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

My darlings, it has been a really long time since I've done this, but it's time for another episode of "How the Sausage is Made!" where I answer a bunch of your questions⁠—much more brief answers, but it allows me to get to more of your questions, and I have so many questions. Thank you for sending them over. And before I get into these questions, I just want to remind you that if you want to have a question answered on the podcast or if you want to get a reading with me on the podcast, all you gotta do is go over to my website at ghostofapodcast.com and click on the contact form that is specifically for the podcast, and then fill it out.

So let's get to your questions. The first one is about Saturn, and it goes like this: "Hi, Jessica. I'm freaking out a tiny bit. Next year, Saturn is going to enter into Pisces, and I have a large stellium in my tenth house of Pisces planets. My Midheaven, Jupiter, South Node, Sun, Mercury, and Mars⁠—in that order⁠—are all in Pisces. I love my job, I love the people here, and I just found it. And I'm just so scared of what's going to happen during these Saturn transits. Is there any way to prepare? Should I be looking for other jobs? What do I do? ⁠—A." Okay. So A was born March 2nd, 1998, at 11:57 a.m. in Miami, Florida.

And so I've got a bunch of answers here for you. First things first, don't quit your job. If you're happy, don't quit your job. My goodness, no. You do not need to look for other jobs. Here's a fun fact about Saturn conjunctions. And yes, the Saturn Return is a Saturn conjunction, but we're not talking about that stand-alone transit. What we're talking about is Saturn sitting on top of any other point in the birth chart⁠—so whether we're talking about a Midheaven or a planet. When we go through Saturn conjunctions, things come together in a meaningful way. So, in effect, it's the start of a cycle, but also, it's a time of consequence.

And so, if you've been working hard at your goals, whether you're grinding or you're working smarter and not harder⁠—whichever one it is or anything in between⁠—when Saturn comes and forms a conjunction to your Midheaven, what you can expect will happen is you will deal with the consequences of your choices, of your actions. If you have been acting in ways that are in alignment with your best interests, with what's authentic to you, then Saturn transits like the ones you're about to go through⁠—sure, they can be hard because Saturn's a pain in the ass. It's a pain in the ass not because it's bad, as much as meme astrology will tell you it's bad; it's a pain in the ass because it's an encounter with reality, and it's an encounter with consequences for actions already taken or not taken, as it were.

And so you don't need to fear these transits, and you certainly don't need to assume that it's going to F up your life in some meaningful way. You're going to deal with consequences. And if you've found that there are no negative consequences to your career, then this transit or these transits will not be about your career but instead about your conscious life objectives. And that might not be about your job as much as a feeling of balance, a sense of freedom. It could be about something more of a personal goal because our conscious life objectives are not just about our careers.

Within that, Saturn will conjoin your Jupiter, your Sun, your Mercury, your Mars⁠—and the Mars transit's a couple years off. It's the furthest one out. But you will be going through all of these transits, and when you do, you may encounter the classic Saturn stuff: a dip in energy, a feeling of malaise or depression or depressiveness. You may feel like you have to work really hard and you're not necessarily getting rewards in a way that are immediate or that you're satisfied with. These are all the classic experiences of Saturn conjoining our personal planets especially. And when this happens, it's an opportunity to learn and to change.

Saturn transits are like a time for pruning your garden, to identify, "Is this a weed? Is this inedible? Is this a beautiful plant? Is it thriving where it is in my garden? Does it need more of this or less of that?" You know what I mean? That's what Saturn wants from us. Now, when Saturn hits those slower-moving planets, it's a little bit different. And in the mix of all this, Saturn will hit your Jupiter. So it'll conjoin your Jupiter. And when that happens, it will, in a meaningful way, test how well you've put your life together. And this has a lot to do with pace. So, if you love your job and you've been working your buns off and everything's going well but you're running yourself hard, when Saturn comes to conjoin your Jupiter and maybe your Midheaven, you may feel burned out. You may feel that it's not sustainable to work as hard as you've been working or work in the way you've been working.

Again, Saturn transits are not meant to torture us, even though sometimes they do. What they're meant to do is help us to apply what we've learned through time into our lives so our lives are a better adult representation of who and what we are and what's realistic for us given our circumstances. So don't fear Saturn; work with Saturn. And in order to prepare for Saturn transits⁠—and they're some of the few transits we actually can prepare for⁠—take responsibility. Be humble. Look at how you're behaving and whether or not it's working for you. If you know now certain things aren't working for you, adjust them. If you can't adjust them perfectly, put the wheels in motion.

