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. This week’s question comes from Rigid Virgo, and it goes like this, “Hello. My question is about signs being cardinal, fixed, and mutable. My Sun sign is Virgo, and it’s a mutable sign; however, over the last few years I have learned that I am very rigid and have a difficult time with accepting things that I do not agree with, but in the larger scope of things, are really not that important to let it cause me so much anger and occupy my thoughts to the extent that it does. I am mostly experiencing this in the context of my workplace. 

I know our Sun signs are not the end all, be all of the chart, and I was wondering if there’s anything else in my birth chart that lends to my rigid way of thinking and world view. And I’d love any tips you have on how to be more flexible and accepting.”

So Virgo’s birth information is 8/25 of 1991 at 1:27 p.m. in the big city of Ocean Springs, Mississippi. Okay. So first and foremost, in astrology, we talk about different qualities of the signs. So we’re talking about cardinal signs, mutable signs, and fixed signs. 

And the cardinal signs are the Aries, Libra, Capricorn, Cancer signs. And the fixed signs are Taurus, Scorpio, Aquarius, and Leo. And then, finally, the mutable signs are Virgo, Pieces, Sagittarius, and Gemini. And these are all the modalities; they’re called the modes of astrology. So there’s a lot of things to know about the different modes or modalities. 

These modes do not mean that if you’re, let’s say, a Sagittarius or a Virgo, which are mutable Sun signs, it doesn’t mean that you don’t experience any fixed energy—that there’s nothing stubborn or rigid about your nature. We’re instead referring, when we look at the modes, to the energy flow of a zodiac sign. 

And then the other thing is when I pulled up your chart, Rigid Virgo, I see a lot of things. The first one is, yes, you’re very much a Virgo with a Sun conjunction to your Midheaven. And you were born on a Full Moon; you were born with the Moon in the opposite sign. You also have a fair amount of Capricorn in your chart because you were born with that generation with Neptune and Uranus and the North Node all in the sign of Capricorn. So that’s cardinal, right. 

But, my friend, you have Mercury, Jupiter, and Venus all in Leo—a fixed sign. And Pluto in a fixed sign of Scorpio happens to be square to your natal Mercury, and that’s the aspect that you’re writing in to ask me about. 

So here’s where we get into some complexity with astrology. First of all, we are not just our Sun signs. The reason why you are so uncomfortable with being fixed in the ways that you’re describing in your question is partially because it doesn’t bring you happiness—it doesn’t improve your life, sure. But also, because you’re a Virgo; you don’t want to be fixed. If you had maybe a Leo Sun, it wouldn’t be so uncomfortable for you to be like, “I know the right way.”

It’s important to understand about yourself as a person, and it’s also important to understand about astrology as a tool—that we are not one thing. There is a reason why astrology is so complex and layered; it is because we humans are complex and layered. We are complicated. We are messy. We have contradictions. We have many parts. We are of many minds. 

Think of the human body—the human body is complex. You have your lymphatic system. You have your cardiovascular system, your nervous system. You have your bones and your ligaments. You have—I mean, I don’t know. I could keep going. But there’s all these kind of systems within your system, and in some complex, meaningful way they’re all communicating with each other. And also, they function independent of each other, that’s why we have an ear, nose, and throat doctor and a Gynecologist and a GP and a surgeon. We have different specialists that treat different parts of our bodies because each part of our body is so complex. 

Now, the same thing is true of our energy body, of our psychology, of our emotional nature. We are complex. Your Sun sign is not your only part, your most important part. If you’re using astrology in a way that you hope will help your mental, emotional, and spiritual wellness, then it’s really important to not think of your Sun sign as something that exists in a vacuum outside of the rest of your birth chart because it doesn’t. 

