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, there's a lot going on. But I don't have to tell you that, do I? Let's just begin at the beginning. We are looking at the horoscope for October 8th through the 14th of 2023. And as I told you about in last week's horoscope, we start the week off on the 8th with an exact square between Mars and Pluto. This square is happening between Mars at 28 degrees of Libra⁠—technically speaking, it's 27 degrees and 54 minutes⁠—and Pluto is at the same degrees of Capricorn. This square is exact at 6:05 p.m. Pacific.

So I talked a little bit about this transit last week. I'm going to unpack it further here, but I just want to say the volatility of the Mars square to Pluto and Eclipse Season is palatable. You may be feeling it in regards to your own personal activation, your sense of ambition, and you may be feeling very difficult Martian or Plutonian emotions like anger, defensiveness, resentment⁠, and a bunch of others, but that's a good⁠—it's a good, tight little list.

The war that has just sprung up in Israel or Palestine is another really chilling example of these energies. The world is rife with violence of many kinds. The world is rife with anti-Semitism and anti-Arab sentiments. And it's important for you, me, and everyone else to maintain our humanity. I personally cannot speak to the complexities of what's happening in that region or the astrology behind it. That is outside of my personal expertise. But I will say that the astrological timing of these events does not bode well for this conflict or the world's likelihood of getting triggered and taking sides and acting in ways that reveal our prejudices and fears.

And this is the thing to keep in mind about Mars and Pluto, these two planets that, as I said last week, are both related to war and conflict⁠. As I always say, Mars is "kick, kick, punch, punch, bang-bang," and Pluto is nuclear. On a more personal level, Mars is anger and defensiveness, while Pluto is our survival mechanisms. It's our fight, flight, or fawn.

And when these kinds of deep, primal emotions and complexities get triggered within us as individuals, let alone as a collective, we have a tendency to act out. We have a tendency to act out against ourselves or others, to want things to be black and white, a very Plutonian thing for wanting things to be all good or all bad, wanting to believe that there are good guys and bad guys, that things are simple and clear-cut.

The truth is, when we're dealing with so many things, there's a level where that may be true, but in general, it's not. There are complexities and nuances to all the things, whether we're talking about social and political conditions or we are talking about our personal lives, ourselves, our relationships, our trauma responses, and the situations that we find ourselves in. And it is really valuable to know that this energy is activated in us as individuals and in everyone we are interacting with, as well as activated within the collective globally. It's a really intense time.

And then, if you throw on top of that it is Eclipse Season⁠—by the end of this week, we will have our first Eclipse of the season⁠—we know that everyone's activation is up. So your coping mechanisms, your coping styles, whether it's to lean towards denial or hypervigilance or anything else, is activated. And that is true for everyone. And when individuals are activated, that's intense and can kind of go any way. But when groups of people are activated, we tend to see bad behavior, fear-based or hateful behavior.

And it's really important⁠—really important⁠—that we do our best as individuals to sit with our reactions. Whenever we're dealing with Moon and Pluto and Mercury, Mars⁠—all these planets⁠—we want to do our best to sit with our reactions before we respond, if possible. If you're not in personal immediate jeopardy, it is valuable to do that because there is so much wisdom that we all have within us, there are so many resources that we have access to, but we can only resource that stuff if we take pause and make the choice to do so. Right? It's a lot.

Now, in regards to what's happening in the world, unfortunately, this transit triggers violence. It triggers anger, and it triggers the urge to dominate and control others. Not great news. I mean, it's not great, right? And we are living through times where the world is in such a shaky place already. So many nations are dealing with strongman leaders. There are so many groups of people who are being scapegoated, targeted, and oppressed. That's kind of always, but things are really intense right now.

And a transit like this the week of an Eclipse, during a Eclipse Season, can really trigger things. So I don't want to make predictions about what's going to happen in the world⁠, not in this moment, anyways. I don't know the value in it. But I can say this because I do think it has value: it is wise to be informed, to not be overly simplistic, but instead to look for the nuance because Pluto makes us want to say, "This is all bad; this is all good." We go into all-or-nothing thinking with our survival mechanisms with Pluto.

And so what we want to do is strive to be nuanced. Strive to consider sources. Strive to look for original sources, if we can, when looking at the news and understanding what's happening in the world, and to know that it is okay to say, "I am not informed enough about this issue to have an educated opinion. I have feelings, but I do not have an educated opinion."