My next question is a little bit more existential or spiritual, and it goes like this: "So I'm on board with the fact that we have free will no matter what. However, I've been pondering if some are destined to follow fate or destined to have more control over what happens in our lives than others and how this is indicated in our birth charts⁠—prime example, people living with chronic medical conditions from genetic inheritance. Are some of us more burdened with generational clearing than others?"

So this is a really good question, and to it I say this. We all have inherited conditions. We are all connected to our ancestors one way or another. And to the question "Are some people destined to follow fate or destined to have more control over what happens in our lives?"⁠—that part of the question requires that you believe in destiny. And the thing about the word "destiny" is that it often throws me off because it sounds very fairytale-ish. I know I'm an astrologer, but I don't know that I believe in destiny. I believe in potential. I believe in energy. I believe in, even, fate. But destiny, for me⁠—I'm not sure. I'm ambiguous. So I'm not going to exactly address that part of the question, and I don't fully juj with it, if you will.

But let me say this. From my perspective, we all have free will, but we don't all have equal conditions and resources and options. A great example of that is someone living with a chronic medical condition. Another great example of that is the millions and millions of people in Pakistan right now who are being displaced by these monster floods. They don't have the option to use their free will to stay home and scroll through social media. So many people are being displaced and living through a really tragic situation. People living in Jackson, Mississippi, right now do not have the free will to just turn on their taps and have safe drinking water or bathing water. But that doesn't mean that they don't have free will.

People hear the word "free" and attribute a sense of limitlessness to it, and this is not a realistic understanding of freedom. Freedom is about not being imprisoned or confined. And in a way, our circumstances are constantly confining us. But we do have free will, and free will is the ability to choose or to use discretion, to have options. So what we don't have is freedom from consequence. What we don't have is control over our conditions, both inherited conditions, our circumstances, the things that happen to us, the things that are happening around us, other people. We do not have freedom from those things.

What we do have is the freedom to use our discretion in our circumstances and to make choices around that. Now, we might not have good choices are good options. That's the fucking rub. Our best options may be fucking terrible, but there's still freedom there. To that end, Maya Angelou has a quote that puts it a little bit more simply and maybe more succinctly, which is to say, "You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide how to not be reduced by them."

My next question is called Time to Change, and it says, "I just turned 40, and I had a scary health emergency in May. This happened in context of a rough patch in my almost 20-year relationship with a man and a restlessness and an urge to move cities. Since that health crisis, I've also been intensely attracted to women. I've always been bi, but this feels different. Am I just feeling mortal?" And she was born March 25th, 1982, at 4:15 a.m. in Westmead, which is Sydney, Australia.

So there's two reasons why I chose this question. The first one is this question⁠—and I don't mean to call you out, my love; I will answer your question more specifically in a minute. But I get a lot of questions that are like this where somebody says, "I'm really craving apples. What's the astrology behind that?" to which I say, if you're craving apples, just eat apples. Make a crumble. How about a pie? How about some applesauce? Just eat the apples. We don't always need to know the astrological reasoning for a thing. And in fact, when we seek an astrological reasoning for a thing that is pretty straightforward, like, "I'm seriously feeling women," then what we're doing is we're, in essence, being defensive towards our own selves around our preferences because if you all of a sudden started craving apples and you had no value judgment to it, if it wasn't that complicated, then you'd just be like, "Okay. I'll eat apples."

The same thing is true in this situation. You're feeling women. So I would say, yeah, you're feeling women. It's time to really explore that, whether or not that means you want to explore it and stay with this male partner that you have or not. You've got agency around that. And the desire to move cities is a different conversation; I'll be honest. It also isn't the centerpiece of your question, as far as I am reading it. So bear with me on this.

I pulled up your chart, and you are in fact going through a Uranus square to Venus. Uranus square Venus can be such a queer transit, and it's queer⁠—not gay, but queer⁠—because it changes up our preferences. It makes us want something different than we've wanted before. It makes us want newness, and it's an exciting transit. That said, it can be pretty disruptive. Uranus functions a lot like an earthquake. It just rattles your foundations. So, while that is upsetting, it's really exciting, and it happens once in a lifetime. So I would say giddy-up. Have fun. Explore. I'm not encouraging you to blow up your life, but in this very brief question you've sent me, it sounds like you're not going to be able to sustain doing things as you've been doing them because you've changed.

