Every year, the Sun makes its annual return to the same position it was when you were born. This day is your birthday. In astrology the Sun holds our vitality, willpower and life force, as well as what makes you special- uniquely you – so it’s appropriate to be made a big deal over on this day, to be showered with blessings, to celebrate our self and allow others to celebrate us. In astrology, a birthday brings more than a new age. During the days surrounding your birthday, your conscious wishes, intentions are more potent than usual. This is because the Sun, planet of your vital will and life force, is strongly supported in the ethers. I’ve personally observed that events and activities surrounding your birthday carry a lot of information about the year to come. It makes sense: a new 365-day cycle is beginning. Your birthday chart kicks off this new year.

The Solar Return

Will this birthday year be different from last year? Will it feel different? Each year you get a new birthday chart for the year- your Solar Return chart. This chart operates as a permanent transit chart for the coming year, illuminating energetic thrusts, conflicts, possibilities for the year to come.  Will it be a year of busy-ness, learning, travel and networking or a year of spiritual and healing work? Will you spend most of your time on your own, or in a partnership? Is this your breakout year for bold new career moves, or a behind the scenes year? These are the types of questions this chart answers beautifully.

Astrologers use different methods for calculating this chart. I’ve had consistent success with a precession-corrected method which places special emphasis on angular planets (because of their tendency toward action). I initially wondered what the Solar Return chart would tell me that a Transits + Progressions charts don’t. Quite a bit, actually. If you’ve ever had the experience of having a longer moving transit “go quiet” for a period of time, or wondered which of your many transits will be featured this year, this is the chart you’ve been missing.  The Solar Return acts as a focalizer, bringing certain transits into the limelight and allowing others to fade into the background. In plain English, a Solar Return chart interpretation helps you understand where your energy and attention is most needed and best served this year. As a practical example, imagine you have the following birthday wishes: a book to finish, a house remodel, and a happier family life… you know you need to move on all of these but you have limited time and resources and you’re not sure which would yield results. If the Solar Return features a strong angular Mercury, with a transiting Moon-Pluto square in the background, finish that book. The emotional backdrop of your year may include difficult family/home dynamics, but it’s not as pressing.

Making Birthday Magic 

Birthdays are powerful times to plant intentions on behalf of your unfolding spiritual journey, and the days before your birthday, to let go of old life. I journal my intentions for the coming year that day but my more interesting wish-crafting sessions have been at the exact moment of the Solar Return (which, due to precession, will be different every year). Once, while journaling my birthday wishes in a bed & breakfast, a wedding procession took place right outside my window; that was the year I got married. The more aware we are, the greater access Spirit has to speak to us about events to come.

I also take note and record the people, concerns, ideas and events in my life around my birthday. These themes tend to play out in the year to come and it’s fun to track them. But my favorite ritual is my annual intentional birthday walk, when I decide to interpret what crosses my path as a message from Spirit about my year to come. Once I found a bird’s nest in my path and I instinctively thought: I’ll have a nest, a home. I brought it home and made an altar with it. That year I moved in with my future husband, and got a new family. Another year featured a baby owl sighting -a year I grew into new wisdom.

Birthdays are special; the Sun’s return inspires our Spirit with new thoughts, ideas and magic for the year to come, and our conscious participation makes it more so. We can regard our birthday as a time of renewal and recommitment to our Self, to the continued development of our full potential. We can choose to see our birthday as an opportunity to receive the gifts of our Spirit, gifts for the journey, gifts that need us in order to actualise. According to Lewis Hyde, author of The Gift, “Our Spirit carries the fullness of our undeveloped powers. These it offers to us as we grow, and we choose whether or not to accept, which means we choose whether or not to labor in its service. The genius has need of us.”

More Birthday Rituals

Gifts and birthday candles on cake have always been a customary birthday ritual. In ancient Rome and Greece, a person notonly received gifts on his or her birthday but they themselves also offered a sacrifice to their guiding Spirit, called your genius (Rome) or daemon (Greek). In custom, any birthday offering made to one’s guiding Spirit was believed to make one more spiritually, creatively, artistically and sexually fertile. The Greeks made sweet honey Moon cakes for Artemis’ birthday, believing their wishes traveled on the smoke of the candles, straight to the Gods. Sacrificial fires held special mystical significance in Pagan ritual, and candles lit in tribute to the Birthday Child secured lifelong luck and fortune.

More ritual ideas for your birthday:

-create an altar to hold your intentions for the year; write in positive terms

-light a candle and speak your wishes into the candle

-make a list of everything you’re deciding to leave behind

-bathe in cleansing magnesium salts and lavender buds

-plant something with your seed intentions written on a piece of paper, bury it in the soil. As you nurture your plant or flowers, you nurture your intentions throughout the year.

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