Ghost of a Podcast with Jessica Lanyadoo

December 14, 2020

169: The Great Conjunction

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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.

Hello, my loves. I am so ready to talk to you about The Great Conjunction of 2020. What the hell’s it about? you may be wondering. You may have been seeing astrologers and astrology fans talking all over ye internet about December 21st, 2020, and how bonkers it’s going to be, and how your hair’s going to change color, and your Soul’s going to be transported, and you will, in fact, see a blue light, slash, also you will lose everything, and it will be a great tragedy. Don’t freak out. None of that’s true. Also, I made all that up. You probably never saw all that. 


Anyways, we’re going to talk about The Great Conjunction. It’s happening on December 21st at 5:30 a.m., Pacific Time—that’s when it’s exact. And what The Great Conjunction is, what a Great Conjunction is is an astrological event that occurs once every, I believe, it’s 19.6 years. So approximately 19 or 20 years, we have this thing that astrologers call The Great Conjunction, and it is when the planets Jupiter and Saturn meet in the sky. So if you were born in 2000 or in ’81, yadda, yadda—you get the point, then you may have been born during a Saturn/Jupiter conjunction. 


When these transits occur, and I’ll talk about it on a bunch of levels here for you, but when these transits occur, it tends to coincide with major structural changes. It’s been referred to as like a transit that demarcates the rise and fall of empires. So when this transit occurs, we tend to see major structural, societal shifts. And they often impact and are reflected in hierarchies, aka, governments, institutions, so—and that can include corporations and religious institutions, but in particular, we want to talk about governments. And that’s, of course, because of Saturn being governments and hierarchies and Jupiter being philosophical, religious, and more ideological than, per se, material. 


Whenever Saturn and Jupiter meet in the sky, it is a big deal. And it’s a big deal for, again, society and the world. Is it a big deal for you personally? It can be, but not as necessarily or as certainly as it is for the world itself. It is in that you are a part of the world, and if the planets themselves—Jupiter and Saturn—do anything to your chart, if they form any kind of aspect to your natal planets or points in your chart, then fuck, yeah, you’re going to feel it. It’s going to be a thing. 


So there’s a thing with The Great Conjunction, and if you follow me on social media, or if you’re a supporter of my work on Patreon, then you’ve probably already seen me post about this. But there’s a thing with Great Conjunctions and United Stated presidents—there’s a thing that happens. Now, let me be really clear. First of all, I don’t predict death. I don’t have the ability to predict death, and I don’t see the value in predicting death. I am by no means predicting the death of the next United States president. I want to be perfectly clear about that. 


But I also can say with clarity that in United States history, and it’s a pretty young country, but in the United States history, there have been eight presidents who have died while in office. There have been eight presidents who have died while they were in office, while they were president of the United States, and seven of those happened under this transit—The Great Conjunction. 


And if you are interested in the details of this, like I said, you can visit my Instagram. It’s easier to find on Instagram than Twitter, but you can also find it on Twitter, or you can become a Patreon at any level on my Patreon, and I’ve posted the details there of how they died, when they died, when they were elected, when The Great Conjunction was. 


That said, the last two Great Conjunctions occurred when Ronald Regan was president in 1980, and when George W. Bush was president in 2000. And in both of those situations, they did not die whilst in office. 


Very famously, Ronald Regan had a trusted astrologer, and so, that he didn’t die is interesting, but also less surprising. Because when The Great Conjunction occurred during Regan’s presidency, it was the only time, the only time since the 1800s that The Great Conjunction occurred in an air sign as opposed to an earth sign. 


It’s about to—on December 21st—happen in an air sign. And the only other time that that occurred was during Regan’s presidency. That was when it was in Libra. He didn’t die. Did something happen? Yes, something happened. Regan was shot, but he survived. Was it because of modern medicine? Was it because of his amazing astrologer? Was it because this is all a coincidence? Nobody knows. And then George W. Bush—also there was an assassination attempt on his life. I think somebody threw a grenade at him, and it didn’t go off. So, yeah, these things occurred. 


