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.

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Welcome back to Ghost of a Podcast. This week’s question, my loves, is Just On Time. And it goes like this, “Dear Jessica, thank you for the concise knowledge you share on a weekly basis. I’m realizing my whole life is built on a lie that I’m a good person. As a child living in a countryside of France, I went through physical and emotional abuse in the home, foster care, and racism at school and any other state institution I was attending. I’m the second child of the family—the impulsive, angry one. That was met with pure criticism from adults in this, quote, spiritual community with comments like, “Do yoga; it will alleviate your nerves,” or “Ego eradication is the goal,” or, “Be patient.” But now I’m 25 and thinking how can I eradicate my ego if I don’t even have one to begin with? 

I spent most of my early adult years doing ashtanga yoga, learning about astrology, and practicing shadow work—trying not to become a narcissistic pervert like my father. Yet here I am struggling with asserting my boundaries and being disrespected on the daily. So fuck shadow work. Fuck the spiritual community. Fuck fake ass Christian colonizers and fused emotional intelligence. Fuck being a good person, and fuck all of them so called healers who sugar-coat their words to avoid telling it like it is. What’s wrong with being quick witted, impulsive, and boisterous? How do I stop giving a fuck about how these weak ass souls receive my intensity? Please keep my birth info private.”

So there’s so much going on in here—so much going on in here. And I will keep your birth info private, but I will also say you are an Aries, and any person who has the audacity to tell an Aries to be patient, doesn’t know a lot about astrology. That said, we’ll get serious in just one moment here. 

I want to unpack your question because there’s so much in it. The least of which is actually the thing that you really asked me, the only question mark in your question, but let’s go there. The first thing is saying that your life is based on the lie that you are a good person. Listen, I don’t know you like you know you—maybe you’re a terrible person; I’ll hold space for that; that’s possible. However, I don’t think that’s the case. I think that there’s a way that you are evaluating what a, quote, good person is, and that evaluation template may need some attention; it may be a little broken. 

You know, you mentioned in your question stuff about yoga and about Christian colonizer infused emotional intelligence—these are two topics I can't speak about. I’ve not really done any yoga myself; I’m not part of the yoga world. I don’t know much about Christianity, as I have evidenced on the podcast before, so, unfortunately, I don’t know exactly what you’re referring to. Whereas many people listening to this actually might know what you’re referring to, I kind of don’t. But I can say this: being a good person is a choice, and if you choose to be a good person, that doesn’t mean that you don’t think fucked up thoughts and do fucked up things. 

You are allowed to be complicated. You’re allowed to be fucked up. You’re allowed to have shit days and good days. And I want to just hold space for the chances that you being a good person is a lie seem very, very small to me—very, very small to me. And I’m not going to try to convince you of that because I don’t know you personally and also because you need to decide that. And it is easiest to make the decision—I am a good person—by doing good things. Unfortunately, it comes through doing good things. 

And the truth of the matter is, over the course of my consulting practice, I’ve had just countless people come through my office telling me with great confidence that they are good people, and then spending their hour with me reporting on all the terrible things that they do to other people and themselves. So having this idea that you’re good or idea that you’re bad, it’s an idea. And what you want to do is choose, to the best of your ability, over the course of your life, what you believe to be good actions. 

Now, that’s my take on things, and everybody’s got their own take. And clearly you have been raised in kind of a spiritual world or spiritual communities, and you have in your twenties taken on a lot of spiritual work, so you have your own point of reference. And at no point in what I say do I mean to undermine or take away from the parts of your spiritual practices that work for you. But I will say—and I think this is really, really important—when people do shitty things to you, when people treat you poorly, whether you’re a child or an adult when that happens to you, that’s on them. 

Other people being cruel, other people saying mean things, doing mean things, and that includes disregard, it includes neglect—it’s not always about terrible violence or something that would end up in a movie—regardless of what happens, when someone does something shitty to you, that shit is on them. And that doesn’t mean it doesn’t fuck up your life; it doesn’t mean it doesn’t make your life a million times harder, but people do cruel and fucked up things because there is something wrong with them. 

It makes sense—here you are at 25 years old, which may feel really old, and it’s objectively really young—I just got to say—but you’ve been doing so much work for so many years, and it’s an uphill battle, and there’s a part of you that’s like fuck all of this. And that, my dear, is a slippery slope, unfortunately. Because you do not need to live in accordance with other people’s vision of what spiritual is or good is. But to say emotional intelligence, fuck that, being a good person, fuck that—it’s not letting yourself off the hook. It’s not giving yourself peace. It’s not giving yourself joy. It’s something else, unfortunately, and that something else can, long term, cost you dearly. 

Cultivating emotional intelligence is slow work. It’s difficult work. You can do it for a decade and make very little progress—that’s real. And in your twenties and even up through your early, mid-thirties, you know, the rewards of achieving emotional intelligence, they can feel a little small. Maybe throughout the course of your life, but especially in these phases of life, they can feel small. 

That said, as we age, we need emotional intelligence. We need to be able to live in our own skin in order to age well, to have some modicum of peace or happiness, to have a life we feel good about. And so, I want to encourage you to look at what your definition of, quote, good person, or emotional intelligence is, and if you don’t like the definition of those things that have been given to you, redefine them based on your own values. 

And that brings me to something else that you’ve named here, which is the ideas and values about goodness that come from whatever yoga community you are affiliated with or have been affiliated with. These are—they don’t have monopolies on goodness. They don’t have monopolies on emotional intelligence. They are a version. They are a pathway, but not the only ones. 

