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 would like to cordially invite you to join me and the Ghost of a Podcast community, as well as the Zodiac The Vote community, as we team up with Supermajority, a women’s organization working for gender equality to phone bank on election day. That’s the day Mercury goes Station Direct—Tuesday November 3rd, and it starts at 9 a.m., Pacific time or 12 p.m., Eastern.

If you haven’t phone banked before, do not worry. Supermajority takes care of everything, including training you and offering real time support if you need it. And TBH, we’re all going to need some support. Mercury is Stationing Direct; it’s still doing its weird thing. So visit supermajority/ghost to sign up and join us. Let’s make some phone calls and win this thing.

Hello, my darlings, welcome to Ghost of a Podcast. This week I have a really—I think a really tender question from Gem from the Gem State. And they say, “I work with children and youth in a faith institution, which is all inclusive and social justice driven. I have been tasked with preparing post-election resources and messages for my young ones and families around different election scenarios, fascism advancing, chaos, increases in white supremist violence.

We’ve had wonderful conversations about anti-oppression and building a future through community liberation, but I’m struggling with building a narrative to help them navigate this particular election. When everything feels so unprecedented and unsteady, what guidance and framework do I pass along to these non-voters? What can spirituality and faith offer this upcoming generation? How do I use my voice to reinforce their own agency and power when I feel so overwhelmed and saddened in the face of the legacy we’re leaving them? Thank you for all the joy and wisdom you share. Gem from the Gem state.” And they shared their birth data, but this isn’t really about them, right. It’s about faith, and it’s about the young ones.

So let’s talk about a couple of different things. The first one that I want to speak to in response to this really thoughtful and important question is the very nature of faith. Whatever it is that you believe in, faith requires us to be brave. It’s not enough to believe in goodness. It’s to put yourself in a position when things objectively aren’t good and to believe that you can be a part of co-creating goodness there.

I use the word good—maybe I shouldn’t because it’s kind of like a binary good/bad sort of a word. But the things that you’re referring to, the rise of fascism, the scariness of how much violence and kind of terror there is in the US right now, and certainly around the world—I mean, I think that it is fair to say that these are not good things.

Faith without action can be very problematic. It can actually lead us to some sort of a rut. And I really—I hear what you’re saying, which is that these are young people that can’t vote; they’re not old enough to vote. And many of them, depending on their age, may understand the complexity of what’s happening now, but also many of them may not have a very nuanced or complicated understanding—they may be too young. But they’re old enough to understand that there’s a lot to be scared of, and that there’s a lot of injustice, and that there’s a risk of violence or other scary circumstances, right. Their lives are impacted by it. And let’s not underestimate children, right. Okay.

So this actually brings me to fear. When we are scared, and this is something I talk about, I think, a pretty—a pretty good deal here on the podcast. When we feel frightened, when we feel scared is when we are the most likely to abandon faith. It’s when we’re the most likely to flail about and to forget to be a part of our own rescue, to forget to be an active part of our own liberation and the liberation of others. When we’re sacred, we roll into a ball, or we fight without consideration. This is the fight or flight mechanisms, right.

The truth is we are in unprecedented times. This is absolutely an unprecedented time, and it is scary. We do not know what will come next. That’s real. What we cannot do is offer ourselves, our loved ones, and certainly not children, platitudes and assurances that everything will be okay because we don’t know if everything will be okay. We know that lots of things are really bad for many people around the world all the time. We know this. We know that bad things happen to good people. Good things happen to bad people. We know this.

What we cannot do is make children or anyone, really, any promises. But what we can do is cultivate skills for coping with fear and for acting with integrity and even with faith in moments when things are dire. That’s when we need our strength. That’s when we need our spiritual convictions. What that means is not sticking your head in the sand because you have faith, but, instead, activating with love and empathy and compassion.