Now, the other part of your question, which is a kind of urge to move cities⁠—that one looks different to me because sometimes we tell ourselves that it is easier to completely blow up our lives than to make changes that would require we assert ourselves to the people we're intimate with. And you, my friend, have a Pisces Moon. You're an Aries, Aquarius Rising, but you got that Pisces Moon with a Mercury conjunction to it. And this indicates, amongst many other wonderful things, that it's hard for you to take responsibility and assert a boundary. I mean, you're great at taking responsibility in many ways, but not when it comes to asserting a boundary, per se.

And so this is a situation where I would encourage you to question whether or not you need everything to change all at once or if you could just start with the relationship stuff. And if by changing your relationship stuff you find that the restlessness and the desire to move dissipates, that's your answer. And if you find that the restlessness and the need to move stays the same or gets stronger, that's your answer. You know what I mean? So, basically, I have endeavored to answer your question with a little bit of astrology but hopefully also a lot of common sense. You're welcome.

My next question is from Feeling Stuck, and it goes like this: "I've been feeling like everyone around me has returned to their 'normal' lives, abandoning masking and social distancing, traveling and dining inside restaurants. I can't seem to return to normal life. At the beginning of the pandemic, I had just become a new parent, and my tendency towards being a homebody really embraced the idea of quarantine. Now, two years in, I have resumed certain activities but always wear a mask when indoors and avoid crowds like the plague. My question is, how can I move through the stuck feeling? I feel a bit gaslit by others abandoning mask-wearing, but also envious of those that seem to have moved on. Is there an aspect in my chart that is keeping me stuck and hypervigilant with regard to the ongoing pandemics?" And Feeling Stuck was born on September 6th, 1979, at 7:47 a.m. in Apple Valley, California.

Now, it should surprise no one, including you, Feeling Stuck, to know that I don't think you're stuck at all. I think that we are going through a pandemic and⁠—pandemic and a half? Two pandemics? We're going through a lot here. Things are not normal. People are still dying from this thing. So I don't think you're stuck. I think you're handling things in a really healthy way. And I don't think there is a way to be normal during a pandemic. The pandemic isn't normal. Pretending that the pandemic isn't happening⁠—is that what we're calling normal? I don't know. I'm not going to.

And honestly, when I talk about wearing a mask or I talk about the pandemic, I often get angry reviews from people. But we're in this reality together, and people are really vulnerable to this pandemic. So I think it's fucking great that you are doing exactly what you're describing⁠—always wearing a mask when indoors, avoiding crowds like the plague, and being conscientious and careful. But the feeling of being gaslit by others who have abandoned mask-wearing⁠—I don't know. That's fair. That's fair, for sure.

The truth is, though, a good portion of the people are actively⁠—they believe that there's no reason to wear a mask. There's no reason to be worried about the pandemic. There are people who earnestly believe that. Are those people gaslighting you? No. They're sticking to their beliefs. There are many other people who believe that the pandemic is real and of course masks help, but they're burned out, or they're more susceptible to peer pressure than you are, or whatever else. They've made their decision, and they made the best decision they know how to make. And are they gaslighting you? No. No, they're not. They're imperfect people making the best choices they know how to make.

Now listen. I'm with you. You put me in a crowd; not only am I wearing a mask, I'm wearing a shield. That's what I'm doing. But everyone is going to be different. And this is the thing about going through a collective experience in a highly individualistic society like we live here in the U.S. Different people are going to do it different ways. And so the question that you're asking me makes me want to ask you a question. Can you accept that the way that you're responding to this spectacular circumstance of living through a pandemic is the best choice for you and that other people are making the best choice for them and that you do not agree with a lot of people?

And it feels bad because it would be nice to be unconcerned or to not care or to be disassociative. All of those things would be easier in the short term, it so seems from where you're sitting with a mask on your face. But you're making your choices, and they're the best choices for you to make. They're the right choices for you to make. And other people may be making mistakes, and they may be making their own best choices. But what other people are doing is on them, and what you're doing is on you.

Now, I'll just say one more thing about this, which is, my dear, you have a Virgo stellium in the twelfth house. Mercury, North Node, Sun, Venus, Saturn, all in the twelfth house, plus a Virgo Rising. Yeah, you're going to be meticulous about living through pandemics. Yes, this is likely to change not just how you live during the pandemics, but it's likely to change you in general, make you more conscientious about contagions and about what is communicable between people. And that's difficult, but it's also not bad, and it's not stuck.

