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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My dear, dear loves, welcome back to Ghost of a Podcast. This week we have a little bit of a different kind of question than I’ve answered in a quite some time. And it goes like this, “Hi, Jessica. I’m curious about contacting someone who has passed. But my fear is that it might somehow trap them here and prevent their spirit from going to heaven or wherever it is that spirits are supposed to go. I would really love to hear your perspective on this. Please keep my name and birth info private. Thank you. Sincerely, A Curious Libra.”

So this is a really great question, and it’s something that I have touched on probably more than a year ago on the podcast but felt like maybe worth revisiting today. So I’m a medium, which means I have the ability to communicate with the dead, and it’s something I’ve been doing for many, many years. 

But I will say, before I say anything else, that nobody who is alive knows what happens when we die, right. There are a lot of theories and a lot of different religions and spiritual practitioners, like myself and very different from myself, have different theories about what happens. And, truly, there’s only one way to find out—it’s to not be alive anymore, right. 

I want to just acknowledge that one of the great mysteries of being in a meat suit, any kind of meat suit that you have, is not knowing what happens when you die, as you die, and after you die. And there is no real way around that. And so, while I have experiences as a medium with many, many clients over the course of many, many years that give me a great deal of confidence in my perspective, there are many people who have different experiences that give them equal confidence in what they believe to be true about what happens in the afterlife. You just can't know. You just can't know. 

And so, that is my kind of like preamble to answering with great confidence this question because I do have like evidential experience as a medium. So put that in your pipe, smoke it or don’t. 

One last thing that I’ll say about this is, me, personally, I don’t believe in heaven or in hell. And I’m going to explain why in a moment, but before I do, I want to say if you believe in these things, that is a beautiful thing or maybe a terrifying thing, depending on what you think about hell, I guess. But I don’t want to contradict your beliefs. I know that a lot of times people feel very threatened when somebody disagrees with them on spiritual issues or, basically, any issue, but I think it’s really valuable to be able to hear differing opinions and just be like oh, yeah. I don’t agree with that, or I don’t know what I think, or yes, yes, I agree. Okay, that’s my damn preamble. 

So why I don’t believe in heaven and hell? Well, first of all, I have never connected with anyone who is in spirit who has reported a location. So the concept of heaven and hell is a concept of a physical location or a physical, slash, spiritual location, and from my experience, there is no there there. When we leave the meat suit, we don’t just leave the physical body; we leave the material condition. And when we leave the material condition, we are no longer in a state of location, which means we are no longer in a state of time. 

So once we take away time and we take away location or physicality, it’s very conceptual and hard to understand, which can make it hard to accept. The concepts of heaven and hell are really helpful in that they are conceivable—like this idea that this person that I love who’s since passed is in a safe and joyful location. It’s soothing. It’s also, in my view, a great way to control a populous, to talk about like, well, if you’re a shitty person, you’re going to go to a shitty place, and it’s going to be way worse than trying to make yourself right here. 

So heaven and hell, to me, are just really very human concepts. And when we are no longer in the body, we are no longer in the human condition. The human condition is essentially a physical condition. So let me start there. 

Next, I want to address this question that you have around being scared of trapping someone by talking to them or connecting with them. This gets into a little bit more of a gray area because on the one hand, I want to say to you it’s not possible to trap a loved one who is in spirit by thinking about them, caring about them, or connecting with them, talking to them, right. On the one hand, I just really don’t think that’s possible. You are not that powerful. You cannot control the spiritual world because you love someone, because you miss someone, because you’re speaking to someone. On the one hand that’s true. 

On the other hand, I certainly have seen kind of like co-dependent, symbiotic dynamics between the living and the dead, where the living are trapped in grief and that is how they know how to stay connected to their lost loved ones, and the person in spirit chooses to stick around, for whatever reason. Whether that’s a healthy choice or not a healthy choice, they choose to stick around with the living. 