It is okay to not know everything about everything. And I think in this world where we all have a bullhorn⁠—we've got social media and all this kind of stuff⁠—there ends up being a lot, a lot of voices. And it's okay to not know what to say. It's okay to not say anything. When you're not educated and informed enough, it's okay. There is a great value in being judicious about what you say and when you say it. And I think we all feel a lot of pressure to show up and speak on things as soon as they happen.

And it, at this time and in these moments when we are all so heavily activated⁠—whether it's through what's happening in the world or just because it's fucking Eclipse Season and Mars is square to Pluto and all the things⁠—I just want to encourage you to allow yourself to take a beat and to check in with yourself and to sit with your emotions, as challenging as that is⁠—and this week, it's going to be challenging⁠—to sit with your emotions so that you can be intentional with your responses, you can be intentional about your participation, so that you can sort through the often messy smorgasbord of shit inside of you and outside of you, and to find your place, your truth, what's in alignment, whenever you can. And you can't always, but whenever you can.

Okay. Now, on a more personal level, Mars square to Pluto often tests our own ability to get at it and stay at it. So we're talking about willpower. We're talking about ambition. We're talking about competition, control, dominance, resistance. All of these things are related to the Mars/Pluto square. And so, while you may be in a state of needing to resist and fight back or you may feel that you need to throw the first punch and get out there, this transit/these energies are going to activate you or the people around you.

And so it may be that you have a project that you are really passionate about. And what planet technically governs passion? Well, that would be Mars. So let's say you have a project you're really ambitious about, and you want to bring it to the next level. You want to enter it into a competition. You want to do something so that other people are aware of it and that you get your accolades; you get your flowers for it. That's Mars square to Pluto.

What we need to do with this energy is to make sure that we are acting in ways that reflect our wisest parts and not our most insistent parts. Oftentimes, for all of us, but especially those of us who have a trauma history, our most insistent and loudest parts are often not our wisest parts. This is true for people who have a lot of entitlement, and this is true for people who do not have any entitlement, who tend to go more martyr vibes.

It is really important to tap in, to the best of our ability, to our wisdom, which means learning from past experience, which means being intentional about being aligned in what we do and how we do it. So that means, if you're not in an actual emergency⁠, not just jumping into the mix, but having some measure of a plan of intention. Remember Pluto is still in Capricorn. Make a list. Make a list.

This is a time where you may feel really triggered to achieve your goals, get shit dealt with. And honestly, this transit can help that, but it's messy. Pluto is messy. Mars can be messy, but Mars in a challenging aspect to Pluto⁠—yeah, super fucking messy. And we're not supposed to avoid the mess. That'll get you into trouble. But we're also not supposed to indulge our reactiveness around the mess either.

What we want to do is sit with our flight-or-fight reactions. We want to sit with our mess without judging it or fixing it or analyzing it or repressing it or pathologizing it. Sit with the mess, and breathe into the mess. Be present with the mess. Do not abandon yourself in your mess. Believe it or not, from that place, we have greater access to our wisdom.

What you do now will have a boomerang effect on you. Okay? Now, this is true for all of us. What we do now will have a boomerang effect on us. Don't worry about what other people are or aren't doing and whether or not they are playing by the rules that you think they should be playing by. Focus on yourself because Pluto tends to have a boomerang effect. And this is why I say ask yourself, "Is what I'm doing and the way I'm doing it and the motivations I am doing it from in alignment for me?"

I fuck with the tarot. I don't know if you do. But if you are witchy-woo and you fuck with tarot, a great question to ask is not, "What will happen?" or, "What should I do?" but to instead shuffle your damn cards and focus on the question, "This is how I'm holding the situation. This is how I'm thinking of the situation. Is it in alignment?" Throw cards on that. "This is what I'm planning to do or what I want to do. Is this action in alignment?"

Instead of asking the cards what will happen, ask the cards, "Is this in alignment?" because when we do that, we're not so focused on outcome, which is out of our control. We're not so focused on other people, which is out of our control⁠—but instead focused on our own personal evolution and personal accountability. That's the only thing that's in our control.