Finding a way to be present with your hypervigilance and to cultivate discernment within your hypervigilance, to recognize, again, you have choice and you're making the best choices for you in this moment⁠—and if things change, you will challenge yourself to change. But your circumstances, a.k.a. the pandemics, haven't changed in such a way that you're ready to take off your mask. Okay. Cool. So can you cultivate acceptance for where you're at and what you're choosing? That's the real question to be asking yourself, and I think it's a great question for us all to be asking ourselves because we don't only need to worry about getting sick with COVID and having a rough couple of weeks. We don't only have to worry about death.

We have to worry about long COVID. Long COVID⁠—we still don't understand it. We don't have real effective ways of treating it, and we don't know anything beyond just under three years because the pandemic is still new. From my perspective, the only way to make a choice is to be informed. We have choices to make. We aren't that informed about COVID. And so we're all assessing risk and potential to the best of our ability based on a variety of factors. I personally think you're doing great. I don't think you're stuck. What's stuck is the way that you're relating to your choices and the way you're holding other people's choices and personalizing them. I know it feels personal. Trust me. I know it feels personal, but it isn't.

And to the final question, it goes like this: "I'm 44, and I believe I did the work the first go-round of my Saturn Return at 30. And my question is, did I identify Saturn's lesson correctly⁠—mother drama coinciding with being a parent for the first time⁠—and if so, will the next go-round be easier? Does the second Saturn Return really impact us as greatly as the first? Thanks for all your work. I appreciate you greatly. ⁠Jennifer." And Jennifer was born February 3rd, 1978, at 12:32 p.m. in Daly City, California.

So there's a lot of things I want to say about this one. First of all, life doesn't get easier as we age, necessarily. That's an important consideration. The second thing I want to say before I really answer your question personally, Jennifer, is that having a hard time with your Saturn Return or with any kind of opposition or conjunction aspect from an outer planet and particularly Saturn is not a value judgment on you. It's not like you learned the lesson correctly and then everything's pain-free from here. That's not how it goes. The Saturn Return is always a really fucking big deal. It is. And it's a big deal close to 30. It's a big deal close to 60. It's a big deal close to 90 if you make it there.

And I wouldn't say that the first Saturn Return is in any way a bigger deal than the second or the third. I would say that on the internet, 30-year-olds are louder than 60-year-olds, especially around astrology. That's all. And that's the only reason why we talk about it more. When you're younger, in your 20s, there's a lot more people who are willing to self-disclose and get real personal on the internet than there currently is around people in their late 50s. That's just the world we're living in right now. And I imagine as people who are going through their Saturn Return now⁠—as they age, we might get a lot more stories when they're in their second Saturn Return about that transit online. So that's just a little social/astrological context.

Now, the second thing is no one can predict for you, nor should anyone try, whether or not you did your Saturn Return correctly. That's not the right way of thinking. So, when we're wanting to understand something like your Saturn cycle, like how did you do on your Saturn return, what we want to do is look at the Saturn opposition or Saturn squaring to Saturn because those challenging transits are really helpful. They show us what needs attention, what needs work. So we want to look to your Saturn opposition to Saturn. And in your birth chart, you have Saturn at 28 degrees of Leo, which means that when Saturn hits 27 degrees of Aquarius, until it leaves the 29th degree of Aquarius, you will be going through your Saturn opposition to Saturn.

This transit begins in February of 2023 and will be over in March of 2023. It's about a month long. So you're going to be getting great information about where you're at in relationship to your Saturn Return cycle. It is like the midpoint between your first Saturn Return and your second Saturn Return, the Saturn opposition. That first Saturn opposition happens when you're around 14, 15 years old. Most of us can remember, 14/15, that's a really intense age. So much happens not just inside of us, not just in our personal lives, but in our circumstances and around us, because Saturn is related to authority figures. And when you're 14 or 15, you generally have to deal with teachers and parents and other adults who can tell you what to do.

But now, when you're in your mid-40s, you have agency. But you're still dealing with Saturnian figures, whether they're in your own mind⁠—so it's childhood trauma, so that's not active in your life anymore, but it's still active in your psyche—or it's a dynamic in your life.⁠ It is not a treatise on whether or not you've done a good job if you're having a rough time. But it is helpful information about what still needs attention, where you need to provide for yourself like a good daddy to your inner child in this process of life. You might not have issues with your mom anymore. You might not have issues even with parenting right now during the Saturn opposition. But you may have a work dynamic that is in some ways embodying the lessons that you learned through your mother drama back at your Saturn Return. It might be that you're dealing with some teacher at your child's school that is triggering mother issues or something. It might not be as literal as you expect it to be because, yes, Saturn itself is literal, but the lessons of our birth charts⁠—they play out in cycles.