Now, I don’t think that’s something you need to fear, especially if the question is I want to connect to my lost loved one. Now, from my perspective as a medium, I want to assure you that the dead hear you just fine. You never need a medium, you know, somebody like me who can communicate with the dead, you never need a medium to have them hear you. You may need help hearing them, and you may not. You may need help trusting that what you hear is them. You may not. But they hear you just fine. 

So if you have lost someone, if you have somebody who’s in spirit, and you want them to know something, just talk to them. And talking to them can be physically out loud, like I am talking to you right now, but it doesn’t have to be. You just need to direct your feelings and thoughts as clearly as possible in a direction, and they will hear you. Because the condition of separation, of duality, it’s a human condition. And when we are no longer in the meat suit, we are more wholly connected. In other words, the spirit worlds doesn’t have such a hard time tapping in. 

So in regards to your question, I want to just assure you that you are very unlikely to trap someone in spirit or prevent them from evolving in whatever way they intend to or are ready to evolve—that’s just not realistic. If an individual has an intention to do a thing, they’ll do it. They’ll do it. 

So this brings me to the larger, kind of slightly unspoken part of your question, which is what happens when we die? From my perspective, it’s not just one thing, just like what happens when we live isn’t just one thing. In my experience, generally speaking, after a person passes there is kind of a transition phase. I think of it as a cocoon phase, where a person is not super available to connect with the land of living, and they are in a state of really just like introspection and being really kind of self-protective, where there’s not a lot of action or forward motion. I have seen many people not jump into that phase. 

Now, I want to say, this has nothing to do with purgatory. I think that’s a Christian concept, purgatory. I watch a lot of sci-fi, so I know a lot about purgatory that may or may or not be factual from the bible. That said, this is not purgatory. What this is is more of a kind of introspective, self-protective, internal transition. 

Now, what’s important to understand is that because there is no time outside of the body, while we experience time, while we experience oh, this person has been in this state for six months or for six weeks or six days, they’re not experiencing time in the same way we are. 

On its own, that might sound really hard to accept, but if you think of ladybugs, if you think of spiders, if you think of dogs, or you think of hummingbirds, they all experience time completely differently than humans. When you remember being a seven-year-old, your experience of time was radically different than it’s going to be in your adult years, in your twenties and thirties. And then as you age, time seems to speed up, right. 

And so, time is very interpretive and relative. And it has a lot to do with how you feel in your body and the sense of control and all kinds of other things that occur. When you’re waiting, time crawls; when you’re having fun, it speeds up. Time is relative. And I say this as a time obsessed Capricorn astrologer. But when we are no longer in a body, we are not resonating with time. That’s not where we’re at anymore. 

So, first of all, we spend an indeterminate amount of time, if time is even relevant in this conversation, kind of in a state of recovery and self-connection, like re-connecting to the self. And then, on the one hand, I really don’t know what happens next because, again, I’ve never died, or not in this lifetime I’ve never died. 

So that said, my experience in communicating with the dead is, again, it varies. So, many people who have crossed over, who’ve passed on will still resonate with their personalities; they will stick around out of curiosity, adventure, love, resentment—any number of things. And, you know, unfinished business—any number of things really. 

When we die, the conditions of the body die with us. This is an important thing. Any kind of illness, physical illness, mental illness, if it’s a condition of the body, it dies with us, in my experience. Conditions of the nature, the emotional nature, the spiritual nature, even the psychological nature, they don’t die with us; they are part of us. And that’s a really fascinating thing for me to have seen over the course of time is how many people who’ve been dead for any number of time are very much themselves. 

I think it’s very important for me to acknowledge that yes, we die—one hundred percent we die, and dying is all kinds of things. But we don’t actually really die. Our bodies die. This life dies, yes, but we exist after we die. And I don’t know that we exist as our personalities for very long in the grand scheme of time, but we stay—your Soul, your central self, that doesn’t die. It does not die. 

And this is part of what motivates me as an individual and as a practitioner to help people to cultivate self-acceptance. Because when you’re right with your Soul, when you’re right with yourself, when you can not just tolerate but when you can actually embrace what you are beyond what you do, dying is easier, what comes next is easier—like a lot easier. 