This is something I talk about a lot on my Patreon. And also, I just dropped something on my Patreon about navigating through triggers versus our traumas, being able to differentiate the two, how to handle triggers differently than traumas. I mean, if that stuff sounds helpful to you, you can join me over there, patreon.com/jessicalanyadoo. The link is always in the episode description. It's also on my website. It's not hard to find is what I'm trying to say.

But anyways, this transit can kick up a lot of the worst parts of Mars and Pluto, so cruelty, jealousy, pettiness, vindictiveness, resentments, anger, aggression, egoism, and also, unfortunately, entitlement, which is, I think, kind of foundational to all of those traits I just named. But know that when we feel threatened is when we feel the most entitled to act out and to act poorly. And two wrongs very rarely make a right. Because somebody is acting like a garbage person does not mean that when you act like a garbage person in reaction to them that it does not fuck you up, because it takes you further out of alignment with yourself.

Now, on the tip of this transit kicking up power struggles and having a boomerang effect, it is just not a good idea to start shit unless you want to get into shit with people. So somebody cuts you off on the road and you want to just fucking mean-mug them, have an outsized reaction to them? It might actually bite you in the ass. So remember we're all going through it. And if you can have a little grace with yourself, it'll make it a lot easier to have a little grace with others.

Now, that brings us to the 9th, the very next day, where we have another exact transit. "Is it going to help the Mars square to Pluto?" you may be wondering. The answer would be no. No, it will not. On the 9th, we have a Venus opposition to Saturn. It's happening at exactly 11:11 p.m. Pacific Time. And it is with Venus at 1 degree of Virgo opposite to Saturn at 1 degree of Pisces. So Saturn is just hanging out at the start of Pisces again.

Venus opposition to Saturn is not a fantastic transit. It tends to kick up our insecurities. So we're already feeling defensive. We're already feeling aggro. We're already feeling entitled, and our hackles are already raised from Mars/Pluto, which has been building for about a week now but was exact on the 8th. And then we have an overlap of the Venus opposition to Saturn.

Now, Venus and Saturn are the two planets most related to security. Maybe the Moon really likes security, but really, Venus and Saturn are the two security-oriented planets. And when they are in harsh aspect to each other like an opposition, we tend to feel unmoored. We feel unsafe. We feel destabilized, and we don't know where we belong. And this can lead to loneliness. This can make us feel like we can't. It just kicks up scarcity. Venus opposition to Saturn can literally kick up financial scarcity where you don't have the resources to do a thing that needs to be done, where you don't have the people there to help you out, that kind of a thing.

Because it's an opposition, it is very likely that it will be played out interpersonally, so between me and you or us and them. And on a social level, between Mars square to Pluto and Venus opposition to Saturn, we are likely seeing gender-based oppression. So it's the people with power who are seeking to oppress and diminish and harm people without. And because Mars/Venus, we're related to gender stuff. And when we're dealing with gender stuff, that very much includes Trans and Nonbinary folks.

While cis women, gender-nonconforming people, and Trans people are all different kinds of people with different kinds of needs and struggling with different issues, at a core level, our oppression and our needs are intertwined because we live in a world where cis straight men are dominant and where they have, for generations upon generations upon generations, yielded their dominance to control, diminish, and often subjugate people who are not of their gender. So our body autonomy and our civil liberties are intertwined.

Venus opposite Saturn confronts us with limitations⁠—Saturn. And those limitations may be related to our finances, like I said, our relationships and intimacies, our value systems. The thing is this can be a transit that shows us where we need boundaries. It can also show us the consequences of our boundaries or our lack of boundaries, keeping in mind that Saturn has a tendency to throw down rules instead of boundaries. That's really a hard thing to navigate, rules versus boundaries. But it's exactly what is up here, is being able to work through the differences between these things, and not just in ourselves but also in reaction to other people and the way that they're trying to manage their boundaries.

Because of Saturn's involvement, we are likely to need to work on things. And that might mean to work to have humility and to take responsibility instead of to kind of slip into guilt or blame or punishing behaviors or attitudes towards yourself and others. The combo platter of Mars square to Pluto and Venus opposite to Saturn can really have us, as individuals and as collectives, pointing fingers, assigning blame, and being incredibly quick to judge and condemn. When or if you find the impulse to judge and condemn hot in your belly, itching in your mind, say to yourself, "Oh shit. That's the astrology. What can I learn about myself from my reactions? Are my reactions in alignment with my values?"

