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.

My loves, I am so excited to talk to you about the topic I am bound to unpack today. I have been threatening to other people—not on the show—specifically to talk about this for ages, and I’m finally going to do it. So what am I going to talk about? you ask. I shall tell you. I want to talk about Millennials versus Boomers. 

Okay, wait. Okay, wait. That sounds good, right. I’m definitely going to talk about that. But really what I’m talking about here today is Pluto. And I’m talking about Pluto because it is so fucking important. And Pluto is a planet that moves so slowly that it is one of those dudes that defines a generation in a meaningful way. So let me tell you about Pluto. But before I do, let me give you these damn dates because you know I love to talk about dates. 

When we talk about generations like Gen X, which I’m Gen X myself, or Millennials or Boomers or whatever, we’re talking about generalized, I don’t know, it’s just branding in some ways, right. It’s just this generalized way of talking about a generation. And from a social and an advertising and a branding standpoint, I have a lot of things to say about it. I can be very critical of it and the usefulness of it. It’s kind of like naming neighborhoods. On the one hand, it’s great, and on the other hand, it’s kind of bullshitty. 

Anyways, that said, because it’s not super specific, the dates that demarcate what a Millennial is or isn’t, what a Boomer is or isn’t, you’re going to see different years in different systems. I went to Wikipedia because, I don’t know, was I being lazy? Was I just going to what felt like the most general thing I could go to to get the dates that I’m working off of today? But, honestly, give or take on either side is what I would say because that’s just what people do. 

So Millennials are defined by the years 1981 through 1996. So if you were born in 1981 through 1996, not only are you likely to be listening to this podcast because I see my demographic numbers, and the majority of podcast listeners to my show are in that age range, but also, that’s the primary age range, I think, that listens to podcasts in general. Again, there’s a lot that can be said about that, but I will not digress too far, I hope. Millennials were born ’81 through ’96. Boomers were born 1946 through 1964, okay. That’s the general idea of Boomers. 

Now, let’s talk about Pluto. Pluto, like I said, it moves slowly. The Millennial generation is largely defined by having Pluto in Scorpio. Pluto transited through the sign of Scorpio between the end of 1983 through the end of 1995. So you see it really tightly matches up with society’s definition, generalized definition of millennials. 

Now Boomers have Pluto in Leo, and Pluto transited through the sign of Leo from 1939 through 1958, right. So Pluto in Leo babies were not born in the revolutionary 1960s; they were born at the end of the 1930s and the ’40s and the ’50s, and that makes sense. It makes sense. 

Let’s talk about why I would even bring up these two generations. I got a lot to say. There are four fixed signs, four mutable signs, and four cardinal signs in astrology, right. So we’re talking about zodiac signs not planets. So there are four fixed signs in astrology, and because of how incredibly slowly Pluto moves, the only people alive ATM who have Pluto in a fixed sign are Millennials and Boomers—do do do do do dooo. 

So Pluto in astrology is associated with our survival mechanisms. Pluto is associated with what we feel we need in order to survive. Our individual survival mechanisms don’t only come from our lived experience, like within our family and our friends and our dating life; they don’t only come from our ideas about the world or our inherited conditions from our family line, from our parents or guardians, although, certainly, they heavily come from those things; they also come from the time in which we were born, the broader social, economic, political conditions of the era in which we were born and the values of that era and the struggles of that era, right—very important. 

So on a collective level we were all born into similar ozone. We were all born into a lot of similar conditions. Now, the differences are, of course, very vast, but for the purposes of this conversation, we are talking about the ways in which we are born at a time and that the time itself is a condition that we are inheriting. 

But it’s not just that. As we grow, as we of a certain Pluto generation, whatever Pluto generation it is, grow, we develop this kind of morphic field of what is true and what is not true, of what is appropriate and what is not appropriate, and that shapes society in a meaningful way. And you can see that with generations as young as Millennials and as old as Boomers. I don’t know what they call people who are older than Boomers. I don’t know, sorry. 

But there’s not just Millennials and Boomers in there. There’s also the Pluto in Virgo and the Pluto in Libra generations, which we actually don’t really talk about as much as a society. But they’re not relevant for this conversation because Pluto in Virgo is mutable, and Pluto in Libra is cardinal. And, so, those two Pluto generations are not going to trigger Boomers or Millennials the same way they will trigger each other. 

Let’s talk about it, but we got to begin at the beginning. Let’s start with the Boomers. So Boomers born ’39 through ’58—we’re talking about those Boomers especially. That generation were born into war. They were born into a pretty traumatized generation of people. They were born into an uncertain present and past and future. They were born into a great deal of fear. And they grew up to become so many of the radicals that lay the foundation for what we know as the civil rights movement today. If you were born in 1946, then you were 20 years old in 1966—a time of great revolution and transformation in society, not just in the US, across the world. 

There’s a way that the revolution of gender roles and sexuality, the role of the individual, and the right to have fun and have creativity and not just work for labor, but work for a sense of joy, not just marry for obligation, but marry for a sense of love—these things, really, have so much to do with that Boomer generation, with Pluto in Leo. Their survival mechanisms around the need to find creativity and joy, not just to survive but to be authentic and true to what is real for them. 