And also, if you can't do that, if you don’t do that in this lifetime, that’s okay. There’s lots of energy and space and opportunity to evolve at all stages of development, whether in the body or out of the body, whether now or later. Whether something’s harder or easier in the kind of like micro, in the felt experience is deeply important. When we get really spiritual and we pull back, it’s in some ways less important. How ever you get there is how you get there. 

Now, that’s a very spiritual thing to say and not a very psychological thing to say. Personally, me, not a fan of suffering—not a fan of suffering. So I want to just be really clear that the more work you can do on self-acceptance and selflove, the easier all phases of development are, whether embodied or in death. 

Now, I’m really lucky in that I’ve been doing mediumship work with clients for so many years that I’ve had the opportunity to see many spirits evolve. And what happens, in my experience, when a spirit evolves is it feels like, to me and to those who are bereaved, those who are still here and have loved ones that are lost, it feels like they’re further away, like you can't access them anymore, like it’s hard to recognize them. And that is not because they’ve, quote, left; it’s because they are in a greater state of wholeness. 

As we become more spiritually whole, we are less recognizable as human people, and we’re less recognizable with our personality markers. It’s almost like looking at the sun. When I look at the sun, all I see is this bright orb of light. I can't see the sun itself. I can't see that heavenly body, as it were. I can't see any of the things that are on it or of it, other than the brightness of the light. And that’s a lot like what happens, from my perspective, trying to connect with people who have spiritually really evolved. It’s hard to tap into them. It’s hard to connect with them because they are so bright and so whole. And while that is difficult for the bereaved, it is such a beautiful thing. As a medium when I encounter it, it is such a beautiful thing. 

If you are connecting with a lost loved one and that’s not what’s happening for them, don’t worry. Do not worry because there is no such thing as time in the spirit world. So if a spirit is saying. “I want to be here for family five generations ahead of me,” they’re not wasting their time. They’re not suffering. That’s okay. 

On the topic of suffering, if we do suffer in the spirit world, that’s also okay. It is not the job or even the right of the living to identify and heal the issues of the dead. When we’re in spirit and we have need for evolution, need for growth, need for healing, then identifying that need and responding to it is our own gift that we give to ourselves. 

So a very common question I get from living people is what can I do for my lost loved one? And very infrequently—I’ve almost never heard any dead person say, “I want you to do x.” The most common things that I hear people in spirit say is, “Hey, listen. Chill out. Take care of yourself,” or, “Please, when you connect with me, go to this tree,” or, “Do this kind of like spiritual act or this ritual,” essentially. Dead people have absolutely said that, but I don’t know that that’s for them as much as it is for you. Because the more lightly you are able to hold your love, your grief, your intention around connecting with them and reaching out to them, the more graceful that connection is, the easier that connection is, and the lighter the load on you. And if the people who have passed away love you, they don’t want you to suffer—of course not. 

Now, one more thing that I want to say. I just want to say something about COVID. You know, it’s been around for just over a year, and we have over three million COVID related deaths worldwide. And in the US, according to CNN, we’re at over 571 thousand deaths from COVID. This is just a massive amount of death. It is a massive amount of death that has touched a massive amount of the global population and, certainly here, the domestic population. 

Something that’s particularly scary about COVID is that you die alone: you have to be isolated, so that you don’t get everyone around you sick. And even if you’re in a hospital with people around you, those are not your people, and they’re masked. They are protected with PPE. So it’s a bit of a scary death. 

And I want to acknowledge that the kind of like morphic field of that, the global weight of that, it’s really heavy. It’s really heavy. And so, if you are a medium, whether you’re practicing or not, if you are an energetically sensitive person, you are likely to be feeling the weight of it and have been for a year plus now. That is going to kind color a lot of things. 

If you yourself have lost someone that you love, whether from COVID or not, in this period of time, the morphic field of grief is so strong that depending on how it lands inside of you, that might make your grief harder to bear or easier to bear because so many others are grieving with you. 

