From: Carole@brownvm (Carolyn Egan)
Newsgroups: alt.astrology
Subject: re: Solar Returns
Date: 10 Apr 1992 18:36:37 GMT
Organization: Brown University
NNTP-Posting-Host: cis_staff-kntx50.cis.brown.edu

I really do enjoy solar returns!  Back in '89, I by chance attended a UAC 
lecture titled 'Saturn, Uranus & Neptune' in your Solar Return' by Mary Shea.
Since that time, I have learned how to use a solar return chart and regard 
Mary as a progressive and thorough teacher.  Her style, which I use, is one 
that looks at a solar return chart as a stand-alone, instead of putting the
s.r. planets around the natal.  

Now, for your question - Why a s.r. chart?  (scuze, I'm Gemini) Sorry I don't
use the Astrolog.  I use  the Nova program from Astrolabe.

The s.r. chart is erected each year for the exact time your Sun returns to its
natal position. If you were born with your Sun at 8 degrees 48 min of whatever 
sign, then the next year when the Sun returns to that place, it could be on the 
day before, day after or on the same day of your birthday but a different time.
The chart is therefore a transit chart of that time when the Sun returns to 
8:48.  This is your chart for JUST THAT YEAR!  It's like the plan for one year
out of your life.  The planets will never again be this way for you again.  So
the chart is like a script for a play.  One act out of a lifetime.  
 
  The symbolism of this chart is mostly through the houses.  The house 
which contains the Sun indicates that the life force (the Sun) will be proj
ected in that area.  Sun in the 3rd - a year learning, teaching, facts, siblings
How is the Sun aspected.  Squares = challenges.  Trines = ease flow, taking
for granted, etc.  Where is the Moon and so on.  The angles of the s.r. are
interesting to look at also.  All fixed angles - hard to make a move this year,
something holds you back or you spend time keeping things planted, looking for
stability.  Cardinal angles - lots of initiative.  Mutable - change, flexibility
etc.  

  Are there lots of planets in the 5th & 7th - love, marriage, or children,
partnership.  How are the planets aspected.  I just had a client who was in the
early stages of pregnancy and had a very nice career going for herself.  The
s.r. chart was a mass of squares.  Enormous stress.  As it turned out, she had
a good deal of morning sickness and found it difficult to keep up her work.
What was helpful  was giving her dates of the most intensity of the squares so
she could prepare herself and not over do.  Her transits for the year showed
relief or a lightening up at the end of July - the due date for the baby!

Her husbands chart had nowhere near the amout of visible stress for the same
year.  

There is a lot more to this subject, i.e. relocated s.r. charts, quarti and
demi charts and the whole cycle of the solar return sun as to how and when it
changes houses from year to year.  

Many people use a double wheel chart and that's fine.  The stand-alone s.r.
chart affords one the use of aspect lines. I draw them in with red for squ and
oppositions, blue for trines and green for sextiles.  broken red for quincunx
and you can  see a pattern very rapidly.  tsquare, grand squ or gr trines.
If you don't have a grant trine natally, don't you think it would be nice to 
some year have that with moon, venus & jupiter.  speculate!  of course, there
are those years with the t squares - but what accomplishment occurs those years

That's all for now, regards  Carol.