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.

Public schools are really struggling right now. That's why I want you to know about DonorsChoose. They connect the public to public schools. Their mission is to make it easy for everyone to help a teacher in need, moving us closer to a nation where students in every community have the tools and experiences they need for a great education. You can donate money to classrooms around the U.S., and it's very easy to do. Go to donorschoose.org to support a classroom today.

Welcome back to Ghost. This week, I have a question from Hierarchy Hater. And she says: "I've always had what you would call a problem with authority. I naturally don't trust it. I'm continuously either challenging it or becoming frustrated and paralyzed with how powerless I feel in its face. But now that I'm in my 40s, this quirk of mine is becoming actively destructive. It seems like now my definition of authority is rolled into one big amalgam that somehow includes all my bosses ever, wealthy people, my aging boomer parents who really need more compassion despite their past abuse, my therapist and medical doctor, the hierarchy at the nonprofit where I was volunteering, and every politician everywhere.

"I know my parents aren't cops and that my relationship with the power these varied people have in my life needs different perspectives and approaches, but they can feel the same these days. I know I'm meaner and less action-oriented than ever, probably because I have a fuller picture of my own participation in harmful structures and can no longer rationally see myself as outside of them. Any tips on how I can redirect my unbridled rage at hierarchy away from myself and the people in my life with whom I must be in relationship and towards a calmer and active engagement with the many ill systems of our world? Thank you for your work. Please keep my birth info private. You can call me Hierarchy Hater."

Okay. So this is such a great question. Before I unpack my answer, I will say what you're describing, Hierarchy Hater, is really common. When we have incredible resentments towards all people in authority, over the course of time, it can end up building to a place where we ourselves become less action-oriented and we become meaner. You're not alone in this. In fact, this is something very common that happens to people in their 40s and beyond. And the reason for this is partially what you're naming. You see your own complacency. You see how you are complicit in situations. But it's also anything that we don't work on, in particular any kind of toxic or destructive emotion that we don't actively work on over the course of time, it gets to a level where the energy is so frustrated that it comes out as meanness, defensiveness, rage, and apathy.

So this, separate from the specifics of your situation and your chart, is a really important thing for people who are either younger than 40 or over the age of 40 to hear. What we do not tend to festers, and when things fester, yeah, they tend to go rogue on us. And the longer we hold on to a complex or a problem, the more difficult it is to heal it. It's not impossible, but it's certainly more difficult. So, all of that said, let's get into your chart.

There's a number of things for us to talk about because your question kind of covers a lot. The first thing is that you're not actually describing a problem with authority completely, because as an example, your therapist is on the list, and your therapist is somebody who works for you, who is a contractor under your employ. A medical doctor also is somebody who works for you. Now, I know that there is power issues and it can feel like these people have power over us. But having an issue with your therapist is different than having an issue with police or bosses. Wealthy people is a very big group. I'm assuming you mean people wealthier than you. It's potentially a very large group of people. Are they authority over you? I mean, in a systemic way, sure, potentially. But depending on your own class situation, there might be a lot of people who are wealthier than you who don't actually have significantly more power.

So the first thing I want to say is when you clump all people together who make you feel a certain kind of way, which I'm hearing is powerless, overwhelmed, defensive—when you clump them all together, you are not allowing yourself to see who they are truly and what kind of agency you do or do not have with them. And so it can kind of be like a cop-out. It can kind of be like an easy way out. It doesn't feel that way, but it can be a bit of an easy way out to not engage with people as individuals and situations as unique in a moment, because if everyone's just the enemy, then you have no responsibility to yourself or others. I think you're pretty much saying this in your question, that you're aware of this; you just don't know how to get out of it.

So step 1 is taking the time to see people as people. And everyone comes from their own shit. You're acknowledging that you're getting mean and not very action-oriented. And this is happening because of accumulated trauma, stress, upsets, right? The same thing is true with everyone. Everyone who acts poorly, who misuses power, etc.—and I'm not talking about systems; I'm talking about individuals—they do so out of a sense of entitlement, and that entitlement comes from somewhere, just like you feel in the moment entitled to being mean to people or to complaining about things without acting on them. It comes from somewhere. It's not out of the thin, blue sky. Right? It comes from somewhere. So what do you do?