The issue of grief and bereavement is a radically different issue than death and what happens after we die. And it’s very tempting to conflate the two. The suffering that grieving produces is so great. And as I’ve said before, and I’ll say again, it is the shit side of love. It really is the shit side of love. 

But, from my experience connecting with dead people, it’s not the same as being dead. Being dead is not the same as being bereaved. And it’s important to not conflate these two conditions if possible. In other words, don’t project your feelings, no matter how severe, onto the dead. Understand that you can't understand. Even though I feel like I understand because of the work I do, I know that I don’t know. We cannot know. We cannot know what happens after we die. That is part of being alive. And anyone who promises you that they know for sure what happens after we die is hanging their hat on a hook I’ve never seen. That was a weird metaphor, but I’m sticking with it. 

Anyways, if you are dealing with bereavement, seek help and be patient because it takes a long time. And I know in our world we don’t like to give it a long time because bereavement and grief is ugly, and it’s deep, and it’s sometimes, often times, inconsolable. That’s its nature. It is raw and animal and driving. So if you are bereaved, for any reason, if you lost somebody this year, if you lost somebody ten years ago, be gentle with your heart and, if you can, wonder at your own capacity to love. Know that your capacity to feel, your capacity to love, even when it hurts, is a really beautiful thing, and it’s part of what makes you human. 

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Let’s get into some astrology, why don’t we? But before we do, I have a very exciting announcement, which is that beta access to Astrology For Days, my transit tracking astrology app for astrology students and professionals, is available only for my patrons on Patreon. If you’re in the market to get the beta access to Astrology For Days and 15% off the subscription price, just go over to patreon.com/jessicalanyadoo, link always in show notes, and giddy up. 

I mean, why would you not giddy up when you could giddy up? It is the DIY tool that every astrology student and professional needs for their tool kit, and it’s a web-based app, which means it works on every device that gets internet—like it doesn’t matter what you have. So, yeah, go ahead and pick up your self-guided learning tool, Astrology For Days today or wait until after beta. 

Okay, we’re going to look this week at the astrology of April 25th through May 1st of 2021. And there’s a fair amount going on here, so let’s get into it. On the 25th, we’ve two transits that are exact, and I kind of touched on one of them last week. Now, on the 25th, we are still going to be under the influence of the Venus square to Saturn. And just as gentle reminder, what that’s likely to feel like is just kind of things are off—there’s an off energy interpersonally. You may not be feeling particularly cute or creative. It can have you in a bit of a heavy set of feelings. 

On its own, this transit is actually really great for reviewing your values. And the problems that you’re confronted with are meant to kind of confront you with do your relationships reflect your values? Does what you do and how you do it reflect your values? 

And on the 25th, the first day of this week’s horoscope, Mercury forms an exact square to Saturn. So now we have the influence of Venus squaring Saturn, the exact transit of Mercury square to Saturn, and it may find you feeling a little fucked up; I’m not going to lie. 

Saturn governs depression. It governs a sense of scarcity. Saturn in the body is related to calcification. It’s related to the bones and teeth and all that kind of stuff, but it’s related to calcification—things getting hard or rigid. And so, when we look at it more interpersonally, when we look at it kind of experientially and not just in the body, what we tend to feel is a tendency to become rigid, to brace for impact. And so, you want to pay attention to that pattern or that tendency in yourself or in others around ideas exchanged. 

Mercury square to Saturn can bring up depressive thoughts because, again, it aligns you with what isn’t working, with what you don’t have. It is scarcity based, and it can be quite defensive. And defensive in that like rolling into a ball to play dead in the face of threats. 

Mercury square to Saturn is a great time for editing. If you’re a creative person, and you need to edit a project, this is a great time for it. If you’re just like I feel shitty, and I want to do something constructive, it’s going through things and sorting them. Mercury square to Saturn is good for good, better, best kind of thinking. And it’s also bad for good, better, best kind of thinking. It depends on the context. It depends on how you apply it. So choosing to do something on and around this date that actually is objectively good, better, or worse or best is a good use of the energy. It’s an intentional application of the energy. 