For me, personally, I do not believe that anger is a problem. Anger is not a problem. If fucked up shit is happening to you, if fucked up shit is happening within you, if fucked up shit is happening in the world, a healthy response to that fucked up shit is anger. That is a healthy response. I look at the world today, and I say if you’re not angry, you are a part of the fucking problem. I want people to be angry. Anger is good. Anger is a healthy reaction to injustice and cruelty—it is. 

Frustration is a normal human emotion—it is. And so, experiencing and expressing anger, I would say, is not the problem. The problem is where you direct your anger and how you direct your anger. Being self-destructive, that’s not very helpful; it’s not a great use of your anger. Weaponizing your anger at others, in particular, at innocent people—people who are not actually the cause of your anger, yeah, that’s not super helpful. 

So in your question, you name that you’ve been like the, quote, angry one in your childhood and that you were vilified for it—that it was not okay. My take on that is that you then have to be the one to say that it is okay to experience your anger, so that you can then find a healthy way to orient in response to your anger. 

You named in your question that you were meant to eradicate your ego. You also named that you don’t feel like you have an ego. So, here, I believe that all humans have egos. We all have an ego; it’s a part of the human condition. And I’m sure there are exceptions—I’m sure there are individual exceptions where, you know, maybe even medical exceptions that I’m not aware of. But, generally speaking, humans have egos. Also, generally speaking, slash, always, humans have the planet Mars in our birth chart—the ego, anger, frustration—that’s the planet that governs all that shit. And irradicating a planet out of one’s chart is a literal impossibility. 

I am not a fan, personally, of irradicating anger. I trust my anger. I rely on my anger. I don’t always enjoy experiencing my anger; people don’t always enjoy being on the other end of my anger, but let me tell you what, anger is motivation. Anger is passion. Anger is what you need to survive fucked up shit. And because of that, I don’t want to encourage you to irradiate your ego. I don’t quite agree that you don’t have one. What you’re saying is you don’t have a healthy ego. You haven’t given yourself permission to fully develop your ego in a way that works for you and that works in your life, and that—that, my dear, is a very good goal: to develop a healthy ego. So that when you’re angry, when you’re frustrated, when you need to motivate, when you need to have boundaries with people that don’t know how to engage with your intensity or who aren’t quite a match for you, that it doesn’t feel like it’s tearing you apart. 

Now, when we go to your birth chart, I instantly look for the planet Mars in your chart to understand the role of your ego. And I understand that, as I mentioned earlier, you’re an Aries, so Mars is your ruling planet to your Sun, to your Sun sign. So in your birth chart you have a very happy, healthy Mars. You have Mars in Leo, and it’s trine to Jupiter. That’s its only natal aspect. 

What this means is that you have a resilient, passionate, urgent, intense Mars. When you are happy and well, you are boisterous. You are wild. You’re intense, and you are absolutely inclined to be impulsive, for sure, for sure, for sure. And these things aren’t bad. I mean, maybe they’re not inherently good either. They’re just qualities, and I think they’re great fun qualities, but they’re definitely not bad qualities. 

Now, if you want to look for bad qualities in this trine, it’s only that your impulsiveness can sometimes come without a lot of forethought, and it can come at the cost of other people’s comfort. And that is not because of your ego; it’s more because if you don’t believe you have a right to have fun and to be wild and to be passionate and to be intense, then you’re not going to let yourself be those things in a comfortable way. And when we repress our energies, even our healthiest, happiest energies, they come out defensive—they come out in a way that is intense. And that doesn’t mean they’re coming out wrong. It doesn’t mean they’re fucking anything up. It just means what it means. 

Now, let’s add more complexity. In your birth chart you have a Sun/Mercury conjunction in the sign of Aries, and this is, again, intense and boisterous and quick witted. It’s literally the words you used in your question accurately describe your nature and fucking lovely parts of your nature. This conjunction indicates that you understand things quickly, and you have a lot of ideas that are wrapped up in your identity, and your identity gets wrapped up in ideas. Which is part of why you’re identifying maybe the yoga community or these other spiritual communities as your community, and it’s hard to kind of think about getting out of that. 

Now, that is furthered by the fact that you have a Sun/Mercury conjunction in the eleventh house—the house of organizations—and both of those planets are squared by Neptune. The square by Neptune—this is what’s really getting you in trouble, not Mars. The square of Neptune to your Sun/Mercury conjunction in the eleventh can incline you to slipping into cultish environments, slipping into environments that do require a level of obedience or falling in line, where everyone’s the same and nothing is too loud, and nothing is too much. And that’s simply not a match for you. 

I think for you, looking at your birth chart, developing a spiritual life that supports you in finding some peace and some calm is a really wise and healthy idea, that engages your body—big yes on that one. But when those things come at the expense of your firey nature, your wildness, your intensity, it’s not a match. 

And so, in your question your exact words were, “How do I stop giving a fuck about how these weak ass souls receive my intensity?” So whether or not the souls in question are weak—and maybe I’m being too literal, but I am a Capricorn, so we are what we are—whether or not these souls are weak, what you are telling me is that you are intimately engaged with people or have people in your life from the past to now that are not compatible with you spiritually, that do not have a world view that is especially healthy for you—it doesn’t work for you. 

And whether they’re weak, or you’re intense, it’s kind of fucking irrelevant—I mean, it isn’t and it is. So the way that it’s irrelevant is once you’ve established that these people and their values, say, denounce the ego, and you say I actually want to develop a healthy relationship to my ego; I want to be big and loud and passionate—okay, cool. Now that you’ve identified this, the difficult next step is accepting it. And that is not easy: that is really hard. 

