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.

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Lovers and haters, welcome back to another week of Ghost of a Podcast, recorded in Oakland, California, where we have ash everywhere, really bad air quality—just some really intense pollution going on here. And I know so much of the country and so much of the West Coast specifically, of the United States is going through a really rough time now with fires. So, my love to you all, and I hope that you are taking good care of yourselves. If you’re in bad conditions, and if you have the capacity to take care of others, I really hope you’re doing that too. 

Now, this week’s question is actually very similar to something I’ve answered before. Don’t go away just because I said that; I’ve got something new to say. The question is about end of times astrology, and it says, “With everything that’s happening in the world right now—COVID-19, massive wild fires, massive inequality, systemic racism, burgeoning global totalitarianism, etc.—sometimes it just feels like it’s the end of the world. There’s doom and there’s gloom. I know every generation says that it feels like the world and humanity are spiraling downhill fast, but it really feels different now. Is there an astrology that predicts the end of the world or the end of a species, and is there anything in our charts that we can look to for hope?”

So the first thing is a little bit about astrology. Astrology—I mean, some people say it’s a science; some people say it’s an art. I actually don’t have a really strong feeling about it one way or another, but I will say this. What astrologers are doing is not completely dissimilar from data scientists. We study and review data sets and cycles, and we can make predictions based on historical events—whether it’s a historical event in your life or in the culture, in society, or it’s just what Pluto does when it’s at this particular degree or what a Saturn opposition looks like—because we can see through data sets the patterns of what these things mean. And, so, there’s no possible way to predict the end of humans or the end of the world because there is no data set for that, My Friends. It’s never happened. And if it has happened, we don’t know because no ones told us about it because they’re all gone. 

Now, it is easy to feel fatalistic when you look around you and so much is burning, right. And when not only is there so much suffering and are there so many problems, but the suffering and problems are amplified by social media and by a 24 hour a day, 7 day a week news cycle. The truth of the matter is systemic racism, systemic oppression—these are not new things, right. They’re absolutely not new things. 

The climate crisis, and it is an absolute crisis; it is a fucking emergency, and it is worsening all the time, but it didn’t just start recently. It’s been going on for years. It’s really important to know—and I hope this doesn’t sound too heavy—but that terrible things are happening every day all over the world—every single day, unfortunately. That’s—that’s the human condition, My Friends. I don’t write the rules; I’m not enthusiastic about it, but I’m also not here to tell you that everything is roses with no thorns. There are a hella thorns. That’s just the way it works. I wish it didn’t, but it does. 

Because scary, bad, painful things are happening all the time everywhere does not mean that we are destined for suffering. Because things are in many ways worse now—in many ways maybe they’re not; I don’t know—it’s easy to feel like it is the end of times. I don’t really think so, but I don’t know. There’s no way for me to know that. There’s no way for anyone to know that. So anyone who tells you that they can predict the end of the world or the end of a species, I’m just—I mean, anything’s possible. It just doesn’t seem like the kind of thinking that is particularly helpful, and it doesn’t seem particularly possible to me. But you know what? I talk to cats, so consider the source. Nobody knows. Nobody knows.

You’re right that every generation has their own things that really clearly demarcate the potential for the end or for a massive tragedy. And in many communities, all over the world, in every part of the world, there is suffering. The way that humans are wired by way of maybe selfishness, but a lot of it is about survival, it always feels different, and it always feels worse when it’s happening to you. And, so, there is an opportunity in this moment—even in your suffering—to cultivate greater empathy, and not situational short-term empathy, but real empathy for other people who are in situations that you can’t understand, that you don’t have all the details for but are suffering. 

Compounded suffering and struggle is attacks on the mental health, and when a person’s mental health is taxed, it’s harder to make choices that are really constructive and balanced and follow through with them in a really effective way. There’s this cascade effect with trauma, right. It’s really a valuable time, separate from everything else, to just cultivate empathy. To look at the ways you once were three months ago, six months ago, a year ago, five years ago, whatever it is, and look at what you’ve learned and how it’s increased your capacity for empathy and increased your willingness to even consider it. 

The truth of the matter is, never having to make a hard decision about the welfare of others is not what makes you a good person. What makes a good person is making positive choices, constructive choices, progressive choices. And I don’t mean progressive in a political sense per say, but forward moving progressive choices. Making those kinds of choices in the face of adversity, in the face of pain, in the face of struggle. 

What so many people do under the burden of a crumbling infrastructure, under the perils of the climate crisis, under the weight of a really frightening government, what we tend to do is we get overwhelmed, and we shut down. And so many of us just don’t have the capacity or the skills to cope. And, so, when we get into that mindset, what we have a tendency to do is nothing. And we do nothing because we are looking for the best thing, the biggest thing to do, the most impactful thing to do, the most special thing to do. And I am of the mind that it is far more impactful to start with the least that you can do, right, the least that you can do. 

