Welcome to Ghost of a Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Lanyadoo. I'm an astrologer, psychic medium, and animal communicator, and I'm going to give you your weekly horoscope and no-bullshit, mystical advice for living your very best life.

My sweet darlings, I got questions and I got answers, or at least I'm going to try to have some answers. This question is from Anonymous, and Anonymous is asking about new relationships in times of COVID-19. And it goes like this: "As we all know, COVID-19 has been hard in a lot of ways for folks. I just started dating someone a couple of weeks before stay-at-home orders went into effect. We are both nonbinary Cancers. I have a Libra Moon, and they have a Scorpio Moon. Recently, they've been dealing with a lot of feelings, and they realized they got really vulnerable really quickly with me.

"They're wanting to take things more slowly since they got nervous in the peak of everything, which is totally cool with me. However, we still haven't defined what that means or had a conversation about our feelings. I feel like the wait is a bit hard, but I'm willing to do it. I think they just need space to process what they need and want during this time. They've given me cute little signs from the Universe they found that point to me, and we talk about surface things until they are ready to really talk. How do you feel it's best for me to proceed? Kind regards and anonymously." And Anonymous has shared their birth data. It's July 9th, 1989, at 11:31 a.m. in Thomasville, North Carolina.

So this is a really great question. Of course, it's not about COVID-19, but it is about how to date during a pandemic—no small thing. There's a lot to say about this, but I will pull back and just focus on one quick little detail astrologically. When you both have the same Sun sign, that is a really interesting little detail because in some ways, what that means is your approach to how you connect can be quite similar. But that's just really on the surface because the crux of our intimacy issues, if you're asking this old astrologer, comes from primarily outer-planet aspects to inner planets or to each other, depending on the placement.

And so knowing a Sun and Moon sign is really valuable data, but it only kind of starts to scratch at the surface. So two Cancers with a Libra Moon and a Scorpio Moon apiece, yeah, that's a lot of damn emotions. And of course, if it was going to start at all, it would start strong. And of course, if one person was going to tap on the brakes because things got really intense, it was the Scorpio Moon of the two of you. But that's actually not the important part. When we're first starting to date someone, in times of a global pandemic or not, it is really tempting to think about their personality, what they think, what they need. And it is really tempting to do that to the exclusion of thinking about what we need, how we feel, what is healthy and authentic for us.

When you're in the first couple/few months of dating someone, most people focus on their date, what they think, what they need, what they feel, what they want. And what we try to do is we try to shape ourselves into something that we believe that they will like or choose. The problem with that is it requires some measure of abandonment of self. It requires, to some extent, you projecting onto the other person based on the very limited data that you currently have and to center that above centering your own self-knowledge. It's a very important thing to think about because, first of all, it's just not super healthy, and second of all, it's not super effective, because here we go. Let me get into your chart now, Anonymous.

You have, yes, a Cancer Sun. And, yes, you have a Libra Moon. Very important details. However, my dear, you have a Saturn opposition to Mercury in your birth chart, and both of those planets, Saturn and Mercury, form a square to your Moon in the first house in Libra—a.k.a. you have a T-square. And a T-square is something I'll get into in an astrology hot-take episode. Don't you worry. I'll unpack it as its own thing in a future episode. But in your particular chart, what this means is you process your emotions verbally. That's your processing style. And it's really valuable for you to have clear data.

Having someone that you're close to who checks out when things get real, who isn't a direct communicator, it tends to bring out the worst of your T-square. In other words, it makes you really anxious. It makes you really worried, and it's hard on you. That doesn't mean I'm encouraging you to compulsively process with people when you first start dating them. That's not necessary, and that's not especially helpful. But when you ask me this question of how is it best to proceed, what I worry for you is that you're asking, "How do I work around their needs so that it still works?" because here's the thing. The Universe giving signs that the two of you are meant to be together is very cute. I like it. But it's not equal to communication.

And so what I want to encourage you to do is to decide—not in a punitive way, but to decide, how long can you be in a cute little flirting time with someone, how long can you be cultivating intimacy with someone, before you need to know what their intentions are with you? Not what their commitments are, but what their intentions are. Are they willing to really be cultivating intimacy or a relationship with you? You deserve to know that. And also, they deserve space and to not have the answer for that right away.

