SSR vs SR

[egeek]

Hi everyone, a total noob here. May I know if sidereal solar return is synonymous with solar return? If not, what are the main differences? I am hoping that someone could help me with my solar return for next year (bday coming up in Jan), is this the right place to post this?

Thanks and love to all!

[ODdOnLifeItself]

Opinions vary immensely, but in this forum, normally we would only consider the sidereal solar return, which will most certainly be different from its tropical counterpart. (and would be read differently, technique-wise)

Post your birthdata, the source, and we could look at them openly, if you have a mind to... Important is where you were residing (opinion on this differs as well) at the time of the Solar Return. (ie. around your birthday)

[SteveS]

egeek asked:

May I know if sidereal solar return is synonymous with solar return? If not, what are the main differences?

It is not. Simple explanation: A Sidereal Solar Return calculates the correct angles and position for the moon, a Tropical Solar Return does not calculate the correct angles and position of the moon.

[Jupiter Sets at Dawn]

Opinions don't actually vary much. Especially not here on this forum.

There is a actual zodiac in the sky. And there are several fictious ones in people's minds. The zodiac used here on Solunars is the Sidereal zodiac (with capitalization) which is real, and you can see it if you go outside at night. It's set, not in stone, but in the stars. We know where the boundaries are because Cyril Fagan read coffin lids from ancient Egypt and Don Bradley did some huge statistical studies that proved the boundaries, and we know it's the same zodiac used by the Babylonians and Egyptians because historians have dug up sites and tested and published and know where the zodiac is. We can show it's the same zodiac. And then Jim Eshelman has done study after study and keeps accidentally proving the Sidereal zodiac over and over. Used to amaze us. We're getting almost blase about it now.

The other zodiacs, the tropical, various Indian-Hindu, and Chinese, are all attempts to recreate the real zodiac at different times in history because the knowledge of exactly where the zodiac was and how to figure it was lost over time. For instance, the Lahari zodiac puts the star Spica at 0°of Libra. The tropical zodiac is based on the idea that 0°Aries coincides with the vernal equinox.

So that's what the other "S" in SSR means. Its the Sidereal Solar Return. SR just means solar return. Recently, the past couple decades, I think, some astrologers realized the ancient tomes described techniques no longer in use, but which were supposed to be amazingly accurate. Unfortunately, those techniques didn't seem to work very well in the zodiacs most astrologers were and are using. However some decades before, Cyril Fagan and Don Bradley had begun using those old techniques in the Sidereal zodiac. And they worked as advertised by the ancient astrologers. The zodiac and the techniques work together.

The Sidereal Return is one of those techniques. It's designated the Sidereal Solar Return, as Fagan called it, to make it clear, this is in the Sidereal Zodiac.

The Sidereal zodiac is fixed. The tropical zodiac moves. You'll always get a Sidereal Solar Return that shows the Sun at the same degree and minutes as the Sun was when you were born. Some other astrologers take the amount their zodiac moved between when you were born and when the chart is cast for and subtract it (or maybe they add it - I don't honestly remember just now) and try to cast the chart for the same time as the SSR. Some don't. There's all kinds of fooling around applied to an SR and you'd need to go to a different forum where they use such things to get a delineation.

All that said, we'd be glad to do your Sidereal Solar Return and help you delineate it.

[Jim Eshelman]

Hi everyone, a total noob here. May I know if sidereal solar return is synonymous with solar return? If not, what are the main differences? I am hoping that someone could help me with my solar return for next year (bday coming up in Jan), is this the right place to post this?

This depends on context. "Solar Return" is less specific. In theory, it could be calculated in a precessing framework and then rightly called a Tropical Solar Return (TSR) or in a precession-free framework and then rightly called a Sidereal Solar Return (SSR). In an ideal world, Siderealists wouldn't have to be so specific - solar return should be sufficient to clearly mean SSR - but there is still a lot of educating to be accomplished before we get there.

Among ourselves (e.g., on this site) we tend to use the two interchangeably.