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

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Welcome back to Ghost. This week's question comes from Spiritually Stagnant, and they say: "Lately, in my spiritual work, I've struggled with finding significant guidance or meaning. Honestly, for the last few years, it's felt way more like research than spirituality. And while I love research, if I had a catchphrase, it would most likely be, 'Oh, let me look that up.' I believe that research can be a beautiful part of a spiritual practice. It's feeling more like a way for me to procrastinate than actually sitting with things—procrastination in the form of perfectionism, if you will. I find myself getting overwhelmed when attempting to interpret a tarot pull or how a current transit hits my chart. Meanings blur together, and nothing feels poignant. I'd love any advice or direction you could give." And Spiritually Stagnant was born on March 19th, 1993, at 2:10 p.m. in Nashville, Tennessee.

This is such a great question. Even for people who aren't necessarily feeling spiritually stagnant, I think it's important for us to really be cognizant of the difference between what is mental, what is emotional, and what is spiritual because they are distinctly different things. If I was to give you a very brief cheat sheet, I would tell you that Mercury is your mind. When I hear the word "research," I always think of Mercury. And when we think about spirituality, when we think about leaning into spiritual work in any way, it's not inherently Mercury. So Mercury may be a part of that, but we want to look to Neptune. We want to look at planets in water houses, in particular the eighth and the twelfth houses. We want to look at planets in the zodiac sign of Pisces, or can be Scorpio.

These are not the only indicators for spirituality, but this is just really very broadly what I look for when I hear questions like your own. And so, of course, you are Pisces. I say "of course" because you were born March 19th. That's at solidly a Pisces Sun. And in your birth chart, you have a Mercury conjunction to the Sun. This placement inclines you to identify with your thoughts, which is why it's tempting for you to research and to analyze as a way to locate yourself. That is not a good thing or a bad thing, but it can be a limiting thing if you get stuck there, as it sounds like you have.

From whatever vantage point you're coming from, in order to do spiritual work, you've got to be willing to sit with your feelings. And in sitting with your feelings, you also get to access your intuition and the sensations of your body. So there's your emotions. There's your physical sensations and your intuition or your guidance. Accessing all of these things requires slowing down, being present, and then being receptive. So one, two, three: slowing down, being present, being receptive. Most of us, most of the time in this modern world, don't have a practice around that.

When your life is really busy or you're really cerebral, if you're on your phone all the time, if you're constantly taking in data and information and analyzing and processing data, you're in your Mercury, which is a busy little bee of a planet. What this can do is it can make us more distant from our emotions so that we start to confuse our thoughts with our feelings. This is something I've talked about on Ghost a ton. But spirituality requires presence and synthesis and a willingness to be uncomfortable because if you're typically in your head, if you're typically in busyness and distractions, when you finally do tap into yourself and you start to feel your emotions or the sensations of your body, it's likely to be uncomfortable.

When we're uncomfortable, what do we do? We grab our phone. What do we do? We figure out something else we have to do. We get distracted. And again, the planet Mercury governs distractions. So what I want to just acknowledge is that in order to have a spiritual practice over the course of time, you've got to be willing to feel uncomfortable and to feel feelings you don't want to feel. And my instinct, Spiritually Stagnant, is that that has been getting in your way because research is driven and it gives you a sense of purpose and it's interesting, whereas sitting with information, sitting with yourself—that can be slow. It can be uncomfortable. And there can be no clear direction, nothing to do, nothing to figure out. To just be is really uncomfortable, and it's especially uncomfortable when you're, oh, I don't know, living through a global pandemic or threats of war or grave injustices to people around you, maybe even to yourself. It is very hard to sit with your emotions in those conditions, and yet that's the work.

So, before I get into your chart, I want to say this: if pulling tarot or reading your birth chart isn't actually improving the quality of your life, if it isn't giving you greater access to your connection to the divine, stop doing it. This is just for any person doing anything on the spiritual realm. If it's really not serving you, and you've tried and it's not serving you, it's okay to walk away. Sometimes things don't service so that we choose to walk away. That's the reason why it happens like that. So I want to just put that in your little noodle for you to bake later. Just something to think about.