What you need to do is determine for yourself what is healthy and reasonable for you to do with this person or anyone instead of how you need to navigate yourself around their particular needs, because they are a stranger danger. Maybe they're a cute stranger danger. Maybe they're a stranger danger that you could become in love with and partnered with forever and ever. But for now, they're stranger danger. So don't center them above yourself. Consider them. Be kind. Be empathetic. Be clear. Be honest. Be flirtatious. Be fun. Be all the things, but don't place their needs and preferences above your own in the getting-to-know-you stage, because then you're not really letting them know you in return, and also, you've done yourself a great disservice.

And this is a disservice that you're a little bit inclined to do because you have a Libra Moon and because you have this T-square. You have a tendency to vacillate between stepping away from your needs in effort to prioritize the other person, or flipping on that and going into your beautiful Venus/Mars in Leo conjunction and just kind of leading with your needs, charging full speed ahead with your needs, and kind of being a little bit demanding of that. Now, Saturn can also be a bit of a bully in its own right and can be really just like, "I am being really clear about my needs." But the reality of this situation is you will do best in your relationship to yourself as well as in your cultivation of a relationship with someone else if you find a middle ground, and that middle ground is knowing for yourself what you can do in a healthy way and what you can't, and not giving the other person more than what you can give in a healthy way.

Now, dating in a pandemic—nobody knows how to do that. There's no answers. There's no answers for that. Of course there's not. There's no normal for this. This is the first time in human history that we've had online dating during a global pandemic. We've had other global pandemics; it's not the first. It's unlikely to be the last. But we've never before had technology that allows us to have video chats and to be texting with people and DMing with people. This is all very new in human development. Cultivating intimacies and closeness with people that you can't actually physically connect with, that you can't meet in the normal course of your life with, that is something that you want to be really careful around, you want to be a little bit gentle with.

Now, I am making the assumption that you're not physically connecting, because at this time, it's not really safe to. It's not safe for you. It's not safe for them. But it's also not safe for the larger community. So I hope you are still in your shelter in place, and so are they. You can date, and you can date this person. But knowing what your needs are within that and not compromising them just because of the shelter in place, because you're scared of it not working out or you're scared of not having someone to flirt with—that's really going to be important here.

Now, I want to just say one last thing. You are going through a Uranus sextile to Mercury right now. Uranus sextile to Mercury is a lovely transit, and it actually indicates that this is a great time for cultivating friendship. So that doesn't mean instead of this new romance, but it does mean the platonic side of connecting with humans is well starred at this time for you. So I want to just really remind you to not stop connecting with your friends and to not stop cultivating friendships.

Now, in the context of this relationship, it simply means that this is a great time for finding new ways of communicating—communicating your needs, your feelings, whatever. It's also a great time for exploring your own attitudes and mind and how you verbally communicate. Now, in your birth chart, you have Mercury in Cancer. And I don't know if you've ever seen a crab walk. They come at things sideways. So there's a way that when people have Mercury in Cancer, they can kind of come at things sideways, which can read as passive aggressive or not really clear.

This is a great time to cultivate more direct and succinct ways of being honest with people about what you feel and what you need and what you want and what you got to offer—all the good stuffs. So this is a fantastic time if you had to be in a situation where the cultivation of your relationships is happening more digitally and more verbally, more about communicating—it's actually a pretty good time for it. So it's something to kind of lean into if you can. And continue to protect your heart, your health, and all your other parts, my dear.

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My dear beloveds, welcome back to more horoscope talk on Ghost of a Podcast Episode 104. This week, we are looking at May 3rd through the 9th of 2020, and there's so much to talk about. There's so much to talk about. But I want to just drop a couple details on you, as I like to do, before I get into it. So the first thing is, as of May 1st, I have dropped a new tier on Patreon. So not only am I dropping my monthly Healing Helper series, where I am currently teaching tarot via video, I am also now dropping a month-ahead horoscope so you can hear all of the transits for May in advance—all the major ones. And then I do through the Sun signs a monthly meditation for you to really work with. So check it out if you're in the market. If you're not in the market, that's fine.