Listen, My Friends, My Loves, My Darlings. I am a triple Capricorn: Sun, Moon, and Rising all in Capricorn; I am a very negative person. Anyone who’s friends with me knows that I delight in complaining. I love to complain. It’s kind of on-brand for me. I am not a positive person; however, I strive to make sure that my actions are positive. I have known many really positive people, and I’ll tell you this—having a positive outlook, having a positive nature does not equal positive actions for your own life or the world around you anymore than being frightened or negative or complaining or seeing the worst in things means that you have negative actions. 

How you feel and what you do are not the same thing. Sometimes they are for some of us some of the time—for some of us a lot of the times, but it’s not inherent that your feelings and your fears and your actions are the same. So what I want to encourage you to do is center selfcare and center your spiritual, emotional, mental wellness. And if you can’t center your wellness on those levels, at least center coming to a place of neutrality and out of fear. And if that means the least that you can do today is manage your mental health or your emotional health—great. Start there. Do the least that you can do. 

Maybe the least that you can do is help out a neighbor or call the senator and complain about something that needs to be complained about. Maybe the least you can do is register to vote. None of these things are the most you can do—absolutely not the most you can do. Start with the least and build from there. Because when we have incremental progress, when we have constructive activities and actions in our life, in any realm of our life, what happens is not only do we start to create a momentum for positivity and growth and change, but that momentum shifts us. Not dramatically—sometimes dramatically—but overall not dramatically but meaningfully. 

Sometimes all we need is to start to build momentum because the chances are very high that no one of us is going to single handedly change the world’s problems. That will take all of us, and it will take all of us being activated. And, as an astrologer, I can tell you there’s no way in hell that all of us are going to be activated in the same way, and that we’re all going to see the same solutions to the world’s problems. We’re just not; it’s not realistic. 

If we can find a way to collaborate through our differences, there’s healing there. If you can find ways to be present with your fear that we’re at the end of days, your fear that humanity cannot survive, if you can allow yourself to have those feelings, but then to start slowly but surely choosing small, sustainable actions to do the least you can do about the things you’re the most concerned about. So it might be one small action a day about your five greatest concerns or your one greatest concern. 

I don’t think that we’re at the end. I do think we are in the throes of a transformative time, and within that, we are all on the hook for how we participate. We are all the hook for our willingness to change and to grow, and it is hard; it’s really hard, and it’s probably going to get a lot harder, TBH. And, so, the key here is to take greater responsibility for what you consume and what you do, what you put out and to create a momentum in your life that can eventually or maybe quickly create a momentum around you. 

And if we speak in energetic terms—because, hey, we’re here for woo, are we not?—the thing about energy is when energy starts to move, when energy starts to flow, even if it’s only a small amount of energy, what it does is it stimulates and touches all of the energetics around it. So if there’s a small amount of movement in an otherwise inert or stuck block of energy or in a situation or in a person, when there’s a small amount of movement, then all the other energy in that situation or in that dynamic is stimulated in such a way that it can respond with its own momentum. Now, there can be pros and cons of that. There’s pros and cons of everything, My Friends. But momentum creates momentum. It just does. 

So don’t save the world today. Don’t fix a broken government today. Start with the least you can do and commit to building from there, so that the least you can do today and the least you can do in two months is a different amount. And shit’s cyclical; healing is not linear. It’s okay to take a couple steps forward and a couple steps back. Just keep momentum—that’s the work.

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It’s astrology time again. Let’s talk astrology, shall we? We are looking this week at the dates of September 13th through the 19th of 2020. Mars is Retrograde, and it’s been a little too on the nose for me: waking up to Mars Retrograde with these dark orange skies. Wild fires of historic proportions raging through the West Coast of the United States. I mean, that’s just been a little too literal for me. How are you enjoying Mars Retrograde so far? 

If Mars is Retrograding over any points or planets in your birth chart, then you are likely to be feeling very intensely Martian energies—aggression, anger, agitation, passion, urgency. And if you don’t have cultivated skills for coping with those feelings, it may be experienced as exhaustion, as sadness, fear, overwhelm. It’s a lot. It’s a lot. So be gentle. Explore and investigate those feelings. Strive to as much as possible be present for them. 

Here’s the thing about Mars. Because it is so urgent in its expression, there’s a way that we are more likely to make mistakes, say it wrong, do it wrong—that kind of things. I mean, you might be getting it right. You maybe just so impressive. But also you may be doing a little bit of both—a little bit of getting it wrong, a little bit of getting it right. You know how life is, right. 