This answer that I'm going to give you is very annoying. I mean, I'm not going to be annoyed by it, but you may be because in your birth chart you have a Sun/Pluto opposition and you've got the Sun conjunct the Midheaven and Pluto conjunct the IC. So, for you, power is a very sensitive subject. You're very aware of power, and truth be told, you would like to be the most powerful person in the room most of the damn time. You want to be in authority, and perhaps you feel guilt about that or you feel like that's bad. Perhaps you feel frustrated because that's not your situation. I don't know. You didn't get into that in your question. But people who have this natal aspect will often feel resentment, and they feel resentment because of exactly what you're describing: a feeling that other people are abusing or misusing power or that you should have more power; they should have less power.

So, within this, I am naming something that you didn't really say in your question, which is that you feel you should have more power—not just that other people shouldn't have power, but that you feel you should have power. And so I'm going to give you this, again, potentially annoying answer for you to work with. And it's really, really simple, but it'll work. Step 1: Accept your situation, whether we're talking about your medical doctor has power over your ability to get the care you want—wealthy people have money, and that is power, and in a way that you don't. Whatever it is, accept that that is the reality you're in. I know that sounds so simple, but when we do not accept what is, then we struggle. We get stuck in this phase where we are consumed by difficult, painful, upsetting emotions without an outlet. And this becomes really problematic, especially over the course of years, over the course of time.

There are many things that absolutely suck that you accept all the damn time. For instance, have you ever been on a long plane ride? If you're on a long plane ride, you might be very physically uncomfortable. You don't have great legroom. You have to go through a bunch of stupid, annoying steps to even get on the airplane, spend a bunch of money—all these things that have to be done to get to the airport, to get through security, on the plane, on the flight, off the plane, collect your bags, all that stuff. So frustrating, right? But you can accept it. You can accept, "This is what's happening. It's happening now; it's not happening forever. This is what's happening, and as annoying as it is, I want to fly to X location, and therefore, it is worth it for me to be uncomfortable, to spend this money, to be bored or inconvenienced."

When we can accept what is happening, we have more options. Our perspective can broaden, and then we see more options on how we can deal with things. We don't lose energy struggling against the choice we've made. Instead, we can put our energy towards relating to that choice and handling the many consequences of that choice in as healthy a way as possible. So that's the first step. It's accepting. You do not need to take care of your boomer parents, but you might be choosing to take care of your boomer parents. And if you are choosing it, then you must come into acceptance, into alignment, with that choice. There may be many negative consequences. There may be many pain points or difficult points associated with that choice. But if you've chosen it, then that's your choice.

When you accept what you've chosen, what you're doing, what you've done, how you're participating, then you can align with your agency. And by doing that, again, it becomes a lot easier to hold and to bear, and also, you have broader perspective. You have more options. So that will not only free up your energy, but it will help you with the anger you're experiencing towards yourself. Nobody's perfect. Nobody—nobody—exists outside of societal systems that were in place before any of us living now were born. You were born into the body, into the time, into the conditions, into the class, into the race, into the religion, the sexuality, the gender—whatever the fuck it is, you were born into it. And the choices you make are really important.

So, if you stop blaming yourself for your participation in harmful structures and instead accept that harmful structures exist—if you can accept that, then you are better positioned to start to be more intentional or to revisit your intentionality and revamp it as needed around, what are the best choices you can make given your situation, your nature, your resources, and this moment? Making choices based on your acceptance of this moment is so empowering. And it doesn't magically make your feelings go away of being mad at hierarchies. It doesn't turn you into a patient person—which, by the way, in your birth chart, you've got the Moon and Venus in Gemini, Mercury and the Sun in Aries, and a first-house Mars/Jupiter conjunction. There are many things that you are, but patient is not on the damn list.

So none of this is going to be fixed quickly. Your feelings aren't going to go away. But what you can do is accept your situation and accept your emotions so that you can better position yourself in response to them. This will inevitably confront you with the reality that you may have been giving away your power and giving away your power because you've made a decision that these people have authority over you, which may be partially true, but it's certainly not 100 percent true. You do have agency. You are an independent individual who's very smart, very capable, and has a lot of passion.

