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.

Welcome back to Ghost. This week, we are going to look at the details of our horoscope, but first I want to say that we are in Eclipse Season. And this is one hell of an Eclipse Season so far. I have talked a lot about how the Eclipses are likely to land and are landing within us on an individual level, and I've talked less about it on a collective level. And in light of the very violent recent events that are still very much ongoing in Palestine and Israel, there's a lot to talk about.

Now, I want to first acknowledge this on a spiritual and emotional level and to say that we are all really triggered. And the Moon is the planet that is very much related to our triggers. Now, we can talk about Pluto in the context of triggers as well. I mean, a lot of the planets have their own ways. But the Moon in astrology is our feelings. It's how you feel right now. It's how you tolerate your emotions. It's how you respond to your emotions, how you react to your emotions, how you share your emotions, how you show up emotionally for others. It's the tone and volume and pace and texture of your emotional landscape internally, and also how you behave when you're activated emotionally, how you behave with other people, around other people, in reaction to other people.

And when we're dealing with the Moon, a.k.a. our emotions, we are also dealing with our individual past because how we experience our emotions in the present is reflective of our past, of our lived experience, our emotional experiences, our emotional expectations, our emotional convictions. A lot of this stuff is unconscious. So, when we go through really triggering times, when we go through Eclipse Seasons, what tends to happen is that we get activated emotionally, and it's not just about what's happening in the present. It's about our own personal past and our own capacity.

And when fear and violence and hatred are heavily in the mix, which I think it's fair to say they are right now, it doesn't tend to bring out the best in us. And that's because we're scared. You know that expression, "Hurt people hurt people." Now, I am, again, not speaking politically in this exact moment. I am speaking personally because what I have seen⁠—and I'm sure you have, too⁠—happen in the last week has been really intense. The way that people are behaving⁠—maybe you and me⁠—the way that we are behaving online, where people are not just expressing their very valid emotions but also policing and condemning and judging and all kinds of other messy, sticky stuff, how other people feel, how other people process grief⁠—that's really intense. And it tells us a lot about where we're at.

The Solar Eclipse on the 14th is in Libra, a very relational zodiac sign. The upcoming Eclipse on October 28th is a Moon in Taurus. So it's a Full Moon in Taurus. It's a Venusian-ruled lunation, which brings us to our relationships, how we relate to others, but even more than that, our values, because you never want to forget that Venus governs values. And when we value some human lives over other human lives, we have lost our fucking way. And, my loves, we have lost our way. I don't know that we ever had it. Humans are fucked-up, complicated animals, aren't we?

And there's so many people around the world who are in terrible fear, terrible grief, and having their survival issues triggered, whether or not their individual survival is actually at question in this exact moment. And then there are many people who are fighting for their lives. I want to just acknowledge all of it. And I want to quote Qasim Rashid, who is a brilliant human rights lawyer that you should be following on social media if you're on social media: "The response to war crimes against civilians cannot be more war crimes against civilians. I cannot believe that this is a controversial take."

The religious and cultural history of Palestine and Israel is really important to acknowledge, especially for people⁠—and all people⁠—raised in Abrahamic faiths or related to people who are in Abrahamic faiths, which is a lot of the Western world. It's a lot of the world, period. Many people from Abrahamic faiths have a strong personal feeling connection to these regions, and a lot of it's unconscious, again, because it's from early developmental stuff. Also, a lot of very social justice-minded people are deeply passionate about what is happening in Israel and in Palestine.

And that is true on both sides. There are people who absolutely care with a deep passion about the welfare, dignity, and survival of Palestinians who have been living for decades in an open-air prison. They have been living in inhumane, intolerable, violent conditions and are continuing to be oppressed by a militarized state, the State of Israel. And there are many people who are very passionate and heartfelt in their love and care for the Jewish people, who have in very recent history suffered through a genocidal event. And the attack by Hamas to primarily Jews in Israel has triggered, for many people who care deeply about social justice for Jewish people, a deep fear, a fear of annihilation. And there is a social and cultural historical context for Jewish people and people who care for them to be scared of pogroms and other genocidal events.

And so it is just and fair and spiritually right to care about both of these things. But I want to remind you of something that I talked about in the year-ahead forecast and probably a bunch since then, which is that this is a year of paradox. It is a spiritual strength, it is a psychological and emotional strength, to have the capacity to say and believe "and also," "instead of," "either/or."