This is not a great time for processing with others because we’re all likely to be in a negative frame of mind. Nobody is going to be the more resilient one, necessarily. Now, because of the nature of this transit and the fact that the Moon will be full in Scorpio the following day, on the 26th, you may not be able to avoid process, or it might not be wise to avoid process. 

And so, this is a great time to tap into another aspect of this transit, which is discipline. Try to cultivate discipline in what you allow yourself to say, what you allow yourself to linger on in regards to your thoughts or what somebody else said. Mercury square to Saturn, it’s not an obsessive transit—neither of these planets in aspect to each other incline us to obsession. However, what they do is they incline us to scarcity-based thinking. And if you have an obsessive nature when you fear failure, you’re likely to just go whole hog on it. 

Mercury square to Saturn may confront you with a failure—real or perceived, and so I want to remind you that failure is a real thing. Obviously, nobody fucking wants to fail, but in essence, in truth, the only way to properly fail is to not learn anything, to take nothing away from it, to say, “None of this was my fault; it was all about other people,” or whatever you want to blame it on and take no lesson. 

So if there’s something that’s not working out the way you want it to, I want to encourage you to do your best to see what you can learn from it—if you need greater humility, if you need greater self-assurance or self-confidence, whatever it is, really see what you can learn. 

If you are not actually actively failing but instead scared of failing, scared of fucking up, scared of future scarcity, I want to encourage you to really look at what it is that you stand to lose. Be honest with yourself. Because sometimes it’s the fear of failure that is much worse than the thing that we are fearing. Sometimes just naming things makes it easier to cope with them and to prepare for them, to take actions that are fortifying and self-protective. And sometimes none of that’s the case. But it’s certainly worth evaluating. 

That’s what this transit wants us to do—to evaluate what is and isn’t working, to evaluate our relationship to fear, to failure, and how we fit into the world at large. So it’s a heavy minute, especially with the kind of overlap of the Venus square to Saturn. 

Now, on the 25th, we also have a Mercury conjunction to Venus, which makes perfect sense. If you’re an astrology student, you’re tracking this, right? Venus is square to Saturn. Mercury is square to Saturn, so it stands to reason that Mercury and Venus are in the exact same place. So they’re sitting on top of each other, and they’re both forming a square to the planet Saturn. 

So Mercury Conjunction to Venus is a lovely, honestly, really chill, not super noticeable transit, IMO—on a regular day anyways. But in the context of the fact that Mercury and Venus are sitting on top of each other and forming a square to Saturn, this is a unique moment, and it really changes the meaning of the transit itself. 

And I want to just pull back before I unpack what I mean to say, if you’re an astrologer or an astrology student, context is very fucking important. Context and synthesis. Because on its own, Mercury conjunction to Venus is a lovely, delightful, chill transit. And if you’re only looking at one thing at a time, you may tell yourself or clients or people on social media, or whatever it is, “Oh, this is going to be beautiful; this is going to be lovely.” But the problem is you have to look at it in context. 

Because Mercury and Venus are sitting on top of each other in the sign of Taurus, forming a square to Saturn in the sign of Aquarius, the tension that this transit is going to provoke is radically different than it would in any other context, right. Mercury/Venus conjunction happens kind of frequently; it’s not a big deal, in my experience. But when Mercury—your mind, your friendships—and Venus—your values, your intimacies—meet and form a square to Saturn, there’s a way that we all run the risk of confusing the way we feel about ourselves, the way we perceive others to feel about the way we look or our relationships, and how things are with our overall value. 

So here I want to give you some very important advice. At the start of the week but, honestly, fucking all week long and for your whole life, do not empower others to be the judge and jury of your value, especially if you don’t like or respect or know those people. It is really important to look at issues related to value—how you identify value in yourself and in others, whether your actions reflect what you believe, whether other people’s actions reflect what they believe. 