So this is where it's important to acknowledge that kind of hidden inside of your question is perfectionism. You see imperfect systems. You see imperfect people. You see imperfections in yourself. And you're like, "Well, fuck it. Fuck it all, because if it's not going to be good, then it's bad. And if it's bad, then no. Then I'm not engaging with it. Then it doesn't have value for me or the world." And that's just not true. There are very few moments in our lives when we achieve some measure of perfection. It's not really what life is about.

So, again, I bring you back to acceptance: accepting that you will be imperfect. You will make mistakes. Other people will be imperfect and make mistakes, and we are living in a series of broken systems that are set up for failure. Yes. All these things are true. But within that, you have agency and you have choice. There is no magic bullet that will get you to be calmer or to actively engage with the systems of our world or with people that spark resentments or defensiveness in you.

But if you stay with the work of whenever you feel activated, taking a moment to really notice that you're being activated and asking yourself, "Can I accept this is how I'm feeling; this is the situation I'm in?" and once you get a yes, can you then ask yourself, "What is my agency here? What are my goals? What do I need from the situation, and what is my agency?" because if we go back to, let's say, your therapist or your doctor example, yes, in some ways they absolutely have authority over you. In other ways, they work for you.

So when you want something from them and you're so wrapped up in this idea that they have authority over you, then you're not stepping into your own agency, and also, you may be acting in ways that make it harder for them to want to help you or to effectively help you or to understand where you're coming from, because you're not just reacting to the therapist in the moment. You're acting to a lifetime of dealing with therapists. You're not just reacting to your new boss at your new job. You're reacting to a lifetime of bosses.

This is where, as we age, things get harder because we have more lived experience, and it's not just theoretical. It's lived experience. We feel like we know things because we've experienced them for long enough. That's true, and it's also not true, because there are many ways of being. We can change, and when we change the way we interact with individuals, we can get new results.

None of this is going to magically correct systems that are broken or systems that are inhumane or unkind, but it certainly can help you to reset how you feel and then—next step—how you respond. And that will inevitably get you some changed and improved consequences. That's really what it's all about, right? That's really what you want. So, my dear, be patient with your process. Again, I know that's really hard because your chart is not the most patient in the world. Be patient with your process as you learn to tolerate your difficult emotions and then find your agency in situations so you can act in ways that reflect what you want out of a situation or a dynamic or your life, instead of acting in ways that reflect what you don't want for your life and in the world.

Welcome back to the horoscope corner of Ghost of a Podcast. It's a cute corner, if you're into astrology, that is. Okay. We're going to look at the horoscope for March 27th through April 2nd of 2022. There's a good amount to talk about, including a New Moon in Aries.

First I want to tell you a bit about my boundaries class I am cofacilitating with Rachel Budde of Fat and the Moon. We are doing this on April 10th at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time, but you can register for the class, and you'll get a download and a [Zeen], which I'm very excited about, after the class is live. And so you can watch it whenever you want and as frequently as you want. I don't teach very frequently, and when I do offer classes, I really want it to be as constructive as possible. We are going through very exceptional times in many regards. And the astrology of this spring, with the Jupiter/Neptune conjunction in Pisces, is really touchy. This can show up in a million different ways, and it's something I talked about a great deal in the year-ahead horoscope. If you haven't already heard that, I don't know what you're waiting for, but giddy-up and get going. It is Episode 239.

But anyways, the astrology of this Jupiter/Neptune conjunction in Pisces does a lot of things. One of the meaningful things that it does is it increases our sensitivities. It increases our permeability. And this can be spiritually very expansive. There's a lot of positive ways that this can play out in our individual lives. One of the most important ways for us to kind of get the best out of this astrology is to have healthy boundaries. And when I talk about healthy boundaries, I'm not just talking about interpersonal boundaries—although for sure that, yes—but also energetic boundaries. Having an awareness of your own energy, where it begins and ends, it empowers you to work with that energy, to maintain not just rules and routines but a healthy relationship to whatever it is you're experiencing.

And so, in Boundary Dwellers, this Plants and Planets class that I'm teaching, we're going to really explore that and not just talk about it theoretically, but give you practical self-care, self-management, self-soothing tips. I'm into it. And of course Rachel is an herbalist, and she'll be outlining the plant allies that we can lean on and work with and how to work with them. So it's, again, going to be really practical and accessible, and I'm really, really excited about this class. So, if you haven't already checked it out, you can do so on my website, and it's linked in show notes—or just go to lovelanyadoo.com, and visit the Shop page, and you will be able to register there. Our hope is that this class is something that creates an impact that empowers you to be healthier but also to engage with others in ways that empowers them to be healthier. It's kind of like a self-care wave.

