I seriously contemplated trying to get away from my current solar return as it features Sun plus 4 planets in the 6th house and I have already been sick this week so that's not very reassuring. But I've decided instead it means I must do my exercises and eat a healthy diet all year ... or else!!!

Tara

Was not the infant Oedipus sent abroad to avoid his fate? Didn't work for him did it?

Overindulgence in cake would seem a minor vice compared to what he got up to.

Matt

For me relocating on SR it's working fine. I've been using it for my clients for about 4 years and proved to have good results.

In my opinion the problem is the level of understanding of SR.Changing your location on your birthday you will not alter your future but you can optimize it. SR chart shows more how you are dealing with things in your life in the comming year. And the events that are need to be happen will occur. You cannot avoid a divorce for example by changing your location. But you can change your perspective on this event. For sure there is a big difference between Virgo Rising and Sag rising on SR.

Also you can deal with a hard transit from Saturn differently with planets in 12th house in SR compared to moving in a place where this planets comes in 1st house.

Everything in SR chart - esp. Asc and houses - it's about your perspective about the following year. One who expect to radically change his life by moving in another place is completely wrong. But you can relocate to have a better view of some things or to be optimize some activities planned for next year.

In conclusion: SR relocating works fine. I have many customers who travelled on their birthday and things were fine. They know that are not doing this to avoid events in their lifes but to get a better approach.

Dan

Hi Dan

Thanks for adding a bit of balance and giving us another view on this. I'm sure the astrologers who do this have a conviction that it's the right thing to do. I wonder where this thinking came from and how old it is. Can you tell us if anyone in particular influenced your approach? And does anyone know of any historical examples of this? I think it would be interesting to discover more about when and where this idea took root.

Deb

Hi Deb,

Things start to clarify in the moment when I start reading works of persian astrologers -> started with Ben Dykes 'Persian Nativities' translation. Vol III is practicaly a solar revolutions manual.

Secondly it's a matter of logic: in a SR chart you cannot change planets placement in signs. This means that the SR planets position will activate the same area in your natala chart no matter where you are. Secondly transits and progressions are not influenced by your location.

In the end I think you can use SR more as an elective chart. You can choose your location in order to redirect some energies.

For me the moment when Sun returns to its natal placement it's like a battery recharching. Practically on that degree and minute Sun will have the exact vibration (amount of light) as in your moment of birth. It's like you are a radio tuned on a specific freq and only once a year you can receive a signal. And ,similar to moment of birth, the location from where you are receiving this signals are important.

Most important in a SR is the Ascendant/Risign sign. It's one of the time lord of the year along with profected Ascendant.

For SR you should bear in mind the followings:
- nothing will take place in SR outside natala chart. You can have Sun-Venus-Jupiter in 2nd house and you can still have money issues.
- you need to know more about that person: the current status on all areas, future plans etc.
- the most important thing is to see how SR and natal chart are working together. Here I'm using a lot midpoints and Lots.
- SR as standalone chart is last thing to check. And if you are relying only on this chart you can make huge mistakes.

I can understand pro and against opinions regarding SR. But for me it's hard to accept extremes. SR it's a tool. In order to use it properly you need to know how to use it. And I think that curently our approach on SR is somehow limited. It's also interesting to notive connections between SR charts.

As an example:

I have a astrotwin sister - a person born on the same moment as me and close location. There is 1 degree difference on rising sign. And we had the opportunity to locate ourself in different places on the world and we notice important changes in how we approach things. For example in 2010 I've been home in Bucharest and she was in Osaka, Japan.

She has a Cancer risign and me Aquarius. And my life was more crazier compared to her. It was a first year in many when she was able to settle down back home in Romania and do some work. For me it was all Aquarius mood - sudden changes and need for independence.


Dan

This is good, useful discussion Dan, thank you. But to clarify, are you saying that the idea of relocating is not traditional as you understand it from PN vol III, but that you personally like the idea of moving to a different area to get a different reception of the energies?

For me the moment when Sun returns to its natal placement it's like a battery recharching.

I agree; but my own views is that the physical reception of the planetary energy is like altering the affect of a planetary transit; but that a solar revolution concerns a symbolic return to the natal chart, so it only concerns the astronomical return of planets to the natal positions.

From what I have seen, taking the birthday trip does seem to make a difference in one's experience for the year. I'm rather amused at all the folks who are spouting criticism in a righteous way who I am nearly certain have never followed the effect over a decade (or even a half decade) using their own horoscopes and those of people they know well.

Also, the argument about "intent" is a sloppy one. Either the effect is observed, or it isn't. The individual's moral intent has nothing to do with it. I see the same sort of sloppy reasoning from the "natural birth" crowd in astrology - who seem to believe that "good" moms don't do anything to alter the birth time of the baby, which would include using any type of anesthesia, while ?bad? moms actually consult an astrologer to ?choose? the birth time if they are planning an induced delivery or a C-section.

If you believe in the impact of changing location, you probably see it being related to Einstein?s space-time continuum. Let?s review that for a moment, folks. In the older classical mechanics, time is treated as universal and constant, being independent of the state of motion of the observer (subject). In other words, events don?t change because of the subject?s motion to a new location. There is nothing wrong with this view ? it works well in our day-to-day life.

