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.

As you shop for masks in this new normal that we're all living in, consider others who rely on lipreading and facial expression for communication. Look into getting a clear mask, sometimes called a smile mask. Just look them up, and consider buying them when you buy masks for yourself and your family.

My darlings and loves, welcome back to Ghost of a Podcast. This week, I'm going to answer a question from How to Say Hard Things. And she asks me, "I recently had a falling out with a friend, and I want to reconnect authentically. I want her to know how hurt I am by how everything went down between us, not yell and accuse—really talk. She's accused me of being guarded and shutting down. She's always telling me I'm too sensitive. I can see how my communication issues have often left me feeling isolated. My fear of interpersonal conflict can make it difficult for people to get close to me. With everything going on in the world, I want to be braver on social media, stand firm about what's important to me. I have so much trouble communicating my thoughts and understanding my feelings. What are tools for the introverted, sensitive, and conflict-averse to say the hard things personally and publicly?" And she was born in Brooklyn, New York, at 7:10 a.m. on October 23rd, 1984.

So this is such a great question, and I'm sorry you had a falling out with your friend. This is a time where I feel like tensions are really coming to the surface for so many people in so many kinds of relationships for lots of reasons, including we're all on edge. We are all stressed out. Everybody's fight-or-flight mechanisms are being engaged in various—depending on your situation and where you're living and all that kind of stuff, to varying degrees, of course. But we're all kind of in our own shit. And so I really am seeing that preexisting relationship issues are getting leaned on. And some relationships are thriving as a result, and others are kind of experiencing what yours are, which is a real problem. Let's start with you.

Now, first of all, yes, you are an introvert. Yes, you are conflict-averse. Absolutely. Why do I say that? Well—thank you for asking—partially and largely because you have a stellium in Scorpio. And having a stellium in Scorpio, in this case, for you, that means your Sun, Pluto, Mercury, and Saturn are all in the sign of Scorpio, and they're all touching each other, except for maybe Saturn. Saturn's the furthest away from them all. Your Sun is also conjunct to the Ascendant, and your Ascendant is in Libra. You also have a Moon in Libra. We'll get there.

Having all of this Scorpio in the chart—and I should be really clear, for anyone who listened to the last episode where I talked about aspect configurations and I talked about stelliums, not only do you have a stellium in Scorpio, but you have a first-house stellium. So having a stellium in Scorpio means many things, including but not limited to you're introverted. You are authentically a private person. You can be secretive. You can be paranoid. You can also just be damn private and want to be able to hold things for yourself, by yourself, on your terms.

So there's lots of tricky things in all of this, but first and foremost, having this much Scorpio in your birth chart, and in particular having Pluto and Saturn in the first house of your birth chart, means you are guarded. You're a guarded person. Being totally forthcoming before you're totally ready is really, really hard for you. That's your nature. It takes you a long time to get ready to really communicate things. So I'm not surprised to hear that you had a falling out, and after the fact, you're like—now you're ready to talk, because you're like a slow bake. But you know what? When you're ready, you're fucking ready. So we'll get into that in a moment.

But having all of this Scorpio in your chart, it really makes it so that it is hard for you to see outside of that Scorpio energy. In other words, it's really hard for you to not come at things from a deep and intense emotional place. That's just your nature, and I want to encourage you to embrace that part of your nature so that you can actually work with your nature. Being able to say to a friend, "I'm feeling really guarded right now. I'm having a Scorpio moment," you're acknowledging that you're feeling guarded instead of protecting that you're feeling guarded.

Having this much Scorpio in your chart makes it hard to either trust yourself, trust the situation you're in, or trust the person or people you're dealing with. Now, it could be some sort of crazy cocktail of all those three things, but generally, it's one of those things more than the others. So, in this situation with this friend, it sounds like she broke some of your trust, but you're also saying that you can kind of see how you have acted in ways that broke her trust.

So being really sensitive and being guarded and shut down, that combo platter is very common for someone who has as much Scorpio in their birth chart as you do. But what it does is it communicates that you are feeling things intensely, but you're not going to share them. So it's like a withholding. And you're doing the withholding probably because you don't know what else to do, right? Because you get emotionally overwhelmed, and that emotional overwhelm makes you either want to attack or shut it down—in other words, flight or fight. And because you don't want to fight, you go to flight. I respect that, and hopefully your friends can respect that. But that doesn't mean it works.

So, when you go into a survival mode in a situation that actually isn't as dire as all that, what you're essentially doing is you're communicating that you don't trust the person you're dealing with. Now, I know that's not what you mean. I know. I'm looking at your chart. I know that's not what you mean. But it's perfectly fair that other people feel that that's what you mean, and here is the thing that's really fucked up. Because you have all this Scorpio in your first house, everybody knows what you're feeling. So you might do your damn best to shut down your feelings, but it's really obvious that you have chosen to shut it down, because whatever we have in the first house, it plays on our face. People can see it.