That brings us to our horoscope. This is a week of conjunctions. Every transit I'm going to talk to you about for this week is a damn conjunction. So, before I get into the details, let's take a moment to review what is a conjunction. And if you want to know more about conjunctions in general, Episode 101 of this here podcast, I talked about the aspects. So you can learn more there, but we're going to do a quick review here now.

A conjunction is when two or more planets are sitting exactly at the same position as each other. So they're sitting in the same sign at the same degree. That's an exact conjunction. Different astrologers will use different orbs, but when I'm talking about transits in the podcast, I'm always naming the day of exactitude. And whenever we have transiting conjunctions—so I'm not talking about your birth chart. I'm talking about predictive astrology like we're doing here on Ghost. What conjunctions do is they intensify energy, so they're not easy or hard transits, a.k.a. bad or good transits. They're just intense.

When it comes to a conjunction, generally speaking, we can see that the planets involved intensify each other, and that intensification can lead to things getting really complicated and messy, or streamlined. And we can achieve great healing with conjunctions because what we're dealing with is the central energies of a planet joining forces for a period of time with another planet. And so kind of anything can happen, depending on the planets involved and of course depending on how that impacts you as a person or the world as it is right now.

What we can know, given that this week is full of conjunctions, is that there will be a lot of energy at play. Things are going to feel intense and like they're kind of coming to a point or they're coming to a head. It's a lot of energy. If you're feeling particularly intense, if things come up in your life or in the lives of the people around you, do your best to pair whatever else is going on with consideration because with conjunctions, the thing that can go sideways on us is that we have obscured perspective. And it's obscured by whatever planet is conjoining the other planet. So, if we're talking about the needs of, let's say—oh, I don't know—Venus, which are security, getting along, diplomacy, and the needs of—oh, I don't know—let's say Saturn, which is the need to be approved of but to also have control, then the needs of these two different planets if they're conjunct to each other can make it so that we go into deep people-pleasing mode as a way to do a power grab instead of as a way to deeply connect.

Now, something else can happen, of course. But basically what we want to do is to not allow our strongest feelings to compel us into action without consideration. And when there's a conjunction, we're often not taking the time to consider what's motivating us, what we truly want, how we're behaving, and the impact that it's yielding. But that's exactly what we should be doing. So put that in your pipe and smoke it, my nerds.

Okay. Let's get directly into your horoscope. On the 28th, we have the first exact transit of the week, and it's a Venus/Saturn conjunction in the Sign of Aquarius. Yeah. Yeah, I knew that was going to happen, so I gave you a heads-up. So, Venus conjunct Saturn, it's kind of a heavy transit. And really, we're going to be feeling this transit all week long, but it's exact on the 28th.

So Venus conjunction to Saturn is a transit that can make us feel lonely. It can make you feel acutely aware of your aloneness, whether you're single or in relationships with others. It can make us feel really bad about our meat suit because it's not playful. When Saturn sits on top of Venus, we can literally feel heaviness, feel a weight. This is not about body mass. It's about heaviness. And when we feel kind of burdened or weighted down, we tend to not feel cute or feel like people like us or feel like we like ourselves.

So the Saturn conjunction to Venus can curtail spontaneity. It can curtail playfulness, joyfulness, and ease. It can also make us just feel really critical of the way we look, of the way we come across to others. It can also make us feel critical of our relationships because that isolation and loneliness, that awkwardness and discomfort in our own skin, is very easy to project out. When we feel bad, the first thing many of us do much of the time is we look around us. We look outside of ourselves to be like, "What's wrong? What's going on? What's going wrong? And how can I identify those things so I can fix them?" which is not entirely a wise or an unwise impulse. It's just not good to be a one-trick pony in the face of our own pain and discomfort.