And as a Jewish person⁠—but it doesn't really matter what my personal identities are. As a person, it is possible to have empathy for the suffering and fear, and to acknowledge the violence and terror that Jews are feeling⁠—I mean, there's been major upticks of anti-Semitism around the world, and I expect that that will get worse⁠—while at the exact same time acknowledging that the right-wing settler state of Israel is violent and that Palestinians have been living with a boot on their neck for decades, and that it is inevitable that there would have been a violent response⁠—inevitable.

And it is important to recognize context. It is important to recognize history. And it is important to recognize the dignity and the humanity of Palestinians and to understand that punishing over two million people, half of which are children, although it doesn't⁠—I mean, it matters that they're children, but even if it was all adults⁠, to punish millions of people, millions of civilians who have nowhere to go, for the acts of an organization is inhumane. And there is no justification for it. There is no justification for cheering for the death or suffering of any group of people for any reason.

This is a spiritual matter. And I understand that a lot of people have a hard time with "and also." And this is where having an understanding of Pluto is really helpful because Pluto is this planet that governs our flight-or-fight mechanisms. It's our survival mechanisms. And what gets activated when our survival mechanisms get activated is this desire for it to be yes or no, all or nothing, day or night, good guy/bad guy.

And there is this way that this wall, this steel wall, can drop down inside of us as individuals, just drop down. And we're like, "This is good, and I can't tolerate to even imagine nuance. And that is bad. And I cannot imagine any nuance." And that's a problem. It's a problem for us as individuals because there is a lot of nuance to consider, and also, there are certain things that are bad, like genocide, which the State of Israel is perpetrating against Palestinians and has been.

Hating people, being anti-Semitic, being Islamophobic, being anti-Arab⁠—all of this is just hate. It's hate towards others, and it bores a hole in your soul. It doesn't help the world, and it doesn't help you. But it is easier in the short term than sitting in nuance. And to that, I will say, since forever, all wars are not just fought on battlefields; they're also fought through propaganda. We have to vilify certain groups of people and dehumanize those groups of people in order to get masses of people to be okay with killing or starving or torturing them.

And come on. Did we learn nothing from the last several years? We know that mainstream media and alternative media is inevitably influenced by misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda. And we also know that whatever social media or whatever YouTube, or whatever it is that you're consuming⁠—the algorithms are tracking you. And the algorithms are going to feed you what you engage with. And what do humans engage with? Outrage, terror, fear.

So we are going to be fed our confirmation bias. And in the last week, you have been fed your confirmation bias. You have been fed specific media that validates and reinforces your worldview, unless you have a magic algorithm, in which case please let me know. I want to know. But that is how this goes. And we are all being served up misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda. And it is very hard to figure out what's real and what's not real. But it is incumbent upon us all to value the truth enough to look for primary sources, so not just reporting, but where did the reporting come from? So be careful, especially, honestly, on Meta-owned platforms, which are known for misinformation and disinformation campaigns.

Now, I'm going to say one more thing here, which is that if you are listening to this and you yourself have family or loved ones or you yourself are in the Gaza Strip, Palestine, if you are in Israel, if you are related to someone, you have people there, I understand that this is a time of great terror. And it would be idealistic to imagine that there is not going to be a rise in anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, anti-Arab behavior and rhetoric, and that the events that are happening now in the Middle East are empowering people who harbored those hateful feelings anyways.

It is just a scary time. So I want to just acknowledge you and how you feel and acknowledge the incredible complexity emotionally, spiritually, and psychologically, even if you're physically safe at this time. And if you are not from one of those backgrounds and you have friends who are, show a little empathy. Do a little showing up. It is not hard to have love and empathy and care and show support for both Jews and Palestinians. It really shouldn't be hard.

And I am aware that I may have said some of this wrong. I am aware that we are all being fed different news, and because of that, we may have a different narrative about what's happening. A lot of people who are vehemently pro-Israel believe that the only way to do that is to be anti-Palestine. And that's just not the only way. It is essential that we care about the humanity in others and that we recognize nuance and complexity, that we separate the acts of militant groups and governments and corporations⁠—we separate those things from the will of the people, the humanity of people, the dignity of people.

