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.

Hey there, Ghosties. In this episode, I'll be doing a live reading with one of my beloved listeners. Every Wednesday, listen in on an intimate conversation and get inspired as we explore perspectives on life, love, and the human condition. Along the way, we'll uncover valuable insights and practical lessons that you can apply to your own life. And don't forget to hit Subscribe or, at the very least, mark your calendars because every Sunday I'll be back with your weekly horoscope. And that you don't want to miss. Let's get started.

In honor of Halloween, I decided to invite my patrons to send me questions about witchy stuff, some witchy-woo, if you will. And so this episode is going to be one of me answering many questions sent in on the general topic of witch tips. And if this is something you're interested in, you are likely also going to be interested in my November 5th class called Astrology for Intuitives: Identifying Your Psychic Strengths Through the Birth Chart. It's happening November 5th at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time.

If you can't make it live, do not worry; you will get a replay of the class in your inbox within a couple of days of the class itself. You can register on my website. There's also going to be a link in the description of this very episode, so you can join me there. And if you're listening to this and you already missed the class, don't worry. It will be for sale on the Shop page of my website, as all of my previous classes are. So you can just check that out over at lovelanyadoo.com.

And, that said, let's get into your questions. My first question is about witchability, which⁠—I'm very into that word. And it goes like this: "Can anyone harness witchability? In essence, is the craft knowable through studying and practice?" And I love this question because, so many times, people think that when it comes to woo stuff, whether it's witchcraft or astrology or psychic ability, that it's either something that you're born with that's innate, or you get hit by some sort of thunderbolt, and then you develop an ability, and then it's right there. And that's not it, at least not in my perspective.

Some of us are born with more natural talent or predispositions towards things than others. But when it comes to the practice of witchcraft, it takes education, practice, community, connection, making mistakes and learning from those mistakes, and on and on it goes. When it comes to any form of woo, the truth is it's just like any other skill. It needs practice and education and refinement. That's just how that goes.

So, even if one is born with a particular gift, without education and practice, it's not as strong as it can be. Think of it as a muscle. All muscles need to be used in order to be developed. So this is a muscle that you want to build; then do it with intention. You don't have to feel like you were born with it, and you certainly don't have to wait for a thunderbolt to hit you in order to embrace your woo side, whether it's through witchcraft or any other form of esoteric spiritual knowledge.

Okay. My next question comes from Emma, and it says, "I am a textile designer, which I like for the most part and I went to school for. However, I also have my own business where I teach and mentor others with magic. I teach and hold ritual, do tarot readings, and offer magical mentorship. This is my absolute passion, and I would love to be able to do it full time, abundantly, with a brick-and-mortar store as well. I've always told myself that at some point, I would take the leap and do this before I was 30 years old. I'm only 26 now, but 30 is closer and closer each day. I've never felt really ready to make this jump even though it's my dream, and I wonder if I will ever feel truly ready. What does my chart say about the right time to do this?"

Okay. I have gotten so many questions over the years from people saying, "I am 26, which means I'm practically 30," or, "I'm 25," or, "I'm 27, which means I'm practically 30." But I want to just invite you⁠, if you are in your 20s⁠—you can apply this to your 30s, to your 50s, to your 70s, whatever. But when you think back from the age of 26 to four years ago when you were 22, does that feel like nothing much happened in those four years? Does that feel like it's practically the same age? No. Of course it doesn't.

The space between 26 and 30 is massive. There is so much growth that happens in these years. There's so much space and time for things to evolve and change in you and the world. So don't allow 15-year-old you decided that at 30, you were going to have x, y, and z⁠—don't let that shit get in your way of being aligned in the moment. Let's just start with that. This applies to all ages. Whenever you think that the age in front of you is really close, deduct those same amount of years that are between you and that age ahead of you⁠—you know what I mean⁠?—to the age behind you, and see if you really think that it's that close. It's just a helpful little trick to gauge age issues a little bit.

But okay. Let's focus on the witchy stuff here. So what I'm not going to do is actually what Emma asks me to do, which is predict the exact time that it would be right to quit the day job and be a full-time healer, because that's actually not the point of being a healer. The point of being a healer is being able to identify when the right time occurs because if what we're doing is holding space for others to have healing and to be in correct alignment with themselves, well, how can we do that when we don't have the ability to do it for others?

So I am not suggesting that somebody has to be perfect in order to help other people. That's obviously not the case. But as healers or helpers, the container that we hold for others reflects the container we're able to hold for ourselves. And so, if impatience or a fear that if it doesn't happen now it'll never happen is driving you, that means you're not yet able to hold a resonant container for others when they're dealing with similar fears. And I can assure you that everybody at some point, if not tons of points, in our lives deal with those fears in one context or another, or 50 contexts or another.