Accepting it will require you to say, “Alright, we are different.” And when we get into acceptance, it doesn’t have to be I am bad, and they are good, or they are good, and I am bad. It’s not about good and bad. Now, again, I don’t know, maybe there’s something that’s not in your question and I’m not seeing in your birth chart that is about good and bad, but really what it’s about is this shit is not compatible with you—it’s not your truth. 

And if you truly accept that, then you get to stop investing in how you feel about how they receive your intense nature. You can't stop caring. You can't stop feeling. If you give a fuck, that is not a weakness, and that’s not a bad thing. Giving a fuck about how others feel about you and how your energy impacts them is a great thing; it’s a healthy thing. 

What you want to be able to do is orient yourself, organize yourself in such a way that it doesn’t fuck your whole life up. It’s, “I care about how they feel. It feels bad that they don’t like this part of myself that I want to develop and that I want to like, and it feels bad to be in an impasse.” And instead of going to a state of value judgements against them or against yourself, to just allow things to be where they are. Which is awful. Which is hard. I don’t know anybody who’s good at this. Nobody’s good at this because it’s so hard. And so, let yourself be bad at it. Let yourself be bad at it. 

And let me add something very fucking important to this conversation, which is you are currently going through something called Pluto square to the Sun. Your Sun is at 26 degrees of Aries, and your Mercury is at 28 degrees of Aries, so in January of 2021 you entered into a Pluto square to the Sun. That is a once in a lifetime event and doesn’t happen to everyone. I imagine you started to feel this transit about three months before it hit, so you probably started to feel it in the last quarter of 2020—just in time for everything to be super chill in the world. 

Pluto square to the Sun is a deep healing crisis, and it is going to bring up your rage and your resentments and anger. This is the time to root out belief systems and attachments, habits, relationships that are unhealthy, that don’t serve you. And in order to do that you need to know who and what you are, where you begin and where you end. In other words, you need a healthy ego. 

At the same time, Pluto is conjoined to your natal Neptune in the seventh house, and so Pluto is absolutely gunning for your relationships that are netted in spiritual connection and in selfcare stuff. So this is going to be a couple few years for you where you are really deeply looking at your patterns. And I want to reiterate, when people do fucked up things, when you have an unhealthy pattern, that doesn’t mean that you’re fucked up and unhealthy. I mean, it can—sure—it absolutely can, but it doesn’t inherently mean that. 

Every single one of us have an origin story. Every one of us went through some shit because of the conditions we were raised in, whether they are cultural or they are environmental or they are health based or familial. We all go through some shit in our childhood, and then we run these programs, essentially, throughout our lives, our adult lives. This is just kind of part of being a human. And we attract people that we can work out so much of our childhood trauma with. And so, it’s not, therefore, you’re doomed, instead it’s, therefore, every interaction you have is an opportunity to choose yourself in a healthy way. 

So I am, of course—of course, I am going to encourage you to choose being a good person, whatever that means to you. I’m going to, of course, encourage you to cultivate emotional intelligence, on your terms not on terms that don’t work for you, but I am going to encourage you to do those things. 

I, personally, am a fan of perverts. I know a lot of perverts. Perversion is not inherently a bad thing. Nonconsensual perversion is a bad thing. But, again, we come down to you don’t need to not be perverted. You don’t need to not be angry. You don’t need to not be weird. You need to be healthy. What you want to strive to be is healthy and balanced in those things, to cultivate consent in your relationships, to make sure that you are acting in integrity with yourself, and that you are not causing harm to yourself or others when it can be avoided. 

Now, that brings me, my dear, to two other very important things that are happening in your birth chart, which are Neptune—Neptune. Neptune’s at the top of your chart. It’s sitting on top of your Midheaven and your natal Venus. And what this is meant to do is a couple of things. Very commonly, these transits will throw you off course; they’ll make you question everything. And if you find that your life and your relationships do not have meaning, you can experience a great deal of dissatisfaction. 

This can be a time of spiritual awakening, and, for you, it sounds like the spiritual awakening you’re having is I need a stronger ego. I need to embrace who I actually am without judgement. So that’s cool and complicated and interesting. But the other thing about these Neptune transits is they generally teach boundaries. And what’s the greatest way to learn boundaries? It’s to be in situations and relationships where you fucking need them—ha ha. 

So this is a very complicated and intense period for you—it is. And the cultivation of boundaries is the biggest part of your work. And that means you need boundaries with yourself, you need boundaries with others, you need boundaries with how you engage with your emotions and how you engage with your thoughts. Not rules, not repression—boundaries: a sense of where you begin and where you end, the limits and landscape of what is healthy for you.

And if this is still like—you’re like, “Wait, what the fuck are boundaries?” I’ve talked about it in other podcast episodes. You can also watch any number of videos or listen to podcasts or read articles about it—really go hard into different concepts around boundaries. And I think that’s the key for you—it’s finding multiple theories and approaches, and then finding what works for you. 

You do not need to subscribe monogamously to a single approach or a single ideology. I think that might get in your way. In fact, what I want to encourage you to do is as you explore, start taking notes on what resonates for you. And then when it stops resonating, give yourself permission to change your damn mind. Cultivating flexibility, it requires healthy boundaries, if you want to do it in a way that you don’t lose yourself, right. 

Now, the other thing I want to name for you, my dear, is that you have a Moon in Scorpio, making you very intense, and it’s conjunct in your birth chart your North Node. This means, for better or worse, that you have come here in this lifetime to cultivate emotional intelligence, to embody your emotions. Because it’s in the sign of Scorpio, that’s based on your values, on your terms. Often times, when we have a North Node in Scorpio or when we have a lot of planets in Scorpio, there’s a need to reject conventional values and embrace ones that are more self-appropriate for you and your healing journey. 

