The Astrology of Death: James Gandolfini passes in Italy

(Astrology Explored) Just as he was enjoying a trip to Italy with his teenage son, and days before he was to receive and award at the Taormina Film Festival in Sicily, beloved American actor James Gandolfini died suddenly and unexpectedly of a suspected heart attack on June 19, 2013 in Rome, Italy. He was a relatively young 51 years of age.

Astrologers don’t like to talk about death. For one thing, people who don’t know much about astrologers often assume that is the first thing we will predict about them. The second is that is it considered unethical to predict someone’s death. The last thing we want to do is alarm our clients. No doubt even this post will upset some.

Actually, predicting death is not as easy. We may not have a fixed point of death in our chart, but many checkout points were the soul can out to move on. In my own personal experience, when transiting Uranus opposed my natal Uranus I developed a tear in my aortic valve which luckily was diagnosed and treated before I keeled over dead. Other people, such as John Ritter were not so lucky. Deaths do seem to cluster around the major transits, the Uranian opposition around 42 to 44, either of the two Saturn Returns at age 29 or 58, the Chiron return in the early 50’s, and the Pluto square at around age 82 to 84.

Why then did James Gandolfini pass at such an early age? Sometimes it is just the intersection of time and place that opens the gateway.

Astro*Carto*Graphy is one method of astrology that traces the apparent path of the planets of the solar system on the face of our planet as the planet turns on its axis. Created by Jim Lewis, Astro*Carto*Graphy is best summed up as the astrology of what planet influences you the most at certain locations on the earth. Anecdotally, through my forensic astrology studies, I have found the people die near their Sun or Pluto lines. Jim Lewis and Kenneth Irving in the Psychology of Astro*Carto*Graphy noted something similar though indirectely in the deaths of two notable people. Lauren Spierer, the missing University of Indiana student, has a Pluto line running through the location of her school. Looking at the Astro*Carto*Graphy map of Gandolfini’s chart, Rome, the place of his death, is smack in between the lines of the planet of transformation Pluto and the planet of self, the Sun.

We have then the place, but what about the time of death?

In looking at the timing of events, most astrologers arrange the transits around the birth chart. I find it helpful in matters of death to arrange the birth chart around the planets of the event chart. What we see is revealing indeed.

(Click on any chart below to enlarge)

At 9:42 PM Rome time Gandolfini’s Sun joins his Pluto in the 8th house of death in the event chart. At 10:00 his son called for medical help. At 10:40 PM Pluto is getting ready to leave the 8th house death chart. At 11:00:00 according to news reports, Gandolfini was declared dead. At that point, Pluto leaves the eighth house to pass into the seventh, the house of the setting sun.

Thus two astrological systems, Astro*Carto*Graphy and Forensic astrology shows the intersection of place and time that opened the portal for a soul to make his way home.

Image of James Gandolfini published under a Creative Commons license as explained by Wikimedia.