This Eclipse Season is far from over. We must pace ourselves emotionally. I'm not encouraging anyone to put their head in the sand, because what is happening in the Middle East right now is very important for the whole entire world, not just because it's a human rights crisis, but also because this could very easily teeter into world war territory. When we are dealing with emotions⁠—the Moon⁠—what we must do is flow. The Moon is water. So the drive to take a stand and dig your heels and slam that metal door down⁠—that's not Lunar. What that is is something else. It's your survival mechanisms kicking in. It's the drive to punish or perform or whatever.

As we sit with our emotions, we're going to ebb and flow. Sometimes we're going to have really healthy emotional responses. Sometimes we're really not. And that's okay. I mean, it's not great, especially if you're doing it in public or you're doing it at people, but it's really okay. We are living through really, truly terrible atrocities of violence and cruelty. We are watching a genocide real time. I mean, there's videos. And there's no way to emotionally process it that's healthy because it's not a healthy thing to emotionally process. But here we are.

And so I want to invite you to understand the assignment. It's to be emotionally present, to have grace, to have care, to have empathy. This is a Lunar time. Having empathy is the assignment. There is so much happening, but to quote the great Martin Luther King, true peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice. And it is possible to have justice without vengeance. In fact, I would say it is not possible to have justice when it is predicated upon vengeance. That's something to sit with. It's something to sit with and work through in your own heart at your own pace this Eclipse Season.

Families in Gaza are in need of your urgent support. Israeli warplanes are bombing Gaza right now, causing death, injury, and trauma. The organization MECA has staff and local partners in Gaza on the ground and ready to respond to the most urgent needs of children and families. Please give now to provide medical aid, clean water, food, psychological support, and more. Give what you can at mecaforpeace.org. That's M-E-C-A, F-O-R, P-E-A-C-E .org.

All right. Well, all of that said⁠—and much more to be said in the future, I'm sure⁠—let's get into this week's astrology. It is as provocative as you might imagine it to be. And I want to remind you again that we are in Eclipse Season⁠—so October 14th was the Solar Eclipse, and on the 28th, we will have a Lunar Eclipse, which is a Full Moon⁠—and that the effects of the Eclipses last for six months. And so this is our week in between the two Eclipses. Transits or no transits, this is a lot. The Eclipses themselves are activated. Both of them are activated. And so we're feeling it. We're feeling it globally. We're feeling it personally.

If you want to go deeper into the Eclipses, you can check out my class. I taught a class on the Eclipses, available on my website. I also am teaching another class on November 5th, and this bad boy is called Astrology for Intuitives: Identifying your Psychic Strength through the Birth Chart. It'll be a live event, but if you can't join me live, that is never a problem. Anyone who registers for the class will get the replay in their inbox within a couple days of the class itself. So you can learn more about that class on my website. It will also be linked in the description of this episode if you're interested in learning with me about how to identify your particular woo and how to work with various kinds of woo in the birth chart. It's woo.

Okay. Let's get into the details of this week's horoscope. We're looking at October 15th through the 21st of 2023. And the first exact transit of this week is a Sun conjunction to Mars. Now, this transit happens pretty frequently. It's something you've heard me talk about before. Especially if you've been listening to the podcast for a couple years, you've definitely heard me talk about this transit before.

When we go through a Sun conjunction to Mercury, it is not an inherently good or bad transit, if we should ever even classify any transits as inherently good or bad. But whatevs. It's not. What it is is a transit wherein our identity and drive to be seen and recognized meets up with ideas, friendships, concepts, communication. And so, when the Sun and Mercury sit on top of each other, as is happening here at 26 degrees and 34 minutes of Libra⁠—and it is exact that 10:38 p.m. So, depending on where you are in the world, you may see it listed to be exact on the 20th or the 19th. But I digress.

This transit, on the one hand, is lovely in that it makes us more sociable. It makes us more open-minded. It has us questioning things, which can lead to fun social interactions, learning new stuff, just kind of taking a different route from work to home and having a lovely experience of seeing different parts of your own neighborhood. It's a lovely transit in many ways. If you are stuck with ideas, ideas you're trying to work through, this transit can actually really help to unstick you, not because it's magic, but because it supports us in being adaptable in our thinking, in listening better, in being inquisitive⁠—potentially, anyways. There's always probability and possibility, and we want to tap into possibility as much as we can.