Words are easy. I mean, honestly, words are hard for a lot of people and for all of us at least some of the time, but it’s really how you embody your words. It’s how you act. It’s what you do. That’s what’s really important here. And so, you may find yourself looking for validation of your self-esteem in the face of others or in the eyes of others. That’s not great, and it’s likely to be a self-fulfilling prophecy this week, okay. 

So really pay attention to those themes in yourself but also in the people around you. You may be dealing with somebody who’s acting weird, and they may be acting weird because they’re having a self-esteem crisis. And in that case, honestly, most people, at least half of us, we self-sabotage; we push people away because we’re scared that they don’t like us. We pick a fight because we’re scared that they’re going to do it first. 

So it’s really wise to try to look beneath the hood on this one. Make sure you don’t take things at face value because Saturn does incline us, and all this Taurus energy does incline us to want to look at things at face value because it feels kind of easier and a little bit more masochistically self-satisfying. So watch out for that shit. 

All of this said, on the 26th, we have a Full Moon in Scorpio. Now, as you probably know, Full Moons occur every single month. Every once in a while, every Blue Moon as it were, there’s two Full Moons in a month, but they happen once a month and once a year per sign, generally—there’s always exceptions. And it’s when the Sun and Moon are exactly opposite each other to the exact degree and in opposite zodiac signs. 

This year’s Full Moon in Scorpio is happening at 8:31 p.m., Pacific Time on the 26th of April. And the Moon is at seven degrees of Scorpio—cool. That means the Sun, at seven degrees of Taurus, Uranus, at ten degrees of Taurus, and Venus, at fifteen degrees of Taurus, and Mercury, at sixteen degrees of Taurus—they’re all sitting very fucking close to each other. They are a sweet little stellium in Taurus opposite that tender, intense, and driving Scorpio Full Moon. So there’s a lot to fucking talk about, see. 

We can look at this chart and see that yes, the Sun and Uranus are opposite to the Moon. Uranus is a bit wide, but there it is. And, again, on its head, you might look at this and be like oh, wow. It’s going to be exciting. There’s going to be lots of newness. There’s going to be lots of openings. There’s going to be a sense of surprise or unpredictability with this Full Moon, and that’s possible. It’s not the most likely because Uranus, the Sun, and the Moon are all forming a square to the planet Saturn at 13 degrees of Aquarius. So this creates a T-square with Saturn as the focal planet to that T-square. 

And what’s important to know is that Saturn is a murderer of all boners. And it doesn’t murder boners just for kicks. Saturn is a bummer because Saturn wants us to hunker down and deal with reality, deal with time, deal with the things I owe to myself and others. It is really a reality based, maturity-oriented planet. And having a Full Moon, especially in the sign of Scorpio—which is such an intense, emotional, and spiritually connected zodiac sign—forming a square or a T-square to Saturn, it can function in a bunch of different ways. 

So because of the kind of 2021 Saturn/Uranus square, we know that there is a psychological component to literally everything that’s going on this year, right. We know that it’s testing and trying of your mental health and the mental health of the people around you. We are all struggling to figure out what is real and what is not real. And that’s true in your relationship to yourself. It’s true in your intimate relationships with others. It’s true as you look at the spiritual world or at the fucking news. What is true in the context of things like on social media or with COVID or whatever else? 

We are all questioning things; we are inundated with too much data, and it is hard to sort through that data, and it is rough. It’s rough. We are living through really unprecedented times, and in these unprecedented times, critical thinking is required of us. Now, luckily, Full Moon in Scorpio loves a little critical thinking. Unfortunately, that critical thinking can become like, again, self harm, really negative self-talk, looking for the worst in situations or in others. 

And so what we want to make sure that we’re doing to the best of our ability is getting present this Full Moon. Scorpio Full Moons have an intense and driving feeling about them. When the Moon is full in Scorpio, emotions are really driving and intense and wild. We feel really intensely. 