Now, on top of that, in 2021, Saturn is forming a square to your natal Moon off and on throughout the year. So this year is kind of—I will call it marred by this transit. Saturn square to the Moon, it brings up childhood trauma. It brings up patterns, and it does this so that you can change. 

I always think of Saturn squares as a time for pruning. You know, you go into the garden, you pull up things from the root that don’t serve you anymore, that are essentially becoming weeds and choking out other growth. Maybe you take something, and you replant it to a different part of the garden so it can do better or do different. It’s a time for evaluating what is and isn’t working—Saturn—and doing it in a way that is emotionally and psychologically self-appropriate—Moon, Moon in Scorpio. 

And within all of this, within all of this, you are not meant to stop giving a fuck. Within all of this, we see emotional intensity and emotional passion. And I want to name for you that these things are not weaknesses, and they are not bad. However, having boundaries with those things, so you are not investing in feelings and thoughts and people and situations and organizations and ideologies that cause harm, that’s the boundary that you need to have with yourself, and, eventually, you need to have with those same people and institutions and yadda, yadda, right. And it’s a practice. 

If you were meant to get it quickly, if it was meant to be easy, this shit wouldn’t last so damn long, you know. Neptune transits last almost two years. Pluto transits, each individually, last two years, and your Saturn transit is off and on throughout the course of a year. And so, there is time—there is time for you to do this work and to find yourself. 

My hope for you is that you are gentle and that you have endurance. Let’s trade out the concept of patience for endurance because this is a bit of a long road, but you actually have all the tools you need within you in order to make it through.

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Welcome back to another day in paradise. Am I right? We are going to look at the week of April 18th through the 24th of 2021. We’re going to look at what’s happening astrologically, but before I get into the horoscope, I mean, I got some shit to say. 

You know, Friday the 16th of April marked the 45th mass shooting in one month in the USA. Forty-five mass shootings in one month, in one country, while police continue to terrorize Black and Brown people in this country and provoke violence in the name of peace keeping. It’s really intense. It’s really painful and terrifying. There aren’t really words. I don’t have the words. I’m sure somebody has the words; I do not have the right words. 

I cannot believe that it needs to be said, but when cops murder unarmed people, when they terrorize Black and Brown children and adults, protests and violence are inevitable. It’s not the fault of the people with boots on their neck for fighting back; it’s the fault of the system that is empowered to terrorize a population to begin with. 

Because you live in the world, because you fuck with astrology, we know that change is coming, right. What we don’t know is what kind of change, and we don’t know what the cost will be. So there’s two astrological perspectives that I want to share around some of this stuff. There’s a lot more to say from an astrological viewpoint, and I will continue to unpack and explore this, but the first thing I want to name is that the kind of revolutionary times that we are living in and the violent times that we are living in is absolutely connected to the Pluto Return of the USA. 

And if you don’t have any sense of what that means, the planet Pluto takes almost 250 years to move through all the zodiacal degrees, so the last time that Pluto was in Capricorn was around 250ish years ago. These here United States of America, our Constitution was created close to that amount of time ago, and so what we are going to experience, and what we are experiencing now is Pluto returning to the exact degree that it was at the time that the Constitution was ratified or that the Constitution was created. 

So the Pluto Return is a really, intense, profound transit that we have never gone through before because this is a young country. We have never gone through his before, and I’m not going to get too deep into it here today because I do want to focus on your horoscope, but I do want to kind of share this perspective. When we’re talking about Pluto, whether we’re talking about it in your birth chart, we’re talking about it as a transit to your birth chart, or we’re talking about it in the context of events in the world, like, for instance, the Pluto Return of the United States of America, what Pluto’s action is, what Pluto’s force and energy is is it is one of transformation, creation, and destruction. 

But Pluto will only transform and reform that which has value. So when something is rotten at its core, when something has outlived its purpose, when something is not authentic and true, Pluto will not reform it. It will not change it. It will destroy it. So reform and change and destruction and creation, they are all forms of transformation, but they’re different. And when we want to understand transiting Pluto’s function, what we need to understand is the kind of center and foundation of that thing that Pluto is trying to transform. 

And, from my perspective, the police in the United States of America can't be reformed. They can't be reformed because their foundation is rotten to its core. So it’s time to meaningfully defund or abolish the system of policing that we have, which is intrinsically a violent, white supremacist organization. 

You might hold different beliefs. You may see the same data and organize it differently than me. I think it’s really important if you are on the fence or really uncertain to do research, to do research about what police abolition actually means, what it doesn’t, what defunding the police actually means and what it doesn’t, and to look at the facts of whether or not police in America keep people safe, and which people are they keeping safe? I’m not going to go deep and hard into this topic because I’m not an expert in it, so I just want to encourage you to really be with that, sit with that, do research into that because this is happening. 

Now, there’s something else happening astrologically that I think is really worth me reminding you of because I have talked about it on the podcast and elsewhere before. It’s happening at the same time as we are in this phase of development of the Pluto Return—while we’re under the influence of the Pluto Return, and that is Saturn’s transit through the sign of Aquarius. 

So Saturn, very different than Pluto, takes about 29 years to move through the zodiac. So what the Moon can achieve in a day, Pluto will take 250 years to do, and Saturn will take 29 years to do—oh, astrology. So what we have here is Saturn has moved into Aquarius as of March 21st of 2020. It was there until July 1st of 2020, and then it came back at the very end of 2020, and we are in this transit of Saturn in Aquarius until the spring of 2023. So we got a couple of years here, okay. 

