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.

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.

Let’s get spiritual for a minute here, okay. This is, of course, a really stressful and tender time. I don’t know if you’re feeling the incredible wave that I have been noticing over the past couple of weeks, and honestly—I mean, I think it would be safe to say that there has been a massive wave of change over the past year—but there’s something really intense shifting at this time. It might feel any number of ways to you. But I imagine that for most people it feels like some mental health strain. My take on it is that it is actually really rooted in spiritual exhaustion—just emergency exhaustion for everyone, and it’s a lot. 

And what I want to talk about today on this Astrology Hot Take— that’s not really about astrology, but more of a spiritual Hot Take—is something I’ve really touched on in recent episodes that I’m still getting a lot of questions about. It kind of is the dovetail between ancestral issues and ethics. 

In episode 135, I talked about the ethics of astrology or ethics in astrology. And I was really thrilled at the wonderful response I got from you guys about it. But I want to just acknowledge that now I’m getting a lot of questions from you saying, “Yes. I love this conversation about ethics and about not looking at other people’s charts without their consent. But I’ve done it, and now that I’ve done it, will you help me?” So let me just talk about responsibility for just a second here because what I’m seeing is happening is that as an expression of love and care for people in your lives, what you’re doing is buttinsking [sp]—yeah, I made the word up. If you love someone you’re dating, a family member, a child, somebody who’s older than  you, whatever it is, if you love a person, and you think, okay, I’m going to look at their birth chart. I’m going to look at their birth chart as an act of love, and then you find a problem, and you find a problem, and you’re like, okay, well now it’s my responsibility to fix that problem in this other person’s birth chart. Do you see the problem in that line of thinking? 

Whether we’re talking about your child or we’re talking about your partner or your date, whether we’re talking about somebody in your life presently or we’re talking about your ancestors. The people who came before you lived their lives and are either no longer on this earthly plain or are here. It is not your responsibility, nor, my dears, is it your right to heal their issues. That’s not how life works. Your only job is to embody with integrity your chart. And for every single person on this planet, regardless of your chart, finding ways of embodying your chart with wholeness and integrity includes being kinder to others, finding ways of acting towards others that are supportive in accordance with your own nature. 

So for me to be kind to someone is going to look different than for you to be kind to someone. And for you to be kind to a child might look really different than for your to be kind to somebody who has wronged you who’s an adult. But I want to be really clear. It is misplaced to think that you alone can change someone’s chart, are responsible for someone’s birth chart, or can heal an ancestral wound for someone other than yourself. That’s not how it works. 

So I’m talking about two really important things, and in many ways there are very different, but, ultimately, they’re the same thing. So I’m going to stick with the astrology piece for a minute, and then talk more about ancestors.

When we are looking at the chart of someone we care about, we are in some ways potentially invading their privacy. So even when you get consent from that person, unless you and they are the exact same level of astrology competency and understanding, then that person may not understand what you’re capable of seeing or how you hold astrology, right. So it’s a tricky, tricky thing. Because when we are looking at a birth chart, when done competently, we are looking at the present and the past and the future. And it’s a lot to hold. And I’m not saying because you’re not advanced you shouldn’t do it. I’m just slowing down the process of information and inquisitiveness to acknowledge the emotional and spiritual complexities of having access to this kind of data and the responsibilities that come with it.

When you look at someone’s chart, and you think, oh, shit. Oh, shit. This person’s going to have a rough road. It is my responsibility to help that person. It is my responsibility to understand why this person has a rough road. It is my responsibility to fix the bumps on the path of this person. When you have these kinds of thoughts, they come from care. They come from care in many ways. And they’re very great thoughts on the surface. It’s a great intention. It’s a great hope. 

The problem is they’re all I statements; they’re all about you. They’re all about you. So it’s hubris. You don’t get to heal someone else’s chart. Your interpretation of someone else’s chart comes from your chart. And if you are close enough to a person to get their birth information, and they’re in your life, then you are in their chart. You’re in their chart. You can’t separate yourself from their chart; you are a part of their chart. So it gets really sticky really quickly. 

