Stellar Considerations

Some astrologers think that if they can find just the right astrological method, they’ll be able to predict how we’ll die. They’re wrong. Life has limits—death being one of them—and so does astrology. The stars might align around death’s gaping maw like teeth—and no one can deny death’s coming—but the question of when and how its jaws might close in is largely unknown and unpredictable. And even if we had a star-clad method to predict our own demise, it wouldn’t grant us the courage or wisdom to meet death head on, which is what we really need.

With the sign-by-sign guide below, you can work with your sign’s inherent qualities to sweeten this life, rob fate of its bitter bite, and prepare to greet the Cheshire grin of death, perhaps even with a smile of your own. Astrology is for the living. We’ll have to wait until the afterlife, if there is one, to see what the dead use.

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Aries

You must live like you’ll never die, and die like you’ll live forever. In other words, always face forward with no regrets.

Taurus

Be as thorough with death as you are in life. See that your death is a pleasant experience for yourself and others, from maintaining your life insurance to preparing an elegant coffin and a final outfit.

Gemini

Silence and boredom often feel like a kind of death. The more you learn to be comfortable with both, the more death and life will seem like two sides of one coin.

Cancer

Take comfort in the fact that your connection to Mother Earth is eternal, from the dust you are to the dirt you’ve tried to clean up to the soil you’ll become, which will nurture all that lives after you.

Leo

You burn like the sun and cannot be extinguished. Relish how, like sunshine, your memory will warm souls and skin.

Virgo

Keep showing the world how to do things the right way. Folks will catch on eventually, and you will have earned the rest in death.

Libra

Whether you’ve had only one partner in life or scores of them, anticipate the ecstasy you’ll feel when you finally rip off death’s veil to join with the hidden companion you’ve felt your whole life.

Scorpio

You’ve walked through countless fires of rebirth in life. Consider death the ultimate blaze to pass through.

Sagittarius

Treat death like another grand adventure—without the delays of deal scouting, reviews reading, or baggage claim. 

Capricorn

Create a lifetime of competency and solid character to help you pass the test of death like all the other tests—with flying colors! 

Aquarius

Know that death will be the moment you allow the world to change you wholly for its purposes just as you’ve been an agent of change in the world.

Pisces

Let the certainty of death hone and strengthen any shakiness in your devotion to life and love. You might have greeted life as a minnow, but you’ll leave Earth as a whale. 

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SAMUEL F. REYNOLDS  teaches, writes, and practices astrology as a consultant in the NYC metropolitan area.