Death, According to Astrology

Many of us want to know when we will die. Some of us don’t. Some want to live as long as possible and some don’t care if they die next week. Some of us never want to die, and wish we could live forever. I have no interest in living forever. I have always been a deadline-oriented person. I think if we lived forever, many of us would never accomplish anything, putting it off to tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Even the word deadline makes it clear what motivates many of us.

But what does astrology say about death? So much of a fuss is made about our birth charts. Are there death charts?

I can look at a chart and sometimes get a clue as to the method of death. Mars in the eighth house indicates a sudden death, and if other aspects agree, it can be a violent death. Saturn in the same house can suggest a long protracted death. Uranus in the can be a surprising death. But I have yet to find a seriously significant transit for the timing of death.

There are transiting planets that symbolize chaos (Uranus) or confusion (Neptune) or serious transformation (Pluto) but nothing points precisely at death. And when I was a beginner at astrology, co-learning with a friend of mine, we went looking for the trigger point for death. This wasn’t particularly professional. We didn’t do a lot of research. We located maybe 25 charts for which we had an accurate time of death, and with slide rules, calculators and pencils with erasers, we set to work.

And we couldn’t find anything significant in a major way. None of the big heavy transiting planets were making precise aspects. Nothing intense seemed to be happening. What we found instead were exact aspects by the Moon or Mercury, and sometimes both together. To make this clear to non-astrologers: if you are 50 years old, Mercury by transit has hit every spot in your chart at least 50 times, usually more due to retrograde motion. And the Moon? At 50 years old, it has made at least 600 trips around your chart. So what to make of this? Death is no big thing? Really? It can happen at any time?

I have a belief in continuing life, so I’m fine with the conclusion that dying is no big deal. And it reinforces all the clichés about how the way you live your life is much more important than the way or time you die. After all, astrologers are concerned with birth charts, not death charts.

And how does the symbolism of the Moon and Mercury fit in here? Mercury is about communication, conscious thought, linear thought, and it also connects with electricity and the nervous system. And the Moon? Well, I see the Moon metaphorically as your heart, and all the heart symbolizes. It represents your emotions, and indicates the roots of your psyche, your intuition, all your non-rational feelings.

So when we die, the thinking stops, the electrical charge goes out, and perhaps we start intuitively connecting with the bigger feelings. So death is a new beginning.