Solar Return Case Study

I've been working on solar return charts for this year and decided to try them two ways: the usual Tropical non-precessed chart and a Sidereal chart. I'm using James Eshelman's method of analysis, which derives from Cyril Fagan's "foreground/middleground/background" model. This method pays a lot of attention to angularity, a bit less to "hard" aspects (none to "soft"), very little to other house placements and virtually none to sign placements, rulerships or "dispositorships." I've attached an example chart done both ways (note that I didn't post the dual-wheel charts showing SR and natal planets to keep this simple).

The Tropical chart was done with Halloran software and shows Pluto and Jupiter as "immediate foreground," especially Pluto right on the Ascendant. Jupiter is near the Descendant and happens to be in its exaltation. What is shaping up for this year (in reality, that is, I'm not drawing this conclusion from the chart) is likely death of the elderly father and a sizable inheritance; an "event-oriented" view of the chart ignoring psychological "haze" and cleared of the usual house and sign meanings shows the possibility of "something" significant happening. Both Saturn and Venus are (very) marginally foreground, although Saturn is elevated in the 10th, and everything else is either background or middleground. There is a Water Grand Trine with Moon-Jupiter-Saturn and the angular Jupiter-Pluto opposition, both square to background Uranus in the 3rd.

The Sidereal chart was done with Riyal and doesn't show any angularity or even any strongly "foreground" planets. I'm not sure what to make of this chart until I spend some more time with it, but nothing is jumping out at me as significant.

Both of these charts have natal planets in the SR angles (especially the precessed one), but that is the next level of analysis and I'm not quite there yet.

And my question is . . . which of these do YOU see as more likely to indicate important life-events, and why?

You are cheating yourself.

I work with Riyal charts all the time and was collaborating with Juan Revilla to develop the full Sidereal or p.c. Tropical methods that Cyril Fagan introduced over a half century ago, and which Jim Eshelman still follows.

After you calculate a Riyal solar return and continue, you will be offered a choice of PSSR, SQ or Continue -- chose PSSR. A listing of every day of the following annual period of the S/R will appear. Any dates which have natal, solar return or natal planets on the angles will have those notations at the right side. Click on any date! You will be asked if you want a bi-wheel chart oriented to the natal angles, the transiting or s/r angles or a single wheel chart. I would reccommend the transit angles choice.

You will get a bi-wheel chart, natal planets inside, transiting or transiting planets outside with the daily angles governing the chart presentation (daily ascendant at the left, daily MC on top) with the natal chart rotated appropriately inside.

If you just want the S/R chart in bi-wheel format, after calculating the S/R, choose continue and DO NOT choose PSSR or SQ. Continue, get a black screen, then click on the F8 key to access a bi-wheel Solar Return chart.

Dave

Use of bi-wheel S/R and Natal charts with RIYAL

Once you use/view a bi-wheel S/R chart you will find it easier to understand that having no planets at an angle is not the end of the world. The MC advances on a daily basis in a nine-month two-week cycle to return to its S/R position. In the final two-months, two-weeks it advances to the next Solar Return MC position. Four-months and three-weeks after the S/R the advancing angles reach their opposition point.

This is important to understanding that the advancing angles will, at various time, contact natal planets and transiting planets as well as natal angles and solar return angles. The PSSR listing (after you create a S/R calculation) gives you a visual guide as to when the chart angles will contact planets and other angles. These daily charts tell you a story of what can happend within the context of your life.

The contact of daily advanced angles with natal angles and s/r angles is important to note as these have a strong interpretive value. They are covered in detail in my book, Personal Prediction (the only book of p.c. Solar Returns since Eshelman's book in the 1980s). Contact me directly if you have questions. Dave

dadsnook2000 said:

If you just want the S/R chart in bi-wheel format, after calculating the S/R, choose continue and DO NOT choose PSSR or SQ. Continue, get a black screen, then click on the F8 key to access a bi-wheel Solar Return chart.Dave

Click to expand...

Thanks, Dave. I was trying to follow the instructions on your website for getting to the graphic chart options, but after telling me to ignore the PSSR option it didn't say to hit Continue. Took me a while to figure that out. In Riyal 3.99 I was sent back to the opening splash screen (not black) and F8 got me to the charts.

dadsnook2000 said:

Once you use/view a bi-wheel S/R chart you will find it easier to understand that having no planets at an angle is not the end of the world. The MC advances on a daily basis in a nine-month two-week cycle to return to its S/R position. In the final two-months, two-weeks it advances to the next Solar Return MC position. Four-months and three-weeks after the S/R the advancing angles reach their opposition point.

This is important to understanding that the advancing angles will, at various time, contact natal planets and transiting planets as well as natal angles and solar return angles. The PSSR listing (after you create a S/R calculation) gives you a visual guide as to when the chart angles will contact planets and other angles. These daily charts tell you a story of what can happend within the context of your life.