So we look at something like your Sun sign, which is Virgo, and we think okay, well, so your Sun’s in Virgo, and it’s at the top of your chart—it’s right there conjunct to your Midheaven, so your career is deeply important to you. How other people feel about you is deeply important to you because the Midheaven is associated with many things, but very much in those things is your reputation. Having a reputation for being fixed would be very uncomfortable for you as a Virgo because your identity, aka your Sun is that you are open minded and that you are reasonable and that you can be flexible. 

So we could do a couple of things from here. We could look at natal aspects to your Sun, so as I mentioned, you were born with a Pieces Moon opposite your Sun, aka a Full Moon. And your Sun/Moon opposition, actually, forms a nice tight square to your Ascendant. So the way that you feel about yourself shows up in your identity, and in a way that can often make you feel uncomfortable because that tension between the Sun and the Moon is the tension between how you feel about yourself and how you want to be seen. And so, that’s really strongly reinforced with the Ascendant. 

We could talk about that a lot, but we’re not going to because that’s not what you asked about. Instead, what we’re going to do, we’re going to look at the ruling planet of your Sun sign. This is where we get into the layers of astrology. You are a Sun in Virgo person. Virgo is the zodiac sign ruled by the planet Mercury. Mercury ruling your Sun is a really important planet in your birth chart. It’s an important planet because you’re a Virgo. But it is also an important planet because it is in a nice, tight conjunction, as I mentioned, between Mercury, Jupiter, and Venus in Leo in the ninth house. 

Straight out the gate, let me tell you what. That conjunction indicates that you really are fixed in your attitudes and beliefs, and you have a lot of attitudes and beliefs because it’s the ninth house. It’s the house of philosophies and concepts and ideas of how things should be. The ninth house is where we find religion, institutionalized religion, so, “This is the truth, this is the word; I am certain of it.” That can kind of happen there. The ninth house is also where we find higher education. 

And having three planets in fixed signs in that house, well, that’s going to make you pretty damn fixed in your attitudes. Even if you’re like. “I want to grow, and I want to change,” you’re going to have your ideas about the way that needs to, and that’s just kind of how you’re wired. But that’s not all. 

Mercury is at 25 degrees of Leo in your birth chart. We have Pluto in Scorpio at 17 degrees and 46 minutes. And the minutes and degrees are really important in astrology. And when we see something like a planet is at 17 degrees and 46 minutes, what we do is we round up, and we call that an 18-degree Pluto or, at least, that’s what I do. Different astrologers will use different methodologies; I’ve definitely noticed that some astrologers are less focused on the degrees. To me, the degrees of planets are essential data. 

So we are using a seven degree orb between natal planets, and we are looking at a Pluto in the twelfth house in Scorpio, square to Mercury. What this does is it gives a compulsive and driving edge to your thinking. Do you obsess on ideas? Yeah, you do. Do you focus on the ideas that are the most intense and driving and powerful and upsetting to you, oftentimes? You better believe it—yeah, you do. 

And then on top of it, because you do have that Pieces Moon, because you are a Full Moon baby, there’s a way that you can just be overwhelmed with emotion, and it’s hard for you to separate yourself from your feelings about your thoughts. Mercury square to Pluto has an obsessive and compulsive style of thinking, and therefore, when you verbally communicate or communicate via text or email, you can come across as defensive because it is hard for you to not feel entitled in your thoughts and in your attitudes. And that’s really what you’re talking about in your question—this struggle that you have around feeling like you’re right, and there’s no other way but your way. Okay. Okay. 

So here’s where we pull back from the immediacy of your feelings, and we talk about astrology more broadly again. Yes, you are a mutable Sun sign and a mutable Rising sign, and a mutable Moon sign. On the surface, if you’re talking to somebody, and you’re like, “These are my big three—Sun, Moon, and Rising,” a person may so to you, “Oh, you’re so mutable. You’re so flexible. You’re so easy going.” That is patently untrue, my friend—patently untrue. 

And this is where the struggle begins because your identity—how you want others to see you, how you want to feel about yourself—is flexible. But nothing in your chart, other than the big three, say anything about flexibility. I’m so sorry, slash, also, that’s fine. Embrace what you are—we’ll get there. One moment. 

