Welcome to Ghost of a Podcast. I’m your host, Jessica Lanyadoo. I’m an astrologer, psychic medium, and animal communicator, and I’m going to give you your weekly horoscope and no bullshit, mystical advice for living your very best life.

I’m finally offering transcriptions of Ghost of a Podcast, not once but twice weekly—yeah, that’s right, transcriptions twice weekly over at Ghostofapodcast.com. Very slowly but surely, I will also transcribe past episodes, so be patient, be excited, and keep on keeping on.

Okay, I have a really exciting question today. And it’s actually a little bit about my book, Astrology for Real Relationships. It goes like this, “I am currently hanging out and dating with someone who I am deeply attracted to. The past days, I have been feeling super weird and confused because I don’t know what I want. We’ve known each other for about a year and started hooking up and confessed our feelings for each other on the Lunar Eclipse in Sagittarius this past June. She is in a relationship with a white cis man. This is the first time I am trying the polyamorous thing.

In your book it says if we’re having fun with someone and it’s working for us, allowing ourselves to enjoy that union without projecting meaning onto it is a really healthy skill. I really felt that, and it had been working, but now, I’m not so sure. We are both Black Babes, and I am starting to realize that this white cis man is bothering me, although he is not part of anything we do.

I’m very confused and have always struggled a lot with projection and boundaries. I realize this now so am trying to fight it, but everything feels like an internal mess, and I don’t know where to find what I want. How can I cultivate that healthy skill, and how can I talk with her about it without roping her into my projections? Please help and keep my birth info private.”

So this is a fucking fantastic question. I love it that you’re quoting my book back to me, first of all—thank you. Love it. But you’re forgetting about the literal first half of the sentence: if you’re having fun, and it’s working, enjoy it. Don’t project. But you just said in your question it was fun. It was working, and now it’s not. It’s not working. It’s not as fun because this cis dude is cramping your style. You don’t want to share anymore. Maybe he’s just bugging you. It doesn’t matter what it is. It actually kind of really doesn’t matter. What matters is that the choices you’re making with the people that you’re dating or the person that you’re dating are working for you.

Now, it is possible that you are just projecting all kinds of shit onto him or her, right. Totally possible. However, either way, it’s just not working for you. And, so, the way to handle this is first and foremost to not abandon yourself when you consider what you need and what’s happening, and I a little bit hear that in your question. You’re trying out polyamory, and it worked for a couple of minutes, and now it’s not working, and you’re like, “What’s wrong with me? How do I figure this out?”

That’s kind of the wrong place to jump to. The right place to jump to is, huh. It was working for me, and now it isn’t. Let me investigate why. Is it not working for me because I’m actually not a polyamorous person, and the closer I get with this person, and the happier I am with her, the less I’m into sharing her? Is it because this white cis dude is bugging the shit out of you just by virtue of his existence? And, if it was a man of color or not a cis man, it wouldn’t bug you? That’s fair.

What I want to encourage you to do is investigate and evaluate your feels. Not so that you can bring them to her or substantiate your position, but so that you can know yourself. It is unwise to try to convince the person you’re dating to stop dating some other person because it just doesn’t work out well that way—especially if she was already in a dynamic with this other person before she met you, and that she is a polyamorous person, right.

But what you can do, once you’re ready, is say unto her, “Hey, you. You know I really like you. You know I’m really into you, however, the polyamory isn’t working for me in the same way. It’s not—I’m not saying that I’m ending it,” or maybe you do need to say you’re ending it, “But what I am saying is this dynamic isn’t making me happy in the way in once was, and I want to give you that heads up that things are shifting for me. I don’t really want to lose you. I’m not telling you to stop dating this person, but I’m not sure that I can date you while you date him.” That’s it.

The key here is for you to validate in your own time, in your own way, your own feelings. You’re not happy. It’s not fun. Okay, that means you can’t keep doing it in a healthy way and expect to have fun, right.

So the path away from projection and towards having healthy boundaries is to know what you can do in a healthy way and what you can’t and to clarify your boundary to her, instead of asking her to take care of your boundary. Tell her what your boundary is. “I can keep on dating you for a minute, but I can tell that this is not going to work for me much longer, so I’m probably going to have to end it before long because I don’t really want to be poly. I’ve tried it. It was cool for a minute. I don’t love it anymore.” You have a right to say that, and she has a right to say, “So sad. Too bad. Oh, well. I’m poly.” She also has a right to say, “Oh, God. No. I can’t lose you.”