The zodiac sign Scorpio, so not Scorpio people, but the zodiac sign of Scorpio is associated with deep letting go, with resentments and passions and intensity. It is deep and associated with healing and destruction. And that’s intense on a regular day. But we’re not living through regular days; we’re living through exceptional days. And so, the intensity of your feelings and the intensity of the feelings of the people around you are likely to be noteworthy. 

So what do you do? Do you quake in your boots? You can. You can. But a better, slightly more constructive thing to do is to be interested in what’s coming up for you—what’s coming up in the patterns that are showing up in your life, what’s going on for you psychologically, emotionally. How about spiritually, physically? Be interested so that you can get present with whatever it is that’s up. And from that present place, determine what your boundaries need to be, what your needs are, what requires your greater presence, energy, attention. 

It’s not going to be the same for all of us because we are all going through our own unique lived experience. But what is going to be the same for all of us is the need to respond to our own emotions and the desire to cover up our emotions with other things. So when I say cover up our emotions with other things, it might mean you feel really intense feelings, and so you start scrolling through your phone to distract, or you are having emotions you don’t want to cope with, so you get high, or you get drunk, or you eat a bunch of food that makes you feel like shit. 

It’s about a distraction. It’s about being like I don’t want to feel x, so I’m going to focus on y. And the focus on y is likely to be somewhat visceral. So scrolling through your phone, it’s something interactive, even though it’s really kind of not, it is—it’s both. So it’s a distraction, kind of like a drug would be. So whatever your drug is, this is a great time, this Full Moon, to become more aware and present with the ways in which your system reacts to emotions and what it compulsively does or wants to do as a way to cope with those emotions or avoid and evade those emotions. Do you pick a fight with people? Picking fights is fun, until they fight back. 

So this is just a great time to become more self-aware. Again, Saturn while, yes, it can murder the boners, it also teaches maturity. It's a time for cultivating humility and self-awareness in practical terms, so that’s kind of cool. It’s not a fun process, usually, but also it is a worthwhile one. So it’s one worth embracing and taking stock of and leveraging. 

Now, if you’re doing some sort of Full Moon ritual, if you’re doing any kind of spiritual work, I would encourage you to consider releasing your attachment to what doesn’t serve you in your own conduct, right. Whatever that looks like for you, whatever that means for you, in whatever spiritual practice or methodology that you like to use. That is a direction I would point you in because it will be effective; it will work if you do that. All to say, Full Moon in Scorpio, it’s not nothing. It’s not nothing. 

Okay, on the 27th, Pluto goes Retrograde. Pluto will be Retrograde until, I think, October of 2021. That brings us to the 29th of April. So on the 29th of April we have a transit called Mercury sextile to Neptune. This transit is exact at 10:26 p.m., Pacific Time, so you may see it in other calendars—if you’re east of the Pacific, you might see it as the 30th. So pay attention to time zones when fucking with astrology. 

But Mercury sextile to Neptune is actually really a breath of fresh air. It’s not, again, a spectacular transit as sextiles often are not, but Mercury sextile to Neptune is a transit that opens up your intuition. It encourages empathy and creativity. This is a time where you’re likely to be receptive to ideas and concepts that are spiritual and creative and humanistic. And, you know what? We at Ghost of a Podcast Industries fucking love that. 

So if you’ve been having a hard time forgiving yourself, forgiving someone else, if you’ve just been so overwhelmed by the fucking world and how painful and scary and violent and sad it can be, this is actually a really great transit for connecting to Source energy or God energy or whatever it is you resonate with and being fortified by it. 

Don’t forget, don’t forget for a minute that you are connected to everything and that there is support in this world, on this planet for you if you connect. So this is a great time to remember to connect and to actively try to do so. So am I telling you to become a tree hugger? Yeah, I think I am. Is there a downside to tree hugging, other than maybe people taking pictures of you with their phones and putting it on the internet and turning you into a meme? Not based on a real experience. No. No, there aren’t. I mean, I guess ants or spiders? Anyways, I’m overthinking it. Hug a tree. Hug a Goddamn tree, I say. 