So let me stay with the Sun, Moon, Rising thing. Your mind, your attitudes, your values, and your beliefs are not mutable signs. Okay, cool. What they are is fixed and cardinal. Can you center and prioritize creating space in your thinking, in your feelings, and even in your days to sit with, “This is what I’m thinking. This is what I’m feeling. These are my convictions.” Pause. “What is it that I want from the situation? What is it that I want to learn within the situation? What are my goals or ambitions in this dynamic? What is it that I want?” Pause. 

And then, and then, based on the certainty of your attitudes or beliefs and, and very important—the big, fat and—your desire to, let’s say if we’re talking about a work situation, to get things done, the desire that you may have to figure something out or collaborate with someone so that a project can be done quickly and efficiently. In that scenario, what’s the most effective thing to do? Okay, it’s to make the other person feel heard and to encourage the other person to giddy up and get going on a thing, right. Okay, then you can, with your beautiful Sun, Moon, Rising in these mutable signs, decide what the most effective way of communicating is. 

And what you’ll find, if you can practice this, if you can practice this and be willing to fail at it and keep on going and keep on practicing at it, is that, eventually, your feelings may not actually go away or change, you know, those fixed, compulsive feelings and thoughts may not actually change, but you will find more effective ways of coping with those feelings. 

And so, the way that you experience those feelings and those thoughts does change. It does change because you’ve learned that you have a right to have your perspective. And you may be right about absolutely everything; you may be the rightest right that ever righted—totally, slash, also it doesn’t matter. Because when you are working with others, being right is not the most important thing. Being adaptable is not the most important thing. Having a balance between these things is the most important thing. Because if you’ve ever worked with somebody who’s super adaptable and really easy going and a pleasure to work with, but they don’t know what they’re doing, that doesn’t take you too far. 

It’s okay to be complicated—it really is. And the best way to change your world view is by being interested in the world, it’s by being interested in other people’s ways. You know, as a triple Capricorn—I’ve got my Sun, Moon, and Rising in Capricorn—you better believe I’ve got a really fixed world view. Not because Capricorn is a fixed sign—it isn’t, but because my chart articulates a unified perspective. 

Now, you have a lot of planets all in the same sign. Anyone who has a concentration of planets, aka Stelliums, is going to have a really unified perspective, whether or not that Mercury/Pluto existed, whether or not you had fixed signs in your chart. And so, within that comes a responsibility that you have to yourself to be interested in other people’s perspectives, to become more adaptable—not so that you change you, so that you get your needs met. Getting your needs met is not about manipulating others; it’s not about changing yourself or changing them. It’s about finding the sweet spot between your inner world and your inner needs and your outer world and your external needs. 

You don’t need to be right about everything. You don’t need everyone to give you a parade because you’re right about everything. You need your days to go well. You need to not hate yourself or hate other people, right. 

One last thing I’m going to say here is this: Virgo is a perfectionistic sign, and its ruling planet, Mercury, when it’s Leo can be very stubborn. What I want to encourage you to know is that there is no such thing as perfection—no one of your employees or colleagues is ever going to be perfect. You are never going to be perfect, and neither am I. And so, being interested in the way that your perfectionism functions, the language of your perfectionism, the feelings of your perfectionism, being interested in it, is what I want to encourage you to do. 

If you try to attack the ways in which you are perfectionistic and be like, “I shouldn’t be perfectionistic; perfectionism is wrong,” or to embolden it by saying, “I’m right and everyone else is wrong,” both of these things are going to bring your unhappiness. Being interested in the way that your perfectionistic impulses and ideas compel you to self-harm, essentially, that’s going to help you a great deal over the course of your life. Life is a journey; we don’t exactly hit destinations. I mean, we look back at things, and we say, “Oh, that was that moment.” But, generally speaking, in life it’s really just an ongoing journey, so be here for it.