So, with this transit, we are likely to look outside of ourselves. That is something to do with caution because you may find that there's something wrong in one of your relationships, and this transit might be something that really confronts you with it, that really brings you to a place where you're willing and able to actually look at it, name it, own it. And you might be realistic. That might be the way this transit plays out for you. That's absolutely a very strong possibility. An equally strong possibility is that you're in such a negative frame of mind and you're feeling so low and down that you see everything through poop-colored glasses. Now, I know that wasn't a very delicate way of saying it, but it was succinct, so I'm sticking with it.

Venus conjunction to Saturn is associated with a scarcity mindset. I am a fan of being critical. I'm a fan of being discerning. I'm a fan of being honest about difficult things. And also, a scarcity mindset is not the same as being discerning. It's criticism to tear down things instead of criticism to be constructive. So, to the best of your ability, strive to be constructive in your thinking and in your approach to your relationships, to yourself, to your finances. And if you're dealing with other people who are just being boners—they're just really negative frame of mind, they're nitpicking, that kind of thing—maybe don't take it personally, if possible. Know that we're all going through this transit, and everyone's going to experience it and express it differently. And some people just might be really kind of a bummer, and that's okay.

How other people behave is truly a reflection on them. That doesn't mean it's not very important information for you to sort through because other people's experience of us is an important bit of feedback that we need to take in and consider. But this is a sticky day for putting your self-esteem and your self-worth in other people's hands. I mean, it's always sticky to do that, but in particular, the Venus conjunction to Saturn is not great for putting your self-worth in other people's hands.

If you have got to do your damn taxes, yeah, do it now. Do it now. This is actually a great transit for dealing with your finances. Will you feel, again, a great sense of scarcity? Very potentially, yes. But Venus and Saturn are both related to our finances in different ways, and so this can be a great time for getting organized and sorting through details.

Now, one more thing I'll say about this transit is Venus conjunction to Saturn can confront us with some sort of expectations that we've held about some of our relationships, about our body image, about love, or about our finances. It can confront us with ways that our expectations were not met. We may be feeling disappointed. We may be feeling a little sad, a little lonely. And my advice to you with this is don't recoil from those feelings and do further injury to yourself by abandoning yourself when you feel sad or bad.

If you're feeling sad or bad, strive to be nurturing towards yourself. That might include connection with others, but it doesn't have to. Find ways of caring for yourself that feel like care. How Venus in Saturn is it—like, be a good, loving, supportive, yet firm parent with yourself today and this week. And, TBH, you may just need it, because on the 31st we have a New Moon in Aries, which is going to bring up a lot of healing issues. So let's talk about that.

Now, first of all, New Moons always occur when the Sun and Moon are exactly conjunct to each other. They're at the exact same degree of the same sign. And in this case, they're at 11 degrees and 31 minutes of Aries. This will be exact at 11:24 p.m. Pacific Time. So, if you're on the East Coast or on the other side of the pond, you are going to be experiencing this on April 1st. Now, broadly speaking, New Moons are a time of opening. It's when the Sun—your identity—and the Moon—your feelings—are aligned. So it's a great time for planting seeds, for starting something new, opening up to possibility, manifesting. It's a lovely transit, generally speaking. Now, this particular New Moon has a lot going on, surprising no one who pays attention to astrology, I suppose. But it has a lot going on.

First of all, the Sun/Moon conjunction is sandwiched by Mercury and Chiron, and Chiron is real close to the Sun and Moon. So it's part of a stellium conjunction: Mercury, Moon, Sun, and Chiron all in Aries. And this is likely to provoke a healing crisis or a doorway to healing. It is likely this New Moon that you will experience some sort of activation around some old wounding. So you might be in a situation with someone that really just triggers an old dynamic from your childhood, that makes you feel a certain kind of way that you felt a million times before, and you will have within this trigger an opportunity to respond in new ways, to change the story, to flip the script, as it were, and through doing these things, to achieve some measure of healing. And when it comes to healing, a tiny bit of progress is progress, full stop. We don't want to judge how far or fast you get when it comes to healing. Putting yourself on the path and being pointed in the right direction, that's all you really need.

Don't be an evil capitalist towards yourself when it comes to your own healing process. You know what I mean? You don't have to prove anything. You're not in a rush. Be gentle with yourself. I say this knowing full well that this is an Aries stellium, and Aries, of course, is not the sign known for gentleness per se. It's a fire sign that tends to be in a rush to kick things off and get them going. And again, this is part of why we're going to be feeling activated this New Moon. To channel that activation into healing is going to be uncomfortable. This is where I return to not all pain is bad, and not all ease is good.