I don’t think children are completely incapable of participating in the social and political system. There’s always writing letters, leaving phone calls. There’s lots of ways that kids can be involved in the kind of convention of the system. But that actually brings me to something that is really specific to young people at this time.

So the planet Pluto is the slowest moving planet in astrology, and it governs our flight or fight mechanisms. And it entered into Capricorn in 2008. And it was in Sagittarius 1995, 1996 through 2008. I don’t know the exact age of the children that you work with, but I can tell you they are likely to either have Pluto in Sagittarius, or if they are quite a bit younger, Pluto in Capricorn. And the survival mechanisms that have formed and shaped this generation are really intense. When we put them together, these two kind of groups of young people together, we’re talking about the need for actionable truth seeking.

The Pluto in Capricorn generation is going to reform and reshape the very systems that hold us up as a society, that protect us or keep us down. That’s the potential there. And the Pluto in Sagittarius generation, they have so much to offer in regards to seeking the truth. And not just the truth at a local level but understanding it in a global context. Pluto in Sagittarius generation are going to tell our stories, tell their stories in new ways. And there’s also a risk of propaganda, like extreme propaganda because of the world that the Pluto in Sag generation has inherited.

In regards to the Pluto in Capricorn generation, who are still yet to be born many of them, because we are still in Pluto and Capricorn years, it’s a very material generation. They will have to deal with environmental concerns in a whole new way, in a brand-new way. They will have to reform the systems that hold us up and keep us down, as I said, and that will take great pains.

But that is the work of adults. What they are meant to do now, both of these generations, maybe accepting the older Pluto in Sagittarius people, people who are in their twenties, what they are meant to do now is to cultivate the emotional intelligence and the spiritual integrity that must be at the base of making the other choices that need to be made. And if you’re listening to this, and you’re an older person, whether or not you’re a Pluto in Sag or a Pluto in Capricorn person, the truth is having emotional intelligence and spiritual integrity, if those things aren’t foundational to your relationship to social justice, to capitalism, to change, to how you look at and engage with anything that frightens you, anything that oppresses or favors one group of people over another, then it will become very difficult for you to make choices, when the chips are down and the shit hits the fan, that reflect your spiritual integrity and emotional intelligence.

We do not know what comes next. There’s so much that is out of our control. There’s so much you can’t control. But what you can do is find purpose and meaning in seeking the answer. What you can do is find determination, devotion, clarity of intent at participating to the best of your ability to, at the most, create solutions, and at the least, not be a part of the problem.

There are so many of us. There are so many of us. We are the majority, right. We are the majority. But for young people, for people who are struggling around survival, dealing with all manner of crisis, for those of us who are dealing with the consequences of systemic repression and oppression, the truth is a lot of the time we are dealing with survival. We are dealing with the immediacy of our survival, and that needs to come first, slash, also, there’s a kind of rigidity of the Pluto in Scorpio generation, right, conventionally called the millennials.

That rigidity of Pluto in Scorpio comes from really deep feelings and really deep fears. And so much of what the Pluto in Sagittarius generation is here to do is to have more faith. It is to have belief in the potential for growth and quick growth—expansion into something better and more humane and more just and even more spiritual. And then the Pluto in Capricorn generation can create greater form to that.

Now I could very easily give you a really negative interpretation of these things as well, but there’s no value in it. This is the time for allowing fear to exist—fear of what we do know, fear of what we don’t know—allowing fear to exist alongside faith and choosing your faith. Allowing fear to exist alongside hope and choosing hope. And not denying the fear. Don’t deny the fear. Don’t tell the kids or yourself that you have nothing to fear. There’s lots to fear. Fear all the things if you’d like to; I sure as hell do. But in cultivating the capacity to feel those feelings without abandoning the self, without scapegoating, without being a Pollyanna about it; when we do that, we make better choices. We make more effective choices.