So, when you're holding on to a secret, people don't know what that secret is, but they can see you're holding on to something. And this really, I imagine, drives you bananas because you want your privacy. You need your privacy. But because all this Scorpio stuff is in the first house, it's really hard for you to keep things totally private without being completely shut down, which actually doesn't make you happy. It doesn't work for you.

So I want to say one more thing about this Scorpio stellium. You have the planet Mercury at eight degrees of Scorpio, and it is conjunct on either side by Pluto at two degrees and Saturn at 17 degrees of Scorpio. Your Mercury, the planet that governs your willingness and ability to speak your truth, to say what needs to be said, to yell, or to withhold your thoughts and beliefs and attitudes—Mercury is really the center planet in what I might characterize as a heavy-shit sandwich.

And so, within that, cut yourself some slack. Speaking up is really hard for you. It is really hard for you because you take everything super literally and super seriously. And when you say something, in your mind, it's written in stone. And so, as a way to protect yourself, and actually others, you try to say less because you don't want to say it wrong, or you don't want to say something you can't really stand behind. So you take things much more seriously than you probably need to, but whatever. You are who you are.

And you did not get this birth chart by not having early developmental experiences that taught you that the only way to be safe is to say less. Right? This is not just your nature; it's also a learned condition. When we have stelliums in the birth chart—and you have a very, very deep stellium. When we have stelliums in the birth chart, our environment really shapes us to believe that it's the only way to be. This is one of those moments where I would say, "Is the birth chart nature or nurture?" And I don't know. Only the planets themselves or God or whatever you want to call it, the universe, knows. I don't know. So, chicken or egg, here we are dealing with whatever we're dealing with.

I'm going to give you really concrete advice about communication in just a moment. But I want to, before I do that, say you have Moon in Libra in the twelfth house. You have a Libra Rising. And because of those two things, you really are conflict-averse. You feel like, "If I like this person, I should agree with this person." There is a way that being agreeable or devotional is what you feel like is love or kindness, and it's not necessarily. It sounds like even this friend of yours is like, "I just want you to tell me when you think I'm being stupid. Don't just think it; tell me." Your friend is saying, "I want to hear from you."

And I think part of what this friend is asking for is just really frightening for you because you don't actually have a light tongue. When you say things, it comes off as harsh. Nobody has a Mercury/Saturn or Mercury/Pluto conjunction and doesn't have a way of coming across as judgmental or harsh. That's just real. And so, for you, using your sense of humor is going to be key. You can be like, "Oh, I have a way of sounding harsh, and I just want you to know that my tone is not my content. I just don't have any control over this tone box." And just say what you need to say while acknowledging that you're not necessarily graceful at how you're saying it.

I think what you've done is you have stopped yourself from having practice at developing this skill, which is totally within your nature to develop. You haven't had practice because you haven't wanted to be wrong or to do it wrong, so you've held yourself back. Oh, the Scorpio stellium problems. Holding yourself back out of fear of being revealed to yourself and the world as a failure, it's not chill. You know?

The reality is your chart inclines you to be an excellent writer and an excellent speaker, but it takes the process of being willing to refine your ideas and your delivery. That's a tricky thing for you, especially in situations that require spontaneity without rules. And so, when we're talking about personal relationships, in particular friendships, the rules aren't as clear. When there's sexual relationships or romantic relationships, some people feel like there's less rules. Some people feel like there's more rules. My guess is that friendships are harder for you than romantic relationships in this regard.

Now, I will just acknowledge one other little area of complexity. In your birth chart, you have a wide—but you do have—a Venus/Uranus conjunction. You also have a Jupiter/Mars conjunction in Sagittarius and Capricorn, respectively. And these two different conjunctions are very different from each other, but they have something in common. You are very much your fucking self. You really are an individual. You have such a strong personality and strong opinions and strong likes and dislikes. So your birth chart has a ton of conjunctions.

You come across to others, including your friend, as a self-assured, self-contained person who knows herself. And so, when you hold back out of insecurity or fear or you say to people who know you, "I don't know how to speak up," I wonder if they have a hard time believing you because you don't have a hard time being yourself in so many contexts. It's specifically about revealing vulnerability. It's specifically about speaking your ideas and your mind in general that it's the most vulnerable for you.