So I want to say the question is the path. The question doesn't need an answer. The question is the answer. Right now, what you're learning about is how to have faith, how to invest in yourself and in your practice. And this is a really important thing with woo, and it kind of connects to the first question. I think a lot of us have this idea that if it's meant to be, it should just magically be; it should just spontaneously emerge, ready. But I don't actually think that's how it works. And if we have a more pragmatic, common-sense relationship to magic, then magic becomes more sustainable. Then we are conserving our energies for what is actually healing and helpful instead of spinning our wheels trying to get somewhere before we're ready.

So all to say I would contend, Emma, that you're exactly where you need to be and that if you continue to do work that is in alignment with you, then it will become an inevitability, your clarity of when it's time to move away from the work that you like but maybe don't love of working with textiles, when it's time to move into the brick and mortar, if that is still what you want. Things may evolve. Perhaps when you decided you wanted a brick and mortar, the internet was really different. Maybe a brick and mortar now is a website. I don't know. It might be different is all I'm saying.

Be open and stay present. If things aren't flowing in that direction quite yet, then trust that. Everything happens in its time.

Okay. My next question says, "Halloween is one of those times that many are familiar with, but there are others like the witching hour or times when the veils are thin that are also mentioned in folk and pop culture. You also sometimes mention times where you do not recommend the use of consciousness-raising drugs. What is the nature of witchy times, and are they inherently good or bad? Would you advise to do different kinds of woo work at these times?"

So this is a great question, and I'll answer it on a couple levels. The first one is I get a lot of questions from a lot of you about how I do recommend avoiding consciousness-raising drugs at particular times. Many of you have asked me, "Okay. Fine. But when can I do drugs?" And I am not a person who is going to tell you to do drugs. That's not it⁠—not recreational drugs, not consciousness-raising drugs⁠—at all. That would be super weird if I was sitting around advising you when to get high, I think.

But what I can do is look at the astrology and advise you about when it's inadvisable, to protect you if you are going to do it. So I'm not judging anyone for doing it, but as an astrologer doing general mundane astrology, I'm certainly not going to recommend anyone doing drugs in general, and certainly not in such a general way. But again, I can warn you when the energy is bad because it's really easy to see for somebody like me who knows to look for it. And I look for it because I know you like drugs.

Okay. Here we go. The nature of witchy times and are they inherently good or bad is a big part of this question. So, in a way, all time is witchy time. When we are engaging with space and time in a spiritual way, what's happening is we are connected to the Earth and our place on it. We are connected to the energetics of time and space. And yes, there are specific times, like the witching hour that people talk about or times when the veil is thin, that are particularly worth noting. I wouldn't ever attribute value judgments like good or bad to them, and I wouldn't recommend that anyone do that in general.

It is really valuable to be able to learn in whatever system you are working with⁠—because I want to acknowledge there are many different ways of working with space and time. There are countless ways of accessing spirituality, and I don't know all of them and I don't think any of them are inherently bad or good. But I think what's really important is that when we are cognizant of and working consciously or unconsciously with the way that time works and things that are happening within particular times, what we're really talking about is working with energy.

And when we're working with energy, what we want to do is, of course, tap into that education, learn things, and then be present emotionally and in the body, not just mentally, so that we can experience time, time plus circumstance plus nature, plus, plus, plus, right? And then, over the course of more time, we can start to extrapolate our own theories based on our education and lived experience.

For me as an astrologer, I have this really specific lens. I am looking at time through the lens of astrology, and astrology is all about timing. It's literally the practice of understanding the human condition through time and space. So, when I use astrology, I am able to understand, okay, for instance, it's Eclipse Season. Everyone is really activated emotionally. Okay. There's a lot of things that I would recommend and not recommend as a direct result of that. There may be other times when Saturn is forming a lovely transit to one of the personal planets, and that is supporting us in being more grounded or more organized. And it's a time where, if you're going to do something that might destabilize you, it might be a little safer because there's stabilizing energy around us that you can tap into.

But let me say this. Astrology is not the only tool out there. It's my tool. I love this tool. I've devoted my life to this tool. But it is not the only tool out there. There are so many tools, and what's important is that you find yours. Within that, what I would say is the internet loves to make things seem simple in such a way that is often lacking in nuance. And so, when you google things and you meme things and you blog things and you watch a couple TikToks or YouTubes or whatever about a thing, it may feel like you really get the thing. But practice and time need to be part of the equation. It can't just be gobbling up data. It has to be education, practice, time, rinse, rinse, rinse, repeat, repeat, repeat.