But the thing you want to really accept, and this is hard, is that if a person is polyamorous by nature, if that’s healthy and good for them, then it’s not a measure of how much they do or don’t like you if they want to continue to be polyamorous. Just like, if a person is monogamous by nature, it is not a measure of how sexually they’re braided or how much they do or don’t like you if they want to stay fucking monogamous, even if they really like you, and there is a third person that they would love to fuck with you. None of this is about your value to her, necessarily. It is about what is compatible, what is healthy, and what is right.

Now, all that said, I got to add one more thing, which is you have Mars in your birth chart at 26 degrees of Libra and 42 minutes, and at this stage of your life, transiting Mars—just Mars moving through the sky—as you know, is about to go Retrograde in the sign of Aries. And it’s going to spend a fair amount of time opposing your natal Mars. Also, Saturn opposite your Mars, and Pluto is not far from opposing your Mars. All to say, you are in a state that is really complicated when it comes to your ego, your rights, and your sexuality. I think it’s fucking awesome that you chose to explore something new. You’re kind of investigating and trying to determine your will and your passions. I also think it’s not likely to be easy. It’s just not likely to be easy because you’re being confronted by limitations where you would like to have none. You’re being confronted by the desire to justify and defend your boundaries instead of your right to simply have them. And, if you feel like the only way to keep her is to convince her to feel the way you feel or why she shouldn’t like a cis white man, then you’re going to end up kind of bullying her. And when I look at your chart, it looks like it wouldn’t be the first time you end up inadvertently bullying someone when you’re just trying to share where you’re coming from.

So this is where having clear boundaries is really valuable. And the way to do it is to start with yourself instead of starting with the fix of a situation. And, again, from your question, I can see that you’ve already lost track of yourself, My Friend. You’ve already lost track of yourself because you are not having fun, and you haven’t fully said that. So I’m going to give you a little cheat sheet, okay.

It goes like this, “Hello, Lover Friend. I am feeling really mixed feelings these days, and I’m processing them on my own. I’m not exactly sure what I need or want yet. But I want to say that I am uncomfortable with this other dude you’re dating, and I’m not perfectly clear why. I have theories, but I don’t really want to share them because I need to figure them out with my friends or my therapist or my dear diary or something. I don’t need to figure them out with you, but you deserve to know that I’m uncomfortable with the situation as it is. I’m not uncomfortable with you. I want to keep dating you. I just don’t love the dynamic. I can’t tell if it’s the specifics of this dynamic or if polyamory is just not working for me long term.”

I think that’s a great cheat sheet start for you with her is to give her a chance to engage with you, to surprise you, to be a part of this, without requiring her to do those things. This is important for you to figure out for yourself what you can do in a healthy way, but it’s a wise thing to let someone know, hey, I’m not feeling the same way because maybe she’s not either. Maybe she’s over this other person. Maybe she isn’t loving polyamory. Who knows? Who knows? Maybe she’s noticing that you’re different and taking it personally. We don’t know. So being forthcoming is wise.

But you see in my cheat sheet script, I did not in any way encourage you to give her details, to defend your feelings, or to explain them, right. It’s just owning it. This is what I’m working on. This is what I’m not clear about. I’m not trying to bring you into my process because I need to figure this out for myself, but I’m letting you know that this is a process I’m actively engaged in in case you want to be a part of it. And then don’t take it personally if she doesn’t because that would actually be pretty healthy of her, especially if she really is a poly person.

To be polyamorous requires a great deal of negotiation of boundaries and, honestly, so does monogamy and non-monogamy and all other forms of relating. But polyamory—it really requires verbal communication and taking responsibility for your boundaries. And I’m really, really happy for you that you’re actively engaged in it, regardless of what happens with her.

Learn about colonialism—past, present, and ongoing. Educate yourself about whose land you’re living on, and, if you can, make a monetary donation or pay a land tax to that tribe. Visit Our Native Land at native-land.ca. The link is in show notes.

Abundant Beginnings Collective is a Black-led community education and empowerment initiative. For over a decade, Abundant Beginnings has been organizing the Forest Freedom School. It’s summer camps, after school programs, and teach-ins to cultivate activist youth, conscious educators, and empowered parents. Abundant Beginnings Collective is raising money to grow, implement, and share their social justice curriculum, resources, and tools so that black and brown children all over the US can see themselves as the brilliant, powerful, and generous beings that they are.

Your donation will go toward providing tuition, free schooling for black and brown families, support ABC educators developing and distrusting curriculum and purchasing land to expand their visionary programs. Support the Abundant Beginnings Collective by donating to their fundraiser and invest in the next generation of activists, leaders, and revolutionary thinkers. Donate at abundantbeginnings.org and follow along on their journey on Instagram at abdundantbeginnings.