So, all of that said, let's talk about your birth chart. As I said, you've got this Sun conjunction to Mercury in Pisces. It's in the eighth house. You lean very spiritually. You're very sensitive. And I can understand why you would have the impulse to try to do research and figure things out as a way to kind of harness your own sensitivities and your own emotions. You've got a beautiful Moon/Jupiter conjunction in your third house in Libra, and that placement gives you a thirst for knowledge. It is a huge part of what makes you happy and what compels you through life.

Let's add to that that you've got that Neptune/Uranus conjunction in Capricorn that people born in the early '90s have, and it's in your sixth house. This placement makes it really uncomfortable to stay with the body, to do things slowly. So you can do things in dream land slowly, but Uranus is just like, "Go, go, go. Figure out more. Figure out more." So all of these things can compel you to rushing around, making a feeling of stagnancy pretty fucking intolerable for you. So what's the answer? What do you do? What you do is really simple.

Put down the research. Put down the learning tools, whatever they are, and be present with yourself. Just seriously—I'm not saying you have to develop a meditation practice, though that might be really great for you. But I am saying have a damn seat. Maybe take a walk. Try to really notice what's happening inside of you, not so you can analyze it, not so you can connect it to your birth chart, not so that you can rush to your tarot cards and throw cards on it, but learning how to be with yourself, how to listen to yourself, how to receive this moment and to respond to it in a nurturing, caring, and healthy way—that is an integrated spiritual practice. All of us, no matter how spiritual we are or aren't, in our own ways over the course of life, many different times, need to return to that. It's just a part of being a human. It's an important part of being a human.

So your question is, "How can I sit with things?" Right? You're not the only person who asks me this. People are always asking me, "How do I feel my feelings? How do I tap into my intuition? How do I feel"—fill in the blank. The answer is alarmingly simple. When you feel uncomfortable, when you feel sad or bad or awkward or distracted or anything else, stay with the feelings. What I find to be the easiest way to do that is, when you start to feel, let's say, anxious, instead of recoiling from the anxiety, trying to figure out why you're anxious, trying to do something about it or change it in some way. Improve it. Breathe into it. Notice where you're feeling it in your body, and if that takes a lot of time, cool. Sit with your body and breathe into that part of your body. If it's just a general overall feeling, okay. Cool. Breathe into your general overall feeling of anxiety or whatever it is.

The need to stay with a spiritual practice at a time where it's difficult to do, it simply requires learning how to stay with difficult-to-experience emotions and doing it in a way that is not agenda driven. Don't seek a blue light. Don't seek resolution or peace. Don't even seek feeling good. Only seek to not abandon yourself in your difficult emotions. The problem with astrology—and there are many problems with astrology, I say as an astrologer. But a big problem with astrology is the way people use it. Astrology is an analytic tool, and it gives us information. It's, of course, very interpretive, but it gives us information. It doesn't do the work for us. And it's a serious problem when we turn to astrology as a way to avoid difficult experiences instead of to learn from difficult experiences.

When we use astrology as a way to explain things away instead of as a way to contextualize what we've come to understand—and I think that you've been trying to explain things as a way to make yourself feel safe and better instead of working to make yourself feel safe and better and then turning to the tool of astrology to help you refine that, to help you contextualize what you did right and what you didn't. So there is no magic bullet. There is no cheat sheet for feeling your feelings and cultivating presence. It's staying with it when you're uncomfortable. It's returning to it even when you don't want to and being kind to yourself as you do it—not having an agenda, just being present.

For people who are really in their head or super intellectual, this can feel like you're not doing anything. It can feel like a lack of progress, when in fact it is the deepest form of work and the deepest form of progress that we can achieve. In other words, that's how you tend to your roots. I mean, think of us, us weird complex humans in our sticky, tricky meat suits, as plants that root in the water. The big show, yeah, sure, that's above ground. That's what you can see. But think of it as our roots, our deepest, most intimate parts, but also our foundations. They happen in our emotional wellness. They happen in our spiritual wellness. By being willing to be present for, empathetic towards, and patient with those parts of ourselves, the rest of our plant grows in a healthier way.