And I want to just remind you, just these very broad strokes about the historical significance and patterning of Saturn in Aquarius. So the last time Saturn was in Aquarius was 1991 through 1993. And the time before that was ’62 through ’64. Now, in 1962 through ’64, that was the time of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. This was the time when Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his, “I have a dream” speech. It was also a time when anti-apartheid revolutionary Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life in prison. Now, 30 years later, during the next Saturn in Aquarius transit, Mandela was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Major changes happened over the course of that 29/30 year cycle to change society in such a way that Mandela was not only regarded by a different lens but treated in a radically different way. 

Now, in 1991 through 1993, that period, a lot of things happened, but on this topic, the violent beating of Rodney King by police officers in Los Angeles was recorded, and there was a subsequent uprising against police brutality. 

Here we are, again, in 2020—yet another time when the police were violent and brutalized a Black person, and it was caught on film, and there was a subsequent uprising. And here’s where the difference lies: time—that is a big difference. This is happening again, but it’s not just that. It's now everybody has a camera. Everybody has a camera. This is a very different world in terms of the role of technology and how it can be instrumental or used against us for issues of social justice and for bringing individual police to account for their conduct and their racism and their violence. But also, overall bringing the system of policing to account. 

Again, these are a massive topics I’m like barely touching on, but I want to just say the time for activism is now. The time for people coming together to speak out against oppressive and violent systems is now. It’s now. And when I say it’s now, I mean Saturn in Aquarius—mobilizing, coming together, working for a more humanistic and just result. This is a very fertile time for that. 

And, in particular, if you are white, or especially if you are white and you have class privilege, or you have a big following, this is your time. This is your time to use your power and use your voice to speak up and speak out against injustice and to take active steps to do whatever is within your power to do to create the reform we need to see in this system. Because while social justice movements are likely to get stronger and louder at this time, so is the backlash—always, so is the backlash. 

So, I don’t know, fuck white supremacy. White supremacy and racism and ableism and transphobia and homophobia and classism, xenophobia—these things, these things, they are alive in all of us because the system that we were all raised in reflects these things. 

It is okay to be struggling. It is great to evolve as you learn more. It is great to be like, “Oh, fuck. I thought I could trust the police, and now I’m seeing evidence, evidence, evidence, and maybe I’m a little late to the party, but I realize I cannot trust the police. They are an intrinsically violent system that does not serve the people.” Okay, cool. Cool. It doesn’t matter when you get here, just get here. And when you get here, fall in line. Fall in line behind activists who have been educating and working in any number of ways to advance these issues. 

And listen, you know, we’re talking about Pluto. We’re talking about Pluto because we’re talking about the Pluto Return. We’re talking about the shame of this nation, which is slavery and genocide of indigenous peoples and the ongoing xenophobic and racist values of this melting pot of a country. But we’re also talking about Pluto because this past week was deeply influenced by Pluto, and we still have the influence as I speak this on Sunday the 18th of April—we still have the influence of Mercury square to Pluto. All last week was heavily influenced by Pluto.

And I want to just encourage you to as much as possible, to the best of your ability, to confront your feelings, to be with your feelings, to not abandon your feelings and thoughts. Because it is in that way and only in that way that true, sustained healing is achieved. It’s staying with it, as fucked up and shitty as that might feel. So wherever you’re at, stay with it. Stay with yourself. 

And if you choose to abandon yourself, if you just need to fucking check out, that’s fine. Just know what you’re doing so that you can return to yourself. It’s hard to return to yourself when you’re in denial about the fact that you’ve abandoned yourself to begin with. 

There’s none amongst us that are perfect. There are none amongst us that always find the right words and that always feel perfectly clear and that are safe in a dangerous or violent world. But, really, at the end of the day, how you choose to cope, the person you choose to be, that’s defining. And I want to encourage you today, to the best of your ability, to choose to be a person who gives a shit and who acts like you give a shit. It’s a lot. There it is. 

Now we look at the week of, like I said, April 18th through the 24th of 2021. And this is a week of conjunctions. So if you are an astrology student, and you’ve had the chance to get a sense of oh, look, these are squares; these are sextiles, now you get to see a week of conjunction energy. 

So in astrology a conjunction is when two or more planets are sitting conjunct each other—right on top of each other. When we look at conjunctions, what we are looking at is the energetics of the planets involved getting merged, essentially. And sometimes that merging is fortifying and strengthening, and sometimes it’s obscuring and distracting. It depends on a myriad of things, a myriad. 

So the week starts off with a Sun conjunction to Mercury, which is exact on the 18th. Now, we are still going to be feeling the effects of the Mercury square to Pluto, which will definitely influence the vibes of the Sun conjunction to Mercury. 

So if you need a refresher about the Mercury square to Pluto, you might want to read the transcript from last week’s episode or listen to the episode again. And transcripts are always available for free on my website; you can go to lovelanyadoo.com/transcripts. 

Okay, so Sun conjunction to Mercury. This transit, it can kind of go either way. Sun conjunction to Mercury can be a time where you just feel really chatty, where you want to connect with friends, and you do—you organically, easily talk to people, and there’s a kind of engaging and livening exchange of ideas, and it’s lovely. That’s one way for this transit to go. And when it goes in that direction, it's great for friendship, it’s great for communication and for listening and for feeling like your identity—the Sun—is validated by people’s understanding of you or ideas exchanged—Mercury. This can be a beautiful thing. It’s validating. It’s affirming. 

Now, the downside of this conjunction, and I shall pull back to acknowledge this is how conjunctions get complicated because they’re not, quote, easy transits or hard transits, but they are a lot. And whenever there’s a transit happening that is a lot, we end up having ish, you know. 