As you shop for masks in this new normal that we’re all living in, consider others who rely on lip reading and facial expression for communication. Look into getting a clear mask, sometimes called a smile mask. Just look them up and consider buying them when you buy masks for yourself and your family.

Darlings, welcome back to Ghost of a Podcast. If I sound a little different this week, that’s because I live in Northern California, and we are being plagued by fires—just plagued. And, yeah, so it’s changed the locale of my recording.

Okay. I want to tell you about an event I’m doing this week on Thursday, August 20th at 7:00 p.m., Pacific Time. It’s an hour and a half long, free event where I’m going to be talking about astrology, a little bit about my book, and, basically, just getting into the stars with Shakira Tabourn, who is another wonderful astrologer. And, yeah, we’re just going to be doing a bunch of chatting about astrology, and I hope you join me there. You do have to register to the event. You can do that on my website at lovelanyadoo.com/events, and this conversation that we’re having is going to be a part of the CIIS Public Programs. You can also go to their website and just go ahead and register there. And I hope to see you there. I mean, I won’t see you because it’s happening digitally, but I hope to read your comments. I hope to see your comments and name tags there. I don’t know. I’m not sure how to talk about things anymore—this fucking world, eh?

So, okay. We’re looking at the week of August 23rd through the 29th of 2020, and it starts off with a really important transit for us to be talking about here. On the 24th, Mars will form an exact Square to Saturn. You may remember a couple of weeks ago, I talked about on the 13th of August Mars was Square to Pluto. And I told you about how that transit would reiterate again in October and then right around Christmas, and how that particular transit is going to impact us throughout the rest of 2020. And I talked about that in episode 132 if you want to listen to that part of the horoscope again just to kind of refresh your memory.

Now, this transit is Mars Square to Saturn, and it’s directly related to Mars Square to Pluto because Saturn and Pluto and Mars are all going to be hanging out around the same damn degrees. The dates for these two different transits: Mars Square to Pluto and Mars Square to Saturn are a little bitt off but not very. So this particular transit, which I will tell you all about in a moment, of Mars Square to Saturn is exact on the 24th of August. It will, again, be exact on September 29th of 2020 and then, again, on January 12th of 2021. We can see that the rest of 2020 is going to be seriously flavored by these transits from Mars to outer planets Saturn and Pluto.

So let’s talk about Mars. Mars is all about getting things done. Mars is action and engagement. It is me first. It is I want. Mars is related to physical violence. Mars is related to passion and assertion and aggression. Where we find Mars, we find motivation. Okay.

Now, Saturn is obligation. It’s responsibility. It’s falling in line. This is the planet that is associated with consequence, and, of course, Mars is action. And, so, when we have a Square 90-degree angle, AKA a challenge between action and consequence, we have got to take responsibility for our actions because we’re going to have to answer for them pretty quickly. Cut corners—that’s cool. Saturn’s waiting for you wagging its little finger at you being like, “Tsk, tsk. Uh, you were in a rush. Now you got to go back and spend more time, and you feel like shit about yourself.” That’s Saturn engaging with Mars.

When we have a Mars Square to Saturn, there’s lots of ways that this can play out. One is a sense of frustration, a sense of being blocked or inhibited. Inhibited action is a biggie unfortunately. Want to vote by mail? Oh, well, the postal service is shutting itself down from the inside. That kind of thing is very Mars Square Saturn. The thing that you need to do to get to the thing you want to have done is out of your hands, and it’s moving slowly, and it’s not working.

When we see this transit, it can equal for you or for us as a society a need to recharge in the face of burn out, a need to recalibrate and re-strategize how we are approaching our ambitions and our passions. It may require that we address our relationship to anger. How we are internalizing anger and frustration and how we are externalizing it and whether or not these things are productive—Saturn, effective—Saturn, and sustainable—Mars and Saturn.

Saturn is all about rules. Saturn wants order and predictability and efficacy. And Mars just wants to do what the fuck it wants to do. It’s like, “I have an impulse; I want to follow this impulse.” And Saturn’s like, “Ha, ha, ha. That’s not going to work because of all of these considerations that you haven’t made and all of these people who you are going to impact.” And you get the point here, right? It can be quite frustrating.

And it is absolutely being amplified by this Mars Square to Pluto because while Mars Square to Saturn is all about causality and consequence, Mars Square to Pluto is about resentments built up over time. Really it can be a time of testing your ethics and your ego. And it’s a lot. And in the context of the world around us and the context of the government and power structures, Mars is militaristic; it’s literally like boots on the ground, militaristic action. And, so, it is possible that in this period we will see a stronger response from governments, and, on a lesser level, we may see a stronger response by corporations to crack down on the populous or the workforce and to assert power by trying to assert dominance and enforce rules. It is unlikely to go well because of these transits. The populous is likely to be like, “Fuck that. I am sick of compromising. I am sick of waiting.”