Because this is a New Moon in Aries, it can be really valuable for you to use your body as a resource to release energy. And so that might mean taking a long walk or going for a run. It might mean just using your standing desk instead of sitting all day. It could mean any old thing, depending on your body, your energy, what's accessible and available to you. But it is wise to consider your relationship to your body and how you are or aren't using the energy of your body to experience, express, and release emotion.

Because all this energy is in Aries, because Mercury and Chiron are sandwiching the New Moon, people—including you; you're people—may get angry, may be defensive, may jump to conclusions or jump down other people's throats. That may happen. And when we're dealing with Aries energy, often there will be anger or, again, activation. And so, step 1, don't demonize your emotions. All your emotions are valid. However, how you respond to those emotions, that's where we want to take responsibility for how we do that. So, if you're feeling really irritable, that doesn't mean yay, you're feeling irritable; act like a jerk to everyone. It means allow yourself to have irritability, but respond to others with greater intention and care.

If you're feeling defensive, if you're feeling angry, you may say some shit you don't mean or that you don't really believe and you can't back up. Again, if this happens, pay attention to whether or not it is a pattern—if you're being triggered and if this is some sort of pattern. Now, you might not be behaving this way at all, but you may be experiencing this in the projected form. And whenever we're experiencing our birth charts or transits in the projected form, somebody else is embodying the energy for us, and then we are in a reactive state. So other people might be picking fights, coming at you with anger, being irritable, that kind of stuff. It's uncomfortable and it's hard, and it's also really valuable because we all have agency. A New Moon in Aries is a great time to tap into your agency.

Now, at the same time, we still have that Saturn conjunction to Venus and Mars. In fact, Mars is on one side of Saturn and Venus on another. So those two relational planets are sandwiching Saturn. We all are going to be feeling a sense of, again, greater isolation or loneliness or discomfort socially. We may be more critical of ourselves or of other people. It's uncomfortable. But because, again, we're dealing with a conjunction, it could go the other way. It could be that we are finally coming to a sense of clarity about ourselves or our relationships. We're finally motivating to start a new way of engaging with our bodies, with other people, with our finances or projects.

Again, this is a week of conjunctions, and this New Moon chart is chockablock with conjunctions. So the potential for where this energy can go is really to be determined. That's a big TBD, very to be determined. And it's determined in large part by you. You can control very little in this world except for your own responses. So keep on returning to that. "What do I want to learn from this situation? How do I want to engage in this situation? How am I caring for my emotions, and then how am I handling them in the world outside of my own inner universe?" These are really great ways of engaging with and relating to whatever it is that comes up for you this New Moon.

Now, as I mentioned when I was talking about the boundaries class, Jupiter and Neptune are not exactly conjunct yet—that happens in April—but they're conjunct. They're very close to each other in Pisces, and this has not happened for a very long time. The last time it happened was in the 1850s. Yeah, the 1850s. A long time ago. So this is a really big-deal transit, and the potential of it is huge. It is an increase of empathy, an increase of understanding that we are one global citizenry; we are all interconnected. Now, unfortunately, we often will see that through times of tragedy and conflict instead of because everything is lovely.

When things are challenging, it is an opportunity to rise to the occasion, to be more generous, empathetic, to understand our spiritual connection even when geography or culture separates us. And that is a really big part of this Jupiter/Neptune conjunction, which is going to be deeply felt within the New Moon chart. So, in personal terms, we have a resource here between all this Aquarius energy, the Mars/Saturn/Venus conjunction, and all this Aries energy, the Mercury/Moon/Sun/Chiron conjunction—we've got Jupiter and Neptune in Pisces sitting on top of each other as a form of support.

So, again, tap into your spiritual resources. Have empathy for yourself. Have empathy for others without pity or it enabling other people or yourself. The way to do that is by having healthy boundaries. And the way that Saturn is involved in this New Moon chart can incline us to being rigid or having rules as opposed to flowing and having healthy boundaries. Aries can be a little start and stop. It can be a little like, "Bark, bark. Let me tell you what to do. Let me tell you what I feel." So it is really nice to have this Neptune/Jupiter conjunction in Pisces in this New Moon chart because it's a resource that we can use to remember how connected we are to others, how connected we are to the planet, and how even when things are difficult, really difficult, we can make choices to be optimistic, broad-minded, empathetic, fair-minded, and kind, even when it's really hard. And sometimes it's really hard.