What I want to advise you to do—not when working with clients, but when working with loved one’s charts—is to recognize what gets kind of triggered for you. What aspect do you see in that person’s chart that you’re like, oh, shit. This means they’re going to suffer in x way? And stop. Stop yourself right there, and then look at your own chart. And look at your own relationship to that theme as your chart delineates it and see what is within your nature and your capacity to do in a healthy way. 

A better thing to do than to try to change their fate is to show up as an adult who can support them when they’re in their drama, when they’re in their feels, basically. In other words, show up for people. Don’t fix people. When you endeavor to fix others, you actually make a mess because people aren’t projects to be fixed or completed. 

If you are a practitioner, it is a different context because somebody has paid you and consulted with you, and there’s a boundary and a set of expectations. So that’s not what I’m speaking about here today. 

I want to really remind you, my loves, that we are all here with struggle. Even the most privileged and those of us who have the easiest lives are here to struggle; that’s part of the human condition. Pluto, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus—these planets are in everybody charts, which means we all have our own struggles. These planets are moving through the sky and fucking with the human race. I mean, it’s just what it’s doing. That’s what always happens. That’s just part of life. So stick with that vulnerability. It is vulnerable to be a human. 

And if you think that it’s appropriate for you to determine for others what their wellness looks like, then that’s in your chart; it’s not theirs. And that’s your shit. And listen, I say that to you from a podcast where I literally tell you what to do and what to think and how to feel all the fucking time, right. But if I were to give this same level of advice to, let’s say, my partner that I do on the podcast—and trust, I do— it’s not received the same way because it’s different. 

So we want to really make sure that in our personal relationships we do not deem ourselves as either the savior, the martyr, the teacher, or the lessor. What we must do is show up to the best of our ability within our nature and to allow for others to struggle and suffer. And I don’t mean to abandon them in their struggle or their suffering, but instead to respect that everyone has their own path. And if you’re another person that they meet on that path, then what you can do is show up within your nature to the best of your ability and make that your goal. Not their chart or their issues—you. Focus on you. I don’t mean this in an egotistical way or in a self-serving way; I actually mean this in a self-responsibility way. 

I don’t really think it makes sense to just predict the future. I want to be an active co-creator of it. And that is a big part of why I joined forces with political strategist, Lindsay Scola, to create Zodiac The Vote. It’s a resource for the astrology of these times written by an amazing team of astrologers and a bunch of voting resources that are easy to understand and actionable. 

Learn what you need to know in order to vote by mail or vote absentee or just get down to the polls. We’re going to be dropping more articles and voting resources, including, just in time for Mercury Retrograde, a Mercury Retrograde Survival Guide. There’s just going to be a lot that you want to check out there, plus, of course, astrology wear for the apocalypse. So go over to zodiacthevote.com and you know what? Zodiac the Goddamned vote.

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I promised you I would touch on ancestors. So I got a bunch of shit to say about ancestors because I get a lot of messages from you asking me how to heal ancestral pain or ancestral issues. The first piece of this that I want to be really clear about is that you don’t get to heal other people’s pain. I am of the mind, both as an astrologer and as a spiritual person, that we are interconnected—we are woven together with our ancestors. And for some of us, and with some of our ancestors, that is terrible fucking news. And for some of us, and with some of our ancestors, that is a gift and a blessing. And we don’t get to choose. 

But what we do get to choose is the embodiment that we work towards in this lifetime, in this incarnation. Whether you are the answer to your ancestor’s prayers or not can be a really beautiful thing. But, ultimately, embracing and embodying your Soul’s truth is your work. It’s not to determine what your ancestors do or don’t want from you. It’s not to fix something that is actually not yours to fix. 