So that's the "typically" read on this transit. But let's put it in context. Let's synthesize it with the larger astrological picture that we're going through. Because everyone is so activated, because we are in Eclipse Season, because there are lots of transits to Pluto that are monkey-wrenching the whole system, the risk with this particular transit, especially if it's hitting stuff in your birth chart⁠—in particular, if it's hitting cardinal placements in your birth chart. So cardinal is Libra, Aries, Capricorn, and Cancer.

The Sun conjunction to Mercury can be a time where we are all about confirmation bias, where we have this idea or we have a series of ideas that we're highly identified with, and we look for evidence and proof of it everywhere we go, that we're not authentically open-minded and adaptable, but instead just talking a lot. And when I say talking, I do mean typing, talking, all forms of word-based communication, including your tone. And tone has to do with how you say anything, whether or not you put a million exclamation marks, the movement of your hands. We want to understand Mercury in a more holistic way to understand that it's not just about the words we use; it's about how we use them.

With the Sun conjunction to Mercury, we may see an unfortunate continuation of people doubling down on their beliefs. This and pretty much everything else I'm going to say to you about this week's horoscope is why it is exceptionally important that we get smart about the news we're consuming, how we engage with social media, how we listen to others, how we communicate with others.

Sun conjunction to Mercury can be a time where we adapt because we learn. But in order to learn, you do have to listen. And sometimes that is the hardest thing to do, in particular because listening is a passive skill. And I don't mean passive like you're not doing anything. I mean it is the art of being in a state of receptivity. And the more activated we are mentally and emotionally, the harder it is to stay in a state of receptivity because when you're being receptive, you're also receiving your own thoughts and feelings, your own complexities and messiness and pain. And most of us, most of the time, don't really want to do that. So it makes it really hard to listen to others when we can't tolerate listening to our own selves.

And so this is kind of an opportunity for empathy, again, and for engaging in your own evolutionary process. You don't have to be right. You have to keep trying. It would be great to be right. I want to be right. Don't you? We want to be right. But I want to invite you to adapt your perspective, to change your mind, if you see fit, if you've learned something new, and to be open to learning new things, and to do that by listening and talking to people⁠—hopefully not jabbing at people and having them jab back, but actually conversating, asking questions, listening to answers, sitting in the discomfort of, "Oh shit. I didn't know that. Maybe I need to change my perspective," because it's really hard to know about all the things all the time for all the people. It's really hard. Most of us don't. None of us, probably, but okay, I'll say most of us. And that's okay. That's as it should be. It's not a weakness to learn and to evolve your understanding and evolve your perspective. It's okay.

I want to just invite you to explore your own thoughts and feelings about that, because trust me, it's a good life skill, but also, this week, the next transit I'm going to tell you about happens on October 20th, which means it overlaps with the Sun/Mercury conjunction. And it is a Mercury/Pluto square. Mercury/Pluto square is a fucking challenging transit, okay? It's challenging.

I want to acknowledge, by the way, that I'm saying a lot of things, as I always do, but this is a very activated time. And if at any point you hear me say something and you're like, "Wait the fuck a minute," hey, I respect that. And also, the transcript for this episode will be up shortly. I generally have it up within 24 hours. So, if you want to read through what I said, it's always there for you, just as a hot aside. So you can just receive and actually listen, and then you can go back for hard data if that's what you're in it for, if that's what you like.

Okay. Anyways, Mercury square to Pluto⁠, this transit that will be exact at 27 degrees and 55 minutes⁠—Mercury will be in Libra, and Pluto will be in Capricorn at those degrees on the 20th, and that will be exact at 5:51 p.m.⁠—is all about looking for receipts, looking for details. This transit makes us really defensive. Pluto literally governs our flight-or-fight mechanisms, our sense of survival, our feelings of resentment and rage and terror. And Mercury is our mind. It's our attitudes. It's our beliefs. It's the information we are learning. It's what we're saying. It's how we're saying it. It's who we're talking to and how the conversation is going.

And when Mercury, so close to the Sun⁠—which makes everything feel personal to you⁠—forms a square to Pluto and it's in Eclipse Season, well, everything's going to feel fucking personal. So, on and around this date, I am going to seriously mitigate my engagement on social media because everybody is going to be defensive. If you think last week was defensive, just buckle up, buttercup. It's not likely to get better, because Mercury square Pluto is all about interpersonal drama.