Because the Sun is also involved in your Scorpio stellium, when it comes to revealing something of your identity, of your true sense of self, that's where your control issues are going to kick in. That's where your self-censure and self-criticism gets really intense. But that doesn't necessarily translate to other people, because they see that Venus/Uranus conjunction, they see that Jupiter/Mars conjunction, and they're like, "Oh. You know yourself. You're brave. You do wild things. You put yourself out there in a million different ways. How come, all of a sudden, you're pulled back now?"

And so people, being insecure and having their own issues, take it personally. They feel like it's about them. And you can say to your loved ones or the people you're in relationship to, "This is a way that I'm messy. This is a way that I'm full of contradictions, and it's hard for me to get outside of my head. It's not about you, but let's figure out ways of handling it together as a team, as friends, as lovers," whatever it is—whatever kind of relationship it is.

Now, I imagine with your birth chart that you've had early developmental experiences that when you spoke your mind, you were punished or you were abandoned or you were criticized. So it really taught you to be incredibly self-protective of your ideas. And, in a way, I think what you've been doing is unconsciously re-creating that very problem. The falling out that you had with this friend sounds like it was messy because she said, "You're too sensitive, and also, you're too shut down." That's complicated.

So what she's saying is, "The things you're telling me that you're upset about, that's too much. And at the same time, I don't know enough of what's happening for you." What I'm reading between the lines about that, of course, by also contextualizing it through your birth chart, is that you don't say anything, and you don't say anything, and you don't say the full truth, and you don't say what's going on for you. And then, when you do say it, you say a lot at once, or you communicate the depth of emotion without the context and without fully acknowledging, "I didn't tell you it wasn't okay. I didn't tell you this was not okay for me or that it was hurting my feelings or that I wasn't in consent with it. And I let it go on until I woke up one day and I was like, 'Fuck this. I'm done with this.' And that's why I started doing this thing."

It's really important that you own how you've been held back or you haven't said what you actually thought or felt or needed. And that doesn't mean you're fucked up, and it doesn't mean you're wrong, but it's context. It's context for her to understand why all of a sudden, one day, you were hypersensitive about a thing, because it actually wasn't all of a sudden one day for you. And it's also context for you to acknowledge how you set the stage for this and how you participated in the problem.

It's complicated, it's messy, and we don't have to make it tidy. And I gotta say this really clearly because for anyone who has a concentration of planets in Scorpio, it's hard to be in the messiness, even though that is where you live your whole damn life: messiness, messiness, messiness. It's like your superpower and also your kryptonite, you know? Messiness.

So now I'm going to give you tools for introverted, sensitive, and conflict-averse you to say hard things personally and publicly. When you're going through what you yourself are going through right now, this really deep and personal transformation where you're confronting your own patterns, however they've arrived in this meaningful friendship for you, it's okay to prioritize your personal development as not only important for you because you're a person, but also as foundational for whatever is to come with how you present yourself in public, because let us be perfectly clear: when we speak in public or we post on social media or whatever, when we do those things, it is a curation of our ideas. It is not just our ideas.

Now, some people will hop on a live and be completely unstructured and totally spontaneous, and even when they're doing that—or I should say we because I certainly do that sometimes—it is curated. You're aware that you are talking to people, right? It is presented. And so it is okay that you are not ready to do that or you have other things to do in terms of self-care and self-work before you can present your ideas and yourself in public. It's not your responsibility to do all the things at once. I really—I like it, and I hear that you're saying that you want to be able to do this more.

But for an introverted person, you don't have to put your insights on display to the public. You're actually not obliged to do that. And there are many ways of making a difference. There are many ways of being a part of the world solutions that actually don't require you to do that. And so, if that's not your truth, you don't have to do that. All of that Scorpio in your chart, it really does speak to your need for privacy. You have a Pluto square to the Midheaven, and in the context of this conversation, it reinforces your desire for privacy.

And so, if there are ways that you feel deeply called to speak out, you will find your voice. It'll just take you a solid fucking minute because the way that Saturn impacts your Mercury is it slows down your cognitive processing, not like you're a slow processor, but what it does is it makes it so that you are editing and editing and editing and editing. Every thought gets hyper-edited by this hypervigilant inner jerk editor. And then what Pluto does on the other side of your Mercury is it makes all of your thought processes deep and investigative. So for you to come to what you believe and what you want to say, it takes time because you're sifting through so much data.

Your friend's not wrong. You're very fucking sensitive. You're very sensitive. What your friend is wrong about is that you're too sensitive. You are exactly as sensitive as you were fucking designed to be, and you are not a mistake. There is nothing a mistake about you. What I think is probably true is that you haven't found ways to honor and be in your sensitivities that work within this relationship, and that might mean you're pretending you don't have the sensitivities, so you don't own them, so it leaks out of you in weird ways and gets defensive, because Scorpio can get hella defensive. Right?

