Astrology · 6 min

Returns

When a planet comes back to where it was when you were born.


Every planet eventually returns to the spot it held in your birth chart. That is a "return", counted as the moment that planet's cycle starts over.

Three returns that matter

  • SOLAR RETURN — every year on your birthday. The start of your personal year.
  • JUPITER RETURN — every twelve years. A stretch of expansion; around ages twelve, twenty-four, thirty-six.
  • SATURN RETURN — every twenty-nine years. One of the most talked-about passages; the first lands between twenty-eight and thirty.

Why the Saturn return gets the talk

The Saturn return gets so much airtime because its timing coincides with a real threshold in a life: in the late twenties most people make their first serious decisions about work, relationships and where they live. That threshold exists without Saturn — astrology just gives it a name.

Check yourself

When does the first Saturn return happen?