A past return

Your Solar Return

The annual renewal of vitality, purpose, and direction.

Exact on August 13, 2020.

At age 84.0.

The cycle it opened ran about 12 months, from August 13, 2020 until the next Solar Return on August 13, 2021.

This return marked a threshold: the Sun’s completion of its orbit back to where you were born, a fresh twelve-month cycle opening in the middle of a year already fractured by forces larger than any one life. What unfolded was a year of reinvention pressed against the weight of collective upheaval.

The rising tone of this cycle was Aries, direct, pioneering, restless. You were being called forward, asked to move, to initiate, to shed what no longer fit. Yet the returning Sun settled into your 5th house, the domain of creativity, romance, and what brings genuine pleasure. This was likely a time when you discovered or rediscovered what you wanted to make, to pursue, to love, not what you thought you should. The return Moon in Gemini, 3rd house, kept the emotional weather curious and communicative; you needed to talk things through, to learn, perhaps to reconnect with siblings or neighbors. There was restlessness in your feelings, but also flexibility.

The wider sky told a different story. Uranus harmonizing with your natal Mercury meant your thinking was being electrified, sudden clarity, new ideas arriving with force. But Jupiter opposing your Moon, Saturn opposing your Pluto, Neptune dissolving your Saturn: this was a year of profound structural challenge. Authority figures, old boundaries, certainties you’d built your life on were all being questioned or dismantled. You were being asked to create and desire within genuine loss.

This period likely taught you that reinvention and grief are not opposites. What you built then, you built knowing impermanence. That knowledge still matters.

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, 2020 to August 13, 2021, about 12 months.

Cast for the return moment, relocated to El Paso.

Rising: Libra 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; Libra is diplomatic, charming, fair-minded; the 1st house is self, appearance, first impressions.
The returning Sun: 11th house friendships, groups, aspirations 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: Gemini · 9th 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; Gemini is adaptable, curious, outgoing; the 9th house is philosophy, higher education, travel.
Midheaven: Cancer 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; Cancer is emotional, caring, intuitive; the 10th house is career, reputation, authority.
On the angles: Venus on the Midheaven; Chiron on the Descendant 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 11th house (friendships, groups, aspirations), 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 Uranus trine your natal Mercury · 0.1° Uranus shakes something loose, often without warning, in easy flow, so it helps more than it demands, landing on your Mercury. Mercury is thinking, learning, communication style, how you process information and sits in your 9th house, Philosophy, Higher Education, Travel. Uranus, the one making the contact, is change, originality, awakening, where you seek freedom from limits.
transiting Jupiter ℞ opposition your natal Moon · 0.6° Jupiter opens things up and asks for more room, facing it from across the chart, a push-pull that asks for balance, landing on your Moon. Moon is emotional needs, instinctual responses, habits, your feeling of safety and sits in your 8th house, Intimacy, Transformation, Shared Resources. Jupiter, the one making the contact, is growth, faith, opportunity, the beliefs that broaden your horizons.
transiting Saturn ℞ opposition your natal Pluto · 0.7° Saturn tightens, tests, and asks what is built to last, facing it from across the chart, a push-pull that asks for balance, landing on your Pluto. Pluto is power, purification, shadow work, deep cycles of ending and renewal and sits in your 8th house, Intimacy, Transformation, Shared Resources. Saturn, the one making the contact, is structure, discipline, boundaries, lessons that mature over time.
transiting Neptune ℞ conjunction your natal Saturn · 0.9° Neptune blurs the edges and softens certainty, sitting right on top of it, so the effect is direct and hard to miss, landing on your Saturn. Saturn is structure, discipline, boundaries, lessons that mature over time and sits in your 4th house, Home, Family, Roots. Neptune, the one making the contact, is imagination, ideals, permeability, where reality blurs with vision.