There's no way to be perfect at this, so don't even try. Just approach it as a practice, and keep on returning to it, not with the need to make progress or achieve anything in particular but instead as a way to stay present with yourself and to integrate all the things you're doing in your life. When you do this, it will be uncomfortable at first as you engage with emotions and sensations that you've been going out of your way to avoid or that you don't have skills yet for coping with. Stay with those, and you will get to the easier stuff, the beautiful stuff, the fun stuff. You'll get to all the parts, as long as you're willing to engage with all your parts and not just the ones that you know what to do with.

My loves, we are going to get astrological. We are going to look at the week of February 27th through March 5th of 2022, and let me tell you what: the astrology is worth sticking around for. But I want to talk about a couple of things because you know I like a good preamble, okay?

The first thing is pretty spiritual, and it's for all of my loves who like to say, "Avoid the news. It lowers your vibration." I want to ask you this: when your house is burning, do you advise the people around you to keep their vibe high by avoiding the flames, or do you want them to help you? There is a great deal of spiritual value to the concept of not engaging with things that lower your vibration. However, it is misunderstood and misapplied when we use that idea around the news and issues of social injustice.

This is a good concept for, let's say, dealing with your ex. If your ex keeps on coming at you with a bunch of shit, well, don't lower your vibration by engaging with them. You already broke up with them. It's done. You can be done. When it comes to issues of pettiness, please do not lower your vibration. However, when it comes to the suffering of others, when it comes to issues of war and systemic injustice, it is not a lowering of your vibration to be educated, informed, and to care and to convert that knowledge and empathy into action.

I would actually say when shit gets real, it's your damn duty to care, to be educated and informed. It does not lower your vibration. I lowers your feelings. It makes you feel bad. Spiritual integrity without emotional intelligence is very fucking challenging. It's very difficult to achieve. We must be able to be present for and tolerate difficult emotions when confronted with terrifying realities because a reality is a reality whether you stick your head in the sand or not. And so it's not just your duty to care and to be informed, but it's also a gift.

It is a gift to care about someone other than yourself, people other than yourself. It is a stain on your soul to spiritually bypass. It is a stain on your soul to not care. That includes not caring because you've given yourself a pass to not know. And listen. We can't all know about all the damn things. There are grotesque injustices all over the world, so we cannot know about all the things and be 100 percent involved in all the things. But you know what I'm saying here, right? We must engage. We must care.

There is no God, there is no higher power, there is no function of the Universe that wants you to put your head in the sand while your neighbor's house is burning. That shit doesn't exist. And honestly, thank God it doesn't exist—or all the Gods that it doesn't exist—because one day it might be your house that's burning, and your attitude about other people being informed and other people's empathy is likely to change real quick. So I just wanted to give that to you to consider.

Now, another thing a little less spiritual but no less important that I want to speak to is that it is really tempting in this time where talks of World War III are everywhere to turn to social media for news on the ground. I'm certainly doing it. But it's essential to understand that disinformation is an effective tool of war in a modern world, as much as it honestly always has been. But in this modern world, we are now post the Great Conjunction, which happened in December of 2020. If you don't know what that is, just listen to my episode about it back in December of 2020. In this period, we entered into a new era, one where the virtual or digital worlds that we exist in and that are a huge part of our modern societies would take greater precedence.

Now we must be aware that wars are not just fought on the ground. They are fought digitally. Injustice is not just perpetrated IRL. It's also perpetrated through le internet. Bear with me because I want to re-popularize a term here: the netscape. The truth is old footage or manipulative footage is not hard to use, and many people are actively, intentionally posting—or some people are not intentionally reposting—old footage or manipulated footage. So we can't always believe what we see. We must learn to vet our sources.

I've been talking about this for years on the podcast, and I cannot stress it enough how important it is here and now. Make sure that your sources are accurate. Find journalists that you trust, and follow them and learn from them. And make sure that you're not the victim of disinformation or misinformation. Be especially suspicious of any kind of videos that you see that are on a loop or posts, in particular scary posts, about war from people whose accounts are brand new. I am not a media literacy teacher, just to be really clear. That's not what I do. But they're out there. Seek out their accounts on whatever social media platform that you are on the most, and strive to learn from them.