So it's not always as literal as, "I had a problem with my mom at my Saturn Return, so my Saturn opposition is going to be about my mom, and so is my second Saturn Return." Doesn't work out like that. But as I said to the other questioner who asked about Saturn, Saturn is really a pain in the ass, a murderer of boners. However, it is the planet that we can prepare for more than any other planet because Saturn is basically Mary Poppins. It's the planet that teaches us that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So pay close attention to what happens this February through early March of 2023 because that will give you a great indicator of what it is that is going on for you in your Saturn cycle and what you need to do to prepare for your second Saturn Return.

Now, my loves, we're going to be back to another live reading in next week's episode, but it was really fun for me to get to answer a bunch of questions in a single episode because you know what? I fucking love astrology, and I love giving readings.

My loves, we have got two very big, very specific things to talk about in this week's horoscope. Before we start, I just want to thank everyone who came to my Sex and Sexuality class. It was super fun. And if you missed it but you do still want to take the class, wait until midweek, maybe the end of the week, and it will be for sale on my website. So you can still grab it if you're in the market for such things.

Okay. So, this week, we are looking at the astrology of September 4th through the 10th of 2022. And the first thing that is happening this week is Mercury going Retrograde. I don't know about you, but I have really noticed this Mercury Retroshade. So, for those who don't know, Mercury Retrograde happens three, four times a year. And the reason why it's such a big deal, the reason why so many people talk about it, is because it's so noticeable. It's so evidential.

Mercury goes Retrograde, and what that means is that the planet appears to be moving backwards, and it is moving back through the zodiacal degrees. And when it does that, the function of Mercury to have us connect to people, to have us communicate, to listen, to make plans, to make choices, to assess data⁠—it gets a little sidetracked. It gets a little backwards. And the reason why this happens is so that we follow the rule—say it with me now—of re's. That's reflect, reassess, explore your reactions, be prepared to redo things. Mercury Retrograde.

Basically, what happens under this influence is that we are meant to turn within. The functions of Mercury, of going out and figuring things out and making plans and analyzing, it doesn't flow as well. And that's so that we check in with ourselves, we check in with our plans. And if you don't do that, you'll just have to deal with it, with whatever consequences occur for you. That's just classic Mercury Retrograde shit. And what Mercury Retrograde can do, unfortunately, is be super annoying and inconvenient, where you feel like you sent that really important email—you didn't. It's in your Drafts folder. You thought you made clear plans; they're on the avenue and you're on the boulevard.

It's stupid shit like that. It's also misunderstandings or miscommunications. Mercury Retrograde really is an invitation to slow down and spend more time in reflection, and a lot of us don't have time for that. We got busy lives. And that's when we have to deal. And often, we gotta redo shit. We gotta backtrack and deal with things, and that's life. Now, I have gone ahead and pulled up the chart for this Mercury Retrograde. I will tell you this, and this is a nice little important detail. This Mercury Retrograde has kind of a central transit to it, and let's talk about that. Mercury is going Retrograde at eight degrees and 55 minutes of Libra, which is a nine-degree Libra Mercury. And it is still opposite to Jupiter. So that Mercury/Jupiter opposition was exact on the 2nd—so several days earlier, but that transit was exact during the Mercury Retroshade.

This transit will occur during the Mercury Retrograde and then again during the Retroshade. So we talked about that last week, but let me just give you a quick little reminder. Mercury opposite Jupiter is a great transit for socializing and connecting and having a fun time, being open to new ideas, being open to new people, and basically socializing, socializing in a way that's just really fun and kind of easy. It's a great transit for all that stuff. On the negative, because it is an opposition, this transit can have us jumping to conclusions. So, in the context of this Mercury Retrograde chart and this Mercury Retrograde experience, it's like not following through with all the steps, not being careful.

This transit can have us jumping to conclusions, being sloppy, being a little careless, not out of malice—it's Jupiter—but just out of a distractibility. And because this transit is the centerpiece of our Mercury Retrograde experience, we want to really pay attention to what happens to us on and around the 2nd and 18th of September as well as the 12 of October. And because September 2nd is in the past, you already have a sense of what was going on in your life and within you on and around that date. And therefore, you can have a little bit of a sense of what to expect from the rest of these transits.