I'm doing hella lives on Instagram as well, so you can follow me there and get all the goods. I'm just trying to connect, see? Trying to connect. And I'm trying to help you use astrology as a tool for cultivating greater self-awareness and emotional intelligence because, honestly, emotional intelligence is the foundation upon which our choices are made. And when I talk about basically everything I talk about as an astrologer, even as a psychic and a medium, I'm trying to really think about it in the context of supporting you through your journey for being emotionally present and considerate of yourself and connected to others and having healthy boundaries and all the messiness that comes with all of that shit.

It's especially important because of this COVID-19 mishigas. The thing about a global pandemic is it's putting us all in a position where we need to be considerate of others. Right? We need to take better care of ourselves. We are not normal. This is not normal. Nobody is in an especially normal state. It is requiring that we cultivate more of our emotional intelligence, that we honor our feelings in a whole new way. As painful as that might be, as stressful as that might be, it is also an opportunity. And it's also an opening.

In the United States, where I am and so many of you are, coronavirus has been here for a couple months. A couple months. And if you have found that you cannot tolerate having your social life or your activities outside of the home curtailed in only two months, I want you to just really notice that. I want you to just really take ownership of that and be interested in what that means. I'm not talking about what that means about your stuff or about your activities, but what that means about you and the tempo at which you are most comfortable living your life and how much engagement/distraction you need.

The thing about COVID-19 is it is incredibly contagious, and it is a novel virus. In this case, novel means we don't know shit about it. It is new. Coronavirus isn't new; COVID-19 is new. Now, I'm not a fucking medical expert, obvi. But COVID-19 is really contagious, and what I'm noticing most everywhere I look is that people are getting restless and people are getting lazy with the restrictions and the protections. And I gotta say, my loves, this is likely to last a real long time. And I'm saying that to you as your astrologer. I'm saying that from an astrological viewpoint. I'm also saying that because I listen to scientists and I read the goddamn news.

It is really valuable for me to acknowledge—and this is something I'll deeply unpack next week and moving forward through the Venus Retrograde. But it is really important for me to acknowledge that we are looking at a Venus Retrograde in the sign of Gemini. It will impact us May 13th through June 25th, so it's not terribly long. It's just over a month. As Venus is related to many things, one of the things it's related to is relationships and getting attention and giving attention and the sensual part of connecting, the sense-based part of connecting.

And so we are kind of being challenged to do what we do in every Retrograde for any planet: review, reflect, reassess. It's the rule of re's. You know it. Retrogrades are the rule of re's. So, when we are reviewing and reflecting and reassessing our relationship to attention and sense-based connection, unfortunately, that often takes being in the silence with it, not being in dynamic, not being in enthusiastic exchange. And this particular Venus Retrograde is happening in the sign of Gemini—chatty, social, Mercurial Gemini.

And so I want to really kind of center you around the need to slow down. Now, I'm not just talking about this because of the Venus Retrograde that is starting on the 12th of May, but also because on the 3rd we have Venus forming a square to Neptune. Now, this transit, it'll come back this month again on May 20th. It tends to trigger idealization and romanticization of people and relationships. If you are just meeting someone new or you're in a newer relationship and all of sudden you're like, "OMG, I'm in love. It is amazing. I just know. I just know that it's going in a direction that's wonderful. We are so connected. I'm just so sure of it. I feel like I've known this person for a long time"—if any of that shit comes up in your mind or out of your mouth, I want you to hear my boner-killer voice in your head saying, "Slow it down." Just slow it down.

This transit is not only going to happen now; it's going to come back. I'll come back in May, like I mentioned, but it's coming back again. It's coming back again in July as well. So we're going to have three hits of this particular transit, which means whatever comes up for you around the 3rd—give it a couple days; it's exact on the 3rd—that theme is going to follow you for a couple of months. So maybe not that specific relationship or that specific person, but that theme, your theme, is going to come back for you over the course of a couple/few months.

All of this builds up to say look at how you idealize others. Look at how you're willing to skip over the sticky parts or the slow parts to get to know someone. Make sure that you're displaying healthy boundaries. And in the times of COVID, this has very much to do with healthy boundaries around socially getting in the physical space of other people. The thing about COVID is it's not a moralistic thing. It's not like, "Oh, this is a nice person; therefore, I can trust them." Right? And it's really important that you are centering your wellness and your values—values are Venus—above your excitement for a new crush.