If you're doing spiritual work around this date, especially on the New Moon, I would encourage you to focus on your own homework. Don't try to affect other people, what they think, what they feel, what they do. Really use this opportunity to bring healing to your own damn self and to understand that if we go broader and we think about this in social context, that we are all a part of all the systems that we live in. Whether you want to tap out or not, you're a part of it. We're all a part of it. And so finding your agency, finding your voice, getting honest with yourself about how you've been behaving, how you've been feeling, what's sustainable, what isn't, what adjustments may need to occur—this is a really great time for that.

We may see in the world around this New Moon some cathartic events. And that can be really great, and that can be really terrible. It's a big world. It'll be all the things. Because of Chiron's involvement in the New Moon, I do expect this to be a bumpy ride on a social level. Whether we're looking at wars on the international stage, whether we're looking at natural disasters or events related to the environment, or we're looking at the things that humans do legislatively, socially—I imagine that we're going to see, with all this Aries energy and all this Saturnian energy in Aquarius—we're going to see people acting out, feeling like they cannot hold themselves back and that they're just going to do what they want to do because they want to do it. It's Aries, right?

Every action is an opportunity for an intentional and creative, effective counterbalance of response. So, again, the key here with this New Moon in Aries is to find your agency, to locate your agency, and to check in with yourself about how you're relating to it, what you're doing with your agency. No judgments. Leave the judgments behind. It's only about finding yourself and leveraging your energies to the best of your ability. That's the move.

Now, on the 1st, we have another exact transit. And the New Moon is technically on the 31st for me on the West Coast of the U.S., but it'll be on the 1st for a lot of people. So, on the 1st at 7:56 p.m. Pacific Time, we've got a Sun conjunction to Chiron. And this transit is an extension of what I was telling you from the New Moon, so I don't need to add too much to it because we just explored it with the New Moon chart. But it is exact on the 1st at almost 8:00 p.m. Pacific. This transit functions as a doorway, and that doorway can be to a healing crisis. It can be to a healing journey. So the way that feels is different, but ultimately, it's kind of the same thing.

The best way for you to leverage this—I'm going to repeat it—is through identifying with your own agency so that you do not feel victimized or bullied by other people or circumstances. And you're going to feel what you're going to feel, but with the Sun and Chiron, the potential here is for you to identify your own patterns, identify your agency, and through that identification, locate yourself. When we locate ourselves, it becomes much easier to mobilize in healthy ways that are procreative. And this is all—I'm using a lot of key words for Aries over here.

On the 2nd, we've got two more transits. And yeah—spoiler alert—they're all conjunctions. We've got the Sun conjunction to Mercury, and then Mercury forms an exact conjunction to Chiron. And the Mercury conjunction to Chiron happens first at 6:42 a.m. And then at 4:11 p.m. that same day, the 2nd, the Sun and Mercury meet. So listen. Listen. All damn week long, we're going to be under the influence of this Sun/Mercury conjunction to Chiron and Sun and Mercury being close to each other, and of course it's wrapped up into the New Moon. And we're still under the influence of the Venus/Saturn conjunction. Again, it's a lot.

So the Mercury conjunction to Chiron is going to intensify our thinking. So this is not good or bad. On the one hand, it is really helpful because if our thoughts are turned to healing and if conversations with friends—because Mercury governs both friends and our thoughts—and our friendships are all in a place where we can talk about heavy, intense, or personal stuff, then it further facilitates our healing journey, making some sort of progress on a deep, old pattern that is causing us pain and has been holding us back. So yay for Mercury being conjunct to Chiron, because it can point our thoughts in the direction they would need to be pointed in order to facilitate healing.

The other way this can go is you pick fights. You act out. You get defensive—or you're dealing with someone else who's doing those things. And if that's the case, whether you're being the jerk or someone else is being the jerk, it's an opportunity for you to identify how you react to having made mistakes, how you respond to having made mistakes. React, respond—very different things. How you react to other people being unkind or brusque or defensive with you and how you respond to those same things—being able to track these things empowers us because it's real information we can use. We might not like it. We might not know quite what to do with it in the short term. But it's real information we can use.