And, as I say that, that might sound scary to you, and it might sound like, finally, fuck—let’s get moving. Right. Let’s get moving. The key here—and I got to really stress this fucking key. The key here is to not project your feelings onto other people, to not dump on other people because everyone’s going through this. It is easy to point fingers and to blame. It is easy to cancel people when they make mistakes. It’s actually really, really easy because it makes the people doing that—and we’ve all done it, so we’re all those people—it makes the people doing that feel superior. It makes us feel like we have some control. It kind of shields us from our own vulnerability about the mistakes that we have made and the mistakes we fear making.

With the energies of Mars, Saturn, and Pluto we can all be total jerks. So what I want you to really make sure you’re doing is not acting out of feelings that you don’t know what to do with by blaming others for your situation and your circumstance. Because even when we’re talking about politics, individuals have absolute responsibility to their action and inaction. Of course they do. But, really, we need to look at systems because if we want systemic change, which—hey, ah, spoiler alert—we do. We do, right. If we want systemic change, we have to look at things from a systemic perspective and not get so caught up in the details of what one person is saying or doing.

It’s really important that we use our energies with intention to transform the world around us. Energies is Mars, intention—Saturn; Pluto is transformation. We can transform how the systems in place, hierarchies in place either do or don’t serve the populous. We can transform the role of masculinity and even violence in society. This is a nice, long period. And, when I say it’s a nice, long period, on a personal, it doesn’t sound awesome to me that it’s a long period, but on the social, that’s what we want to see because the kind of changes we need in society, the kind of changes we need in ourselves—they take time to work on and work out.

So there’s a great potential here because even though these transits—I’ve given you these sets of dates of when the transits are exact, but the transits are activated from here on out, My Loves. And that means giddy up on your healing, giddy up on transforming the role you want to take in society. Because here’s the thing, this is happening. You don’t like it? You don’t love it? Oh, well. It’s happening. So, if this is happening, who will you be within it? What will you do?

I am very pro anger. I am very encouraging of anger. I think anger can be healing. It is essential that we have access to anger and to understand that being assertive or even being aggressive is essential at times. But when we don’t have the capacity to experience in a heathy way our angry or frustrated or upset impulses, when we don’t have the capacity to do that what happens is we can’t transform that energy into something like gas for your car, right. It doesn’t actually help move us forward. It actually keeps us stuck. And it gets a little bit twisted up and becomes self-harm, self-hate. It becomes anxiety, victimhood, sadness.

And, so, what I want to encourage you to do in this period, this long ass period is to really look at your relationship and your experience of anger and how you react and how you respond to other people’s anger. And, if you find that your relationship to anger is not healthy, if you find that you have been engaging in seriously unproductive blame behaviour, that’s okay. This is a great time to become self-aware and to transform it. But I invite you to really work on becoming self-aware because here’s the thing, we’re all going to be impacted by this. And, so, even if it’s not super serious for you, you are going to be dealing with other people who it is super serious for. So keep this in in your noggin, stir it in your noodle pot. This is my way of saying think about it—just fucking think about it.

Okay. So those are some big parts of the Mars Square to Saturn. I want to say a couple more words about it, and then we move on. In terms of the Mars Square to Saturn on a personal level, you might be fighting about stupid shit. You might all of a sudden be like, I can’t live with my partner anymore; they’re driving me nuts. You might find yourself really sexually turned off and shut down. You may find yourself feeling exhausted and sad or agitated. This transit is hard. It’s not meant to be easy. It’s meant to be hard. And the thing that is hard for you is exactly what you’re meant to kind of explore and to do it in a slow and steady way.

Mars literally governs running. It literally governs fast cars. And Saturn governs walking. Saturn is about step by step by step. You can see there’s a little bit of a conflict here. We must find ways of channeling patience into the action we are called to perform, whether that action is healing something internal or something external. Motivating, mobilizing, whatever it is, the key here is don’t demonize your feels. Don’t demonize your impulses. You are allowed to feel whatever the fuck you feel. You’re entitled to all of your feelings. You, however, are not entitled to all of your actions. Not all actions are healthy and appropriate.

So what you want to be able to do is create space where you’re allowed to have your damn feelings and your thoughts. But you have to create enough space to work through those feelings and thoughts, to be intentional about what it is that you actually do in response to them.