Let me pull back and not get too—don’t get too wowed by this—these details and this data because what’s important, what you want to take away is not oh, shit, the next president of the United States is going to die. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t—nobody knows. That said, what we do know is that there is precedents for the rise or fall of empires. There’s precedents for a disruption in the highest seat in the land, and that disruption in the United States has meaningful impact across the globe. 


I would say all of these presidents who died during and around this Great Conjunction period had a massive impact on the American psyche. I feel like JFK most famously so, but that’s probably just because it’s like the closest to my lifespan. Also, maybe because he was handsome. I don’t know. I don’t know. 


Anyways, the moral of the story is The Great Conjunction is not here to fuck around. And so, when astrologers see this transit occurring, we know that there’s this precedent of these things happening. There’s a lot more things that happen pretty consistently throughout these transits, and if you yourself are a historian, or you have that kind of brain and you want to know more, you can just look up what was happening in the United States during these period—or anywhere in the world to see what was happening in various countries. So it can be a really interesting point of investigation. 


Now, what we do not have precedent for here in the US, but also really in general, is we don’t know what it’s going to be like for The Great Conjunctions to occur in air signs. This is new. And so, what we can do is we can speculate based on history and data and what we know of astrology, but it’s really TBD and isn’t that fun to hear? Everything’s been so stable. Isn’t what you want to hear me say that it’s TBD, and there’s no precedent for it and nobody knows? Yeah, that’s not what you want to hear me say. 


So now, let me take it a step further by taking it a step back. Let’s talk about Saturn and Jupiter. The planet Saturn is associated with hierarchies. It’s the CEO. It’s the head of an organization. It can be a manager. It’s, quote, The Man. It’s the architype of control coming from rigidity and a power over through structure, through constriction and restriction. 


It is a planet associated with obligation, responsibility, and community. So not community in an Aquarian way, although, of course, this Jupiter/Saturn conjunction is happening at zero degrees and 29 minutes of Aquarius. So it’s Aquarius. But the planet Saturn is associated with community in a sense of your responsibility to the community of humans that you are a part of. It’s more in the duty-bound way than it is in a like let’s bound together and fight for something we care about. That’s more Aquarian community vibes. So Saturn is really about the reality that you find yourself in and the reality of who you are and what you can resource to do. 


Now, Jupiter, by contrast, is expansion. Jupiter is freedom and growth and we’re all connected. Jupiter is philosophy and religion and higher learning. Jupiter is associated with big picture truths. And this is the ruling planet of Sagittarius, which I talked a fair amount about in the most recent episode because of the Solar Eclipse in Sagittarius. 


Now, when we are dealing with Saturn and Jupiter conjoined, what we’re dealing with is these two planets who are really different. One wants to constrict, the other to expand. One wants to clamp down and make things stable, and the other one wants to throw it all away so that it can be free. These are very different energies. 


Do you ever lie awake at night obsessing about the moment when everything went wrong? Maybe you wish you could reach out to the brother you stopped talking to 40 years ago, or maybe you want to ask your high school sweetheart why did you dump me? On the podcast Heavyweight, Jonathan Goldstein helps guests journey back to the past to answer the questions that still haunt them in the hope of setting things right. That’s Heavyweight from Gimlet. Follow and listen for free on Spotify.


On January 5th of 2021, Georgia has the opportunity to flip the US senate blue. And whether or not you’re in Georgia, you can get involved. Here are some organizations that you can donate to and volunteer with, and the links to them all will be show notes. 


One super star on the political scene is Stacey Abrams. I know you’ve heard of her, but let me just tell you about her organization Fair Fight, whose mission it is to advocate for free and fair elections by fighting voter suppression and promoting fair elections in Georgia, as well as around the country. You can donate and find out more about how to get involved over at fairfight.com. 


Now, there’s another organization I want to share with you, which is called The New Georgia Project. They seek to empower the new American majority to vote through advocacy and engagement. You can go to their website at thenewgeorgiaproject.org to donate and get involved. 