Okay, so I have to tell you about this exciting bit of news. I have a new astrology app coming out. It is an astrology app for serious astrology students and pro astrologers. And it does what you know I am obsessed with—it encourages you to learn astrology, not by trusting me, but by creating your own interpretations of the planets, based on your lived experience. I am very excited to support you in your learning of astrology. 

If you want to learn more about it before I actually drop it, join me over on Patreon where I’ve shared some little beta cookies. Not cookies like cookies on the internet, but cookies like chocolate chip, gooey, delightful, delicious cookies of the beta of this app. I’m just trying to help you help yourself—that’s what I’m trying to do. Let’s all build a deeper practice with astrology as we get through this crazy thing called life.

My loves, let’s talk astrology. But before we get into the week ahead, I want to acknowledge an error I made in a recent episode. As you know, I dropped two episodes with the lovely Mecca Woods and Janelle Belgrave on Stars On Fire. We talked about the astrology of the inauguration and the Biden-Harris presidency. 

And I made an error in something I said that a couple of people on social media pointed out to me. I referred to Christians and Catholics as different, but what I had meant to say was Protestants and Catholics are different, so that was an error that I would like to simply acknowledge. And if it offended you or gave you a cause to scratch your head in total confusion, I apologize for that. 

Okay. So that said, I want to just take a moment to take a breath because January has been an intense year, you know. The energy is chaotic, and the energy that is pervasive and that so many of us are feeling, the chaos of it, it’s destabilizing. And I will repeat something I’ve said a bunch of times in a bunch of places, that January’s a particularly astrologically tense time. 

And also, now that we have a new president and the end of the reign of the 45, a lot of people here in the US are feeling this incredible exhaustion—you know that way that you feel after you’ve been cramming for a test and cramming for a test and preparing for a test, something’s really stressful, and then the test happens, and then you’re like—you get a cold, and you’re in bed for five days. A lot of people are having the psychological or emotional equivalent of that, just this intense amount of burn out as your system is recalibrating to change. 

Even when human’s go through improvements, change can be really destabilizing. And feeling destabilized and out of control is hard. It’s hard emotionally. It’s hard psychologically. And on top of it, the astrology of this month is just fucking all over the damn place, and it’s really rough. 

In particular, it’s rough on the nervous system because of the presence of Uranus in a lot of what we’re dealing with. And this particular week, as we’re going to look at the week of January 24th through the 30th of 2021, is no exception, unfortunately. 

But before I kind of like get into the astrology of it all, I want to take a moment to say if you are feeling sad, if you’re feeling grief, if you’re feeling vulnerable or exhausted or riled up and antagonized and defensive, you’re not alone. These feelings that you are feeling, they’re being felt by so many people in the collective, which only amplifies those feelings in your individual experience. 

It is wise and healthy to know the root cause of your feelings. It’s wise and healthy to manage your personal or your individual experience with integrity and in a way that actually works for you and the people you are dealing with. All these things are super important. It’s also important to recognize that some things are bigger than just you, and the root cause and the details are not the only important thing. How you tend to your feelings, how you validate your feelings, how you do or don’t give yourself permission to have your feelings is really important for you to consider at this time. It’s not just important for you to consider for yourself at this time, but also with others. This is a really kind of all over the place moment, and if you’re feeling all over the place, it’s okay. 

I want to add a fun little flavor to the mix, which is Mercury goes Retrograde on the 30th of January. I’ll break that down, of course, within the horoscope, but what that means is we’ve been in the Mercury Retrograde shadow—the Retroshade period. So on top of everything else, communication stuff is wonky. You’re going to say things wrong. You’re going to maybe miss an important email. There’s going to be some sort of confusion, or it might not be you who’s doing it; it might be someone else. And, as I say every Mercury Retrograde, the benefit of astrology is that because you know this, you can have more grace with others. You can be more patient with yourself. Instead of taking personally these miscommunications or these misunderstandings, you can be like, “Oh, yeah, that’s just fucking Mercury, and I can use the rule of Re’s.” The rule of Re’s, which is reflect, reframe, reassess. I mean, I use lots of different Re’s when I talk about that damn rule of Re’s, but we’ll get there—we’ll get there more. 