Cultivating critical thinking skills and media literacy—I know it sounds so boring, but it's a really essential tool for the modern world, especially when there's so much conflict and there's so much noise in the world of news. So much noise, right? But here's the thing. War, like any other conflict or scenario that threatens your survival, whether that's in a real or imagined way, it tests your character. How you behave now will not just define you as an individual, but you are part of the collective, so it will define us all as a society. It's easy to look back at wars of past years and be like, "Well, I wouldn't have done that," or, "How could those people have done that?" Well, here we are.

When your survival is threatened, when your comfort and wellness is threatened, what are you willing to do? My advice to you is to start with prioritizing enough empathy that you stay informed and that you seek reliable news sources, and enough empathy that you truly consider others and not just your own comfort. This may not lead to being able to do a whole lot. I don't know what you can do about something that's happening in another country or on another continent. There are things to do, and again, this is not exactly my field of expertise, but it is certainly possible to seek out people who it is their field of expertise.

But that's part of being a concerned global neighbor. It's about caring enough about others to know what's actually happening and to be able to focus your energy and care in a way that actually helps and that doesn't just add to the noise. I know it is terrifying that so many people are talking about world war. It is terrifying. And if we are all going to live through a world war, panicking about it today is not going to fucking help you or anyone else. Develop skills. Pace yourself. Don't put your head in the sand, and also, don't doom scroll 20 out of the 24 hours of each day.

It is hard to be a person. It's hard to know how to function healthily as a human adult. And also, here we are, just doing the damn thing in our weak little meat suits on a fucking marble hurtling through space. Here we are. So do what you can to be the best version of yourself in terms of how you care for yourself and how you participate in the world around you and with others.

I know. It was super light. No big deal. No big deal. Okay. Now, all of this said, my sweet, dear loves, if you're interested in a little bit more woo and energy exercises, I dropped a video talking about some good self-care you can do on my Patreon. So you can always join me there. And in particular, right around the first of the month is a great time to join my Patreon in general because on the first of every month, I drop a bonus episode of Ghost of a Podcast which is a month-ahead horoscope. Who doesn't want that, I ask you? Who?

Okay. Are you ready for your horoscope? Are you ready for the astrology of the week ahead? I feel like you are. Let's do this. Okay. Again, we're looking at the dates of February 27th through March 3rd of 2020. And of course, February is a real short month, and every year, I find it really disorienting. Here we are. There are no exact transits on the last two days of February.

On the 1st of March, we have a Sun sextile to Uranus. The Sun will be at 11 degrees of Pisces, and it will form a sextile, which is a 60-degree angle, to Uranus at 11 degrees of Taurus. Now, the Sun sextile to Uranus is a lovely transit. It supports us in making connections, whether that means cognitive connections where you're figuring things out and kind of perceiving things from a new angle or creative connections. It can simply be that you start to feel your way forward in some meaningful way in your life, especially if you've got something that will get triggered at that 11th degree in your birth chart.

This transit is stimulating because of Uranus. So what we want to do to the best of our ability is to be interested in—whether it's the world around you or whatever is happening within you. Instead of jumping to conclusions, as Uranus can do, be inquisitive. This transit can connect us to our intuition and our guidance in ways that are just kind of synergistic and really work. Don't forget to be curious. Again, this transit can lead to discoveries and adjustments that really improve things in unexpected ways.

This transit it is—because it's a sextile, it may not be that spectacular in your life. You might not notice it, because in life we have a funny way of ignoring the easy and lovely stuff and fixating on the challenging and harder stuff. But it's really worth your while to cultivate awareness of this transit as it's happening. It's going to be exact on the 1st, and we're going to be feeling it the 28th of February through the 2nd of March.

So it's worth activating this transit, and the way to do that is by being interested in the world around you, by being curious in the world around you, being open to changing, being flexible and actively engaged. That's the best way you can engage with this transit. I should say one last thing about this transit. It is exact at 9:05 p.m. Pacific Time. So if you're on the East Coast of the U.S. or Canada, you're going to experience this early in the morning on the 2nd. So adjust for your time zone.