I have a correction to make from my Mars Retrograde Hot Take because I said in that episode that the last the time that Mars was Retrograde in Aries was in 1941, which was not quite right. So Mars went Retrograde in Aries in 1988, My Friends. However, it Retrograded back into Pieces; it didn’t stay in Aries the whole time. That’s what I meant to say. I made a mistake. Sorry if it was confusing or misleading. This particular Mars Retrograde in Aries and the one in 1941 stayed in Aries the whole damn time—that’s what it did. But the one in ’88 didn’t stay in Aries the whole time. It did Retrograde all the way back into Pieces. 

If you want more about Mars Retrograde, I talked about it in episodes 141 and 140 of the podcast, so there’s tons of data out there. And as I’ve been saying to you over the past several weeks, I am now offering transcripts on my website, so you can just go to ghostofapodcast.com.

Okay, let’s get into this week. This week kicks off on the 14th with an exact Sun trine to Pluto. So whenever there’s a Sun transit, we feel it for three days. It’s exact on the day I name, but you feel it the day before and the day after as well. Sun trine to Pluto is a lovely transit. It can be very useful for stimulating growth, investigation, and healing. 

Where we have a trine to Pluto, from any planet, we have the potential to make use of Plutonian energies; we have the potential to generate healing, and confrontation that’s actually really authentic and penetrating. The downside is that whenever we’re dealing with these kinds of intense energies that Pluto stimulates, the reality of the situation is that even if you’re doing a great job and things are going well, it doesn’t necessarily feel great. 

There’s how a thing feels in the short term, and there’s what a thing is, and those sometimes are really different things. Some of the things that feel the best and most amazing in life are fucking terrible for you, and they will bring you worlds of pain and hurt down the line. And sometimes things that really hurt in the short term, like learning how to identify and maintain boundaries, communicating something that’s really difficult, whatever the fuck it is, healing—healing hurts. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s really good for you. And, long term, it can bring you a lot of peace and authenticity and happiness. So even though we’re dealing with a trine, which is a benefic flow of energy, this may experientially be a little bit of a difficult transit. What you want to make sure is that if it is difficult, it’s healing and transformative instead of destructive and limiting. So that’s for you to investigate and play with. 

Now, on the 15th, we have a Venus square to Uranus. You’re going to be feeling it a few days building up and a few days after the 15th as well. So there’s going to be an overlap between these transits. Now, Venus square to Uranus is a tricky little transit, I tell you; it’s tricky. So there’s a lot of ways to look at these two planets interacting with each other. 

Personally speaking, Venus is related to your values, your personal finances, and Uranus is the unexpected. It is instability. It is growth and change and autonomy. And, so, what this can look like is surprises or upsets in your personal relationships. This is a terrible time to ask someone to make a commitment to you, generally speaking. Basically, to do your same old thing during a Venus square to Uranus is not well starred. 

Venus square to Uranus is great for an exploration into new ways of doing things, new ways of connecting socially, romantically, and personally with other people. This is a great time for exploring and experimenting romantically and socially. It’s not so much of a great time for creating stability and security because Uranus eats stability and security for lunch, and it’s a big lunch. It doesn’t even want dinner. Uranus is earthquakes. Uranus is electricity and the intranet and technology. It’s big and fast moving. It wants change and progress. And Venus wants security, stability. So it’s an upsetting square. It's an upsetting kind of challenge of energies, unless of course, you want change. Unless of course you want to explore, and you’re not looking for tomorrow; you’re looking for today. 

So Venus square to Uranus also can bring up money stuff. It’s not a great time to balance a cheque book. Do you have a cheque book? Is that antiquated? Not a great time to balance your cheque book, whatever the hell that means—your Excel spreadsheet. I don’t fucking know. It’s not a great time for spending money because you’re going to want to spend it spontaneously, potentially on some junk you don’t really need. If you have to go clothing shopping, hold onto your receipts because we tend to have a weird aesthetic on that day. Personally, me, I love a weird aesthetic. I love going shopping on a Venus square to Uranus. But it’s not for everyone—that’s for damn sure.

Now, on a social level, this can be a time where we do a really good job, not an easy job, but a good job of exploring our values as a society and recognizing where there is a greater need for liberty and autonomy and freedom. That’s kind of cool. This transit can be related to some sort of movement within women’s rights. And, generally, although not always, when we’re talking about women’s rights, we are talking about queer rights as well, and we’re talking about gender liberty in general. So Venus square to Uranus is good for all of those things. 

If you have been in some sort of a journey of exploration with your gender experience or your gender identity or understanding how you feel and fit in with somebody else’s gender that is challenging you in some way, it’s a great time for exploration into those themes. So there’s a lot—there’s a lot to work with here with this Venus square to Uranus. 