Now, Venus square to Neptune can kick up anxieties. On the positive, honestly, this can be a transit that just gets you staring in the mirror and using filters on Snapchat all day long, or it could have you really in a pickle with someone and not really realize you're in the pickle jar quite yet. So what you want to do is really center yourself around this date on having healthy boundaries and noticing your impulse to compromise your boundaries for people that you like and love, and to understand that you can have devotional feelings for anyone, but to behave in a way that is devotional to someone who has not earned your trust over the course of time—that's where you get into trouble. Having feelings—have any feelings, all feelings. All feelings are good. I mean, they're not all good, but it is healthy and appropriate to have all manner of feelings. But it is not always appropriate, healthy, or creative to have all manner of behavior. And you want to, as much as possible, center yourself around the difference between the two around this date.

Again, on the light side, this can just be really fun for—if you're an artist, this is a great time for visual art or for music. If you are somebody who's not an artist but you just love that stuff, just surround yourself with beauty around this date. The key here is to watch what you're imbibing, whether I'm talking about taking in other people's energies or taking in substances. This is a terrible time for pulling out your credit card. So, unless you really have to spend money around this date, I wouldn't. I wouldn't.

Now, Neptune governs anxiety, dysmorphia. And so you may have a really distorted interpretation of how you look right now, and if you find you are having an anxiety response to the way you look in general or how you think other people feel about how you look, I encourage you to change the station. Return to this a different day. O, were it so easy. But seriously, as much as possible, do not invest in those lines of thought. I want to encourage you to line up your resources.

If you know you have a history of struggling with eating stuff or with body-image shit, as much as possible, line up resources around this date to support you so it's right there, so that you're like, "Oh. Yeah. Astrologically, I knew that this shit might come up today. These feelings and thoughts are simply part of an old story or a preexisting loop that I have inside of me. They're not me discovering something new. They're not me discovering a truth. They're just an old shitty tape I have playing inside of me. And this isn't the day I'm going to dismantle it, but this may be the day where I choose to not invest in it." And investing is a thing of Venus.

Another thing to pay attention to around this transit can be romantic disappointments. If you find that you're not doing the idealizing thing, but instead, your beautiful romantic bubble got popped and you are seeing some sort of reality or some sort of truth about a relationship or a person, even yourself, around this date that just brings up a lot of disappointment, it could be super disheartening.

Venus and Neptune together, man, is the most romantic. I mean, when Venus and Neptune are together, they want nothing less than a Disney Princess with a fairy godmother in the background just twirling and twirling with birds that were once mice and all that kind of crap. It just wants high romance. It wants everything to be perfect and intimacy to be without flaws and getting to know you to be without bumps. When these two planets form a square, which is a challenging aspect, it confronts you with the ways that that's just not true.

And so attempt to sit in balance with what you hope for, what you're putting out there, what you're expecting, and how much time has passed. You don't need things to be permanent for them to be healthy. You don't need things to be certain for them to be right. You need them to be authentic, creative, generative. Do not put yourself at risk for a goddamn crush, because if your crush requires you to put yourself at risk, then they are not making your life better. And if they're not making your life better, what the fuck are they doing? What are they doing?

Now, on the 4th, we have a much lighter transit. It's a Sun conjunction to Mercury, and this is just really good for figuring things out, for connecting with friends to reading books—basically, Mercury and the Sun meeting is good for expanding your thinking and gathering new information. The downside is it can make you quite wedded to your thoughts and attitudes and less flexible than you think you're being. It's Taurus, right? It's a fixed sign, and it's a bit of a bullheaded sign. Am I right? So what you want to make sure that you're doing is being open. That's all. Be open.

On the 7th, we have an exact sextile between Mercury and Neptune on the same day as a Full Moon in Scorpio. And that Full Moon will be at 3:45 a.m. Pacific Time. Now, Full Moons occur when the Sun and Moon are opposite each other to the exact same degree. And when we have a Full Moon, we have the closure or the ending of an emotional cycle. Full Moons are about closure and endings, and Scorpio is a hella intense sign.