As always, if you are interested in tracking the transits on your own, subscribe to Astrology For Days at astrologyfordays.com. It is my astrologers' pro tool for tracking transits, and you can adjust it to any time zone in the world. And of course, if you get Astrology For Days and your time zone is somehow not represented, just email the team, and we will add it because we do shit like that.

So that brings us to the 2nd of March. On the 2nd of March, we have got two exact transits. Very notably, we've got a New Moon in Pisces exact at 9:35 a.m. So, for all of you who celebrate New Moons at night just because you can see the Moon, just FYI, it's exact at 9:35 a.m. Pacific Time. We also have a Mercury conjunction to Saturn on that day, exact at 8:33 a.m. So it is a big part of this New Moon. Let's get into it.

There is so much going on in this New Moon chart, I can't even tell you. So okay. It's a New Moon in Pisces. We've got it happening at 12 degrees and 6 minutes of Pisces. And Jupiter is very close to the New Moon. It is at 14 degrees and 16 minutes, so it's a really nice, tight conjunction to the New Moon. This on its own in a bubble—which, of course, who amongst us lives in a bubble? But in a bubble, this can bring spiritual advancements, growth, expansion, a sense of well-being, a feeling of safety and love and happiness.

This configuration can make us feel really good and like everything's going to be okay. The problem is—and of course there's a damn problem—is that Saturn is conjoined to Mercury, which is a transit that kind of does the opposite. It stimulates thoughts of scarcity. It makes us feel like things are going in the wrong direction, that there isn't enough for us, that we have failed or that we are going to fail. It concerns us with very serious lines of thinking and can lead towards pessimism.

Additionally, this is an aspect happening in the sign of Aquarius, and so it can stimulate the nervous system. Something that Pisces, which—for this New Moon, we've got a stellium in Pisces. The Sun, Moon, Jupiter, and Neptune are all in the zodiac sign of Pisces. That is a lot of Pisces energy for us to be dealing with. So all this Pisces stuff, this Aquarian energy—it can really mess with your nervous system and with your nerves in general. And you didn't need that help, what with the world as it is. Am I right?

So it furthers our need to be mindful about how we preserve and protect our peace so that we don't do it in a spiritual bypassing way where we stick our head in the sand. And being able to preserve your peace in times of unrest—it's not always an option. So, if you can't be at peace—you can't have your equilibrium in a really lovely and easy place—that's okay. It's not awesome, but it's totally okay. It's about what we do with our energies and our attention. All that said, in walks some fucking Pluto shit. But of course it does, because as you all know, the Pluto Return of the United States just occurred in its exactitude, so it's at 27 degrees of Capricorn. But guess what else is at 27 degrees of Capricorn? Mars. Yeah, Mars.

So I'm going to unpack Mars and also Venus. I'm going to unpack these transits, the conjunction of Venus and Mars to Pluto, more in depth in a moment. But in the context of this New Moon chart, our survival mechanisms are likely to be triggered. So you can only imagine how that's likely to play out on a global or social level. But on a personal level, if you feel that your security, your survival, your reputation, your plans are being interrupted, it may bring out the worst in you—or maybe not you. Maybe you're a goddamn angel. Maybe it's just going to bring out the worst in the people around you. And then will that bring out the worst in you? I don't know.

The problem with Pluto in Cap is that it really can mess with our humanity. Unfortunately, Pluto in Aquarius is not much different in that particular regard, and that's where Pluto goes next. But that is a story for another day. Today, I say unto you, my loves, that this conjunction from Pluto, Venus, and Mars will intensify our feelings in a really compulsive way. The things you find yourself fixated on are not reliable at this time. It is really important to check out your relationship to power.

We are likely to see abuses of power or misuses of power. Abuses and misuses of power sometimes are a cue for you to take a stand, to actively engage, and to advocate for yourself or others. And sometimes they're your cue to step back. It really depends on your situation. It depends on the amount of power you have. It depends on so many factors. But it's what we must consider during these kinds of transits.

So the combo platter of all of these transits happening within the New Moon chart is really tricky. You and the people around you may be feeling a sense of resiliency and hope, and that can lead to jumping in the pool before you check to see if there's any water. But because we've got this Mercury/Saturn conjunction, we are being reminded of consequences. So another thing that may be happening this New Moon is we either are pretending consequences aren't a thing because of all this Piscean energy, or we feel fragmented. We feel fragmented because we want to believe the best. We want things to be okay, and we're terrified that they're not.