So the downside of the Sun conjunction to Mercury can be that you cannot see beyond your perspective, that your ideas are so wound up in your identity or your identity is so wound up in your ideas that you don’t listen, and that if somebody disagrees with you, you take it very fucking personally. Sometimes when people disagree with us it’s because they disagree with us, and they see things differently. And there’s a great deal of wisdom and maturity in being able to be in disagreement with other people. 

Now, of course, when our disagreements are rooted in disrespect, that is a whole other conversation, and that is not specifically what I’m referencing during the Sun conjunction to Mercury. On its own, it is not about respect or oppression or anything like that. 

Because Mercury square to Pluto will also be felt on the 18th and 19th, we have a little bit of an ish here because we may actually have really toxic ideas being merged to identities. And in that case, you may need to use your voice, whether that’s written or verbal, in order to be heard or to stand up for something you truly do believe in. If you were thinking hey, I haven’t emailed or written or called my elected official recently, this is a great time to get into it, like a fucking great time. Sun conjunction to Mercury is a great time to say what needs to be said—truly. 

And if you don’t know what needs to be said, this is a great time for reading, listening, learning—Mercury. And to let it change you. It is a fucking beautiful thing when our ideas evolve our identity, when we learn something, and it provokes change. Because when we change, especially in the direction of what is authentic and what is whole, it’s an expansion, right. So this conjunction may really be provocative, and you might not notice it too much. But I’m kind of expecting this one to be pretty provocative, so pay attention; let’s see what happens. 

Now, on the 19th, we enter into Taurus season. The Sun and Mercury move into the earth sign of Taurus. So, you know me, I don’t usually talk about the solar seasons that much because I feel like it’s the most talked about thing in astrology and eh, eh, eh. But for this particular shift in seasons, I do think it deserves some words. Because, first of all, we have gone from a very Aries vibe, very firey, very giddy up and go kind of energy to the Sun and Mercury moving into Taurus, and on the same day, we have the Moon moving into Leo, actually. It’s late in the day, but regardless, we have the Moon moving into Leo, so it’s a lot of fixed energy. 

So it’s kind of like the car is driving fast, and then all of a sudden, the speed limit changes—things slow down. And the thing to keep in mind about Taurus is that its ruling planet is diplomatic Venus, right. So Taurus craves security. Taurus craves a sense of stability, right. It’s an earth sign governed by diplomatic Venus. And so, it can be a time where it becomes that much harder to bare the unpredictability and the stress of this period of time or of your life in general. 

And so, what you want to do as much as possible is find ways of aligning yourself with pleasure. Now, I don’t mean as a way to disassociate from the things that need to be done and from what is truly important, but I mean as a form of self-care, as a way to stay embodied. Sun and Mercury in Taurus, I mean, this can be very sensually, viscerally validating. I want to encourage you to align yourself with life affirming pleasure as opposed to pleasure at the cost of your wellness or the wellness of others, right. To really go deep and hard into those Taurean themes of sensual presence. 

Another thing worth naming is that Mercury in Taurus is a little bit stubborn, and it can be stubborn and diplomatic at the same time, which you might be thinking how can it be stubborn and diplomatic? Well, it can mean not wanting to say something because you’re scared of what other people will think. And so, this can be a very difficult transit in that regard of like being direct and forthcoming, and, honestly, it’s about being honest. But in particular because of all that is happening in the big picture, it can be a very difficult time because you may be in a position where you just don’t want to rock the boat because the boat is already so Goddamn rocky. And that’s a call for you to make. That’s all I can say—it’s a call for you to make. 

You know, one thing I have learned as an astrologer—also as a living person—is that life is just a series of actions and consequences, choices and repercussions. And if you can, to the best of your ability, align yourself with actions that are most likely to bring about the repercussions that you believe to be right, life gets better. And that doesn’t mean you have a life that is without negative repercussions or negative consequences or difficult consequences—that’s not going to happen for any of us. But what it does mean is that if you’re going to go through a struggle, at least that struggle feels like it is helping you to grow and be more whole. And that shit is worth it, you know. If you’re going to suffer, you might as well suffer for something. Okay, that was a very Capricorn statement, but I stand by it. I stand by it. 

Now, on the 22nd, we have another conjunction. It is a conjunction from Venus to Uranus. So, again, Venus and Uranus are in Taurus. We got a butt ton of Taurus. Why a butt ton? I don’t know. We have a butt ton of planets in the sign of Taurus at this time. It’s a lot, and it can feel a little bit heavy, especially if you’re not comfortable with fixed energy. 

Now, Venus conjunction to Uranus in the sign of Taurus can be delicious. Let’s start with that. The way that it can be delicious is that it can be a time where you find new ways of engaging in sensual delights. That can be anything from wearing something in the back of your closet that you once thought was ridiculous looking, and now you’re like OMG, I am divine. It might be that you flirt with somebody, and it’s just a really like sparky, sparkly kind of vibe. 

It can be a time where something happens in your personal life around the way you look, around your experience and expression of gender, around relationships, or even around your personal finances that surprises you. And within that surprise may be delight. Wouldn’t that be lovely? Yes, it would. Yes, it would. It would be lovely. So that’s one of the many things that can happen under a Venus conjunction to Uranus. Delightful surprises that are sensually uplifting and interpersonally engaging, that reflect your values or allow you to experience your value or the value in others in a way that is, again, surprising. And the kind of function of being surprised when it comes to Uranus is that it is enlivening. We like that. That’s good. 