So this is how it happens. And this is where a lot of people who practice witchcraft revere the crone because we're talking about this archetype of somebody who has experience, not just education, not just talent, not just drive or passion or energetic sparkle, but experience. And experience is really important in the cultivation of all things, but certainly something like witchcraft or, as I like to say as an umbrella term, the woo.

Okay. I got another question here, and it's about mushrooms. And it says, "I recently tripped on mushrooms, and even though I purposefully took a small amount on a good astrological day, I tripped extremely hard, even more than my friends who took way more. At one point, I didn't feel like I was even human. Are witches more susceptible to psychic attacks, or is there something in my chart that suggests that I am not a good candidate for consciousness-raising drugs?"

And Mushrooms, as I will call her, was born on May 22nd, 1999, at 1:50 p.m. in Fort Oglethorpe⁠—I think⁠—Georgia. Okay. So, absolutely, not everyone is a good candidate for drug use, certainly not psychedelic drug use. And I know it's very in fashion right now to do these drugs, and they are for sure not good for everybody. They can really fuck with your mental health, and they can fuck with your spiritual health.

If one is particularly susceptible to energy in general, if one is an empath, if one is a channel or a medium, if you are particularly psychic at all, recreational drugs⁠—which encompasses consciousness-raising drugs⁠—can be really hard on you because, essentially, having all that woo sensitivity that I just referenced means that your auric field, the field of your aura, is more permeable. That's how all that data gets through that a lot of other people don't feel. And so, when we take drugs, it shifts our auric field in such a way that it becomes more permeable, but to different things.

And so a lot of people who have sensitivities are not well suited to doing drugs. And I want to be exceptionally clear: I'm not talking about prescription drugs. Take your medicine, okay? What I'm talking about is recreational or consciousness-raising drugs. A lot of times, people find through experience, and sometimes harrowing experience, that they don't need help being open. They don't need help being permeable. And in fact, it can invite some shitty stuff. Some of that may look like psychic attack.

And this is the thing. The way I most frequently describe it is this. If you live in a city and you open the front door of your apartment⁠—you just open it up⁠⁠—and you go in your house and you do your thing, it may be that your friend who's supposed to come over just lets themselves in because they see the door is open; they just let themselves in, and that's it. That's the only thing that comes in. But you may get rats in your house. You may get random humans with questionable intentions in your house. You may get some sort of creepy crawlies or flies, or anything can come in an open door.

And the same is true when we throw open our boundaries, which drugs⁠—in particular, drugs like mushrooms⁠—tend to have us do. We're not well-boundaried. That's the whole point. It blows open our boundaries. That's part of why we call them consciousness-raising drugs, right? But we cannot steward with clarity and intention what gets in. We hope for the best, but we can't steward it. And that is why, yes, sometimes when people do recreational drugs, they have terrible trips and they have terrible experiences. And sometimes, it fucks with you long term. Sometimes it ends up that you end up with psychic attack; something makes its way into your open door that you didn't invite. But it happens, and that can be a bit of a mess.

And so there's real importance in having spiritual cleansing practices, if you are somebody who's really sensitive and you are doing these kinds of drugs, to do them before and after any kind of drug trip that you may take. Again, I am not recommending that people do drugs. That is not what I am here for. I'm your Capri-daddy. I want to encourage you to mess with reality. That's what I'm here to do. But if you are going to do these drugs, I want to encourage you to play safe on a spiritual level as well as the other levels.

Now, that said, don't think I forgot about your birth chart. Listen, my dear. You did the right thing by checking to see if there were any challenging transits occurring around when you took a trip. That's smart. Good job. Here's the problem: you didn't look at your own birth chart, see? And the truth of the matter is you are going through a Neptune transit, the whole length of which would be not a good time to do any kind of drugs that mess with your sense of reality.

You're currently going through a Neptune opposition to the Moon. Your Moon is at 25 degrees of Virgo. This is a once-in-a-lifetime, two-year-long transit and a pretty terrible one to do anything that throws you off your matrix, because Neptune squares and oppositions⁠—sometimes conjunctions⁠—to personal planets tend to throw us off our matrix or light up the ways in which we were already out of balance or out of alignment. It's a time where we need more fortification and better boundaries and not to blow open our boundaries. So this is probably why you had such a rough time, even though you took a baby dose and everyone else took a big dose.

We always want to check in with the birth chart. And if that's not something that you have the skill set to do, if you're nervous, hire an astrologer. Ask them to do it. But when you're going through Neptune transits and Pluto transits to your personal planets, this is when I always advise caution with substance use, especially psychedelics or anything that's going to change your understanding of reality.