On the 25th, we’ve got a couple more transits. And, again, they’re all overlapping on each other, but here we do. On the 25th, Mercury forms a Trine to Uranus and Venus forms an Opposition to Jupiter. Mercury Trine to Uranus is lovely and creative and dynamic. It just marks a time where, if you want to socialize, it will just be lovely and fun, and if you are trying to figure something out, if you have a writing project, if you have a need to communicate in any way—verbally or in writing—with other people, this is just a great time to do it. Uranus brings innovation and creativity to the damn mix. Who doesn’t want that?

Because Venus is also opposite to Jupiter this is a great time, again, for socializing. Venus opposite Jupiter is actually a really fun, lovely Opposition. The tension between Venus and Jupiter can be very self-indulgent. So you might eat three extra slices of the damn pie than you were planning on eating, but, because of Venus opposite Jupiter, you’ll enjoy every damn bite.

Venus opposite Jupiter is a bad time to impulsively declare your love for someone, although it’s a tempting time to do that. This is a time where you might feel really strong feelings, but they’re not necessarily sustainable or rooted in anything. So be in your feelings, enjoy romance if you can, if you’ve got access to it.

Maybe you want to shop. Maybe you want to go online and look at all the pretty clothes and have all kinds of pretty feelings. I wouldn’t encourage you to spend a lot of money on this date because the temptation will be there. That is why somebody invented the shopping cart where you can save to cart. Do not spend a ton of money on this day, unless it’s for something you were already planning on investing in. This combination of transits is just really lovely for connecting with other people. It’s really lovely for creative pursuits, so, if you make use of it, you will note it flows.

On the 27th and the 29th, we have a continuation of the good vibes. Isn’t that nice after I gave you all that heavy reporting on the Mars Square to Saturn. It’s nice that we have a bunch of lovely transits. So, on the 27th, Venus forms a Trine to Jupiter. It’s just really—it’s a romantic moment. It’s a time where if you’ve been trying to look at your finances, if you’ve been trying to look at your relationships—either one, really well starred here. This is a transit that supports non-attachment, tenderness, romance. So, if you’ve had relationships that feel kind of, I don’t know, rough—like they’ve just had some rough edges, things have been a little bit stressful, this is a great date to really just slow down and be with a person, including your damn self. This is a great time to ease some of the pressure you’ve been feeling by centering attitudes and actions that feel supportive and are a better reflection of your values and your ideals.

On the 29th, Mercury forms an exact Trine to Jupiter. This transit is excellent for communicating. It is excellent for seeing the big picture and communicating the big picture of what you want and what you need. Again, we have, from the 25th onwards, a series of exact transits that are great for socializing.

The Mars Square to Saturn is the literal opposite of being great for socializing. It’s fucking awful for socializing. It’s not great for sex. It’s not great—it’s not great for most things fun, light, and easy. But then these other transits really are. Because of that Mars Square to Saturn, you’re still going to be feeling it. It might make some of this a little less rosy than I’m painting it for you. I don’t know. It really depends on how it hits your individual birth chart.

Mercury Trine to Jupiter is really lovely for expanding your world view and connecting with others in a way that feels fun and spontaneous and joyous. So this is a great time to focus on the kind of romantic or on the platonic foundations that you share with people, whether it’s lovers or friends or business partners that you kind of have a friendship with, this is a great time for connecting with people and making them feel good and allowing yourself to feel good in the dynamic.

If you’ve been kind of taking people for granted and dumping a lot of your problems and your ish on them, this week, the second half of the week is the time to reach out and send a love emoji—just let them know that you appreciate that they’ve held space for you, that they’ve been there for you in whatever ways. It’s just a great time to get in there, share the love. Appreciate someone you appreciate out loud so that they get to enjoy you appreciating them.

My Loves, that’s it for this week. I’m going to do a quick run down of the transits. On the 24th of August, we are looking at a Mars Square to Saturn. On the 25th of August, Mercury is Trine to Uranus and Venus is opposite to Jupiter. On the 27th, we have an exact Venus Trine to Neptune, and on the 29th, we have an exact Mercury Trine to Jupiter.

Lucky for us all, on the 27th, when we have that wonderful Venus Trine to Neptune, you’re going to come see me at the CIIS event talking about astrology and stuff. That’s going to be nice. And you know what else? On Patreon I did something really weird. I dropped a little bonus benefit that I’ve never dropped before on my kitten’s level walking you through energy work, just doing a little bit of energy work. So maybe you’ll join me over there on Patreon. Maybe you won’t. Either way, I love you. Either way, I’m excited for your journey.

Every day, every damn day is an opportunity to have a little more empathy, a little more compassion, to have a little more kindness towards yourself, and a little more kindness to others. Embrace it. Bye.