Now, I want to leave you with this little fable that I’ve told on the podcast before. I’ve no idea where I’ve learnt it, but I think it’s really important, and I think of it often, actually. Now, my partner was actually raised very religious in a Jesus faith and tells me that he’s never heard it before and that I’ve totally made it up, which is possible. So I’m going to flip it up a little bit and tell it to you like this.

Once upon a time, there was a person and they lived in a house, in a town, in a state. And they had great faith in a magic cat. And the magic cat assured them, “If shit ever hits the fan, don’t worry, I got you. No matter what, don’t worry. I got you. I’m your magic cat.” And, so, the person was like, “Cool. That makes me feel great. I have faith in you.” Time passes, and one day there was a great big flood in the person’s town. And a bunch of people came and knocked on the door and was like, “Hey, there’s going to be this massive flood. We’re here to evacuate you.” And the person was like, “No. no. no. no. No need. Don’t worry. The magic cat has said that they are coming to get me.” And, so, the people were like, “Okay. Okay. I guess so.” And then they left.

And then the flood came, and the flood started to fill up that person’s home. And someone came with a boat and was like, “Hey, we’re here to rescue you.” And the person was like, “Mmm, no, sorry. I got a magic cat, and the magic cat’s coming for me, so you just run along and help someone else who doesn’t have a magic cat.” And the person was like, “Okay.” And so the floods kept on coming and coming. And then eventually the person was waiting on the roof of their home, and someone came with a helicopter and was like, “Hey, bitch. I can help you. Let me help you.” And the person was like, “No need. I’m waiting on my magic cat.”

And then the person died. And when the person got to the magic litterbox of the sky, they were like, “Uh, hey, magic cat. What the F? Where did you go? You said you were going to help me.” And the magic cat was like, “Yeah, I did. First, I sent you people to evacuate you, then I sent you an opportunity to get in a damn boat, and then, finally, I sent you a helicopter, and you turned it all down.”

The moral of this story is not to believe in cats; it’s to be a part of your own rescue. It’s to take opportunities as they emerge. It’s to not be so wrapped up in fear or in faith that you don’t activate and actualize within your capacity, within your situation, as best you can. Miaow.

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Let’s get astrological, shall we? We’re looking at the week of November 1st through the 7th of 2020. As you know, Mercury is Retrograde through November 3rd. Now Mars is still Retrograde, my friends. If you haven’t listened to my Mars Retrograde episodes, I have dropped episodes about Mars in general and Mars Retrograde specifically. Episode 141 is about the Mars Retrograde, and episode 123 is about just Mars itself.

Past Mercury going Direct on the 3rd, so it’s going Station Direct on the 3rd of November, we still have Mars Retrograde in the sign of Aries through November 13th. And, so, what I want to just acknowledge is that as Mercury Stations Direct, what we are going to see is greater clarity about not just things that are related to Mercury, but I believe we are going to see greater clarity around themes related to Mars and Mars Retrograde. Because when Mercury has been Retrograde during the Mars Retrograde, so it’s been like enveloped in this transit of Mars Retrograde, what’s happened is we’ve all been a little bit reflecting within and looking at many systems and ideas and all of this kind of stuff.

Now Mars, stubborn Retrograde in Mars, governs many things, including, but not limited to fighting, combat, violence, masculinity in a conventional sense—certainly, toxic masculinity. Egoism is Mars. Being a bully is Mars. Being bullied is Mars. So I think that there is going to be some sort of kind of like fast paced—it’s like, you know, the way that I’m visualizing it, and I don’t know if this is going to be a helpful metaphor for you, but you know when you’re watching a video, and it kind of stalls, and it stalls, and then all of a sudden, it like catches up with itself, but everything kind of speeds up, and then it catches up with the present moment? I kind of have an instinct that that’s going to happen with Mars.

So we may see after and around the 3rd, just in time for the American election, a lot more aggression, a lot more violence, and a lot more defensiveness and urgency. And angry, defensive males and male types—they’re going to get hella loud. Loud I say. Why do men always have to be so loud? I mean, not all men, obviously. But, you know, why so loud? Well, Mars has a lot to say about that, TBH, because Mars demands to be heard and seen and validated. So be on the lookout for that.