When humans—not just individuals, but when groups of humans are scared is when we do the worst things. Most of the worst things any of us have done we have done out of fear on some level or another. Whether it was justified or not is not the issue. It's just we act wrong when we feel scared because we feel like we have no other options. So investigate that feeling or those feelings or those thoughts before you act on them if they emerge this New Moon.

As always, New Moons are a time for openings and beginnings. They're a great time for planting seeds metaphorically. This can be done by identifying or focusing on constructive goals. Be a conservationist in your thinking. Conserve your energy for what matters, for what's useful, for what's constructive. And engage with power issues, whether it's owning your own power, not wasting your energy, not devolving into pettiness and resentments—it can be any of that kind of stuff—being conscious about how you engage with power.

Associated with that is anger because a Pluto/Mars conjunction, which again I'm going to talk about in a moment more in depth, can bring up rage and violence and defensiveness. It can be pretty fucking ugly, TBH. So your ability to stay present for ugly and aggressive and defensive and angry emotions, whether that's psychologically, emotionally, or in your body, is being tested this New Moon. But within that is an opportunity. There is a seed for engaging in new ways because not only is it a New Moon, but this Pluto shit is a conjunction. Pluto/Mars/Venus, conjunction. Saturn/Mercury, conjunction.

Conjunctions are also seeding opportunities. They're the opening of a new cycle. They're the start of something new. And so, if you bring intention, conscientiousness, empathy, patience, grace to the difficult things that come up within you and around you, you are making the best use of this New Moon and of these transits. It's very difficult to do. It's kind of simple, but it's hard as hell. So be patient with yourself, and if you can, be patient with others.

Now, of course, I'm not encouraging you to put yourself in danger as you're being patient with others. But there are a lot of ways that a lot of us, or maybe all of us at least some of the time, get wrapped up in outrage and despair about things that are actually not that consequential in the world or even to us as individuals. So don't waste your energy there. You don't have it to spare. None of us do right now.

Hopefully you can see why I wanted to start off this horoscope talking about spiritual bypassing, talking about our willingness and ability to be in "low vibrations," be in fear, because that's part of life. It's part of being a human. The human condition may be a bunch of bullshit sometimes, but it is our condition, and we've got to learn to live in it—hopefully not just survive it, but to thrive within it, to be the best possible human we can be within our nature, within our circumstances.

That brings us to the 3rd, where we have—no big deal—an exact conjunction between Mars, Venus, and Pluto in Capricorn at 27 degrees. Is it a big deal? Fuck yeah. Fuck yeah, it's a big deal. It's intense. This transit can be associated with violence. Mars is bang bang, punch punch. And Pluto is nuclear. It's associated with toxicity. And so I absolutely have a great deal of concern about violence breaking out on this date and around this date. We're going to be feeling it all fucking week, but it is exact in the morning Pacific Time of March 3rd.

The Mars conjunction to Pluto is very volatile. The fact that Venus is involved compels us—gives us a drive for things to be okay, to preserve peace, even at the expense of authenticity, even at the expense of living in accordance with our values. So we want to watch out for the impulse to compromise your humanity in efforts to protect your security, your safety. This is one of the greatest weaknesses of us humans. Our values can go out the damn window when we're personally at risk. So make sure that you're not acting in ways that do not reflect and embody your damn values. If you don't know what your values are, this is a great time to do some investigation this New Moon, this Mars and Venus conjunction to Pluto.

You may find yourself wanting to act in ways that force other people to do things that you want them to do. This energy can be very manipulative, so check in with yourself. The trolls are going to be out in full force this week, and especially on and around this date. So, again, don't take the bait. There's no use in it. Conserve your energy so that if you need to fight, you fight for something that matters to you. There's a great deal of value in fighting for what matters.

Now, this transit can also stimulate your sexuality and can be really fun and dirty and motivating to get in there and get something done. If you have the opportunity to work this energy out safely and consensually on this plane, my friends, have at it. Mars and Venus would be very happy for that, and so would Pluto. The key, of course, is consent and safety because Pluto tramples on consent sometimes. That's kind of its vibe. So you want to, again, be really mindful about how you're engaging. If you're having partnered sex and things start going in a direction that you thought you were into and then you're not, hey, man. Just say no. You may need to advocate for yourself.