Now, this Mercury Retrograde chart doesn't only have the Mercury opposition to Jupiter to pay attention to. Mercury is also opposite to Chiron, and this aspect is really important to pay attention to because what it does is it suggests that we are going to feel easily triggered. So Mercury Retrograde already gets people to be a little defensive. It's easy to get in your feels when you've made a mistake or you've misunderstood something. And because of Chiron, people are likely to feel easily triggered. And you might not even notice that you're triggered. You might just be like, "Oh, I've been offended." And maybe you have been offended; maybe you've been triggered.

And this Jupiter opposition to Mercury is going to increase people's inclination to have a knee-jerk reaction, which—you can see how that could get messy. On the internet, in your personal life, and in the world at-large, this shit could get messy. So, if you don't want shit, don't start shit. If you make a mistake, say, "Oh, look. I made a mistake. I can own that. I'm sorry about that. How can I do right by this situation?" Just keep on moving. You don't need to freak out about it. If it was just a Jupiter/Mercury opposition, I wouldn't worry about anyone getting too hung up on things. But because of Chiron, we can kind of connect injury—whether we've perpetrated it or someone else has perpetrated it, we can connect injury to, "This is how it will be forevermore, and this is how it's always been."

It's important to explore—and if possible, psychologically, spiritually, emotionally explore—any kind of "always" statements, any kind of "This has always been this way, and it will always be this way" kind of thoughts, because these kinds of thoughts can ultimately be self-fulfilling prophecies. And we all have them. I mean, we all have them. But it's valuable to excavate them, to explore them. And a Mercury Retrograde is designed for excavation and exploration. So take heed, I say. Take heed.

Now, with this chart, we also have a Sun square to Mars. It's a little wide, happily, but it's still square, just like we have a Saturn square to Uranus conjunct the North Node. And these are two very different transits, but they both can bring about defensiveness out of irritability. Things don't go the way you want, and it's like, "I'm frustrated." So this can ultimately be a really frustrating Mercury Retrograde where people take miscommunications personally or you say some shit, they say some shit, and as a result, there is a conflict or some kind of injury that's been under the surface just comes to light.

So it is valuable to remember that people are annoying. I'm annoying. You're annoying. Your best friend is annoying. And sometimes you just need to let a thing go because someone annoyed you. Maybe you annoyed you. Sometimes you just gotta let a thing go, and sometimes it deserves a conversation. But before you hit Send, before you start shit, consider this: "Does this need to be said? Does this need to be posted?" because this Mercury Retrograde has all the markings of a trigger-happy experience from all manner of people, and that can go in all manner of ways, mainly not fun. Not everything needs to be said out loud. Think about it. This is a great time for just considering it.

Now, the other thing that I will say that is quite lovely in this chart is that Mars and Venus are square. I love this square because what it indicates is more good news for socializing and flirting. And so, even though there are definitely some hard spots in this chart, the Venus/Mars square suggests that it's good for socializing. Mercury opposite Jupiter, great for socializing. So, if you can have nice social experiences in a way that is pandemic-safe, this is a great Mercury Retrograde for doing so. And in particular, if you can connect with old friends, people who know you, who you have some sort of history with, that is a really good use of this energy.

Now, it bears naming that Mercury is in Libra, which is very relational, and Jupiter and Chiron are in Aries, which is very "These are my needs. This is my goal. This is who I am." And the tension between these two energies requires some measure of negotiation. It requires some measure of delicateness. We want to be able to be diplomatic enough—Libra—to get our point across—Aries. And sometimes that requires being a better listener. Sometimes it requires figuring out, really, what is it that you're thinking? What is it that you want the other person to hear? And sometimes it's about just saying it. So, within this Mercury Retrograde season, this theme is going to continue to play itself out.

Now, this Mercury Retrograde, like all Mercury Retrogrades of 2022, will start in an air sign and end in an earth sign. So Mercury will eventually Retrograde back to Virgo, but for now, it is very much in Libra. And that is just one more layer of information about how relational this Mercury Retrograde is. So be easy on your friendships. If you care about someone, if you appreciate them, if you value them, don't be shy to let them know. And if you need to do that classic Mercury Retrograde thing where you go into a hidey hole and you hide and you do your little reflection and you're taking care of yourself, licking some wounds, maybe⁠—yeah. Someone invented texts so that you wouldn't have to talk to your friends, but you can still text them and be like, "Hey. It's nothing personal. I'm just in my head these days. Talk to you later. Buh-bye." Feel free to just quote me on that.