Now, here’s what happened with the Boomers, from my perspective. A big thing of what happened with the Pluto in Leo generation was they struggled. Man, did they struggle. They came into struggle, and they struggled when they were young. They struggled, and they struggled, and they gave, and they changed. They changed themselves; they changed society. Now, I’m talking about generationally, of course, not necessarily your weirdo uncle or whatever. 

But that all happens, and then at a certain point, they were like, “I’ve changed. I’ve done all these things. I’ve worked so hard, and progress has not been made as much as I would like, and I have lived with less or been a part of a effort or a movement, and it hasn’t worked out the way I thought it would, and now I need to get back to me. Now I deserve x. If I can’t be joyful, if I can’t be free, then I’m going to get fucking comfortable, then I’m going to get me some power, then I’m going to get me some ownership of something.” It’s Pluto in Leo. 

Pluto, again, is associated with—and I say again because I know I have talked about Pluto a fair amount on the podcast. Maybe I haven’t dropped a Hot Take on it, which I shall do soon. But Pluto is associated with our survival mechanisms. It’s flight or fight. It is not our reasonable, intentional impulses. It can become reasonable and intentional over the course of time with a great deal of work, whether that’s therapy or doing woo shit, or whatever it is. 

Pluto can become a great source of transformation and inspiration, but it’s never exactly easy because Pluto governs flight or fight. It governs survival. And the part of our nature as human that is hard wired for survival is specifically just that. It’s meant for our survival. It’s not meant to get us to thrive. It’s not meant to get us to change and heal if that is in the short term going to come at the expense of survival. So our survival mechanisms are kind of like our animal brain—they just keep on doing the thing that it believes will work because all it wants is for things to work, to not fall into the pit. That’s all it wants. 

And, so, when I kind of pull back to this Pluto in Leo, Leo is all about the queen, the king. It’s like, “I am the best. I deserve more. I should sit on a thrown and other people should serve me.” Which sounds all cute when you’re tweeting about it, but it’s actually not that cute—especially not when you grow old, right. 

So this is where we need to really look with some measure of complexity at the Pluto and Leo generation in order to understand why they feel so entitled. Now, they feel entitled because all people feel entitled. They feel entitled because Pluto in Leo—the terror of Pluto in Leo is what if I’m not good enough? What if I’m not loved? The survival mechanism in response to those questions is to constantly seek proof and validation that you are good enough, that you can be loved, that you are loved. 

So the Pluto in Leo generation, as they aged—so not in their twenties, not even necessarily in their thirties, but a little bit later after that—they more and more settled on comfort. The modern world offers a great deal of comfort. You can prioritize your comfort really quite excessively, right. And we do—all generations do. 

But here’s the thing, and this is really, really important this thing that I’m about to get to because it’s relevant to the Pluto in Scorpio generation. At a certain point when you’re compromising and you haven’t done healing work on your survival mechanisms, and you have Pluto, really, in any sign, but there’s a special something about Pluto in a fixed sign, then what will happen is you will get resentful, pretty damn bitter, and be like, “Fuck it. I deserve x. I deserve x because I’ve been giving y.”

Want to learn more about Pluto or anything astrological? Send me your questions at ghostofapodcast.com. 

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And that brings me to our beautiful Pluto in Scorpio babies. Now, Pluto in Scorpio, similarly, though very differently, your generation was born into massive cultural shifts and changes. There was just such instability. There was the dot-com boom and crash. Your generation could not hold the same expectations as the generations before you—not dissimilarly to the Pluto in Leos. 

What’s really important for me to say, because we can’t speak retrospectively about millennials because you are all still very much in your prime. You’re all still young people—even the oldest amongst you. What we know that the Pluto in Scorpio generation is capable of is, again, we’re on that axis where Leo, Scorpio, Taurus, and Aquarius exist—this fixed axis. So we see that the Pluto in Scorpio generation have so much to do with seeing a world where the role of women in society is expanded, gay and queer rights are expanded, there’s conversations around sexuality that are really spearheaded by your generation and those younger. 

Millennials have had to innovate in many ways, but, really, what it comes down to is Pluto in Scorpio people have had to be fucking scrappy. You’ve had to work your damn buns off. You’ve had to be scrappy and innovate and see careers that never existed before and deal with issues that have never existed before. And it has been actually quite lonely. Millennials are the first generation born into technology—like computers and phones and all that kind of crap, and the first generation to deal with the deep loneliness that comes with being interconnected with everyone, the deep loneliness that can come from being fed media all the time. 

Your generation is the one that really had to deal with the school-to-prison pipeline. It was actually budgetary decisions made by the US government from 1987 to 2007 where funding for incarceration more than doubled. This is a completely new world that you encountered. And with this, not being able to trust government, becoming way too savvy way too young about media, being over-exposed, essentially, to too much adult content when you’re young. Yours is a first generation who’s had to bear all this, and there’s a great deal of jadedness, and it can be resentments. 