One last time⁠—I know I did it twice already, but I want to reiterate this speaks zero percent to prescription medication. We always want to take our prescription medication in the way that it was prescribed by physicians that we trust. We're just talking about recreational drugs here, okay? Okay. Okay. And one last thing I'll say to you, my dear, is yeah, don't do drugs right now. Don't do drugs, not at all. Fortify. Support your system. With that Neptune opposition to the Moon, it will be over on March 6th, 2024. So you don't have that much more time in front of you. But I would encourage you to take a break and really tend to your spiritual and emotional health between now and then.

Identify and unlock your psychic potential with Astrology for Intuitives webinar on November 5th. There's still time to register. Discover your innate intuitive gifts and unleash your true psychic strengths; explore the spectrum of clairvoyance, empathy, and more as we decode the birth chart to unveil your hidden talents and how to access them. Join me for an empowering journey of self-discovery and transformation on November 5th. It is perfect for astrology enthusiasts and those curious about their intuitive prowess. Find the link to register in the description of this episode, and join me live or sign up and get the replay delivered directly to your inbox.

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Okay. I've got a question from Jean that says, "Any tips on tapping into my inner witch while not abandoning my tendency to live in my mind? I love to analyze and think things through, but I wonder if this is getting in my way of my witchy potential. How can I learn to trust my mind and also stay open to and guided by other wisdom and energies that surround me?" And Jean's birth date is August 28th, 1987, 6:34 a.m. in Louisville, Kentucky.

Okay. I think that for people who tend to be super in their head or very intellectual have a hard time with receiving because the mind is constantly reaching out to analyze, project into the future or the past, fix things. It's hard to stay in a state of openness and receptivity. And because of that, it can be hard to receive messages because in order to receive guidance messages or insight, what you need to do is to be open.

And it turns out when we are processing data, we are turned inward in such a way⁠—or outward, depending on the way we're processing data⁠—that we're not actually that open to woo stuff or spiritual stuff. This is where tapping into things like meditation becomes really helpful because it teaches how to be present and not chase thoughts. Now, in the case of you, Jean, you have a stellium in Virgo in the first house. You got Mars, Sun, Venus, and Mercury all sitting on top of each other in the zodiac sign of Virgo. And that is a lot of Virgo to move through.

Also, your Moon is in Libra, which is not a super analytic sign, necessarily, but it's another air sign. And so your tendency, when in doubt, to go to your head and to logic is real strong. And that's not a bad thing. That doesn't need to end at all. But what it does say is that practical, evidential, earth-based, witchy practices are going to be it for you, not something that is so divorced from your nature that it just doesn't feel like a match.

It's important to remember that I'm an astrologer. I'm a psychic medium. I do all these things. The things that I do don't have to match for you, and the things that work for you doesn't have to match for your friend. Spirituality is really personal. And it is really wise to develop practices that empower you to access your own guidance, divinity, whatever it is, in ways that actually work with instead of against your nature.

So being able to use your big, analytic mind to sort through information is a valuable resource, but you want to be able to have your brain on a dial so you can turn the volume down at times. And this is where practices⁠—again, like I said, like meditation⁠—become really helpful. There are also many different paths, whether it's witchcraft or other kind of ritual-based practices, that could really work for you because we don't want to forget, when dealing with the zodiac sign of Virgo and also the sixth house, what we are dealing with is a house and a zodiac sign that are all about ritual.

And so another way to access your guidance or sense of divinity is through ritualistic, material behaviors that help you to shift from being super analytic to being in a greater state of presence and receptivity. And so my invitation to you is to use that big, old brain of yours to research lots of different practices and experiment with trying them in safe, smart, and respectful ways to see what is the best match for you. Lots of Virgo is going to do really well with lots of ritual.

One more thing I'm going to say. In your birth chart, you've got the North Node in Aries in the eighth house. So finding rituals that give you access to deep spiritual truths and deep spiritual feelings⁠—it's part of your calling. This is really good work for you to be doing. And you don't have to vilify or abandon your big, beautiful brain in order to do it.

My last question is about witchy friendships, and it goes like this: "Are there any important parameters to establish or good rules of thumb to follow when building woo friendships? How do you communicate with others at various places and points in their woo or astrological study? What is different and what is the same about communicating with those that may have studied more or haven't studied the same material, or how to answer someone asking questions who doesn't know a lot about astrology or woo topics yet?" And this questioner was born 7/11/1980 at 8:24 a.m. in Hibbing, Minnesota.