And this is one of those things that I’m touching on that is not about the specific transits of the specific moment exclusively. It’s about having a sense of synthesis of the big picture of what is at play and what has been at play. And we want to always know that when we’re dealing with astrology, if you yourself are an astrologer or an astrology student, that there is what is written, like the day that a transit gets exact, and then there is the big picture, much of which is not exactly written in all of your transit tracker books or whatever.

I believe that between November 3rd and 13th, that Mars Retrograde in Aries is going to emerge with force. This is a good time to track your damn ego, to have healthy boundaries, but also recognize that if your ego is out of place, if it’s too strong or not strong enough, then you will be defensive in how you hold and assert and protect your boundaries. And when we are defensive, we tend to inspire defensiveness in others.

So it’s a great time to bring your consciousness and your awareness to these themes and to care for yourself so that you can care for others and participate in the world and in your community with integrity. As I’ve talked about before on the show, when we don’t feel comfortable embodying and expressing and experiencing anger and rage and our physical bodies and intensity and urgency and passion, when we don’t have the capacity to experience those things or experience them in  a healthy way, it can very quickly and easily convert to exhaustion, feeling victimized, feeling really frightened, feeling demoralized or helpless or hopeless.

So there’s not only one way of experiencing Martian energies. And within that, all I want to call you to is not judging yourself or other people about how they experience Mars or how you experience or express Mars—that’s useless. It’s just useless. What you can do though is use this information to gain more self-awareness or more awareness of what’s happening around you and with the people you’re engaging with. And to use that information, especially now that Mercury is moving direct, to influence your understanding, your strategies, and your approach.

Mercury is not just the planet—when we talk about it being the planet of communication—it’s not just the planet of speaking or writing. It’s the planet of listening. When we come to a Mars relationship to Mercury, we’re talking about active listening. Listening not just with your ears, but with your body, with the wholeness of your presence. When that’s done defensively, it can be really fucking messy and aggressive very quickly. It can be fights. And when it’s done with compassion and empathy and kind of permissiveness for difference and for openness for difference, and I’m not talking about hateful difference, all right. I’m not talking about oppressive and repressive difference; I’m just talking about difference, then there’s a great deal of growth that can occur. And that growth may simply be, “Oh, I see there’s nowhere to grow in this direction.” Boundaries up. “I don’t need to defend this boundary. I don’t need to explain this boundary. I don’t need to lament this boundary. I just need to hold this boundary.”

So I want you to be thinking about boundaries this week. I want you to be thinking about boundaries over the next couple of weeks. Nobody needs to agree with your boundaries. That’s not what boundaries are. You need to agree with your boundaries. Just because you have a boundary, doesn’t mean anyone’s going to respect it. That’s not what boundaries are. Boundaries aren’t magic. What boundaries are is clarity about what you can and can’t, will and won’t—that’s all it is. It is clarity that it is your job to maintain and hold. And what other people are going to do is what other people are going to do.

Okay. So we’ve got a couple big transits this week, and that’s it. One of them is Mercury going Station Direct on election day, on November 3rd. And this particular transit, I believe—I will say, not just me, I mean, I think most every astrologer around agrees—that this means that we will have delays, confusion, drama for your mama and your baby and your friends. It will just be a mess.

Mercury going Station Direct on an election means things will be contested, mistakes will be made. There will be all kinds of confusion and delays and problems. And this is why me and so many other people, just so many other people, have voted in advance, from an astrological standpoint, in efforts to get around the Mercury Retrograde. And in a muggle standpoint, in efforts to get around what our very easy to see problems with the vote by mail system, with the counting of ballots across this nation, with voter suppression, etc., etc., etc.