So, in terms of the public stuff, I want to say really firmly and clearly that's not your first job right now. Your first job right now is the personal stuff, and the public stuff will actually come from the clarity that you develop for yourself. And this is reiterated within your birth chart by the fact that if you look at your chart, you can see all the planets are below the horizon except for your Moon in the twelfth house. Below the horizon means under your Ascendant and your Descendant.

And so you're a private person. And, again, I know we're living in a world right now that demands that everyone show up in public in this very particular way, but it just might not be your truth. And there are countless other ways of showing up and being a part of the world and even being a part of a conversation. That's the public. Now, on the private, let's talk about being conflict-averse, because you say you're conflict-averse, and I believe you. And, also, I don't. It's both.

You're averse to being wrong. I don't know that you're exactly averse to conflict. Having a Jupiter/Mars conjunction in Capricorn means you will fight if you need to damn fight. It means that you will stand up if you need to stand up. The problem is, in your personal relationships, you don't like drama because you don't want to be wrong. You do have a way that you can obsess and get really fixated on things, and it actually causes you harm. It fucks with you. It doesn't serve you. Because of that, there's a way that it's been easier for you to say, "Okay, I'm conflict-averse. I don't want to start anything. I don't want to get into anything," because you're scared that if you say, "The last three times that we talked on the phone, you just talked about yourself the whole damn time and you didn't really seem very interested when I talked about myself"—let's say that happened with that friend. Because you're so sensitive to feeling like there's no room for you, it would be really hard for you to say, "Hey, you're not actually asking me about myself. I feel like you're a little bored by me right now. I actually need to talk about myself a little bit."

That might feel like, if you said it, it would sound like you were starting shit. And so it's easier to shut down than to risk saying it wrong and having to deal. For you, you have tried to evade and avoid seeing painful truths so that you wouldn't have to cope with them. But, in a way, you have kind of created the things you're scared of by doing that. It's complicated. And I want to be really clear: none of this is the worst. I mean, I'm sure it feels fucking awful, but the way your chart is written, these are life experiences that you need to go through in order to choose to embody the best parts of your Scorpio stellium nature.

The thing you want to remember is that having all that Scorpio in your chart, having Pluto and Saturn on either side of Mercury in your chart, having the Sun conjunct Pluto in your chart—all of those things reiterate, reiterate, reiterate that you are the goddamn phoenix. You have an amazing capacity for transformation and healing. But, also, when you feel pain, you feel it really deeply. And so you are very sensitive. You are hypersensitive, and that is not a problem.

It's how you cope with it, it's how you support yourself, and it's how you bring others in once they've earned your trust or keep them on the outside if they don't earn your trust. That's what you need to mature and own and work with, not so that you can make yourself less sensitive but so that you can create a life in which your sensitivities are not something you're always trying to get away from or shield others from, but instead, they're just a wonderful, weird, complicated, and powerful part of who and what you are.

So here's where I get into real pragmatic advice. You're going to write two lists, okay? Every time you have a friend or interpersonal issue where you're like, "Fuck, I don't know what to say here," two lists: what I'm feeling honestly—no one's ever going to see these lists. This is fucking personal. This is like dear diary shit—what it is that I'm feeling in this relationship. Every petty thing you're feeling, every defensive thing you're feeling, every paranoid thing you're feeling, every sad thing you're feeling. Everything. Throw all the complicated emotions that are scary to say out loud.

The next list is what is objectively happening. Make sure that in that second list, objectively, what are you doing? Objectively, what are they doing? Then you're going to put those down. Okay? So this is, first, therapeutic, just getting clear on what's emotionally happening and what's behaviorally happening, because you want to be able to sit with the contrast that may or may not exist between those two things. You might find your emotions are at a ten on a scale from one to ten, but the situation is actually closer to a four. Okay. Cool. That's where you talk to your nice lady therapist. That's where you bring it to your tarot reading. That's where you start to deal with this more emotionally and mentally before you then determine what to say to her.

That might mean if you start to realize, "Oh shit, all my feelings are at a ten and the situation's at a four," that might be when you text your friend and say, "I am in a weird, messy place with my feelings about an interaction we had. I really don't know if it's on me or if it's something we need to talk about, so sorry if I was weird. Let's check in in a day or two. You know me; I need a minute." You can do that. And if your friend isn't down for that, then she might not be well suited to a long-term relationship. Not everyone is going to be down for that, but not everyone needs to be in your inner circle. You are allowed to have tiers of friends, some of which you would never trust with this realness and others of which are there for you through this.

