the Sun's annual return to its birth position..

Further Reading

• Mary Fortier Shea, Planets in Solar Returns
• Robert Hand, Planets in Transit