Solar Return and Life Cycles

What is calculated

• Solar Return — the moment the Sun returns to its birth position, and the annual chart for that moment. Its Design side is taken 88° of the Sun before the Solar Return.
• Saturn Return — around age 28–30, the end of the first third of life according to Ra.
• Uranus Opposition — around age 39–45 (for those born in the 1970s–2000s, usually at 42–45), “midlife.”
• Chiron Return — around age 50, the start of the third stage.
• Second Saturn Return — around age 57–60.

Because of retrograde motion, slow planets often pass the point two or three times — the calculator shows every pass with your age at the time.

How the system sees it

Ra Uru Hu described life as three great stages, bounded by the Saturn Return, the Uranus Opposition and the Chiron Return. They matter most for profiles with a sixth line: up to age 30 is a stage of trial and error, from 30 to 50 is observing “from the roof,” and after 50 is being an example for others. Each such moment produces its own chart, which, according to the teaching, overlays yours until the next cycle; your type and authority do not change.

How exactly software builds cycle charts is not described in open sources. We take the moment of the first exact return as the Personality side and the moment 88° of the Sun before it as the Design side, and we say so in the result.

An Honest Look at the Method

Human Design is a modern system that Ra Uru Hu described in 1987. Its rules are precisely defined and therefore calculable, but none of them has been tested as a way to describe a person or predict how relationships will turn out. We calculate by the system’s rules and write the interpretations as a description of what the system holds, not as knowledge about you. More on the system’s origins is on the Human Design page.