Now, let's say you're ready to figure out what to say. This is where you're going to write two separate lists. Now we're on lists three and four, I guess. Right? Now, the first thing is, "What do I want to say to this person?" Just bullet-point it. I mean, you don't have to bullet-point. This is Capricorn on Mercury/Saturn conjunction suggestion. You can write a poem if you want. You can write a prose. But I find bullet point is easiest because it doesn't allow you to get distracted by how you're saying it. This is just notes for you. So what you're going to do here is what you want to say, what you want to get off your chest and say to this person.

And then the second column is what you want them to hear. So what you might want to say in my little example is, "I feel like you don't care about me. I feel like you don't listen to me. You make me feel like shit." And what you want them to hear is, "I really value your friendship. I really like being there for you, and it hurts my feelings when that doesn't seem clearly reciprocated. Is something going on? Was that on purpose, or were you just having a narcissism moment?" They're the same thing, but they're different.

There's what we want to say, and then there is what we want the other person to hear. Sometimes they're the same damn thing, and a lot of times, especially when we have a lot of intense emotion and sensitivity, they're actually quite different. Saying to someone, "I'm mad at you," is fair. But when you say to someone—when you lead with, "I'm mad at you," most people, most of the time, instantly feel defensive. And when people are in their defenses, they're not listening to you anymore. It's okay to say, "My feelings got hurt. I see what I've contributed to our problems, and I certainly want to talk to you about ways that you hurt my feelings and that you contributed to the problems. Are you open to talking about the messiness of what's happened with us?"

That's basically the same thing as saying, "I'm pissed at you," but they're not fighting words. Right? And I think that what you need to give yourself permission to do is to take the time to sift through the layers of your thoughts and reactions to come to the truth that you want to unpack with someone else. And you are allowed to say, "I don't know how to say this right, but this is the mess of what I'm feeling," or, "I don't know exactly if this is right or wrong, but this is what I keep on returning to. Will you help me figure it out?" or, "I feel really defensive about this, but I want to work through it with you."

When we lead with some measure of humility, with acknowledging our part and acknowledging what we don't know, it makes it a lot fucking easier for other people to do the same. When you come at someone with, "This is what it is and this is what you did," that person will invariably be defensive. And people either get mad when they're defensive, or they shut down, or they get sad. It's not a really opening situation. So, if your ambition is to facilitate resolution, as it sounds like it is from your question, think in that way.

I'm not encouraging in any way to minimize your truth or to water down your needs, your feelings, or what is authentic for you. But how you deliver those things definitely does need some measure of finesse. The only way for you to do it is to give yourself permission to take the time to do that. I think for you, with that Saturn, writing lists and columns will be very effective in doing this. Now, let's say you've done all four of these lists. Then you can create a couple bullet points of things you want to make sure you say or things that you keep on thinking but you know you don't actually want to say.

It's okay to come into a conversation with notes. I have done that 700 million times over the course of my life. I'm exaggerating—also, I've done it a lot. The only reason to do that is because you're making an effort to keep yourself on track. Now, you don't want to do that to create a script. That would be a terrible idea because it's another form of showing up rigidly, which is what your friend has accused you of, of being shut down and guarded, which is an expression of Scorpio rigidity. All of the fixed signs and many of the cardinal signs are quite rigid.

But what I'm trying to get at here is this. Don't script this. Only make sure to center and align yourself with what is authentic, and leave room for what you don't know. Leave room for the discomfort of being vulnerable and of things not going the way you want them to, because if you're being authentic, if you're showing up and you're being authentic and you don't get what you want and it doesn't work out the way you want, you haven't made a mistake. Showing up authentically is always the right choice if we're talking about dealing with someone you actually trust.

This brings me to my very final point, my dear. If you do not trust this friend anymore, I do not encourage you to take this advice. If your friend has broken your essential trust, then do not turn yourself inside out for her. That's not the answer. When somebody has proven themselves to not be the person you thought they were and has proven themselves to not be worthy of your trust, it is self-harm to turn yourself inside out and show up authentically and give them your vulnerability. So don't create a self-fulfilling prophecy where you do all this work and you take all my advice with somebody you know you can't trust. So that's my only one caveat to undo all my other advice.

My dear, I really hope this helps you, and good luck with the tough conversations.

The Okra Project is a collective that aims to mitigate food insecurity in the Black Trans community. The project hires Black Trans chefs to come to the homes of Black Trans people, or community centers if they're currently experiencing homelessness, to cook healthy, culturally relevant, and delicious meals. They feed bellies with great food and feed spirits with great fellowship. The Okra Project intentionally has never sought 501(c)(3) status so they can ensure that their money goes where it's needed. Therefore, their work is maintained entirely through individual donations from people like you, and everything helps. Learn more about their programing by visiting theokraproject.com, or donate. And the link is in my show notes.