But, again, it’s just another level and layer of holding space for the process, being present with the things that don’t work instead of jumping on them—either jumping on others, jumping on yourself, or taking it on and taking it on when someone else jumps upon you for making a human error. I can assure you, you will make errors, and so will I, and so will everyone you hate and love and feel very little about because we’re all humans. In fact, my cat makes errors. He is as close to perfect as I can in any way imagine, but he makes errors all the fucking time. So, yeah, that’s just life—life on this stupid ball that we live on; it’s called Earth. 

Okay, let’s get going into your horoscope. On the 26th, we have an exact transit between the Sun and Uranus. Now, I should say because our horoscope starts January 24th, on the 24th we will still be feeling the impact of the Sun conjunction to Saturn. We talked about that in last week’s horoscope. So the Sun conjunction to Saturn will be impacting us on the 24th, and then, because the Sun square to Uranus is exact on the 26th, we will also be feeling it on the 25th. So this is all part of this ongoing set of energies. 

And if you don’t remember, just very briefly, Sun conjunction to Saturn is heavy, and it’s a little depressing, and it makes you feel a sense of responsibility. The positive of it is that it can have you taking responsibility and kind of like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps kind of vibe. The negative of it is it can just make you feel flat and depressed and like you’ve got nothing. It can align you with scarcity mentality. 

Now, having that transit kind of flow, if I can use that word when referring to Saturn. I don’t know, but I did it. So it will just flow into a Sun square to Uranus—exact on the 26th; we will feel it the 25th, 6th, and 7th. The Sun square to Uranus is upsetting. It is destabilizing. Again, Uranus is the intranet. It is social movements. It’s social change. It’s your central nervous system. It’s electricity and technology in general. 

When the Sun forms a square to Uranus, we can expect surprises and upsets. Now, when you hear upsets, you might think bad, but upsets are not necessarily a bad thing. It can upset your plans when you think you’re just going to hang out at home and wash your hair, and then a friend is like, “Hey, I got tickets to go to a show.” This is a pre-COVID or a post-COVID metaphor. “Hey, I got tickets to go to a show with your favorite artist.” So it upsets your day—it upsets your plans, but is it a bad upset? No. You just have to re-calibrate and go and have some damn fun. 

So upsets are not inherently bad, but they are inherently destabilizing. And they require us to be flexible and adaptable, that’s Uranus’ move. The problem with Uranus is that it requires flexibility and adaptability, but it tends to get really fixated on things—on ideas in particular. And so, we may find that we are dealing with some obstinate person or situation or that we are ourselves are obstinate. 

We may find that we are having annoying technology problems. And that would be true with the days leading up to Mercury Retrograde. It would be true with the Sun square to Uranus, but it would be extra true with both. In particular, some jerk company is like, “Here, do an update today”—maybe don’t do it. I don’t know. These things tend to go sideways on us—that’s just what happens. 

Sun square to Uranus—the best way to engage with the energies of your life under this influence is by striving to be adaptable and/or inquisitive. Be curious. Be willing to learn something you don’t already know—whether that’s someone else’s perspective, something about yourself, something about the world, etc. 

Know that this transit can trigger reactive feelings. It can incline you to jump to conclusions. After the time we’ve been having astrologically, it’s no good. It’s just no good. So I want to encourage you to notice your impulses around jumping to conclusions and see if you can just breathe a little space in between your reactions and your responses—try. It’s okay if you fail. It’s okay if you falter. It’s okay if you’re not good at it—just try. 