You know squirrels. You’ve seen squirrels, right. Squirrels are just wily little creatures; they just run around town being cute, being annoying, taking a bite off a piece of fruit and throwing it in the ground. Are they rodents? Are they snuggle babies? I don’t know, but I do know this. They plant trees without intention, without a strategy, and it’s fucking gorgeous and weird and random and intentional and by design. It’s all the things. It’s all the damn things. 

You may be the nut some ancestral squirrel has planted. You may have grown into this magnificent tree that your ancestors couldn’t even dream of. And that is because of who you’re connected to and where you’re from, but it’s also because of your choices. 

I really want to say that within my spiritual convictions, which may or may not be consistent with yours, we have agency. We have choice. We don’t all have great choices, honestly, but we always have a choice. And if you have inherited an ancestral line that is really painful, that is full of struggle, as many of us have, and you fixate on the line instead of your felt experience and your agency within this very moment, it gets too overwhelming to bear. So what I want to kind of have you come back to is this moment. 

When we talk about Soul work, which we are essentially talking about when we talk about ancestors. When we talk about Soul work what we are talking about is this moment. Because, from my perspective doing mediumship work, when you no longer have a body, there’s no more linear time; there’s no more physical time. The experience of physical time is rooted in the body, right. So a ladybug experiences time really differently than a cat. And a cat experiences time really different than a human. Now I’m not suggesting that all humans or all ladybugs experience time in identical ways—we don’t. However, the physical condition of our personhood of, you know, we are humans here on a podcast—listening to a podcast, talking on a podcast, whatever. We are humans. The human condition is a material condition that is unique to the human condition. And our experience of time, of present and past and future is a human issue. 

Cultivating the skill to be present, that is a human challenge. That is a human lesson. It is part of what we are here to embrace in our human condition. Being interconnected to all times is a spiritual condition, and it is a really wonderful goal—if that is one of your goals as a spiritual person in a body. But, at the end of the day, you’re human for a reason and for a limited period of time. 

When we allow ourselves to spend too much time in the past or the future, we are actually not doing our Soul’s work. We are doing other work; I’m not saying there’s no value in the other things we can do in the future and the past—I mean, I’m a damn astrologer; I’m in the future all the time, and I think a lot of therapeutic process involves really spending time in the past. But as a psychological and emotional approach to this moment or to healing ancestral or inherited wounds, it requires the willingness and ability to stay present and to be in the present. 

And the reason why I talk about this all the live long day is because it’s very fucking hard. And intelligent people can think circles around it and talk circles around it and analyze circles around it; that’s one of our gifts as humans, and it’s also our downfall, IMO. 

The best way to honor your ancestral line, to heal your ancestral line is to be here, wherever you are, now, and to accept it. And to understand that your acceptance is not consent; it’s acceptance. And from that state of acceptance you can start bringing more presence and more presence to your moment, so that you can embrace yourself—even if you fucked up, even if you’ve got tons of problems, even if you’re struggling—embrace yourself, and from there you can start to make changes. Because when we first accept and then embrace the kinds of transformation that we are capable of it’s closer to evolution, right. It’s closer to this great expansion that we can’t achieve when we’re like, this is wrong with me. I’m going to fix it. 

Now, I know I’ve said a lot of this stuff before, but times are rough, and it never hurts to remember what the work is kind of distilled down to its most simplest forms. The work is to keep your eyes on your own damn homework, to know that being in embodiment and doing your birth chart to the best of your ability is not at the expense of treating others with kindness and generosity. And it’s not at the expense of healing or connecting with ancestral conditions. We cannot do all the things at once—not if we want to do them well. 

Start where you are. Try to use tools that are accessible to you and that serve you and just stay with the work, knowing that sometimes the work of healing, sometimes the work of adulting or being a human is one step forward, five steps back. Sometimes that’s the work. Life is not a straight line. We are not a Disney princess movie. 

In the words of Viktor E. Frankl, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Center your responses with care and love, my loves.