 We're going to look at the week of August 2nd through the 8th of 2020. As always, there's so much to learn. There are so many ways that we can slip into old habits and trauma patterns and insecurities, fears, and there are so many ways that we can challenge ourselves to grow, either in really, really small ways, in really, really big ways, and everything in between. Every moment is an opportunity. Sometimes I don't like the opportunities I'm being offered, but we gotta do what we gotta do.

Something I want to talk about really briefly before I get into this week's horoscope is the morphic field. This is something I've talked about in different contexts at different times. But there's a lot of fear in the world right now. There's a lot of hurt, there's a lot of fear, and there's a lot of sickness. And if you are an energetically sensitive person, or if you never used to be an energetically sensitive person but just the amazing energy shifts of 2020 have turned you more sensitive or aligned you more with your sensitivities, then you may be feeling new forms of anxiety, new embodiments of exhaustion, new levels and layers of emotional and mental strain, which are really potentially, at root, spiritual strain. I mean, I know I certainly am.

First of all, I just want to name it. I want to just acknowledge that that is happening for a lot of us, and not just the wooest of us. You know what I mean? Also just people who care, people who maybe have less distractions going on in our lives, and so we're more checked in to what's happening internally. There's just a lot of energy. Because we're going through a global pandemic, there is this great shared experience that provokes a great deal of fear and, in many people, sickness.

Because there's such a collective fixation on the same thing or a similar thing, the energetics of it are really strong. And so I want to remind you that it's okay to be vulnerable, and it's healthy and normal to feel. You know what I mean? If you touch a hot stove and it burns your hand, that's good. You want your hand to hurt when you touch a hot stove. If you feel concerned about the world, that's actually a really healthy response to the world as it is, in context of all the things, all the damn things.

Now to your horoscope. This month kicks off with a lot of energy, just a lot of energy. On the 2nd, there will be an exact Sun square to Uranus. You'll be feeling it on the 1st, but it's exact on the 2nd. And a Sun square to Uranus is upsetting. Uranus brings upsets. So that could mean a secret you once told is revealed. It could mean that you—basically, it makes you accident prone. It can just make you not really pay attention to what you're doing, and so you end up slipping on a banana peel. It happens. It's not just for cartoons.

It's also a transit that brings us sudden and unexpected circumstances. That might mean you have an insight that's just a goddamn game changer, something that really just has you perceiving things really differently. It's a shift in perspective. Another way that Sun square to Uranus can play out is much more oriented towards actions. So there might be a change in your circumstances. There might be a change in your life or world that just throws you for a bit of a loop. Depending on whether or not this transit hits your chart directly, you will feel this really personally, or it might be something that you're noticing in the people around you or the world around you.

Sun square to Uranus is not just meant to bring up upsets or surprises. It's meant to facilitate change. When things are destabilized—and trust me when I say Uranus is a destabilizing force. When things get destabilized in your life or in the world, it's in part because it's an opportunity for you to restructure your life or the world because it's an opportunity to see things in a new way, have a new perspective, or to simply get free of some limiting perspective or action or whatevs.

So Sun square to Uranus, be on the lookout around this date for opportunities to free yourself of something that actually isn't serving you anymore or maybe never served you. I would be wary of trying to force other people to think or feel or do anything around this date because a Sun square to Uranus is just not the time you're likely to be successful, TBH, especially because on the 3rd at exactly 8:59 a.m. Pacific Time—California time—we have a Full Moon in Aquarius. A Full Moon in Aquarius, that's kind of exciting, right? Okay. Let's talk about it.

So, as you know, a Full Moon is when the Sun and Moon are exactly opposite each other by sign and degree. This particular Full Moon is happening at 11 degrees and 45 minutes. So the Moon will be at 11 degrees and 45 minutes of Aquarius, and the Sun is at the exact same degrees of its opposite sign, Leo. When Full Moons occur, shit gets emo, right? Emotions rise to the surface and demand to be dealt with. On a more holistic and big-picture level, Full Moons occur once a month, and they mark the closure of a Lunar Cycle that began with the New Moon. Right? The New Moon in Leo was the start of the cycle. The Full Moon in Aquarius is the end of that cycle.

So, every month, we have this opportunity with the Full Moon for closure. And that closure over the course of time can become greater maturity and a more embodied life, really. That's a cool thing about the Moon's movements is that it really does mark points of development that you really tend to notice. Most people really notice their feelings around the Full Moon. Now, this particular Full Moon is an opportunity to see yourself in the collective. So the tension between Leo and Aquarius has so much to do with the tension between "I want attention for how I'm unique" versus "I want to be a part of a group. I want to be a part of a collective movement towards our shared specialness."