It really can help a great deal so that people don't personalize things because, again, it'll be very easy to be triggered this Mercury Retrograde, and you don't want to unintentionally trigger someone because you just disappeared on them, because you're still in relationship to people that you're close to even when you're not actually talking to them. Fun facts. Fun facts. And I guess I should say that Saturn/Uranus square—I talked about it a million times. I'm going to talk about a million more. But yeah, it's just this ongoing tension that we're experiencing, and that tension is both really annoying and frustrating and bringing a lot of starts and stops into our lives, but it's also really fertile because it is challenging us to create more freedom and autonomy within the structures of our lives. So, ideally, it's inspiring us to create a life that is free and sustainable. Isn't that fucking gorgeous? I mean, it could be. It can be. Let's keep on working on it.

Okay. That's Mercury Retrograde. It's a boner, but here we are. Okay. That brings us to the 10th, the next day. And on that day, my friends, we have a Full Moon in Pisces, and it is exact at 2:59 a.m. Pacific Time. And as always, if you want to know the exact time and date of all things astrological, just go and subscribe to Astrology For Days over at astrologyfordays.com. You can just adjust it for your time zone, and bada-bing, bada-boom. You're basically an astrologer. That's not true, but it is true that you'll know when all the transits are happening at a glance, and that is very useful.

So the Moon is full in Pisces. Full Moons always occur when the Sun and Moon are exactly opposite to each other to the degree, to the minute. This Full Moon, the Moon is in Pisces and the Sun is in Virgo, and it's happening at 17 degrees and 41 minutes. So the tension between the Moon in Pisces and the Sun in Virgo is so much to do with the tension that we tend to have inside of ourselves and within our lives between our behavior and our deepest spiritual psychological needs. And so a Full Moon in Pisces is often a time where we are in some way confronted with how our lifestyle and our habits isn't supporting our heart or our innermost psychological or innermost personal life.

This is a really uncomfortable confrontation because we're dealing with the psyche. We're dealing with the heart, a.k.a. the damn Moon. But also, Moon in Pisces, it's so emo. It's so sensey. If you are an empath or a highly sensitive person, this is going to be a particularly important Full Moon for you to pay attention to because we can get reflections around our behavior or a need for boundaries under this kind of a Full Moon.

This is also going to be an important time for you to check in with your body because, again, the tension between Pisces and Virgo—Virgo is more related to the body. And how we take in other people's energies, protect ourselves around other people's energies—all this stuff is so important and can be really sticky. It can be really sticky because we don't necessarily want to have to deal with the maintenance of our wellness. That's not fun. I mean, Full Moon rituals are fun, but day-to-day maintenance, that's a lot harder.

And the Full Moon in Pisces is a time for us to get really in contact with where or how we need that or, conversely, depending on your nature, how maybe you need to let go of control a little bit, use a little more discernment and a little less judgment. The Full Moon in Pisces is a good time for spiritual work in general, but this Full Moon in Pisces, you want to be a little careful because the Moon is at 18 of Pisces, and Neptune is at 24 of Pisces. This means these two planets are conjunct, and when Neptune and the Moon are conjunct, it means that our energetic body is more porous. We can be a little bit more hypersensitive. It makes us more empathetic, more sensitive, more psychic if you are wired in those ways. If you're an artist, it can make you more creative.

All these things are—they're not good; they're not bad. They are. But in regards to doing spiritual work, you want to be careful about what doors you open up because this transit doesn't bring with it strong boundaries. So I don't recommend any kind of consciousness-raising drugs. And on my Patreon, people have been asking me recently, "What the hell do you mean when you say consciousness-raising drugs?" I basically mean self-prescribed medications, spiritual facilitators and recreational drugs. But in particular, I know lots of folks enjoy spiritual facilitators of all kinds, and those really, in my view, are most effective when they're done with great intention.

And so, as an astrologer, I'm going to look at the transits and be like, "Okay. This is not a good time for fucking with external substances," in part because shit can go sideways, but also in part because that's not what the astrology wants. When we have something like a Neptune/Moon conjunction in Pisces, we are meant to sit in our own energy body and our own spirituality. We don't need facilitators, because we're already right there. And it's really good to know where you're at without substances. And I don't mean this around medical issues. Again, I'm talking about self-prescribed and recreational drugs, so not talking about prescribed medications. Please take your prescribed medications.