And that brings us to the last transit of this week and that is on the 30th of April. On the 30th of April, the Sun forms a conjunction to Uranus. So the Sun is in Taurus. It is conjoined to Uranus. You may remember that last week on the 22nd and the 23rd of April, we had two conjunctions to Uranus by Venus and Mercury, respectively. And so, I would encourage you to look back at what was going on for you just to get a sense of oh, this is what conjunctions to Uranus from personal planets feel like when they’re happening in the collective, right. 

And this is a great way for you to be able to track how energy feels to you. And in particular how conjunctions to Uranus in the fixed earth sign of Taurus feel to you. Because it’s going to land differently for different people based on our individual birth charts, right. 

So the Sun conjunction to Uranus can kind of go either way. This transit is likely to stimulate your nervous system, aka make you anxious or nervous or excited and engaged and enlivened. It depends. It depends on your nature. Personally, me, I love a Uranus transit. I get real good giddy up vibes. I love the activating nature of it. But you know what? You may feel really distressed by it. It might feel really agitating and frustrating. It just really depends on you. 

So Sun conjunction to Uranus can bring things from left field. It can bring up surprises. It can bring up upsets. It can make us accident prone. The Sun in astrology is your will and your identity. It’s the energies you draw upon. When you’re thinking about yourself, you’re thinking about the Sun. The glyph, the symbol for the Sun, is a circle with a dot in the middle. And that dot in the middle is what you want to focus on because it’s the center. That’s the Sun. 

So the Sun has so much to do with our identities, and it is so pivotal to our energy. And Uranus is electric. It is fast moving, forward moving, and it is absolutely about progress and change. It’s also about upsets and that which cannot be predicted. So when they meet up in the sky, things are weird. Things get surprising. And if you can be flexible, these surprises can be enlivening and exciting and inspiring. And if you can't be flexible, they can be a real fucking disappointment. It can feel like you get your ass handed to you. 

So whatever it is that you feel, know that this is a three day transit. We’re feeling it on the 29th, the 30th, and the 1st. And it’s exact on the 30th. So you don’t have to live through it for too long. But we are meant to cultivate more excitement and engagement and interest in the face of our need for flexibility as we are presented with new information, new energy, new opportunity. Sun conjunction to Uranus. 

If you find yourself really agitated, if you’re dealing with upsets and kind of disappointments or accidents having happened, try to apply some of that wisdom I was talking about earlier around not each individual mistake or success defines you. Flexibility means you don’t break when you need to bend. It’s hard. It’s a practice. And if you need to practice, you can expect to be confronted by that need this week on or around the 30th—fun. 

So, my loves, that is your whole horoscope for the week. Let me run through the transits one more time. On the 25th, Mercury is conjunct to Venus, and it is square to Saturn. On the 26th, there will be a Full Moon in Scorpio, and it will be exact at 8:31 p.m., Pacific Time. On the 29th, Mercury forms a lovely sextile to the planet Neptune, and on the 30th, the Sun is exactly conjunct to Uranus. 

Hey, guess what? I am going to be dropping a midweek episode this week. I am really excited about it, so I’m going to let you know about it right now. Famed Virgo astrologer, Tony Howard of Astrology University, is joining me on the show to explain Mars out of bounds and how it is related to the Sibly chart of the United States. Yeah, we’re going there. So stay tuned for a mid-week episode this upcoming week. You know I can't stay away; I just love you like that. 

If, in the meantime, you’re just like okay, wait a minute. I don’t want to become a patron. I’m not ready to use Astrology For Days for beta, but I want more Jessica, know that I have a free app for IOS called Tiny Spark—download it. It’s free and delightful. Also, if you haven’t already picked up my book, Astrology For Real Relationships: Understanding You, Me, and How We All Get Along, that’s really exciting because that means you can pick it up and read it for the first time and be charmed, educated, and inspired. That’s fun. 

Okay, I’m going to shut up, but not before reminding you that you are special. You have something to offer. There’s actually no one like you. Treat yourself like you’re someone special. Be a friend to yourself. Okay, now I’m going to shut up. Bye.