This is a transit where our thinking is deepened. So your thinking is deepened. Your friends, your enemies, the people in line that you'll never know but you have lots of angry conversations with⁠—everyone's thinking is deepened. Everything gets more intense, and everything feels more personal to your survival. It's complicated.

And this transit on a regular day can coincide with disinformation, misinformation, propaganda, conspiracy theories that are driven by hate, that are driven by vengeance, that are driven by terror. That's on a regular day. And this week, my friend, will include no regular days. So we want to be really mindful. Notice what activates you, and understand that that is just as much about you and what activates you as the data you're being presented with.

We want to be on the lookout all week, but especially around this date⁠. We want to be on the lookout for misinformation and disinformation, which means we need to have critical thinking at the fore. Critical thinking is thinking about thinking while thinking. So noticing what you're thinking is critical thinking.

Typically, when this transit occurs, I say to you here on Ghost of a Podcast, "Don't cyberstalk your ex. Don't obsessively look at people and compare yourself to them or people that make you feel bad about yourself." And I'm sticking with that. That's really good advice. But I'm going to add to that this is a really important time to not just doom scroll or pick fights with people. The energy that we participate with, the energy that we engage in, is precious because it's our fucking precious energy. If you're going to fight, fight for something. I'm not talking about being the first person in the world to ever convince someone in the comments section of the post to change their mind. I'm not challenging you to that. I'm saying, if you actually care about something, then do something about it. Do something constructive about it.

Mercury square to Pluto can have us obsessing and fixating and ruminating but not actually unpacking and exploring. The difference between the worst parts of what can happen and the best parts are all about whether or not it's constructive, whether or not it helps to unearth the truth and get to the bottom of things so healing can occur, so repair can occur. Mercury square to Pluto can have us engaging with and in greater harm. So, unfortunately, it gives me great concern about what will happen in the world.

But you and me as individuals, we're part of the world. And we can do our part to participate in as healthy ways as possible and as loving ways as possible. And sometimes that means fighting. Absolutely, it does. But pick your battles wisely and with intention. Make sure that you are not activating from a sense of hatred or vengeance and that you're not projecting your shit out. It's really hard to feel the feelings that Mercury square to Pluto kicks up. It just is. But that's the assignment.

This transit kicks up extreme ideas and extreme delivery. It can absolutely represent power struggles, dominion and control, the rise in hate speech and just hate in general towards groups of people. What we need is repair. What we need is healing. And there are a lot of different ways of getting it in lots of different kinds of life situations. But what's really important is that you don't compromise your humanity or ignore or deny the humanity of others. It's really important⁠ with your ex, with a group of people, whatever it is.

Let's not forget that Mercury is still in Venus-ruled Libra. Looking for equanimity and fairness is really important here. Showing up and engaging in ways that reflect your values⁠—Venus⁠—more than your fears is a really healthy and challenging, but really healthy, approach. If you can avoid it, avoid processing with people today because it's hard to keep things fair and kind and to really listen under a Mercury square to Pluto.

I would also recommend, if you don't feel safe in an area, maybe don't go into the area. This is not a time where we want to push the boundaries of our safety, if possible. And it's, as we know, not possible for many people. But if it's possible for you, it's just some good advice during squares to Pluto in general.

This transit can represent a time where you move through old triggers. And we know that those triggers are psychological because Mercury is involved, but we also know that they're emotional because we're in Eclipse Season. And we know that they engage our survival mechanisms because fucking Pluto. So this can be a deeply healing and transformative time, even if it's a challenging one.

This is when we want to remember that just because it feels bad doesn't mean it is bad. Just because it feels good doesn't mean it is good. We must do some measure of introspection and self-evaluation in order to kind of understand what's underneath a thing. And if you can do it, I'm just going to say it's good work. But again, you may really need to take a break from social media in order to access the resiliency within you so that you can do that work and do it with integrity.

Now, that brings us to the next exact transit. Well, I should say the next exact transits. So, on the 21st, we have two exact transits. And they are overlapping with the Sun/Mercury conjunction and the Mercury square Pluto. So I'm going to talk about the softer pitch first. We've got a Venus trine to Jupiter, Venus at 12 degrees of Virgo and Jupiter 12 degrees and 7 minutes of Taurus. So that transit will be exact at 9:32 p.m. Pacific Time on the 21st of October.