And, finally, you need to know about Black Voters Matter. Their goal is to increase power in marginalized, predominately Black communities. Effective voting allows a community to determine its own destiny. Get involved and donate at blackvotersmatterfund.org. Link to all three of these orgs will remain in show notes.


When we have Jupiter and Saturn meet, what we have is the struggle of creating structures that foster freedom, of essentially asking the question can we really find God in a house? Is God limited to a location? You know, these questions of form and structure versus freedom and spirit. Truth versus the beauty and importance and the synthesis of all things versus the sense of responsibility of like, well, what should I say, and what is important to say, and how can I prioritize? 


So when we are dealing with these two planets meeting in the sky, we are going to question our beliefs. We are meant to question our cultural norms. There are so many cultural norms that need to be questioned. They need to be reconsidered so that they are more humane. And this is something that Jupiter and Saturn actually agree on. They both want humanity—they just go about it in such different ways. Even when Saturn and Jupiter have the same goal, they go about it in different ways. They want to satiate it in different ways. It’s complicated, right. 


When we are talking about a Saturn/Jupiter conjunction in the sign of Aquarius, we are really going to be talking about how do we need to relate to our laws, to our institutions, to old structures, old hierarchies, and how can we breathe new life into them? Again, what I want to point out to you is that The Great Conjunctions have all been in earth signs, so it has been very material. It has been about material things. And many astrologers are talking about this being the end of an age of materialism because these Great Conjunctions are now moving into air signs. 


But for me, that really draws the question of well, what is materialism? And are we talking about capitalism? Are we talking about deity focused religion or location focused religion? Are we talking about environmental pillaging? There’s so many ways that we can look at this kind of concept of materialism, but what seems pretty certain is that we need to re-envision how we socialize and even how we work. And whether or not it’s going to be in physical person. And so, many jobs, many roles in society can only be filled IRL, in person, but many actually can be filled from home. 


And when we look at something like a Great Conjunction in this new age of conjunctions that will be happening in air signs, what we can expect is to see the issue of the environment becoming increasingly more important—demandingly more important. And we will have to look at how borders are drawn and imagined—so both how they’re understood, how they’re managed, but it would not surprise me if in this next phase major national borders changed. And the changes that would come from certain countries succeeding or places succeeding from within the union, from whatever union they’re in or whatever country they’re in, it would have a massive, massive impact on the economy—whatever economy we’re talking about. 


And so, what we can expect within this period is also a changing of currency. Could that become a more global currency, something like a Crypto situation? I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s really hard to predict something without precedent. And whenever we’re looking at something like environmental collapse or we’re looking at something like technology, these are unprecedented issues. It’s very hard to predict what exactly will come, in no small part, because they are human made crises, right. They’re not natural crises. They’re human made crises. 


We need laws that actually protect us online. We don’t have them. Not only do we not have them, but largely, certainly in the US, we don’t have a lot of legislators, we don’t have a lot of people in government who even understand the internet or how to work with it. We have these massive companies with these massive monopolies, and how are they wielding their power against the people? 


You never want to forget, when you’re on a free app, if you’re using a free search engine, if you’re on social media, if you’re doing anything like that, you’re the damn product. You’re the product. Somebody is—people are—companies are tracking you to use for their benefit and gain, and you’ve no say and no control, right. 


And so, we are going to see in coming years legislation, hopefully, to protect the people, but the risk is that we will also see legislation to protect the personhood of companies and corporations, which would be very fucking dangerous—not unprecedented, but dangerous. 


And so, within all of this, I want to say nothing is going to happen by magic or osmosis. People with power are diligently working—they have teams on it to keep their power and to expand their power. They have the resources and the motivation to research and stay on top of changing tides so that they can continue to capitalize from them. 


When Saturn moves in Aquarius, and I’ll do a specific episode on Saturn in Aquarius, but when Saturn moves into Aquarius, we have the opportunity for a social uprising that becomes solidified into the culture. In other words, that has direct impact on the way people live and on governing laws where you live. And there is so much potential. 