The reason why Scorpio gets a bad rap is because Scorpio is concerned with intense, brooding, sometimes resentful emotions. Scorpio goes to the depths that other signs are scared of. Scorpio governs sex and sexuality, psychic phenomenon, fear of death—all the big things that are scary to talk about and tend to feature people's secret feelings and secret fears. So, when we have a Full Moon in Scorpio in the same week as we are leading up to a Venus Retrograde and when we have that Venus square to Neptune—when we have all of this stuff happening, what you are likely to find is that the emotions that you have been repressing because they are angry, because they are defensive, because they are resentful, they might just bubble up to surface and demand to be dealt with.

For many people, repressed emotions emerge somatically in your body. So having a stomachache because you're anxious, that's a somatic response to anxiety. I imagine that this particular Full Moon is going to be experienced quite somatically for many people even though the chart of the Full Moon doesn't exactly suggest that. I just think this much emotion in this particular time—it's likely to get really intense and sticky for us. Now, the Sun is really close to Mercury still during the Full Moon, and Mercury, the Sun, and Moon are all forming a sextile to Neptune. The potential here is that it is very spiritualizing.

This can be a time where you decide to really get into your scary feelings, your upset feelings, where you give yourself permission to be where you're at. That's the potential, which is a beautiful thing. The only way we can let things go is if we first hold them, right? Not too tightly, but hold them. It's important to be able and willing to own your messy emotions—and messy emotions, that's the Moon in Scorpio right there—to be able to hold those emotions with empathy for yourself and for everyone involved, to be able to sit with  how you're feeling without an agenda, without fixing it, without redirecting or defending or distracting from it.

The beautiful part of Neptune, which is featuring kind of heavily in this week's horoscope, is empathy. And it is the kind of empathy that lends itself to faith. It lends itself to social service. It lends itself to considering the needs and welfare of others. The downside here is that all the shit that you feel like you've been compromising and that no one else is compromising and all the things you feel like you've been doing that no one else has been doing may come to surface as well. And in that case, you may weave a story in which you are the martyred hero and no one appreciates you.

Now, if you find yourself caught up in that kind of a storyline, I want to encourage you to really understand that you, me, each of us as individuals are meant to do what is right, what we believe is right, because it is right. Not because there's an award at the end of the day. Not because someone told us to. Do what's right because it's right. And if you're looking around yourself and you're like, "All these people are doing a bunch of bullshit," that's on them. That's their problem. Don't make it your problem, and don't think you deserve extra cookies because you're doing the baseline of what's right.

This Full Moon, because it's a Full Moon in Scorpio, can bring up this compare and contrast and resentment and all that kind of stuff. Scorpio is a sign that is associated with jealousy. And we all know that Theodore Roosevelt quote, comparison is the thief of joy. It is. It's the thief of fucking joy. Don't rob yourself of your own joy by comparing yourself to others. Don't rob yourself of your own joy by forgetting the value and the necessity of empathy in your self-care regime. A self-care regime without empathy for yourself and for others, even the people who are doing stupid shit—and there are so many people doing stupid things today, yesterday, tomorrow, every day—how much does that suck for them?

Understand that when people act out and when they do wrong, when you act out and when you do wrong, it comes from pain. That's where it comes from. The biggest assholes, the worst people, and you and me, we all fuck up. And we fuck up sometimes because we slip/it's a real mistake, but generally out of pain, out of dissociation. And if you can on a spiritual level hold space for the complexity of other people's journeys and the fact that they are going to have to deal with the consequences of their action or inaction in their way—the world is not symmetrical. So it's not like I tripped you at the supermarket, and then 20 minutes later, someone tripped me in the parking lot. That's not how it works. It doesn't need to work that way. If I tripped you in the parking lot, I'm an asshole. I'm a living asshole, and I have to live with myself every day being that asshole. That is its own punishment, and it's a pretty fair one, IMO.

So the Scorpio Moon is not the time to be seeking justice in that particular way. It's the time to be seeking peace within yourself by accepting where you are not at peace.

My loves, per usual, I want to thank you so much for joining me on another week of Ghost of a Podcast. Subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to it so you can get alerts every time a new episode comes out, and continue to do your level best to not be your worst. Bye.