A past return

Your Solar Return

The annual renewal of vitality, purpose, and direction.

Exact on August 13, 2013.

At age 77.0.

The cycle it opened ran about 12 months, from August 13, 2013 until the next Solar Return on August 14, 2014.

This was the moment your Sun returned to its natal degree, marking the threshold of a fresh twelve-month cycle, a year when the spotlight swung back to you, and the questions you were meant to answer were deeply personal ones.

The rising sign of this return chart was Leo, which set an unmistakable tone: you were stepping into a season of visibility, self-assertion, creative presence. The returning Sun landed squarely in your 1st house, the house of self and first impression, meaning this wasn’t a year of background work or retreat. This was your year to be seen, to show up as yourself, to lead from the front. How you presented yourself mattered. What you believed about your own worth would shape everything that followed.

But the return Moon in Scorpio, sitting in your 4th house, home and family, told a quieter, more complex story beneath that Leo brightness. This was likely a time of emotional intensity at the roots: family dynamics shifting, old loyalties tested, perhaps a need to reckon with what truly felt like yours and what no longer did. Lilith on the Ascendant sharpened the edge: you were shedding old compliance, claiming what had been denied or hidden.

The wider sky amplified this. Jupiter supporting your natal Mercury, the North Node doing the same, your words, your thinking, your voice had unusual power and clarity. Meanwhile, Neptune opposing your natal Venus suggested some dissolving of old romantic or relational illusions. Pluto in harmony with your Uranus meant deep, structural change was not only possible but supported.

This was likely a year of becoming more fully yourself, even as you released what no longer fit. The lessons carved themselves deep.

About The Solar Return

Your Solar Return marks the moment the transiting Sun returns to its exact natal position, your astrological birthday. Astrologers cast a fresh chart for that moment, relocated to wherever you'll spend the year ahead, to read the themes of the coming twelve months. Each Solar Return chart functions as a year-in-miniature forecast: a new rising sign, new planetary placements, new aspects, different territory than the year before. Once a year, every year.

The Return Chart, At A Glance

This is the chart of the return itself: the whole sky at the moment your Sun came back to the spot it held at birth. It describes the cycle that opens, not you as a person, and the birth chart underneath it does not change. That cycle runs from August 13, 2013 to August 14, 2014, about 12 months.

Cast for the return moment, relocated to El Paso.

Rising: Capricorn Sets the tone of the whole cycle: how this stretch of time tends to go about things. In any chart, Rising is your outward manner and first impression; the mask and lens through which you meet the world; Capricorn is disciplined, responsible, ambitious; the 1st house is self, appearance, first impressions.
The returning Sun: 8th house intimacy, transformation, shared resources The part of life this whole cycle works through, where Sun does its work for the next round. In any chart, Sun is core identity, will, vitality, the drive to express your essence; Leo is confident, generous, creative.
Moon: Scorpio · 11th house The emotional weather of the cycle: what it will tend to feel like from the inside. In any chart, Moon is emotional needs, instinctual responses, habits, your feeling of safety; Scorpio is determined, brave, loyal; the 11th house is friendships, groups, aspirations.
Midheaven: Libra What the cycle pushes forward in public: the part other people will see. In any chart, Midheaven is your public reputation, career calling, and the face you show to authority and the world at large; Libra is diplomatic, charming, fair-minded; the 10th house is career, reputation, authority.
On the angles: Jupiter on the Descendant; Pluto on the Ascendant The loudest placements in the chart: a body sitting on one of its four corners shapes the cycle more than its position alone would suggest.

How this sits with your own chart. A return chart is laid over a birth chart, never swapped for it. Your Sun is still in Leo, exactly where it was at birth, and that is what makes this a return at all. What is new is the frame around it: cast for this moment, that same Sun falls in the 8th house (intimacy, transformation, shared resources), so that is the part of life this cycle asks about. Everything in your birth chart stays as it is; this chart only says what the cycle ahead does with it.

The Wider Sky Then

The slow, life-shaping transits active at this return, the backdrop the reading reads against.

transiting Jupiter sextile your natal Mercury · 0.2° Jupiter opens things up and asks for more room, offering an opening, if it gets taken, landing on your Mercury. Mercury is thinking, learning, communication style, how you process information and sits in your 9th house, Philosophy, Higher Education, Travel. Jupiter, the one making the contact, is growth, faith, opportunity, the beliefs that broaden your horizons.
transiting Pluto ℞ trine your natal Uranus · 0.3° Pluto strips a thing back to what it really is, in easy flow, so it helps more than it demands, landing on your Uranus. Uranus is change, originality, awakening, where you seek freedom from limits and sits in your 5th house, Creativity, Romance, Children. Pluto, the one making the contact, is power, purification, shadow work, deep cycles of ending and renewal.
transiting Neptune ℞ opposition your natal Venus · 0.3° Neptune blurs the edges and softens certainty, facing it from across the chart, a push-pull that asks for balance, landing on your Venus. Venus is affection, aesthetics, values, attraction, how you give and receive harmony and sits in your 9th house, Philosophy, Higher Education, Travel. Neptune, the one making the contact, is imagination, ideals, permeability, where reality blurs with vision.
transiting North Node ℞ sextile your natal Mercury · 0.9° North Node pulls toward the growth edge, offering an opening, if it gets taken, landing on your Mercury. Mercury is thinking, learning, communication style, how you process information and sits in your 9th house, Philosophy, Higher Education, Travel. North Node, the one making the contact, is your evolutionary pull and the qualities you are stretching toward in this life.