On a social level, this Mars/Pluto conjunction is definitely a transit that I am concerned about. I expect there to be violence in the world. And so, if you are feeling unsafe, trust that instinct. Take care of yourself. Even if you're not personally experiencing any kind of violence or rage or any of these heavy themes, it's in the morphic field. Said in a less woo-woo way, it is in the collective. It is what is in everybody's mind right now. And so it's going to be triggering. It's going to be activating.

If you have trauma from not having agency with your body, if you have trauma from being the victim of violence or abuses of power, this might trigger stuff for you. And so, instead of recoiling and abandoning yourself in those feelings, to the best of your ability with your resources and all the things, recognize that this is an opportunity for you to care for yourself, whether it be stand vigil for yourself, advocate for yourself—heal and transform your shit because that's the thing Pluto can do. It can bring about revolution, transformation. That's what we want, right?

Now, as you know, the Venus/Pluto conjunction—it's not the first time you've heard me talk about it because this is the third and final hit post-Venus Retrograde of this particular transit of Venus conjunction to Pluto in Capricorn. The last time was on December 25th, and the time before that was on the 11th of December. So the issues that were going on in your life in December are absolutely ones for you to revisit because they're going to revisit you. Whatever it was that was going on in those periods in your personal life you're likely to have to deal with all over again. This is a time of resolution of those issues or a continuation of those issues, depending.

So I want to remind you about something I said to you in Episode 237 of this here podcast, which is this is not the time to ask, "What should I do?" This is the time to ask, "What are my motivations? What do I actually value? And how do I want to show up? What am I willing to give up or let go of so that I can embody and act on what I value and hold dear?" Who we choose to be at this time is so monumentally consequential. And I'm talking about this on a personal level; I'm talking about this on a social level, because truly, at the end of the day, how separate are these things? I don't think they're very separate.

But given that there is such unrest in the world, given that there's so much unrest here in the U.S., unfortunately, I think that we're going to see some serious drama from these transits. And we are likely to be seeing a great deal of toxic individualism. We are likely to be seeing people's liberties being compromised. That might be happening in your personal life, and it might be happening in the world around you, to you or not to you. Hopefully it's not happening from you, but if it is, hey now. Watch it.

All we can do is engage with integrity to the best of our ability. That's all you can do. Pluto governs our flight-or-fight mechanisms, our survival mechanisms. It's our root chakra vibes. And so, when dealing with Plutonian energies, we must be willing to stay associated so that we can know the difference between a trigger and a trauma. Traumas and triggers require different remediation. We must engage with them in different ways. And to the people who trigger us, they may feel like our enemies or our oppressors, but they are not reliably those things. It takes a willingness to stay present with what's actually happening within you and where you're at in order to know the difference.

Set up support. Be a support for others. Do what you can. Do what you can. I think I'll leave that there and lead you to the last transit that I'm going to talk about for this week, or last couple of transits I'm going to talk about for this week. On the 5th, we have Venus and Mars ingressing into Aquarius. That's a meaningful shift in energy. And the Sun is exactly conjunct to Jupiter at 14 degrees of Pisces.

So, Sun conjunction to Jupiter, let's talk about it. This transit, I kind of spoke on it a little bit with the New Moon because it was very close to exactitude. This transit is a great transit on paper. This transit can trigger a great sense of resiliency—psychologically, physically, and emotionally, even spiritually. This transit can make us feel lucky and hopeful and resilient, and it can increase our sense of empathy and basically just make us more gregarious and generous. Yay.

It can be felt in such a subtle way as you just feel pleasant. You just feel, "Oh, I can handle this. I'm okay," or, "I ran into someone lovely on the street that I haven't seen in forever, and it felt really good and it reminded me that I have more friends than I thought I did"—that kind of vibe. Or it can be downright lucky, where some sort of an opportunity or windfall crosses your path, lands in your lap, and you're like, "OMG. Look at me. I got something going on, and it's life-affirming." All wonderful things.