It can also be greater capacity for feeling your feelings because Pluto in Scorpio—Pluto’s in its natural placement when it’s in Scorpio. Pluto in Scorpio is intense. It’s transformative. It is brooding. It is profound. It is healing. It is incredibly deep, just incredibly deep. It is not a small thing. Here’s the thing, the Pluto in Scorpio generation is really active in getting so much done in the world, whether it’s change and reform within business or in society or in your own individual lives and healing your ancestral crap—y’all are doing it. It’s really profound. 

But here’s the thing that I worry about. If you don’t tend to your Pluto, if you don’t find ways of exacting engagement and consent within your own flight or fight mechanisms, your own survival mechanisms, what ends up happening is you end up getting bitter, and you end up getting resentful, and you end up saying, “Fuck it. I tried. I marched. I did all these things, and progress was not made, and my safety was not ensured, and I did all the shit, and the world is shit, and there’s no point, so now I’m going to get comfortable, and I’m going to get mine. I’m going to get power. I’m going to get praise. I’m going to get mine.” Just like the Boomers, right. 

So it’s really important to understand that part of why, from an astrological viewpoint, Millennials find Boomers to be so fucking annoying is because they’re triggered. Your Pluto, if you’re a Millennial, squares Boomers’ Pluto’s, if they have Pluto in Leo. That’s just how that goes. And when we encounter an inter-personal square—my shit squares your shit—then we’re going to trigger each other. We’re going to activate each other in a way that’s really annoying. And Scorpio and Leo either get along amazing or really don’t get along. Because they’ll experience very similar problems, but emotionally respond to them in incredibly different ways, and then see fit to behave incredibly differently—at least on the surface—in response to those problems. 

The opportunity here is to learn from the Boomers, learn from Pluto in Leo. Understand that because so much of their self-help wasn’t deep enough, they didn’t have the tools, they didn’t have the resources, they didn’t have the opportunities that actually the Pluto in Virgo people did have, the Pluto in Leo people did have, and you Millennials do have, to deeply investigate the self with tools. The world is so much more global now. 

And since Pluto in Virgo times, we have access to so many more schools of thought, so many more approaches to understanding the self, understanding the world, and engaging. But the reason why Boomers and Millennials are not are triggered by Gen X people in general is not because we’re less annoying—we’re obviously just as damn annoying—but it’s because we don’t experience that Pluto square, so it’s less of a generational back and forth, like ping pong back and forth. You would expect that to come more from a square, especially between fixed signs with the planet Pluto. 

We are on the verge of several more years, at least, of healing from what has happened in the last four years on a political level and on a social level. But it’s not just that. It’s not just that, my friends. It’s that things are unstable and uncertain, and Pluto in Scorpio does not like that kind of thing. I mean, nobody does, but Pluto in Scorpio has the most highly tuned survival mechanisms, and that can make you rigid when you respond to them without a great deal of forethought. And that rigidity can create all kinds of mental health issues and emotional health issues. It can make you feel defensive and entitled. 

So what’s really important is to look at Boomers and be like, “Ha, interesting. Pluto in a fixed sign. That’s what it looks like 40 years from now. Ha, I shall investigate. I shall make sure that I learn from my elders instead of become my elders.” 

The way forward is to not pursue actions that you know look right but you aren’t actually able to follow through on. The way forward, the way to age gracefully—because, eventually, my Millennial friends, my Gen Z friends, you will be the old and out of touch person in society. You will. You will be the person who has no idea what the technology means, no idea how to keep up. You will eventually be the person who doesn’t know what all the language means, and society, in general, won’t be made for you. It won’t be about you. This happens to every generation as we age. 

It’s really important—because we have access to all the generations now in a way we never have before—it’s important to learn from the generations before us, especially those who have similar astrological or complimentary astrological makeup because we can start to see, “Oh, shit. This is how that ages. Hmm. I shall work on that.”

Now, eventually, the Pluto in Capricorn babies are going to look at the Gen Xers with Pluto in Libra, and there will be tension there. Eventually, the Gen Xers with Pluto in Virgo, or whatever exactly they’re called; I’m not sure of that, will have struggle with the Gen Zers who have Pluto in Sagittarius because our survival mechanisms will be kind of in struggle with them. However, because we’re not talking about fixed signs, those struggles may not be quite as loud as the Millennials v. Boomer situation. 

Part of the Millennials’ survival mechanisms and part of the Boomers’ survival mechanisms being in these kind of really big fixed signs are about needing validation, about wanting others to see and bear witness and to repeat it back to me in the words that I want to hear it in—that’s a fixed sign’s approach. 

So I share this with you, my loves, in the hopes that you can investigate your own survival mechanisms and not just yours like in your family—that work is really important, and we talk about that work on the podcast all the time—but in the context of your generation and how we can actually learn from people who are older than us about not just what to do but what not to do and to see ourselves in the people that annoy us the most. How’s that then there, fiends? That’s not the expression. How do you like them tomatoes, huh? Pigeon, huh? Bye.