Astrology was never meant to tell us the exact moment of death… that’s not its purpose, and I would never use it that way. What I can share, though, are my own observations: the patterns I’ve noticed after reading hundreds, maybe even thousands, of charts over the years.
When I look back at the charts of people who have passed, I often see the same transits repeating with uncanny regularity. They don’t cause death in a mechanical sense, but they tend to show up around those threshold moments, times of closure, transition, or release, when the soul seems ready to step through a different kind of doorway.
Saturn vs. Pluto
Traditionally, it’s Saturn and not Pluto that rules death and finitude. Saturn is the keeper of time, the skeleton, the ticking clock we all live by. When Saturn’s hand is heavy, we often meet endings that cannot be avoided or negotiated.
Pluto works differently. Pluto almost never shows up as literal death. It’s the underworld journey, the kind of destruction that forces you to start over. Ego death, identity death, losing the very things you thought were unshakable. Where Saturn says, “This is the end,” Pluto says, “Burn it down and begin again.”
In charts I’ve read, I’ve seen Pluto’s hardest transits in people who lost everything overnight, money gone, stability gone, suddenly left with nothing. Saturn, though, is the one I’ve seen over and over when it comes to physical death, both natural and premature.
Saturn is the sculptor who carves you into stone through struggle, patience, and pain. Pluto is the force that hands you great power one moment and rips it away the next. One teaches you limits. The other shows you what it means to be stripped bare.
Transits I’ve Noticed Around Death
These are the patterns I keep running into when I look at charts around the time of death. They don’t hand out guarantees, plenty of people live right through these transits, but there’s a weight to them. They echo with endings, with thresholds, with that strange shift when life feels like it’s leaning out of the physical and into something else.
Uranus conjunct the Ascendant. This one shows up in sudden exits. Uranus doesn’t wait, it shocks and disrupts. When it hits the Ascendant, the very point of incarnation, it can act like a quick door swinging open, a jolt that releases the body in an instant.
Uranus conjunct the Midheaven. Here the element of surprise often plays out publicly. The passing itself may shock others, or it becomes the moment where the person’s memory is crystallized, made suddenly larger than life. Uranus rarely allows for quiet departures.
North/South Node Conjunctions. This one has been haunting me for years. I kept seeing it repeat in death charts, and for the longest time, it just didn’t click. Uranus conjunct the South Node, the North Node conjunct Jupiter, Jupiter conjunct the South Node… the pattern was there, but the meaning was slippery.
Over time, I started to read it as a kind of soul expansion, a crossing into something bigger and uncharted, a leap beyond the limits of this lifetime. Sometimes it’s the North Node, sometimes it’s the South Node, and that makes me wonder: do South Node transits point back to the last life, while North Node transits point forward into another incarnation?
I still don’t have a neat answer. I pause over this every time I see it, because it shows up too often to dismiss. There’s something in the Nodes that speaks to the movement of the soul, and in the charts of death, that voice comes through loud and clear.
Pluto opposite the Sun (when the Sun is already stressed in the natal chart). When Pluto presses against a Sun that’s already under strain, the confrontation runs deep: mortality, ego, legacy, the very life force itself. It’s like the universe forcing a final reckoning.
The third Saturn return. Very few live to experience this, but those who do often face Saturn’s full weight. It has the feeling of completion, the bell tolling that the cycle is done.
The third Saturn opposition to the Sun, or Saturn conjunct the Sun later in life. These are often the moments when Saturn comes to collect. The sense is very clear: the circle has closed, the work is finished.
Lilith conjunct the Ascendant or Moon. Rare, but striking when it appears. Lilith has a dark, uncanny quality, and when she fuses with such personal points, I’ve seen deaths that felt strange, unnatural, even violet-tinged, touched by something forbidden.
Harsh Neptune transits to the luminaries. Neptune dissolves. People like to paint it as dreamy and mystical, but it’s also the planet of erosion, blurring, disappearance. As ruler of the 12th, Neptune has a hand in endings, and when it pressures the Sun or Moon, especially alongside other hard transits, it can coincide with deaths shrouded in mystery, or even literal disappearances.
Chart ruler hit from both sides. This one fascinates me. Sometimes the ruler of the chart is activated in a mirrored way. For example, your chart ruler is Mercury. Transit Saturn is conjunct your natal Mercury, while transit Mercury is conjunct your natal Saturn. Both sides of the equation light up at once, and I’ve seen this pattern echo around times of passing. It feels like a double tolling of the bell.
12th House Transits & Pisces Luminaries
Another pattern I can’t ignore is how often deaths line up with 12th house transits. If the 1st house is the doorway in, the 12th feels like the hallway out, the last stretch before the exit, where the body is already tired but the soul hasn’t fully slipped away yet.
What still surprises me is how much fear people project onto the 8th house. Everyone thinks the 8th is “the death house.” In my experience, it just isn’t. I’ve gone through chart after chart, and I have yet to see a death tied to the 8th house. The 8th is about merging, intimacy, the mess of what we share with others… it’s transformative, yes, but it’s not the end point. The 12th, though, keeps showing up.
And when someone has luminaries in the 12th house, or strong Pisces placements, things can get heavy if too many difficult transits hit at once, especially the big ones: Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, conjunctions, squares, oppositions. That kind of pressure on the Sun or Moon, our very light of life, can sometimes coincide with the soul deciding it’s time to move on.
Thresholds
Astrology gives us patterns, not promises. These transits don’t mean that every time they show up, something terrible is waiting around the corner. In the charts of death, it’s almost never just one thing anyway. It’s usually the chart ruler under siege, the luminaries taking hits, or several planets all grinding against the angles at once. Death shows up as a chorus, not a single note.
No matter how many charts you read, you’re not going to predict death. You’ll only ever recognize it in hindsight. The best you can do is study, observe, and admit that every chart you look back on will still teach you something you didn’t know before.