Okay. So here’s my pro tips for November 3rd, Mercury going Station Direct. One: do not read speculative news. There’s no value in it. We’re not going to have answers on the 3rd. That’s highly unlikely for the presidential election, in particular. We don’t expect when Mercury goes Station Direct to have answers and clarity. What we simply expect is to no longer have this active process of mis or disinformation and confusion.

So the retroshade or the shadow period is over on the 20th of November—the 20th of November. Which means I don’t expect to have any kind of clarity about the results of the election before then. Hey, anything is possible. But if you’re following the retroshade shadow period concept here, that we’re not going to have total clarity of the election process until after the retroshade is over, that means you need a strategy for tolerating the relentless new cycle we’re about to be subjected to of speculation. And, depending on your nature, depending on what you have going on, you got to have a plan.

So this is where I say to you, if it’s just like counting down in speculation on what this means and what this could mean, if you find that interesting, great—go for it. But if that stresses you out, just avoid it. If it’s fact-based reporting, pursue it. And if it’s speculative reporting, you don’t need it. You don’t need it.

Another thing I would encourage you to do is mind your mind. In other words, prioritize your mental health over the coming weeks in a way that allows you to stay informed but not overwhelmed to the point of not being able to do anything. So for somebody like me, I really am bolstered by having more information. But there’s always a limit. You maybe somebody who does better with less information.

This is a moment to know yourself, aka have healthy boundaries enough to say, “Okay. I can consume news once a day. And that once a day, it needs to be sometime in the middle of the day where I have things organized later in the day that will distract me from whatever shitty news I get.” Having a specific time of day and having a specific news source that you seek is wise. It’s not the only strategy. If you don’t like that strategy, tweak it. Make it your own. But my advice to you is to have a strategy because it’s going to be chaotic. It’s a retroshade.

So if we kind of like culminate Mars goes Direct, Station Direct on November 13th, it will remain in its retroshade for a little hot minute, and that means that after the 13th of November and until the 20th, we will have a meaningful change in tone of conversation.

I know I’m specifically talking about the US, but, hey, this is where I am, and shit is very real out here, and that’s what I’m doing over here. But this applies globally; this astrology is global astrology. Now when I kind of pull it back to this specific week, we’ve got two exact transits between November 1st and the 7th, and it’s the same exact transit.

One the 1st, Mercury forms an exact square to Saturn. On the 6th, it forms an exact square to Saturn again. And that means that it is exact on these two dates—yes, but we will be heavily under the influence of this transit all week. So what does that mean? It means a lot of things.

The first thing. The reason why this transit can occur twice in a week is because on the 1st, Mercury is Retrograde, and then on the 6th, Mercury is not. So there is a shifting in direction that occurs. So Saturn is continuing to move forward—march, march, march through Capricorn, Capricorn, Capricorn, and Mercury’s kind of changing directions.

Now in terms of what this particular transit means, honestly, it’s a boner killer. This is a transit that brings up depressive thinking, unfortunately. Mercury is your thoughts. It’s your cognitive processing. It’s your capacity to listen, and Saturn is depression, and it’s scarcity-based thinking. It can be related to a sense of inertia, of being so overwhelmed that you freeze in place.

Saturn, experientially and individually, can make you feel lonely, like there’s no one to talk to, like you can’t—other people aren’t really getting you, that they’re not really hearing you the way you need them to hear you. This can really kick off loneliness and the frustrations that have been kind of sitting under the surface between you and friends or colleagues. It can really make it material. Saturn is a very material planet, and, so, it brings things to a material concern. And squares activate issues, and they can often be associated with problems because when things get activated, they’re generally things that we haven’t been choosing to deal with, and so, now we have to.

So here’s the thing. The speculative nature of the Mercury shadow period, the Mercury retroshade period in the context of the American election is probably going to feel pretty fucking bad to most people because of the Mercury square to Saturn. And we may find that kind of like powerful entities, like news outlets or governments, basically anything hierarchical in the context of corporations, organizations, or governmental institutions are going to want to get ahead of the narrative. That’s what the astrology suggests. And, so, we may see some sort of forced narrative or a rush to creating stability and answers before we’re actually ready. And I can’t say that that’s bad or good. I don’t know. But I can say that that is what’s likely to happen under this influence.