Leo really just wants to be the center of things, and Aquarius wants to be a part of things in a more humanistic and collective way. Now, I'm not talking about people who have Sun in Leo or people with Sun in Aquarius. Don't get your panties twisted in a knot. What I'm talking about is the energies of these signs in the context of the conflict between them. And this is a really important thing to consider given the world we're in, right—the tension between individualism and social movements, right?

With this Full Moon—fun facts. A couple fun facts. First one is there is an exact Mercury opposition to Saturn occurring during this Full Moon. And Mercury opposite Saturn gives us a real "the glass is half empty" feeling. It really triggers pessimistic and scarcity-based thinking. It also can trigger fights and disagreements and hurt feelings between friends. This is a time when differences between you and others can come to the surface, and they come to the surface in a way that is just like, "Oh shit. I don't even know if I can work with this."

Saturn makes us feel like things are insurmountable. That's the downside of Saturn. Saturn makes us feel like, "I'll never have enough. I'll never have enough love. I'll never have enough time. I'll never have enough resources," whatever it is. The thing you want to know about this particular opposition is that you are unlikely to have great perspective. You are likely to either be feeling really negative or to be dealing with somebody who's really negative.

Back to the Full Moon. The Full Moon, the Sun/Moon opposition—both of those planets, the Sun and the Moon, are forming a square to Uranus. And any Ghost baby who listened to Episode 129 of the podcast and heard me talk about T-squares—I talked about aspect configurations in that episode, and I referred to T-squares. So, basically, what is happening here is Uranus is becoming the focal planet of a T-square between the Sun, Moon, and Uranus for this Full Moon. What that means is you can expect the unexpected. You can expect whatever it is that you're experiencing around this date is just going to be surprising. It's going to not be what you're planning.

Now, you might find yourself feeling anxious or jumpy or defensive because Uranus can kind of make us feel jittery. It accentuates your central nervous system or your nervous system in general. So it can just make you feel nervy or on edge. And because of Saturn/Mercury opposition, we can find ourselves braced for the worst, which kind of makes that jumpiness jumpier, unfortunately.

This Full Moon chart indicates that there is a risk that we will get bad news, that we will get upsetting news, that we will feel isolated or alone, that someone will disappoint you in a way you weren't expecting, or you will disappoint someone else in a way that makes you feel like shit about yourself.

So here's the thing. Uranus wants us to be open-minded. Uranus is a planet that champions adaptability. You may feel really inclined to take a risk, or you might feel like you are being kind of pressed into a corner and you have to take a risk. This is tricky because if it weren't for the Saturn/Mercury opposition, I would say, "You know what? No time like the present. Take a damn risk." But the presence of the Saturn/Mercury opposition, for me, is a concern because it does indicate that we will not be seeing things clearly. We will be seeing them through poop-tinted glasses. That's not an expression. I just pretended it was. But that's kind of what this Saturn/Mercury opposition can do. It can tint our glasses negatively.

So what I recommend is, if you can, schedule time on the date of the Full Moon to do some introspection. If you have a shrink, if you have a bestie that you go deep diving with into your stories, if you have a dear diary, whatever it is, spend some time really unpacking your ideas and situation and reflecting on it if you can. Now, make sure that you don't get caught up in the narrative in such a way that you're telling the story about what other people said, what other people did, what other people want, what other people expect, and instead you look at your part, what you're bringing to the table, what your reactions and your responses are.

Stay fixated on the part that you can control, on the part that is really, ultimately, your responsibility. That's you. And if you find that you cannot stop obsessing on what everyone else is saying, thinking, doing, or not saying, thinking, doing, then that's your problem. That's a good problem to work with. We all have problems. Don't feel bad that you have problems. Problems are human.

Before I move on to the next transit, which is happening on the 4th, I want to say this. Full Moons kick up a lot of feelings. Sometimes a Full Moon passes and you don't really pay attention; life moves on. And sometimes they can kind of bring you to your knees. They can really be exhausting and overwhelming. I have a little worry that this particular Full Moon is going to be draining. And so, if you find yourself not drained, don't worry about it. Yay you. But if you do find yourself drained, it is just your system's way of saying, "Hey, buddy, I need a little more TLC. I need a little more space, a little more time. Maybe I need more sleep."

This is definitely the time to hydrate, eat well, really tend to your body's needs to the best of your ability, because that form of self-care, of real basic eat nutritiously/drink water kind of stuff, it really can help to support your foundations and set the stage for your mental and emotional wellness, which is kind of going through a trying moment here with this Full Moon. If you can't do that, that's okay. Do your best with whatever you're working with, wherever you're starting from. But if you know you tend to self-sabotage by not taking care of your body's needs, be on the lookout for that around this time, and do your damn best. Okay? Okay.

