Over at our awesome Chart Harmony 💙🖤🧡💗💜💚 Discord, I get asked questions. Recently, one of ’em was about solar return charts — and choosing the LOCATION for the rendering of this subsidiary chart.

The solar return chart is a fun, hypothetical (or fictional, depending on whom you ask) chart created for the exact moment this year that the Sun returns to the exact degree, minute, and second it occupied at the moment of your birth. One of the settings for creating this chart is location. Should it be the location of your birth? Your current residence? Where you may travel for your birthday?

This is actually a debate I’ve seen (and been a part of, sometimes) in many an astrologer Discord community out there. Personally, I’m a fan of using the space we NOW live in (or where we’ll travel to, on our next birthday) because I believe the energy for the year ahead DOES take the shape of that space. And since it’s a chart that creates a colored lens for your never-changing natal chart rather than a whole new birth chart, I feel like it’s a portable set of shades.

HOWEVER, I’ve been schooled by some people I really respect as teachers that THE rule is to keep the natal location intact. So… I’m trying to get used to using the natal location. That IS the way the technique is done. (Of course, the astrology software itself has a place to change the location, so obvi changing locations IS another way of doing the technique by enough people to have it IN the software, right??)

The idea is solid: We don’t change location for doing profections, or progressions, or Firdaria, or Zodiacal Releasing, or any other timing technique we overlay on the natal chart, so why would we change the location for solar return charts? There’s no evidence in ancient astrological texts/translations that we change location, either.

HOWEVER (another however), in ancient astrology, we’re talking about a life in which we never lived very far away from where we were born, right? It’s a modern reality that we can live a world away from where we were born… and I think that’s a compelling reason to use preferred location over the natal location.

And… these are debates I’ll probably continue to have. 😉 Ha ha! 

Should you come to me for a solar return reading (or any other Chart Harmony session), you’re welcome to give me YOUR location preference for running this kind of chart for you. Heck, we can even run a few options to see what shifts and discuss what you may wish to lean into for the year ahead!

I like looking at different interpretations the same way I like looking at different house systems. There’s gonna be a story in each rendering… and both are true!

Come on over to our Chart Harmony Discord server) to share in this convo. And if you’d like to go deeper with any of my free (or non-free) on-demand resources, head over here to the library I’m continuing to build for you!

Much love,

Bonnie Gillespie is simultaneously all characters in The Wizard of Oz (esp. the yellow-brick road). Wanna work with Bon? Start here. Thanks!