On a more social level, this can go any number of ways because, again, we are talking—when we’re looking at Venus conjunction to Uranus, we often see issues of the rights and roles of women and femmes in society. So I personally do not regard Venus as being specifically about girls and women; however, when we’re using mundane astrology and we’re looking at what is likely to happen in the world, we want to look towards females and femmes, basically, and we want to understand that the role of women in society, there could be some sort of a spark, some sort of a change, and that can be for better or worse. That can be at the behest of women and femmes, and it can be at the expense of women and femmes. TBD. What do they say? Hindsight will be 2020. 

So that all said, Venus conjunction to Uranus is a great time for experimenting and playing around any Venusian themes—so beauty, romance, interpersonal dynamic, finances. 

However, it’s not a good time for making commitments, for trying to create stability and security. So we enter into Taurus season, a season that is so oriented towards security and stability and predictability, and instantly, we have two—and I haven’t gotten to the second one—two conjunctions to Uranus, which is literally all about instability and insecurity. So this is a little bit of a tremor time, and—I mean, right, sure, no problem, no problem. 

But, here we go, what is likely to happen under this influence this week is your nervous system may just be like, “Holy shit, no. I cannot anymore.” And so, I want to just take a moment to acknowledge that first of all. And second of all, encourage you to respect the limits of your nervous system. That might mean a little less caffeine in your diet this week, a little less stimulants. That might mean turning off social media, putting your shit on airplane mode, so it’s not just about not engaging with social media, it’s also about not getting the fucking vibes of the internet in your brains as much as possible from a device, right. It might look any number of ways. You might be called to participate in matters of social justice. 

But Uranus is unpredictable, and it’s not always sustainable—the things that we do under the influence of Uranus. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it isn’t. And it’s about being present in the present without attachment to the future. 

And there are two planets, in my view, that are really oriented towards nonattachment to the future. And Neptune is the first one I think of in that regard, and it is really about nonattachment in a spiritual sense. But Uranus is also about nonattachment to the future, but it’s less spiritual, and it’s more about the present is what we have—stay in the present. Don’t be attached to what comes next because you can't know what comes next. So it’s more of a heady concept. 

Uranus is very much about our nervous system, and it’s about the way our mind fires off ideas. And you want to pay attention to those themes inside of you, especially interpersonally this week, okay, and especially around the 22nd. 

Now, on the 23rd, Mercury meets Uranus in the sky. So Mercury and Venus are always real pretty close to each other; they’re not always conjunct, but they’re always quite close to each other. And it’s no surprise that Mercury is conjunct to Uranus the next damn day. So Mercury conjunction to Uranus is anxiety provoking. Let me just be direct about it. 

Mercury and Uranus are the two planets we look to to get information about your mind, right. So when they meet in the sky, it can be very damn zingy. There is likely to be news that is surprising on and around this date. There maybe reporting that is published before it’s been fully vetted. You might not exactly get the full truth on this date, and that’s not because people are lying, necessarily. Mercury conjunction to Uranus is not really about lying; it’s about jumping to conclusions. It’s about rushing to speak something before you fully understand it. 

Mercury conjunction to Uranus can be a time where you say shit you did not mean to say, or you say it in a way you didn’t mean to say it, or you hear things really differently than they were intended. So there’s like a real left field—coming from left field kind of situation that can happen under this influence. And, again, it can strain the nervous system. It can make you feel anxious and distracted or distractable. It can find you jumping to conclusions, and because of the next transit I will tell you about, they are likely to be negative conclusions. 

So when we look at Mercury conjunction to Uranus, the positive potential of this transit is being open to seeing things radically differently, being exposed to new forms of information, new kinds of information, and being able to really like get it, being able to say things in new ways. If you’re a writer, and you’re like dealing with writer’s block, this is a fucking great transit. 

I guess, similarly, if you’re an artist of any kind, that Venus Conjunction to Uranus is a great transit, or it can be because it kind of opens up new pathways, which is really exciting and what we need when we’re blocked. 

So Mercury conjunction to Uranus can be a time where things really open up, and you understand new things; you talk to people in a new way, or you connect or reconnect with people in a new way, which is awesome. Be interested in your impulses. Be interested in your mental impulses, be interested in your assumptions, and be interested in the speed with which you wish to respond to things. 

I know—I know that there can be something that happens in the world, and you need time to process your thoughts and your feelings about it, to formulate what you need to say, what you want to say, if anything. And in that time that it might take you, many other people might have already figured that out, and they might already be speaking on a thing. It’s okay to find your own pace. 

Mercury conjunction to Uranus speeds things up. And so, if your response to feeling kind of rushed is to slow down and dig in your heels in classic Taurean fashion, then this might really provoke a lot of stress for you. So Mercury is related to breath. So I want to encourage you to remember to breathe—just breathe, that’s all. It’s a pretty helpful human function that a lot of us forget to engage with. 

Don’t forget in times of stress to use your selfcare toolkit, to remember to take care of yourself is an important part of developing spiritual and psychological selfcare, right? I know that sounds super basic, but in my experience as a person and also my experience in counseling people, it’s the first thing that goes out the window—we forget that we have resources and that we can choose to use them when we really actually need them. So don’t wait until you’re on the floor to ask for help if you need help. 

And that brings us to the last transit of the week, and that’s Venus square to Saturn, and that’s on the 24th. Now, it shouldn’t surprise you that Venus is forming a square to Saturn because, as you know if you listen to this podcast, we have a Saturn/Uranus square all damn year long, and so any planet that sits on top of Uranus is going to very quickly thereafter form a 90-degree angle, aka a square to Saturn—that’s just what’s going to happen. 