Now, this transit is really supportive. This is a lovely transit. It empowers us to act in ways that reflect our values, equanimity, to be generous, to have a global view on what's happening, to be more expansive about what's happening. Typically, it's really great for love. So, if this transit hits your birth chart sweetly⁠—so, basically, if you have anything at around 12 degrees of water or earth signs⁠—it's going to be quite lovely. And it can be a nice time to meet people, to connect.

This transit can certainly ease some of the pain that Mercury square to Pluto and the Sun square to Pluto that's also happening on this day will kick up. But it only eases things if you tap into the energy. So what is there to tap into? Venus trine to Jupiter can just make us feel good. So that can happen through just taking a walk through nature and being like, "Oh yeah. I love trees. I forgot," or eating something delicious that you're like, "That hits the damn spot," wearing materials that feel good against your skin. It's just really simple, sense-based⁠—a.k.a. sensual⁠—pleasures. That can really ground into the body, make us feel more resilient, make us feel a little lighter, a little better.

The other thing that can happen with the Venus trine to Jupiter is we can tap into our values and our generosity of spirit, connect with our high-level beliefs, and that can help us to navigate through the thorny bramble patch that is the world we're living in right now. This can just help to essentially ground us into our values, which I cannot stress enough is so fucking important, so important.

As I've said many, many times, but maybe not super recently, the transit of Uranus in Taurus, which is ongoing for many years⁠ and we are still very much in⁠—it challenges us to ask ourselves who we value and how we express that value, which people get valued and which people don't. The last time that Uranus transited through the zodiac sign of Taurus is when we had World War II. It was a time where the world decided who did and didn't have value and decided it pretty violently.

Uranus is again in Taurus, and we are again⁠—or still, maybe more accurately, to be honest⁠—having those conversations. But now we're having them kind of globally in this very big way that reflects the cruelty of humans, that reflects how when fear and power and hatred get all put together in one snow globe, how dangerous it is. So that can be incredibly destructive and terrifying and all of these things, but on an individual level, what you and me can do is make sure that we are checking in with our values and making sure that we see and center the dignity and the value in all people⁠—people we like, people we don't, people we know, people we don't, people we agree with, people we don't. People.

Now, that brings us to the other exact transit on this day, and that is the Sun square to Pluto. This transit is happening at 27 degrees and 55 minutes. So the Sun is in Libra at that degree, and Pluto is at Capricorn at that degree. And this transit is exact at 7:09 a.m. When the Sun forms a square to Pluto, we get really motivated. Unfortunately, that motivation can be pointed in really weird directions sometimes. And by weird, I mean destructive. So I should have just said destructive. But this is a harsh horoscope, so I was trying to soften it.

The Sun square to Pluto will often activate power struggles, feelings of resentment, terror, rage⁠—you get the picture because I'm repeating myself a lot. Pluto governs death. I want to be clear it doesn't govern people dying necessarily, but it governs big letting go. I mean, it governs coming and shitting and dying, basically. It's the big letting go. And so, when we have transits like the Sun square to Pluto, our fears around death or annihilation get activated.

And now, of course, that doesn't mean that every time we go through these transits that people are annihilated or everyone feels that way. But oftentimes⁠—you know how it is. You're in a relationship with somebody, you're dating them, and you're definitely not at any kind of a real risk of annihilation, but those flight-or-fight feelings kick in and you get really activated around, "I'm going to be annihilated. This is going to be the end of me." That's Pluto for you.

So, whether we're dealing with very real material threats or more psychic, psychological, or emotional threats, the Sun square to Pluto tends to trigger them. Speaking of triggers, this transit plus the Mercury square to Pluto really kicks up activation and triggers, so we want to be on the lookout for them. We want to be mindful of them. We want to do our best to engage in ways that do not reflect our worst and loudest parts but instead our wisest and most empathetic parts, our most fair parts, our parts that reflect our values and the value we see in ourselves and others.

Whenever we're dealing with this much Plutonian energy, especially because it's Eclipse Season, we want to remember that truism "Hurt people hurt people." Just because you're hurting doesn't mean you're entitled to hurt others. Such a simple truth, but it is such a hard one for so many of us to embody all the time.