What we must do as individuals is really decide who we’re going to trust and decide what we want to do. Mercury square to Saturn can have us lamenting. It can have us feeling really just negative and worried, worried, worried. And on top of that, the morphic field, the collective field of worry makes the worry worse.

For any of us who are empathetic or empaths, who are psychic or intuitive, it’s going to be really important for you to be doing your energy work, doing your boundary work, especially when stepping into the world or engaging with anything with the collective. And it’s okay to be sensitive. It really is. I think it’s fantastic to be sensitive, but with it comes responsibility. So take that responsibility to yourself really seriously. Don’t tell other people what to do when you need to take care of you first and foremost, if you can.

So this particular transit in this particular week is going to really force us to deal with disappointment and frustration. It’s going to require us to figure out how to show up in different ways. It’s not easy. It’s not going to be exactly chill, but it’s very valuable. You get to think whatever you think. You get to feel whatever you feel. What you feel is so important. But it’s what you do that defines you. You know this. I know this. And it’s hard to remember this when we’re frightened, when we’re overwhelmed, when we feel like shit, when someone annoys us.

So I want to be really clear that Saturn transits, they occur always—always they occur to help us cultivate greater maturity. And maturity can only be gained through experience. Maturity does not come through study. It does not come through theory. It does not come through judging or whatever. It comes through experience. So let the experiences that you have this week, and especially on and around the 1st and the 6th of November, 2020, let these experiences inform your sense of maturity—hopefully, your sense of humility, empathy and self-possession. That’s the positive.

The negative is the exact same fucking thing. The negative is in order to achieve those things there must be some measure of struggle. In order to plant, first you have to get out a shovel and dig. I don’t know if you’ve ever dug a hole—that’s not super easy. I don’t know, maybe it is for you. For me, it’s not the easiest thing I’ve ever done. So wherever you’re at in the organic growth process of maturity, especially the maturity of your thinking, of your capacity to listen, and your capacity to communicate, to activate, to be a part of things in a way that is constructive, wherever you’re at with that is perfect—start there. Don’t compare yourself.

One of the many downsides of Saturn is that we can get into trying to keep up with the Joneses and compare ourselves to other people. Don’t look sideways. Look ahead. If you can’t look ahead, look within. That’s where you’re going to have the greatest amount of resourcing. That’s where you’re going to have the greatest amount of impact. And when all that doesn’t work, take a damn break. Give yourself a break. Just make sure that the breaks you choose, the gifts you give yourself aren’t just about feeling good in the short term but cost you in the long term, but instead actually feed you and feed your Soul.

There is a difference, a meaningful difference between pleasure and joy. What gives you pleasure in the short term may rob you of your joy in the long term. What gives you joy may be a little less sparkly than what gives you pleasure. It’s certainly less easy in the short term. But it grows. It has roots, and it expands within you and all you touch. And that’s it. That’s your horoscope for this week.

If you haven’t already, I urge you to vote your buns off. Just vote, vote, vote. Vote like it’s going out of style. But it’s not; it’s just getting into style. If you haven’t already checked out what I think is a very interesting episode of Ghost of a Podcast about the Voting Rights Act of 1965, I surely encourage you to do so. You can also read it if you prefer on my website, or watch the video version, which is on zodiacthevote.com.

It’s tempting to think that if something’s complicated, if something’s stressful or upsetting, it’s deep and good. But that’s not the case. Life is hard. Life is scary. It is healthy and wise to choose joy where you can get it. And it’s healthy and wise to allow some things to be simple. Keep it simple, sweetheart. And if you can, make every effort to be constructive in how you engage with yourself and others this week.