And because you know this, you know that next week’s horoscope is going to include a Mercury square to Saturn. Not to give you a spoiler, but come on, you know that because if Mercury and Venus are so closely connected that they’re both conjoining Uranus, then inevitably, Mercury is going to form a square to Saturn, and we’ll get into it in depth next week. 

But I will say that you are going to be feeling the effects of the Mercury square to Saturn on the 24th even though it’s not exact until the 25th. You are going to be feeling the effects of Venus square to Saturn throughout the week, honestly. As soon as it hits the conjunction to Uranus, you’re going to be feeling it. Again, this is a heavy time. 

So Venus square to Saturn is a test of your values. I mean, there’s no other way to put it—it is a test of your damn values. It tests not just what you care about but how you mobilize and act, how you orient around what it is that you value. And if your actions don’t reflect your values, you may have a really shitty day on this day. 

Venus square to Saturn on a really personal level can bring up loneliness; it can bring up self-esteem issues, feeling like other people are prettier than you or have more security than you or have more love than you or more money than you, and therefore, bad vibe, bad vibe, bad vibe. That’s kind of classic of this transit. 

Venus square to Saturn brings up loneliness—it exacerbates loneliness. And who amongst us doesn’t feel lonely? I don’t know. I think everybody feels lonely. I think the human condition is a pretty lonely one in some regards. This period that we’ve been in in the context of COVID is very lonely for most people—I would probably say for everybody at least some of the time. Venus square to Saturn is a time that will exacerbate that. It’s not for nothing. It’s not because we’re trying to be punished by a planet, obvi; it serves this other function. And that function is to show us what counts and what matters. 

So you may respond to this transit by seeking attention. I’m not mad at that—you can seek attention. But don’t confuse attention with love. They’re different. Care and attention are not the same things. So I want to encourage you, if you can and if it feels appropriate, to share some care and some love and some kindness with the people in your life that deserve it, and know that no matter what it looks like a person is doing online, everybody’s going through it right now. I mean, I guess some people aren’t. I don’t know. But I’m going to say most people are going through some shit right now, so be kind, show up if you can. 

And if you can't, really make sure that the people that you’re reaching out to you’re not reaching out to them just for attention or validation, but instead because you genuinely care for them and you genuinely believe in the value of your relationship, the value of your connection, the value of them. 

Venus square to Saturn can bring up relationship problems. It’s actually a really great time to deal with financial problems, to like consciously deal with them, you know. If you have to organize the shit you own—I’m talking about the stuff in your kitchen, the stuff in your closet, whatever it is—this is actually a great time to do it because it’s one of those things where if it’s going to be a painful time no matter what, you might as well do something productive and useful with that pain. And going through your shit is a great way of doing that. 

When I say going through your shit, of course, this could be going through your interpersonal shit, going through your self-esteem shit, going through your relationship to beauty shit. 

And on that tip, may I say, if you’re following a bunch of people so that you can feel bad about yourself and you can compare the way you look, the way you dress, your lifestyle, your finances to theirs, and you do it as a form of, essentially, self-harm that you maybe call inspiration, but really, it’s just self-harm, honey, unfollow. Mute a bitch. Unfollow a bitch. And don’t do it because you’re mad at them, necessarily, but do it as a form of self-care if that’s where you land this week. 

Venus square to Saturn, it really is triggering this larger issue that Uranus in Taurus provokes, and the Saturn/Uranus square is really kind of hammering in, which is this issue of who has value in our society, and how do we express and protect that value? Who doesn’t? How do we express their lack of value, right? This is a very important series of questions, especially in the context of what is happening in this country, in the US right now and also globally in many countries. 

Awareness and acceptance are foundational to reform, transformation, and healing. It is very fucking hard, if it’s even possible at all, to reform and heal something that you haven’t acknowledged and accepted. So awareness is an important step towards healing. And this Venus square to Saturn, all of the transits of this week may be a time where you become more aware of something. It may be a time you get distracted and thrown off course, TBH, but it also might be a time where you become more aware. And that can be a very painful or uncomfortable process, but it’s also a very necessary process. 

Now, it may also be a time where you decide you know what? I’ve been working my balls off. I’ve been having a very hard time, and I need to center self-care in a different way. I need to tend to my nervous system. I need to create more space in my life for pleasure and for presence. And if that’s that case, I want to say go for it, my loves, go for it because all this Taurean energy will support you in doing that if that is authentic to you, if that is the right thing to do. 

So that’s a lot. That’s a lot. I’m going to run through all of the transits of the week again. Watch me go. On the 18th, the Sun forms a conjunction to Mercury, both in Aries. And then on the 19th, those two planets move into the sign of Taurus. On the 22nd, Venus forms an exact conjunction to Uranus, and then the 23rd, Mercury forms an exact conjunction to Uranus as well. And then on the 24th, we have a Venus square Saturn with a little bit of Mercury square Saturn on the side. That’s what’s happening in the stars this week. We have the backdrop of that Saturn/Uranus square at play. 

My loves, as always, I want to thank you for joining me here at Ghost of a Podcast. The conversation continues on Patreon. You can follow me there at patreon.com/jessicalanyadoo. 

This is a crazy time to be alive. It’s a weird fucking time to be alive, but it’s also so special. You’re alive now. You’re here now. And this is a unique time in human development. This is a unique time in history. What’s your role to play? How do you want to engage? No matter what you do, you’re a part of what’s happening in the world right now. Find your place. This Taurus season I want to remind you that you are here for a reason. Your body, your meat suit, it’s your chariot; it’s the boat you’re in for a reason. Embrace your meat suit. Embrace this life so that you can bring greater value to the world around you. Talk to you later. Bye.