On a mental health level, it can be upsetting or exciting. So if you experience excitement, I’m not give you advice about that—do your damn worst. Do your damn worst. But if you’re feeling anxious, they key is to not ground your thinking or actions into stability and security, but, instead, to point towards authenticity and exploration. It’s only going to last a couple few days, but it will last a couple few days, and it’s worth really thinking about.

Now, in the context of so many people on the West Coast dealing with fires and bad air quality and the potential for evacuation, this transit might actually be a time where you have to decide what to hold onto and what to let go of—like what’s actually important to you. So there’s a lot of ways this can go, and it’s important to just stay present because Uranus does kind of compel us to want to run into the future. But if you abandon the present to get to the future, you’ve done a disservice to tomorrow you as well as today you.

And that brings us to a New Moon on the 17th. It will be happening at exactly 4:00 a.m. on September 17th at 25 degrees and zero minutes of Virgo. So, as I always remind you, a New Moon occurs when the Sun and Moon are sitting at the exact same degree of the exact same sign, and there are, generally speaking, 12 New Moons a year. So once a year we have a New Moon in Virgo, and this is that damn time. This is that damn time. 

With the New Moon, it is a great time for manifestation because it is a great time for clarifying your intentions. When the Sun and Moon meet up, it’s like your feelings and your will are in alignment. That is a really fertile stance when your feelings and your will are in alignment or when the energy is present to support you in getting your feelings and your will in alignment. Because a lot of times it’s like I—my feeling is I’m scared of being single forever, and my will is I want to get into a relationship. That’s not fertile. That doesn’t actually bring us what we want. We want to get the desire and the yearning and the hopefulness for what we want in alignment with our will. 

So having this New Moon in Virgo—and I should say, on the same day, we also have a Mercury square to Jupiter and a Sun trine to Saturn—so having this New Moon is actually a great time to try to get clear. Virgo energies are really great for cultivating discernment. So it’s not judgment; it’s being willing and able to look at the details to come up with an assessment that is really useful. 

Virgo is a sign associated with service. This is a great time for doing yourself the Goddamned service of self-investigation. And the good news is, Mercury will be forming that square to Jupiter, which will kind of excite your curiosity and your willingness to learn and explore more. The downside of that same exact configuration of the Mercury square to Jupiter and the New Moon in Virgo is that it can make it so that you’re so busy talking, you can’t hear a damn thing. This is a really important time to listen. It’s a really important time to show up with honesty and to really listen to what people are saying and what they’re doing, right. 

The Sun trine to Saturn that’s also active and exact on this day is an opportunity to create stability. Now, that is reiterated by having a Sun, Moon conjunction in Virgo. The potential here with all this earthy energy is to invest. I really—I’m using the words invest and fertile on purpose. I want you to think like a Goddamned plant. Your roots—they can run deep, and they can be private, and they require a lot of nurturance and tending to. And they are just as important as whatever it is that you’re trying to grow above the surface, right. You want to look at the ways in which you are honoring one over the other and bring as much awareness to that as possible so that you can activate whatever changes or adjustments are necessary. That’s the move.

Now, My Loves, that’s it for this week. Honestly, I think it’s enough, don’t you? It’s a lot. It’s a lot. So let me just give you a quick run down of the transits of the week. On the 14th, the Sun is trine to Pluto. On the 15th, there’s an exact square between Venus and Uranus. And on the 17th, we have a New Moon in Virgo, also a Mercury square to Jupiter, and a Sun trine to Saturn. 

I will tell you that on the 20th—so it’s the first day of next week’s horoscope—there will be an exact square between Mercury and Pluto, which means that you’re going to be feeling the effects of it by the end of this particular week, okay. So it kind of will mark the beginning of some pretty irritating, stressful transits for next week’s horoscope. And I don’t usually kind of give you a heads up because, honestly, don’t you have enough on your plate without going into the future too much? 

Stay present. That’s really want I want to empower you to do. However, it’s important that I name that because of the Mars Retrograde. Because of so much that’s happening, it would be easy to get defensive, to beat yourself up, to go on the attack towards others—really, very easy. But it’s not particularly useful. I want to really—and I think I’ve said this a bunch already, but I want to really orient you to stay connected to your mental health, your emotional health, and, at its foundation, your spiritual health. I want to really center you around these things so that you can engage with these transits in as constructive, healthy, and kind ways as is possible for you. 

My Loves, as always, I invite you to send me your questions over at ghostofapodcast.com. If you would like to learn more with me and from me, join me over at Patreon where I teach stuff; I do stuff—things happen. Things happen. 

I think that’s about it. That’s what we got. Okay. Keep on showing up, My Loves. Keep on showing up.