On the downside, this transit can get people to jump to conclusions. Now, how could that possibly go wrong in this day and age? It can have us soapboxing or dealing with other people who are just trying to drag you, whether you're kicking and screaming or not, to their side or their way of thinking. If you've decided that you are the teacher of all people and the judge and jury and you have no humility around that, that's when you get into the downside of Jupiter's righteousness. You can point people to the path. You can put beautiful lights, even solar panel lights so it's bright at night, on the path. Make it as appealing as you like. But dragging people on the path, forcing people on the path, that's where you get into some bullshit.

This can also be a time where, again, in the context of COVID, we have the spread of something because Sun/Jupiter conjunction can be associated with spread. So that can be the spread of misinformation. That can be the spread of an airborne disease. It could be the spread of all manner of things. It can be the spread of resiliency and good feelings and positive news. It certainly can. But when we are looking at astrology, just like when we're looking at most things in life, we don't want to look at each of the individual transits outside of the context of the whole.

So the Sun/Jupiter conjunction in the context of everything else happening this week is a little bit of a red flag for me. I'm concerned that there will be some sort of meaningful disinformation campaigns that spread like wildfire on or around this date. So pay attention. Check those damn sources. Relisten to the beginning of the episode if you need more advice. The thing is that Jupiter is a planet of growth and expansion. And so it's important to remember that Jupiter will grow anything, not just positive things, not just luck, which would be great if it was very selective. But it is not.

So, if you are greedy, if you are dissociated, if you are angry and defensive or whatever, this transit can lead you to being more of those things. Jupiter is not known for moderation. That said, this week—on this date certainly, but in general all week, I urge you to be moderate, to be a conservationist when it comes to your own energies and attention. If you can do this, you will be able to benefit from the best parts of this transit. And if you can't, then you'll deal with maybe the less wonderful parts of the transit. If you like doing drugs, this is a really rough week for drug use. I do not encourage anyone to do any kind of consciousness-raising drugs at this time because the energy in the collective is way too much. Staying present, even when it's shitty, even when it's scary and destabilizing, is in our best interest this week. So, to the best of your ability, show up, my loves.

And that is your super light and easy horoscope this week. I'm going to run through the transits one more time. On the 1st, we have an exact sextile between the Sun and Uranus, the Sun in Pisces at 11 degrees and Uranus in Taurus at 11 degrees. On the 2nd, we have a New Moon at 12 degrees of Pisces. It is exact at 9:35 a.m. Pacific Time. And on that same date, we have a conjunction between Mercury and Saturn, and that is exact at 8:33 a.m. Pacific Time.

On the 3rd, nothing to see here—just a Mars/Pluto conjunction as well as the last in a series of three Venus/Pluto conjunctions, all in Capricorn. Yikes. And then, on the 5th, we've got a Sun conjunction to Jupiter, while both Mars and Venus ingress into Aquarius. Now, the ingressions occur between 10:20 and 10:30 p.m. Pacific Time, and the Sun/Jupiter conjunction at 15 degrees of Pisces is happening at 6:06 a.m. Pacific Time.

So that's your rundown, my loves. I hope that you take the time to care for yourself and others and that you do the deep inner work that the astrology of this week requires. This is a big moment, and there's no room for perfectionism. There's just room for progress, and even little bits of progress are valuable. Even small advances are meaningful. So don't undervalue whatever growth you achieve this week. And if you have setbacks, if you fuck up, learn from it. Don't waste your fuck-ups. Don't waste your errors. Learn from them. Then they're not energy wasted; then they're life experiences that catalyze you into a better and more whole embodiment of yourself and more effective ways of dealing with your life in general as a human person in the goddamn world.

As always, if you get value from this podcast, please make sure that you're subscribed to it, and write me a review. Give me five stars on whatever platforms you're listening to the show on. If you haven't already gone to my new and improved website, I do invite you to go there. If you're an android user, I have Tiny Spark embedded on the home page of the website so you can use that tool for resourcing your intuition there. And there's lots of free goodies, as well as classes for sale in my shop. So spend some time over at lovelanyadoo.com, why don't you? And I'll talk to you next, okay? Buh-bye.