The contact of daily advanced angles with natal angles and s/r angles is important to note as these have a strong interpretive value. They are covered in detail in my book, Personal Prediction (the only book of p.c. Solar Returns since Eshelman's book in the 1980s). Contact me directly if you have questions. Dave

Click to expand...

Thanks. You and I communicated privately while you were still working on your book, but I fell off the face of the Earth for a while . I was looking at the PDA lists for a few months but tailed off all things astrological. I still need to pick up your book.

I use regular Placidus SR charts and I've been studying them for quite a while, I can testify that SR with Pluto on the Asc or in the 1st (same sign as Asc) is a year of significant changes. I have personally experienced these charts. The changes themselves can be all kinds but they alter the life in a major way, a whole chapter closes. What begins if anything is another story. For me, the rulership of Pluto plays out but also its placement in the natal as well as its most exact aspect (one). This I have witnessed a few times already and I'm in another such year now.

It also doesn't depend on other placaments in the SR. Even without any SR aspects it plays out, for me at least. However, SR planets in the SR houses otherwise connected to Pluto in the natal give additional info and sometimes timing.

Ronia said:

I use regular Placidus SR charts and I've been studying them for quite a while, I can testify that SR with Pluto on the Asc or in the 1st (same sign as Asc) is a year of significant changes. I have personally experienced these charts. The changes themselves can be all kinds but they alter the life in a major way, a whole chapter closes.

Click to expand...

That's interesting. Have you had charts in which Pluto has fallen in the Placidus twelfth but still in the same sign as the ASC? If so was there any noticeable effect at all?

The reason I ask is that in a related thread, I posited the idea that Dave's view of SR cycles seemed to use the angles as a test of planetary strength rather than as topical indicators.

Ronia said:

This I have witnessed a few times already and I'm in another such year now.

It also doesn't depend on other placaments in the SR.

Click to expand...

Dave may be able to help me here, as I've not got his book handy. He refers to a cycle of changes in the SR MC (but I can't remember whether this point covers both tropical and precession corrected charts or precession corrected only)


Given Plutos' long sojourn in signs, it would seem to me that if it turns up in the Ascendant once, it's likely to turn up every four or five years over a length of time(relocation might well influence this one way or another, if you use it). Have you noticed that these years that you have identified follow any sort of pattern?

MC cycle in Solar Returns

The MC can progress or advance in any type of Solar Return IF YOU WANT IT TO. Cyril Fagan tried to progress a Sidereal Solar Return using secondary progression techniques and/or a degree per day. This didn't work out because successive Solar Return charts shift (advance) the MC position by 90 degrees each year. Fagan decided that the extra quarter day in Earth's orbital year could be the excuse for adding 90 degrees (a quarter of Earths daily rotation) to the 360 degrees of Sun advance per year. This meant that the MC of the Solar Return advanced about 1.25 degrees per day.

The exact amount of advance varies from year to year and also during the years. If you know about the Equation of Time then you'll understand. In any case, using Solar Fire or any other popular astrology program to advance the MC by 1.25 degrees per year will NOT provide you with an accurate chart --- the Equation of Time variable has to be applied. The only software program that does this is the freeware program RIYAL which i extensively mention in my book.

You can use this method to obtain a derived daily chart, which Cyril Fagan called a PSSR or Progressed Sidereal Solar Return, with Tropical, precession-corrected Tropical or Sidereal Solar Returns. The Tropical S/R will always give you a different/earlier chart time than the other two types which are identical to each other in terms of time and house positions of the planets. Only the sign-degrees shift.
Dave

Another interesting tid-bit of fact

A Tropical Solar Return will re-present the natal angles at age 23 (I believe). Sidereal or precession-corrected Tropical Solar Returns will re-present the natal angles at the SR angles on the 39th year (and the 78th year) unless one has moved.

If one goes to Astrodatabank and queries the database for charts of those who have died in their 39th year, one has to stock up the printer with paper as the print-out list is very long. Withe the natal angles coincidental with the solar return angles, one has the choice (it seems) of rebirth and choosing a new life direction or of dying. So many notable people die at age 39. Others have close calls and live such as Prince Charles when he and his group narrowly escaped an avalanche while skiing at St. Morritz. Martin Luther King is a public figure who died at age 39.

Dave

Thanks Dave.

I wasn't looking for the exact reproduction of the natal ASC, as Ronia said 'on the Ascendant or later in the same sign' (that is somewhere in the first house but still in the same sign). I would think that that was a much more common event.

Pluto isn't on her natal Ascendant, which is Capricorn. It's 10 degrees Libra.

Her MC is 15 degrees Scorpio, the same sign as her natal Sun.

By now transiting Pluto has passed through Scorpio and Sagittarius and has been in Capricorn for the last six years.

What I was wondering was whether there would be a cycle in the SR Ascendants, that would periodically coincide with the sign that Pluto was in, either when it was in Scorpio, or Sagittarius or Capricorn, assuming she stopped in the same place (little chance of that )