Now, the thing about the Sun conjunction to Mercury that's happening on the same day

 is that it makes it really hard for us to have perspective. In other words, we are so identified with our thoughts that if somebody disagrees with us, we can take it really personal. So, yeah, expect the trolls to be out in numbers this week, and especially on and around this date. And you know what? You might not think you're being a troll, but if you've only got something to say in public/online when it's negative and you never say anything when it's positive, yeah, that's troll behavior, my friends. That is some troll behavior.

So pay attention to your own patterns. Own it. Maybe you will reflect on it and be like, "No, it's not, Jessica. You are wrong." That's cool. Or maybe you'll be like, "Oh shit. I hadn't thought of it that way. Maybe I need to make sure that I'm saying more positive things because I don't want to stop saying negative shit," or maybe you just find different ways of saying critical things. I don't know. I don't know. It's a big world. Let's see. Let's see what happens for you.

But the thing here that is really important for you to take away—it will feel very fucking personal if someone disagrees with you or comes at you in a way that you feel defensive or uncomfortable with. Remember that, that you're going to be in a state—and everyone's going to be in a state—of taking things personally. And again, investigate the space—which is really tough because, as I mentioned, conjunctions are when planets are sitting right on top of each other, so there is no space. That's the whole point. But try to investigate the space between your reactions and then what's actually happening or what your actual goals are or what your agency is aligned with so that you can be intentional in how you respond, or at least take responsibility for how you respond and the impact that it has because, as we all know, motivation and impact are not equal. They are not the same. And sometimes what we intend to happen is not what actually happens.

So our intentions and our impact are not aligned. That's uncomfortable, and it sucks. And it's an opportunity for healing because when you can identify, "Oh shit. Things didn't land the way I meant them to," or, "I thought I was being righteous, and I was actually just being a bully," or whatever it is—if we can identify those things, then we may have more empathy when someone else does that. Then we may be a little less demanding of perfection from others. That's cool.

Conversely, you may find a way to actually stand up for yourself when you've been laying down for too long. And finding ways of standing up for yourself or asserting yourself are really hard when you're out of practice or you've just never developed a practice with it. A lot of times, when we have our pendulum swung too far in one direction, we overcorrect and we act out, or we act in ways that are defensive or intense. So, again, have some grace with yourself and others if that's happening, and you want to remember to not act out of a sense of scarcity or defensiveness. And trust me: there's going to be a lot of it all over town, all over town this week. So you don't have to add to the noise, but if you do, again, there's something to learn there. There's something to be gleaned.

Okay. So that's it for the horoscope of this week. Let me run through the transits one more time in case you're taking notes. On the 28th, we have an exact Venus conjunction to Saturn. On the 31st of March, we have a New Moon in Aries at 11:24 p.m. Pacific Time. On the 1st, the Sun meets Chiron exactly. And on the 2nd, we have both a Sun conjunction to Mercury and a Mercury conjunction to Chiron. And that's it.

Now, my loves, it's about to be the 1st of the month, and the 1st of the month is the best time of the month—or the first week of a month is the best time of the month to meet me over on Patreon. On the kittens level, I drop a bonus episode of Ghost of a Podcast where I go through all the major transits of the month ahead. I drop it on the 1st of every month, so find me there. And spoiler alert: we're at the brink of Eclipse season, so there's a lot to talk about. I'm also dropping lots of energy work content and teaching tarot. There's a lot going on my Patreon, so hopefully I'll see you there.

I've been studying the chart of Kentanji Brown Jackson's Senate confirmation hearing, and I think in the next week or so, I'm going to drop content there, unpacking that chart and talking a little bit about her birth chart. So yeah. Join me over on Patreon. And if you don't want to join me over on Patreon, that's cool. But if you do get value from the podcast, I do invite you to write me a review. Give it five stars. Subscribe to it. It's so much appreciated, let me tell you. So very appreciated.

And as your weekly reminder, pandemic's not over. Wear a mask. Wash your paws. Socially distance whenever appropriate and necessary, because we're all in this shit together. Right? Takes so little to do something to take care of so many. Let's take care of each other. Okay. I'll talk to you next week. Buh-bye.