But, again, it doesn’t happen because Saturn is in Aquarius. It’s more that when Saturn moves into Aquarius, we know to expect this from the people. But if we the people do not get off our asses, if we do not continue to do the work of unlearning the multitudes of bullshit that we have learned, if we do not do the work of having empathy and compassion and some form of latitude for other people’s learning process, if we don’t do the damn work, if we don’t hit the streets, if we don’t make the noise, if we don’t vote, if we don’t do all the things that need to be done in order for change to occur, then it won’t. 


And it’s not that change won’t occur—I should be clear—it’s that change for the people won’t occur. Because people with power will always work diligently to protect and expand their damn power. 


So The Great Conjunction of 2020, on a personal level, is an opportunity for you and me and everyone else to look at the structures of our lives and to see which ones are keeping us safe in a way that locks us into a rut and which one of those structures actually helps us to grow. It is hard to know the answer, and that is why we go through transits that force us to ask the damn questions. 


And if you’re old enough, you might want to look back the last time we went through a Great Conjunction in May of 2000, and the time before that in the 1980s—in the early 1980s. And just wait, in less than 20 years from now, we’re going to go through another one. 


To me, it is reassuring to know that there is a pattern to societal and human development. There is a pattern and there is a math to it. To me, that is really validating. It’s really fortifying. It’s really soothing. Because there is a time for everything. 


As a Canadian now living in California, to me, living in Oakland, California, I’ll tell you what—it is spring. It is winter. It is summer. I can’t tell the difference. I mean, I can—of course, I can but not really because the seasons are not that big of a deal. Being a Canadian, though, seasons are a beautiful thing. There is a time for fucking everything. And when The Great Conjunction occurs, it is the time to really reassess the way you’ve put together your life—your relationship to freedom and your relationship to responsibility. Truly reassess it, especially if you have something at around zero degrees of a fixed sign or an air sign or a fire sign. 


And also, on a social level—and there’s, you know, I’ll say this is a Hot Take. I could talk about this for hours, upon hours, upon hours. But on a social level, what occurs now will have lasting implications. And even though this transit is exact on December 21st, it doesn’t mean it only impacts us on this date. Big transits like this take many months building up and then many months to integrate. 


I will talk more about the implications of this transit and the other major transits in the forthcoming 2021 year ahead horoscope, which I absolutely will drop for you with love. But in the meantime, whenever we’re dealing with a transit that involves Saturn, you want to take responsibility for what you’re doing—for what you are and aren’t doing. You want to hold humility for what you don’t know yet. You don’t have to know everything. Hold humility for what you don’t know yet. And also, allow yourself to experience hope and yearning and joyfulness and excitement and curiosity for the adventure of life because Jupiter is involved. 


If you have come into consciousness about so many things this year—there’s been so much that has happened this year, you may have learnt things about the world or yourself that were just beneath the surface for you, and you kind of knew them, but now you really get them. You may have learnt brand new shit—yay, yay. I got to say the work isn’t over just because we got the 45 out, theoretically, hopefully, knock on wood. Just because the 45 is out, does not mean our work is done. If you feel that you need a break, take a damn break, but the work is far from done. 


2021 is a time for activating, getting engaged, staying engaged. And that’s something I’ll talk about more—strategies around that and what we can expect from that. But this is a good time, The Great Conjunction, to look at what you’ve learnt and to allow yourself to feel humble about what you haven’t yet learnt, what you don’t yet know, instead of to slip into guilt or to slip into shame or to gloss over it and say, “Well, I’ve been a good girl, and I’ve done a lot of work, so I don’t need to do anything more. I’m great now. Everything’s fixed. We’re fine.” So, you know, these two different ways are Saturn and Jupiter’s ways. 


My loves, as always, I thank you for joining me here on Ghost of a Podcast—Astrology Hot Takes because I fucking love astrology. I just love it, and there’s so much to say about it. It’s basically a fucking endless topic. And it really thrills me to know that so many of you are down to learn about astrology. And I hope that it treats you as well as it’s treated me because I really fucking love her. I love her. Yeah, I called astrology a lady—why not? I love a lady.