On the 4th, Mars is forming an exact square to Jupiter. Now, Mars square to Jupiter is a time where we feel impulsive. So you can see there's a lot of impulsive energy in this week's horoscope, and it's not a nervous system impulsiveness like all that Uranus is, but it is a Jupiterian impulsiveness, which is, "Fuck it. I'm sure it'll be fine." Whenever I look at Mars square to Jupiter, I'm thinking—you know that expression when you jump into the pool before you check and see if there's water? That's what I think of when I think of a Mars square to Jupiter. It just is like that. It's risk-taking without a whole lot of forethought.

This is a terrible time to decide to take off your mask in public. Okay? In the context of the spread of something, I would encourage you to be very conservative—COVID-related, very conservative—on and around the 4th. I know I find cause to say this every week, but I mean, check it out. COVID is not getting better here in the U.S. It is getting much, objectively, worse. So please be careful.

Okay. So Mars square to Jupiter. Another thing that can happen is you can feel the energy boost you need to get a thing done. If you've been kind of having to force yourself to mobilize, if you've been feeling depressive or just having a hard time with motivation in general, Mars square to Jupiter is what you want because it's a boost of energy, and it can be reckless if you're already inclined towards impulsiveness. But if you're not inclined to impulsiveness, if you err in the other direction, this actually can be really energizing.

If you leverage this transit intentionally, it can be a time where you deal with your ego so that it becomes healthier and better adjusted. Whether that means you need to make it a little smaller or you need to make it a little bigger, this transit can actually help you gain greater balance and strength with your ego. You don't want a weak ego, and you don't want an aggressive ego. You want a strong ego because a strong ego knows when it can take a back seat.

So, when I'm looking at this transit, honestly, there's really great potential and there's really negative potential. If I was walking around town an angry man, just like, "I'm an angry man and I got angry things to say," yeah, I might get real pissed on this transit. But don't worry. There's no angry men in the world, so that won't come up.

So this transit is not one to start shit with people, especially not people you don't know. It's a terrible time to do big social things, and the reason why I say that is literally only because of COVID-19, because if it wasn't for COVID-19, I'd be saying this is a great time to socialize. But because Mars and Jupiter are the two planets I see as related to spread, like things catching fire, this is a bad time to put yourself in groups, even if it's groups of people you super fucking like. Be conservative.

One last thing I'll say about this transit. If you have a sexual partner, be it toys, your own paws, or a human or multiple humans, this is a great time for getting some because Mars square to Jupiter can give you sometimes quite quick but satisfying sex, some good athletics. So this is a great time to enjoy your sexuality, whatever that looks like, whatever that means to you based on all the things that make you you.

Now there's only two more things for me to tell you, and that's, on the 4th, the planet Mercury moves into Leo. And on the 7th, the planet Venus moves into Cancer. These two things—I won't go into them in too deep of a way, except for to tell you that it is a shift in energy. Mercury will only be in Leo for like a couple weeks, which is very fucking quick of Mercury. So, if you really love it when Mercury transits through the sign of Leo, really make use of this time. Mercury in Leo—the downside is we can get really fixed in our thinking, and we can be a little forceful in how we communicate. And the positive side is it is a great transit for creation and connection. So have some fun. Tell a joke. Laugh, why don't you?

Now, Venus in Cancer, this transit is really good for reaffirming the love you share with people, for reaching out to people and letting them know you like them; you appreciate them. The downside of Venus in Cancer is it can kind of go smothery. It can kind of go smother-lovey, you know what I mean? So it can be a little [coda 00:49:41], a little attachy. That's the downside of the transit of Venus in Cancer.

But if you're doing any shelter in place or quarantine styles, this is actually a great transit for cutifying your home. Yeah, I said cutifying, and I'm going to stand by it. In particular, Venus in Cancer—cutify that kitchen. Cutify that bedroom. That's what Venus in Cancer wants you to do. And who are you to stand in the way of Venus in Cancer? Huh?

Okay. Now I'm going to quickly repeat the transits of this week because you know I talk fast. On the 2nd, we have an exact Sun square to Uranus. On the 3rd, Mercury will be opposite Saturn. And at 8:59 a.m. Pacific Time, there will be a Full Moon in the sign of Aquarius. On the 4th, Mars forms an exact square to Jupiter, and on that same day, Mercury moves into Leo. On the 7th, Venus moves into Cancer.

Now, my loves, thank you heartily for being a part of this podcast and for listening. You know what I mean? It just means so much to me. I'm into it. How about you?