Happy Birthday! – Solar Return Tarot Spread
Updated: July 24, 2025
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My birthday recently passed — happy birthday to me! — and I wanted to create a tarot spread for my birthday and Solar Return. I’m surprised I hadn’t done this yet, honestly, but it is what it is!
Birthdays have always been sort of “meh” for me. I didn’t have great birthdays as a kid; it wasn’t until I was in my mid-teens that I started having birthdays that didn’t suck. As an adult, my birthdays tend to be just another day, but I want to start making them a more important part of my life. Part of this is going to include honoring my lunar return every month and using it as a time to check in emotionally, but since my birthday just passed, I am focusing on my solar return.
What’s a Solar Return?
In astrology, a solar return is the point in time where your Sun placement returns to the exact position it was when you were born. To find your sun placement, you will need your date of birth, place of birth, and time of birth. You can use websites such as CafeAstrology to run your chart. Once you have your natal chart and know your sun placement, you will also know where the Sun will be for your solar return! For example, my Sun placement is Sun in Scorpio 16°. There are a few other things that go into the placement, but I’m not an astrology expert, so I don’t know what they are. You can use this calculator from Astro Seek to find the date and time of your next solar return. This may be different than the actual day of your birth. For example, my Solar Return was a day before my actual birthday this year.
Astrologically, a solar return can help guide you for the next year. It represents the Big Picture for the year, especially when combined with the house your Sun presents in for the return. For example, my Sun Sign is Scorpio.
This year, my Sun Sign is in the Fourth House. This combination means that for the bigger picture, I should focus on my transformation and intensity in relation to my home life and emotional boundaries. Again, I’m not an astrology expert, so I’m only covering surface-level information here in a way that I understand.
Solar Return Birthday Spread
Now that I’ve covered the basics of a solar return, let’s get into the spread and questions! This spread uses five cards with a nice balance between past-year reflection and future-year projections. It doesn’t matter how you lay the cards out, either. A straight line works just as well as a circle!
*not my actual reading
Card 1 – Last Year’s Lesson
Every year, we experience a major theme or lesson, something that guides how we experience the year and what sort of foundations we set for ourselves. This card is reflective, and you may be surprised at what affected you the most!
Card 2 – What to Leave Behind
Just as we gain new habits and patterns that benefit us, we might also hold on to bad habits and beliefs that aren’t good for us. This card will help you identify something (or a few somethings) that you would be better off without. This card will help guide you with what to release for the coming solar year.
Card 3 – The Year’s Theme
Just as we experienced a lesson in the previous year, we will experience lessons in the year to come. This card offers guidance for the main focus of the year to come.
Card 4 – Upcoming Challenge Areas for Growth
With this card, you will see where you may find growth for the year to come. This growth and transformation will come through life’s challenges and your experiences. The card you pull for this question will offer guidance on where you might best place your energy.
Card 5 – Future Potential
Lastly, this card points toward the future, revealing opportunities you can nurture for the future. This card may reveal the best outcome for you, showing where you can place your energy in terms of your career, family life, or passions.
*not my actual reading
Make sure you bookmark this post and come back to it on your birthday. If you use this spread for yourself, I’d love to hear how it worked for you!
Happy Birthday!
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