If you are dealing with somebody else who’s jumping to conclusions or just acting really defensively or aggressively or entitled, again, you don’t need to resonate with their energy. You can stay aligned with your own. You can take responsibility for how you choose to engage, even if that means you are showing up differently than ways you have in the past or differently than others want you to or expect you to. 

And that’s the thing—that’s the thing about Uranus is Uranus goes out on its own. It does its own thing. So this transit is an opportunity for you to embrace your own autonomy and individuality and to do so in a way that is considerate of the big picture of your life and the world around you, aka do not be selfish and shitty, but to be honest and autonomous. Fine lines between these things, my loves, fine fucking lines. 

And that brings us to—do, do, do, do, do, doo—on the 28th, we have a Full Moon in Leo at 11:16 a.m., Pacific time. This Full Moon is coming on the heals of some pretty intense energies. It is never totally chill when we have a Full Moon in Leo. To remind you, a Full Moon occurs when the Sun and Moon are exactly opposite each other by degree and by sign. And, generally speaking, broadly speaking, we have one Full Moon per sign, per year. And this is our Full Moon in Leo, which means the Sun is in Aquarius, and the Moon is in Leo, and the feelings are big because Moon in Leo is big feels. 

Now, as I mentioned earlier, the sign Aquarius and the sign Leo are both fixed signs. And fixed signs—I’ve done an episode about this very topic; it was episode 97. It was a Hot Take, so if you want to learn more about the modes and qualities, go ahead and do it there. 

But when we are looking at fixed energies, when we’re looking at fixed signs, what we know is that there is going to be a sense of certainty, of this is the way it is, and this is the way it should be. And when we’re dealing with a Full Moon, it’s the closure of a cycle, and it’s a very personal cycle of development. And so, the space between us as a collective and me as a person, as an individual—my needs, my way, and what’s best for us, our way forward, there’s a tension there. On a societal level, that’s what this Full Moon is going to trigger in many different ways. 

When we look at this on a personal level, a Full Moon in Leo is very much about how you take heart, how you embrace your own feelings, your own needs, your own relationships, how you embrace others, and how you allow yourself to be embraced. Now, that’s just in a very general way. 

When we look more specifically at the Full Moon chart of this Moon in Leo, we see a lot of things worth mentioning. And this is not going to be a chill Full Moon. Surprise, surprise, it’s not going to be chill. So there’s a lot of things. The first thing is, this particular Full Moon chart has two exact transits in it in addition to the Moon/Sun opposition. There’s going to be an exact Sun conjunction to Jupiter, which means the Moon is also opposite to Jupiter. And there’s an exact Venus conjunct to Pluto. 

So let’s stay with the Sun for a moment here, okay. When the Sun and Jupiter conjoin, there is the potential for a sense of spaciousness, a sense of, “Ah, I figured it out. This is working. This is flowing; this is going my way.” Jupiter can be associated with luck. I mean, you know I’m a triple Capricorn, so I don’t really focus on the luck part of it too much, but it can be associated with expansion and growth and luck. 

Now, unfortunately, Saturn is at five degrees of Aquarius—four degrees and 53 minutes of Aquarius, so it’s very close to the Sun/Jupiter conjunction and close to the opposition of the Moon, so that certainly dampens the buoyancy of that Sun/Jupiter conjunction. Because Saturn is about consequences and reality, and Jupiter is about like, “I’ll do it all. I’ll hop in a car and drive across the country and figure out money later.”

The thing about the Sun/Jupiter conjunction that is a little on the worrisome side, Jupiter is associated with extremism and propaganda, in addition to lots of wonderful things, and so, we may see, on an individual level and on a collective level, being exposed to ideas, and you’re not sure if they’re right, and you’re not sure if they’re real. This may be a time where some sort of new propaganda pops up or there’s some sort of a leak of some data. 

And the reason why I say leak is because the Sun/Jupiter conjunction opposite the Moon form a T-square to the Uranus/Mars conjunction, which is not exact but is indeed active still. So the Uranus/Mars conjunction is something we’ve talked about on the podcast before. 

