Solar return chart and your year ahead

What is a solar return?

The solar return is the yearly moment when the Sun reaches the same degree of the zodiac it occupied at your birth. The calendar repeats every 365 days, but the Sun needs about 365 days and 6 hours to make the same trip. So your solar return drifts a few hours later each year, and leap years pull it back. It always falls within a day of your birthday.

A chart drawn for that minute is your solar return chart. It has the same structure as a birth chart, with an Ascendant, houses and every planet in a sign, but it describes one year rather than a lifetime. Here it is calculated with the NASA JPL DE421 ephemeris, the same engine as your birth chart, and set for your birthplace.

How to read your solar return chart

Three points of the solar return carry most of its meaning:

• The Ascendant sets the tone of the year, the mood you meet it with and what comes easily.
• The Sun’s house shows the main area of the year, where your energy goes.
• The Moon’s house shows where your feelings live this year and what restores you.

The year then unfolds through the slow planets crossing your birth chart. Jupiter marks where the year is generous and helps you grow. Saturn marks where patience and discipline will be needed. When either of them touches your Sun, Moon, Venus, Mars, Ascendant or Midheaven exactly, that is a turning point worth a date in your calendar. Eclipses, retrograde Mercury and the new and full moons add the rhythm of each month.

Why your birth time matters here

The Ascendant moves one degree about every four minutes, so the solar return’s Ascendant and houses depend on the minute your Sun returns. That minute, in turn, depends on your birth time, because the Sun moves about one degree a day. Without a birth time the planets in signs, the arcana and number of the year and every date in the calendar stay exact. The Ascendant and houses are left out rather than guessed.

The arcana and number of your year

Alongside the sky, the year has two numbers taken from the date. Add the day and month of your birthday to the year it begins. Reduced to 22 or below, the sum gives the arcana of the year, one of the 22 major arcana of the tarot. Reduced to a single digit, it gives your personal year number in the nine-year cycle of numerology. A birthday on 12 February starting a year in 2027 gives 12 + 2 + 2027 = 2041, then 2 + 0 + 4 + 1 = 7, The Chariot and a personal year 7.

What the Year Ahead book adds

The solar return above is yours to read now. The Year Ahead book follows the whole year from birthday to birthday, as a private web page and a PDF to keep:

• where the year helps you grow and where it asks for responsibility, with the dates;
• every big turning point, the weeks it is strongest and what to do then;
• each month with its theme, new and full moon, warm days for love, days of strength and days to slow down;
• a calendar of the year’s key dates to copy into your own.

For the Moon’s day-to-day rhythm, the Moon phase today page shows the next 30 days in your time zone.

What a solar return can and can’t tell you

A solar return describes the climate of a year, not a list of events. A difficult Saturn aspect asks for patience, and a bright Jupiter month opens doors, but what happens depends on you. Use the dates as a calendar of weather. Plan bold moves for open weeks and give yourself room in the tense ones.

Questions people ask