Einstein opened up Pandora?s box and showed us that time was related to velocity and gravity. An object traveling at a super-human speed would experience time more slowly than we would on earth. A space traveler traveling at a velocity that approaches the speed of light could take a 20 year trip and return to Earth and find that hundreds of years had passed. In other words, the outcome in time is altered because of one?s motion and also one?s frame of reference. Put a little differently, the duration of time can vary for various events and various reference frames.

In some way that I can?t demonstrate mathematically, I think that location may influence the course which time follows in the same way that we know velocity does. It doesn?t do this in our day-to-day lives, but it may do it at the moment of the Solar Return, which establishes the ?reference frame? for the coming time interval (one year). This might depend on the existence of some weird ?hybrid? dimension that is neither temporal nor spatial (some string theories use this loophole at the sub-atomic level).

While I can?t prove this mathematically, I would rather not throw the idea out altogether. It would account for the impact I feel certain I observe. It would explain why certain events culminate at various times in a given year. Obviously, there is no way to establish an independent variable with this sort of thing. And a different SR location probably does not change the outcome of karma ? if you are fated not to get that job, or if you are fated to drown that year, it doesn?t really matter whether you do it at the beginning of the end of the year. But I would rather entertain a possibility related to Einstein?s special relativity than I would fall back on these righteous, judgmental ?moral? arguments. That?s all I?m saying.

Since this is clearly an issue that divides opinion, I thought it would be a good idea to add a poll to this.

Obviously the first name I have in mind is Morin (Tom helped me to decoding Holden translation for an article of mine in Linguaggio Astrale )

This is a portion of the chapter:
First, it may be said that this follows much more evidently and certainly if you have tied the influx of the natal constitution to the natal place, but not to the native, as was stated above. Second, the virtue of the revolution can extend itself to a certain degree to advance or hinder the radical influx of the revolution of whatever place , either natal or extraneous that the native will have received it .....
And in this the infinite goodness of God shines forth, in that He will have allowed a man to be free to avoid or to mitigate, by a suitable change of location those malign acts that are going to happen after his birth

Anyway Morin mentions the use of solar returns with directions in the same chapter and those are cast for the birth place- he wrote.

In every case I have the opinion that Morin idea to relocate returns was an idea which was in the air; Campanella in his book "How to avoid the sidereal fate" (the title talks by itself) recommends many times to change place because of an eclipse falling on some given points of the natal chart.

Morin anyway says in the beginning of the chapter that astrologers located solar returns for the birth place.

margherita

In stating the case for relocating Tom wrote:

The influence is on the individual not the place. Therefore when the cosmos impresses it influence for the year on the native it does so on the native based on where the native is, not on where he was when he was born.

It looks as though no one has questioned this idea that ?The influence is on the individual . . . ?, and ?Therefore when the cosmos impresses it influence for the year on the native . . .? Influences and cosmic impressions? Can we be so sure that it's all about positioning ourselves on the planet and receiving rays and influences from the cosmos? Does it truly boil down to rays acting upon us? We may be unquestioningly assuming that rays shoot down and influence our material bodies and little gray cells, a version of a simplistic cause-and-effect story which has been favored by modern science.

Maybe it's more helpful to think in terms of 'As it is in the sky, so it is within the individual'. By that I mean that the outer sky may in some way more accurately serve metaphorically as an inner sky ? the power of metaphor, symbols, and poetry. The motion above reflecting the motion within. This takes us into the realm of Platonic and Neoplatonic ideas, images and archetypes. There may be planetary rays but they would be more of a spiritual or psychic nature. It would be a question of connecting or aligning with them rather than being their passive target.


In my previous post I wrote:

I start with the birth location with its inherent pattern of angular signs in the return charts. I do take a look at the current place of residence which is activated and validated through the possessions, daily routines, and concerns of the native.

Our personal story begins with birth, so the place of birth can reasonably said to always be with us. Our hopes, dreams, fears and daily drudgery take place at our current residence ? ?Home is where the heart is?, that sort of thing. So it looks like a pretty good case for a strong emotional or psychic connection to the place of residence and the return charts for that location. But running off to a birthday location ? isn't that a turning away from our daily concerns and routines and therefore a strong break from the life that we are living on a daily basis? By dashing off for a few days we aren't aligning our lives with the sky, but rather breaking the connection between the sky and the life we are living daily. After a birthday getaway we return home and go right back to living our usual patterns of images and metaphors, thoughts and ideas, and wait for the ?influences? to have their effect on the story we have been living. We have simply scampered off briefly in hopes of taking in a few rays.

As we all know, the planets don't change their zodiacal positions or interrelationships when the native relocates. The change is in the planets' relationship to the local horizon and, therefore, how they are viewed and experienced in that environment. As we are the center of our local horizon, that would seem to point to the real purpose behind relocating as inducing a shift in our own perception and an openness toward the images presented by those planets. But such an openness probably could be accomplished anywhere without the need to strategically place oneself in the supposed right spot at the supposed right time, so why not just stay home, enjoy your birthday, and ponder the return charts drawn for the location of your story's beginning and the place of your current daily activities and concerns?