This Full Moon aspect is explosive, and it’s defensive, and it’s intense. On a personal level, it is likely to make you feel just zingy, like your nervous system is just overloaded. Your feelings and your thoughts and your body’s response to all of these things may just be super defensive and knee jerky because there’s not enough space to take in more data. 

Here’s the thing, and this is really important. Take in data with responsibility this week and especially on and around this Full Moon. Be responsible with if you can’t take in more ideas, if you can’t have a conversation, if you can’t talk about something in a way that is open, then just you don’t have to talk to people. You don’t have to be online. You don’t have to engage with social media. For reals. 

This energy is defensive. It can get blamey. It can be explosive. It can trigger a great deal of anger. The thing is is Uranus and Mars together are explosive and having Jupiter forming a square plus a Full Moon, it just can bring up a lot of really intense emotions. Because all this energy is so defensive and explosive, it can be very entitled. It can be very dramatic, and it’s all in fixed signs. It’s likely to trigger your own attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors. 

When I say it’s going to trigger it, what I mean is it’s going to trigger you to be willing to change in the face of fucking evidence that you need to change. And that doesn’t mean you’re wrong or you’re right. It means you’re likely to have to adapt. We are all likely to have to adapt. 

And a lot of times when change is kind of thrust upon us or when we feel like a situation or a person has kind of required us to change, we respond defensively. What happens when you respond defensively is you are responding not only to what’s happening in the moment, but you are responding to a backlog of thoughts, feelings, experiences, and emotions that have nothing to do with the situation, and you’re bringing all of that to the moment. And so, you’re no longer in the moment in a completely authentic way. 

And that’s okay. It’s human. We do this; we’re humans. But it’s worth noting, and it’s worth being present for. This Full Moon is going to kick up a lot of shit. It’s just going to. And on top of it, that Venus/Pluto conjunction in Capricorn—totally exact. It’s very intense. 

So Venus—Venus we know is related to our values, our values as individuals, and because of Pluto’s closeness, we’re looking at social themes as well. So we’re looking at values, but we’re also looking at interpersonal relationships. What else are we looking at with Venus? Money, honey. We’re looking at money. We’re looking at your finances, your relationship to what you have or what you don’t have, but we’re also looking at the economy. 

Pluto is the toxic side of the collective. It’s shame. It’s resentments. It’s also transformation and healing. Pluto’s very composty. Pluto’s very undertow in the oceany. And when we have Venus conjunction to Pluto, that transit is going to trigger deep, compulsive, and intense feelings about one of those themes, if not all of them. So we’re talking about money. We’re talking about relationships. We’re talking about how we fit into social order, how our relationships are or are not working. 

You may find that you are fixating on some person or some relationship, and I want to encourage you, to the best of your ability, to be interested in the obsession more than the person or the relationship. This transit on its own and certainly this transit in concert with the whole of this Full Moon chart and Full Moon experience, it’s going to trigger something in you of you. 

So the opportunity here is to grow and heal something within yourself. When we become too fixated on our reactions, on our emotions, on our fixed beliefs and narratives, what we have a tendency to do is to focus on the other person—what they did, what they meant, why they’re wrong, yadda, yadda, yadda, instead of why you feel a certain kind of way, how you are caring for yourself around those feelings. What pattern has been enacted here in your own lived experience, and how can you, to the best of your ability, change your way of dealing with this pattern so that the pattern itself is forced to change? 

There’s great healing potential in this Full Moon. There’s great healing potential in this Venus/Pluto conjunction—massive. But it is no get out of jail free card. That’s a Monopoly reference, in case you didn’t know. There’s no quick or easy way out of this—there just isn’t, I’m afraid. It will require not blaming, pointing fingers, or obsessing on other people. It will require sitting with yourself, noticing what you’re bringing to a situation. Not as a way to blame a victim, but as a way to understand what you are getting out of your own patterns, whether it’s your patterns in thinking, your patterns in spending money, your patterns in engaging on social media or engaging in your personal relationships in any given way. 

