As astrology grows in popularity, I keep hearing people say “happy solar return!” on birthdays. Cute. Most of them have no idea what it actually means in practice, and the difference between a solar return and a birthday matters more than you’d think, because one of them is just cake and the other one is a forecast.
I explain the whole thing in this video, and here it is in writing.
What a solar return actually is
Quick recap: your birth chart is a graphical snapshot of where everything was in the sky at the time and place of your birth. A solar return focuses on one piece of it, the Sun. Whenever the Sun travels all the way around and returns to the exact position it held in your birth chart, that’s your solar return. Born with the Sun at 3° Pisces? When the Sun comes back to 3° Pisces a year later, your personal new year begins.
Note the word exact. Your solar return can land the day before, the day of, or the day after your birthday, because it’s tied to the Sun’s precise degree rather than the calendar. It’s the same reason zodiac season start dates wobble from year to year: Scorpio season might start October 21 one year and a day or two off the next. The calendar approximates. The degree doesn’t.
The solar return chart: one volume in your series
Here’s where it gets useful. You can cast a chart for the exact moment of your solar return, which astrologers call a subsidiary chart, meaning a chart derived from your birth chart.
The way I think about it: your life is a book. Except it’s actually a huge series with many volumes, and your birth chart is the whole saga. Each solar return chart is a single volume. Read it well and you can see the shape of that year: which themes get highlighted, and often which concrete events are coming. And since it’s all just math and astronomy, you can cast a solar return chart for any year of your life, forward or backward. It goes both ways.
When the year actually starts (earlier than you’d think)
One thing I always tell clients: solar return events start playing out about 2 to 3 months before the return itself. If your birthday is December 5, your solar return lands somewhere in the December 4 to 6 window, but the story of that year starts unfolding around late September or October.
In my experience, solar returns come in with a bang and go out with a bang. My birthday is in October, and the big events of my solar return years reliably kick off around August. One August I met a man I dated for years. Another one, brand new job. Another, graduate school. A different year I had to move unexpectedly, which set off a whole chain of other things. The action starts shifting before the candles do.
Why the birth chart has to come first
If you want an accurate solar return reading, the return chart has to be read against the birth chart. Some astrologers will read your solar return cold, without ever looking at your natal chart, and to me that’s like picking up volume 37 of a series with no idea of the title, the author, or even the genre. You’re just in it, contextless.
Here’s why context changes everything. Say your birth chart promises serious wealth, Rihanna and Oprah rich. And say this year’s solar return chart shows awful finances. Read alone, that return chart says doom. Read against the birth chart, it says: leaner year than usual, inside the greater life story of someone born to be very rich. Same chart, completely different counsel. Overlaying the return on the natal chart also shows which parts of your natal promise come due this year, which is the actual point of the exercise.
Different people live the same circumstances very differently, so the astrologer needs to know who you are before telling you how your year goes. This is why, at Homegirl Astrology, I will not read your solar return without reading your birth chart first. That’s just how the business works, and it’s for your own good.
Lunar returns: the chapters inside the volume
Same concept, smaller cycle. A lunar return is when the Moon comes back to its natal position, and since the Moon moves fast, that happens every 28 to 29 days. If the solar return is a volume in your series, each lunar return chart is a chapter inside it.
I track my own lunar returns closely, partly because I like knowing what to expect from each month, and partly because they sharpen the solar return reading. Here’s the trick: my current solar return is a Cancer rising year. So when I scan the year’s 13 lunar returns and spot the months where the lunar return also has Cancer rising, I know those are the months where the solar return story is most likely to break through. The month-by-month energy shifts give me something to look forward to, and I get to watch the bigger birth chart story play out in a faster, more tangible way. I’m a big fan. I want to know what’s good.
The short version
Your birthday is a date. Your solar return is an event, timed to the degree, castable as a chart, and readable as a preview of your year, with the previews starting months early. Lunar returns break that year into chapters. And all of it only makes sense on top of the birth chart, the root of the whole series.
Watch the video for the chart examples, and if you want to know what your next volume holds, book a solar return reading. We’ll start with your birth chart. You know why.