Okay. All of that said, it is possible this Full Moon, because of Neptune's presence, that you will feel hurt or left out or just sad. Neptune's also opposing the Sun, and so it may be hard for you to have boundaries. It may be hard for you to identify what it is that you need. You may feel like you're losing control or that you don't know what you're "supposed" to do. And that's all really uncomfortable. It's not the worst in the world, but it's really uncomfortable. So you may find yourself in situations where you need better boundaries, and maybe you'll have them; maybe you won't. Maybe you'll fail; maybe you'll succeed. Either way, it's a learning opportunity.

Now, people⁠—people may be weird. Their energy may be weird. Their behavior may be weird. And you, of course, are people, so you may be any of those things. And that's just because Neptune makes us all awkward. Full Moons make us awkward. Neptune makes us awkward. I mean, what's a girl to do? In addition, you want to keep in mind here that the Full Moon chart is very similar to the Mercury Retrograde chart because they were cast not even 24 hours apart. In conjunction to all this, we still have Mercury opposite Jupiter and Chiron. So all that same stuff I just said in the Mercury Retrograde chart applies. We are easily triggered, easy to jump to conclusions.

And the Saturn square to Uranus still applies. Your old way of coping may be rubbing up against your need to do things differently. You may be needing more stability and feeling just really afraid, like your nervous system is taxed, because Uranus is related to the nervous system. So, whether you need to do more grounding and tend to your habits and to fortify yourself, your life, or you needed to kind of break things up and try new things, expand and explore, this is going to be a Full Moon where you will be pretty clear about what needs doing. Now, listen. It's possible nothing's clear and you're super anxious and overwhelmed⁠—fucking Neptune, fucking Pisces energies. So, if that's the case, what you want to do is simplify. Simplify.

Now, as I said in the Mercury Retrograde chart, we also have Mars forming a square to Venus and the Sun, which further communicates that we can be defensive, quick to react, impatient, all that kind of stuff. And with that, again, I just want to remind you Full Moons are the closure of a cycle. Things come to the surface, and they require being dealt with. And I will remind you, as well, it's a Full Moon, so we're meant to deal with it emotionally. And what a lot of us do a lot of the time is we feel a feeling and we don't know how to feel that feeling. We don't want to feel that feeling. So what we do instead of sitting in that feeling is we start shit. We stir the pot. We snap at someone. We scroll to distract or we scroll to become outraged. We scroll for confirmation bias.

I recommend, this Full Moon, trying to be really aware⁠—and when I say this Full Moon, I'm talking about a 24-hour period, so this is not a crazy assignment. But strive to be aware of how this is functioning in your life. Maybe it's not relevant to you at all, but maybe you can find, "Oh shit. I have a hard emotion or an uncomfortable emotion, and I grab my phone," or, "I have an uncomfortable emotion, and I get annoyed with someone in my house," or whatever. Try to be aware of that because awareness, self-awareness, is so valuable always, but certainly during a Full Moon, because as that awareness becomes integrated, you start to have more options with how we can cope. And those options make a world of difference in our psyches and our lives, especially over time, so maybe not in the first 48 hours or the first two weeks, but absolutely over time. So it's something⁠—a little assignment for you this Full Moon.

Now, something else I want to say⁠—I know you witches love to charge crystals during a Full Moon. Friendly reminder: clear your crystals on a Full Moon. Charge them on a New Moon. I know it sounds counterintuitive because a Full Moon is bright, so you want to charge your crystals under a bright light. That makes sense. But the energies of a Full Moon are about closure and release. So pop them outside to release. And if you are making Full Moon water, what a glorious idea. I think this is very romantic. But you want to remember all the energies I just described are going into your water that you're then imbibing. I personally would Full Moon water with care and New Moon with abandon. How about that? Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Now, my loves, that's it. That's your whole damn horoscope. I hope you have a safe and healthy week and that you are kind to yourself and others. If you'd like to learn more woo and astrology with me, please come on over to Patreon over at patreon.com/jessicalanyadoo, always linked in the show notes. And join me on the kittens level to get a bonus episode every month where you get to hear the astrology of the month ahead in great detail, and I do share different details than I do on the weekly podcast on the bonus episode. And yeah, we get spiritual. We get astrological.

And if you go over to my website over at ghostofapodcast.com, you can go to the Shop page to find classes and learn more astrology with me that way. And of course, if you haven't already gotten my book, Astrology For Real Relationships: Understanding You, Me, and How We All Get Along, then you're just basically in for a treat. It's cute. It's smart. And there's an audiobook version, so you don't even have to read it. You can just listen to me telling you more shit in your earphones. How about that?

All right. Until next week, my loves, buh-bye.