Now, we want to look out during a Sun square to Pluto to manipulation dynamics, power dynamics, jealousy, resentment, any kind of obsessive-compulsive behaviors. If you know you're dealing with addiction issues, this is going to be a kind of triggering time and an especially important time to stave off whatever the addiction is. And that might mean not do the thing that you feel like you have an addictive habit around, or it might mean trying to take a harm-reductionist approach where you know you're not going to stop doing the thing, but maybe do it 50 percent less or something, because the Sun square to Pluto does trigger us in such a way that we can perpetrate self-harm or self-sabotage or harming others.

Again, the Eclipse Season wants us to rise to the occasion and to be emotionally evolved enough to engage with the feelings that you're having, that I'm having, that is coming up in a situation, and to do so in a way that reflects our greatest capacity for healing as opposed to for breaking shit down⁠, although sometimes shit needs to be broken down. We can't always heal. But again, this is the path. I'm not pointing you towards a destination as much as a path.

Now, I said earlier this is not a great time for processing, and it's not. But you very well may have to. You may very well have to set a boundary, establish what you can and can't do, what you will and won't do. You may very well have to answer to something you've done or somebody perceives that you have or haven't done.

When Pluto comes calling in the way that it is this week, we generally have to deal with mess. And it's important to be able to evaluate your own conduct, to take responsibility for what you have or haven't done, and also to have enough self-reference, enough self-awareness, to be able to really assess if somebody comes at you and says, "You did x"⁠—to really assess, "Did I do it?" And maybe come up with, "The answer is no. I perceive the situation differently."

The way astrology works is not that it's the exact same circumstances for all the people. Of course not. It couldn't be. It's about energy, and it's about understanding that Pluto governs so much depth and such intense reactiveness or activation that it can play out on lots of different levels. But what you want to do to the best of your ability is not play yourself by acting in ways that don't reflect your integrity. Don't play yourself by acting in ways that don't reflect self-love, self-care, and respect and care for others.

This can be a transit that brings about healing, but it doesn't usually do so in very palatable ways. It tends to be really messy. Now, there's one last thing I want to say about the Sun square to Pluto. This transit, very similarly to Mercury square to Pluto, can intensify fucked-up beliefs and feelings and people because it brings up the shit in us. It brings up our shit feelings. Unfortunately, it can activate racism, misogyny, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism⁠—you get the picture.

I want to invite each and every one of you to excavate, interrogate, sit with, unpack, and explore in efforts to heal any thoughts or feelings or behaviors that reflect those fears, because they're essentially fears, fears of others⁠—and that hatred in your soul. That's the kind of hatred that really fucks you up on a soul level. I mean, it fucks up the world. It's not good for anybody. But it certainly isn't good for you. And sometimes people are just hateful, and that's what that is. And a lot of times, people have inherited, hateful, or fear-based beliefs and ideas, and it's easier to not really look at them and really work to understand and heal them than to do so, at least in the short term. So people don't. And then, when shit goes down, we act on our reflexes.

So, again, I want to encourage you to be on the lookout for your own internalized, fucked-up impulses and beliefs because this can be a time where you come to healing, where you purge them from your system. And that might be an all-out excavation, and it may be a subtle shift of awareness and willingness that has a powerful effect that plays out over the next six months of your life, because all these transits that are happening in Eclipse Season are essentially swept into the season, which will, again, play out for the next six months.

It is more important that you try than you get it right right now. It is more important that you struggle to find the truth than you pretend you have it because everyone else online seems like they have it. It's okay to evolve. It's okay to not know things. It's okay to explore. And a lot of us are really terrified of that, especially with this very online life that we have. Hey. Listen. I want to say it's okay to be scared. Work through your fear if you can, and if you can't, just sit with it instead of throwing it away from your body and into someone else's lap, which is what a lot of people have been doing in the last week.

All right, my loves. I thank you so much for joining me this week on Ghost of a Podcast. I hope you're taking really good care of yourself and others, that you're showing up to the best of your ability, and that you remember that this Eclipse Season is a time for feeling your feelings, not just the nice ones⁠—feeling all your damn feelings. And if you find, in efforts to feel your feelings, that you don't know how or you don't know what to do with it, well, then you're in really good company. That's what we're all going through, and it's time to rise to the occasion, letting go of expectations, perfectionism, and pride. Rise to the occasion.

All right, my loves. I will talk to you in just a couple of days. Stay safe, take care of yourself, and take care of others.