Okay. So, when cultivating or being waist-deep in friendships with people who are studying something similar to you but have different knowledge or at a different state of knowledge, it's important to have boundaries. And when I say that, I mean boundaries with yourself. To be honest with yourself, are you leaning too hard on this friend to learn something from them when maybe that's not appropriate to your friendship or that's not appropriate in a given moment? Are you sharing your witchy, astrological⁠—whatever⁠—knowledge with people so that they like you, so that they're interested in you, so that they feel like they want to hang out with you?

It's important to make sure that we are not using our special gifts and interests as a way to unintentionally feed into our intimacy issues is basically what I'm saying. And I think that that's important to name. Now, another thing that's important to name is that it's really valuable to be able to say, "I don't know," or to say to your friends, "I don't want to talk about this right now," or to say to your friends, "I do have a lot of information about this, but I'm not sure how to communicate about it in this moment." It's really valuable to own your humility.

And the truth of the matter is I have friends who are professional astrologers. I am a professional astrologer. And they know shit I don't know, and I know shit they don't know. Or I know shit, but when it comes to me, I'm not good at putting that stuff into practice, so I will ask them and then they can help me or vice versa. And that's good. That's great.

But I also have friends who are astrology fans, and they are not professional astrologers with 30 years of experience, obviously, because there's very few people like that. And I talk about astrology with them a lot less. And when I talk about astrology with them, it's radically different because we're not two equals on a topic coming together to share information. We have different kinds of information. We have different interests. And I'm more likely to be teaching or sharing information as opposed to learning or receiving information in that situation. So it's important that I have really good boundaries. And if my friends who are astrology fans want to know a lot more from me, I will simply go forth and say, "I don't really want to talk about it right now," or I'll change the subject. And that is a perfectly fair thing to do.

Now, that said, you also asked about people who don't know a lot about woo topics. And to this, I say not everything is for everyone. And it is so important to respect that you may be super into a particular thing and love it and trust that it is so valuable and so important, and that doesn't mean that I'm going to have the same opinion on that same topic. And it's really important in friendship, in my belief, to not try to shove our passions down our loved ones' threats, to respect that not all things are for all people.

Your friend might be super into religion and want to share that good word with you, and you may think, "That word is not so good. Please don't share it." And that's fair. That's fair. And it's equally fair to not talk about astrology and the Moon and witchy shit with all the people all the time, because not everybody is interested. And within that, we're really just talking about boundaries with friends. We're talking about boundaries with ourselves.

And that, my dear, brings me to your birth chart. You have a Sun/Mercury conjunction in Cancer. You also have got the Moon in Cancer. It's not quite conjunct, though. And your Sun/Mercury conjunction in Cancer makes it so that you love sharing your ideas and your experiences with people. You're super identified with your ideas. And so it might be hard for you to tolerate when people are at radically different levels of a thing with you or don't have the same interests as you.

But your Sun/Mercury conjunction happens to be in the twelfth house. And so the theme of having healthy boundaries with yourself and your friends is exceptionally important. And it may be really valuable for you to create or join into some sort of witches' circle or some sort of spiritual group where you do come together with a clear intention of making magic in one way or another. And then that may make it easier for you with your other friends to not necessarily talk about that stuff all the time or not need them to be engaged with you on these topics all the time or at your level all the time.

Now, I will name that you also in your birth chart have a Venus/Neptune opposition, which further reiterates the need for boundaries and accepting people for where they're at and who they are and, likewise, accepting yourself for where you're at and who you are. Self-acceptance and boundaries is really the answer to your question. And so many of us who have taken a woo path, whatever that means to you⁠—we often try to kind of force ourselves into some sort of radical self-acceptance that is a beautiful direction to be pointed in, but the truth of the matter is time and practice, time and practice, making mistakes, taking the wrong path, experimenting, learning from the pros and cons of what you do⁠—that's how we come to true self-acceptance.

Self-acceptance can take time. And I don't say that to be like, "Oh, you'll get there later," but to acknowledge that it is far easier to have boundaries with ourselves and others, it's far easier to respect the boundaries of others, when we have self-acceptance. And it is a powerful tool for your witchy tool kit, but just your life tool kit.

Now, my dears, I hope if you do celebrate Day of the Dead or Halloween, that you have a healthy and exciting time if that's what you're looking for. It's 2023, so it does not really need to be said, but just in case, I just want to reiterate other people's identities are not a costume. We don't dress up as other people's identities. We're not doing that in 2023, right? I mean, I know we know it, but it's worth repeating.

I want to thank you for joining me for another episode of Ghost of a Podcast. And I will talk to you for your horoscope in just a couple of days. Buh-bye.