The key here, and it’s such an important key, is that there is energy in this Full Moon chart for authentic and deep change. But if you are only seeking to change others, if you’re only kind of like a dog chasing its tail, just focusing on the story, focusing on the feelings, and you miss out on the opportunity to be interested, to be inquisitive, to look for the patterns, to understand yourself, if you miss out on that opportunity, then you won’t get as much out of this transit, which, honestly, is likely to be uncomfortable and unpleasant, regardless. So I don’t know, maybe for you it won’t be unpleasant or uncomfortable; maybe it will be delightful. Let’s hold space for that, slash, also, I got to read these damn planets, and that’s what they’re saying. 

What I want to remind you kind of inspired by Lady Gaga’s pin, which was tip of the hat to The Hunger Games, what I want to remind you is to remember who your fucking enemy is. Is it the person you disagree with? Is it the person who does it different than you? Or is it the system that holds it up? 

Don’t make an enemy of yourself. Don’t make an enemy of others, unless it is in your best interest. And, honestly, I think sometimes it’s really wise and healthy to have enemies. Some people are my enemies, and I feel really good about that. That’s fair. And also, people who you disagree with, people who you outgrow, people who you can no longer be in relationship with or you used to like what they posted, and now you don’t, they don’t need to be your enemies. You don’t need to give them that kind of energy. 

Instead of focusing your energy on things you don’t like that ultimately have no power over you or your life, strive to direct that energy towards understanding why your compulsions are driving you the way they are and to achieve some measure of healing. That’s a beautiful bit of work for you this week. 

And that brings us, my loves, to the last transit of the week. It’s Mercury Retrograde on the 30th of January. And it will remain Retrograde until the 20th of February, so it’s a pretty quick one. It’s pretty quick—thank you. So this Mercury Retrograde is occurring in the sign of Aquarius the whole way through. 

And as annoying as Mercury Retrogrades can be, and you know they can be hella annoying, because they bring up miscommunications, misunderstandings, technical problems, that kind of shit. As annoying as they can be, Mercury Retrogrades are the planets way of reminding us all that there is a time to make plans and put yourself out there and communicate, communicate, communicate, and then there’s also a time, there’s also a season for reflection, for reassessing, for catching up with your ideas, with your words and really checking in. Are they right for you? Are they true? 

Listen, Mercury Retrogrades are the time for us to reflect, so do some damn reflection. There’s more than enough to reflect on, wouldn’t you say? I mean, I cannot say this strongly enough, there’s a lot to reflect on. So know that this is a brief period. It’s a couple few weeks, and it’s a time to move a little slower through your ideas. 

I imagine this is going to be a technological problem, so if you work in commerce or communications, you’re likely to have a lot of issues. If you, I don’t know, live your whole life off of the internet, you’re likely to have some issues. But who does that these days? Am I right? So be patient. Be patient. If you think something should take 20 minutes, schedule 40—stuff like that, as much as you can. And if you can’t, then learn something about yourself. Learn about how you react to impatience and how you respond to that reaction, and let it be data that helps you to understand yourself and your life a little bit better. Why not? You know, why not? We’ll talk more about the Mercury Retrograde very soon, don’t you worry. 

My loves, I just want to thank you for tuning into yet another week of Ghost of a Podcast and for doing the work. Wherever you’re at with the work, whatever the work means to you, thanks for doing the damn work. 

As always, I invite you to send in questions to me at ghostofapodcast.com. I also encourage you to subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to it. Write me a little 5-star review if you’re in the market. And join me over at Patreon, where the conversation just goes and goes and goes. In fact, I’m doing a livestream at 12 noon, Pacific time on the 24th, this Sunday, so if you’re not already on Patreon at the Kitten’s level, join me there, and let’s talk astrology. Let’s talk 2021, why don’t we? Bye.