You may be feeling lonely. You may be feeling the full weight of what isn't working in your relationships. And that's a lot to bear. The work here is to stay aligned with your values and the things you truly believe to be true, because in doing that, you can evade the worst and most punishing parts of this transit. Now, hey, it's possible that your values are punishing and punitive. That's possible, sure. But this is a great time to question that, to be inquisitive about that.

What is the value in condemnation? I don't know. I do think there is a great deal of value when we see something wrong in the world or something in our relationships that's just⁠—it's not right⁠—it is really valuable to figure out a way to remedy, to rectify, to repair. There is value in finding ways to protect yourself or others. But condemnation and punishment⁠—I don't know. I don't know. And again, you might have a different take on it. There's not one way of looking at the world. But these transits can bring out the worst, most cruel, and repressive within us. So it's something to investigate. It's something to work through.

Because we're in Eclipse Season, it's going to be so emo you might not be able to. But again, when we are the most activated is a really useful time because we can see what our core survival mechanisms are telling us, even when they're whispering instead of yelling. This week, they may yell. But they're always around trying to keep us safe in the ways they know how.

I'm going to say a couple more things about this transit. Terrible time for a first date. Terrible time for going into social situations where you don't feel comfortable. Terrible time for putting yourself out there in general, because Venus opposite Saturn tends to make us feel small. If you don't feel good, you don't need to put yourself out there this week. I think, oftentimes, it's good to be like, "Push through it. Power through. Maybe you'll have a good time. You're just being shy," or whatever. No. Not this week. Too much shit in the planets. Too much shit in the air. I wouldn't do it.

If taking care of business is soothing to you⁠—it is for some people; it isn't for others⁠—this is a great time to⁠—I don't know⁠—sweep your bedroom. Fold your laundry. Do small, actionable things that can be completed that make you feel tangibly just a little bit better. Because there's so much that's going to feel out of control with all this astrology, the Venus opposition to Saturn is actually kind of soothed by that sort of thing⁠—small, manageable successes.

It's really important with this transit that you are self-protective and patient. Now, Saturn actually tends to make us feel really impatient. It is associated with big-picture planning, long-range planning. But where we have Saturn, we tend to feel a sense of impatience because it's related to some measure of perfectionism. And especially because we have Saturn in Pisces and Venus in Virgo, perfectionism is likely to be activated this week.

So protect what you value. Protect what you care about by giving it enough space to settle inside of you so that you can really assess what the fuck is happening. This is not a good week to pop off. This is not a good week to act spontaneously. There's too much energy. It's too unpredictable. If you're going to err, err on the side of self-protective. Err on the side of nurturance and self-care.

So that brings us to the 10th. On the 10th of October, we have an opposition between the Sun and Chiron. It's happening with the Sun at 17 degrees and 41 minutes of Libra and Chiron at the same degrees of Aries. It will be exact at 11:21 p.m. Pacific Time. This transit luckily is only going to be felt on the 9th, 10th, and 11th. And the Sun opposition to Chiron really kicks up our core wounding around being in a body, around being here at all and taking up space.

So, when we're talking about core wounding, we're talking about wounding that is epigenetic, a.k.a. ancestral. We're talking about wounding that is from lived experiences in the first seven years of our lives. The Sun opposition to Chiron will often kick up really hard feelings around our right to be here, our willingness to be here. The Sun opposition to Chiron is a mess in this very messy week.

I want to say something to you that I said in my month-ahead forecast over on Patreon. All of this energy⁠—Mars/Pluto, Sun/Chiron, Venus/Saturn, freaking Solar Eclipse⁠—that's not even all that's happening. I'm giving you all of this breakdown of the details of what's happening on what day astrologically, but really, at the end of the day, you, me, and everyone else is just walking around living life. And it's important to keep in mind that when the energies are this wild and activating, that it feels completely personal. It feels completely like it's happening to you because each of us as individuals are universes unto ourselves. And at the same time, it is happening collectively, and it is affecting collective issues.

And so it's a really important time to do your best to take care of your life and yourself and the people around you that you care about, but also to understand that the way we do or don't show up for world issues makes up the world. I know it's a lot of responsibility. I don't mean to drop that responsibility on you right after I talked about Venus opposite Saturn. But that's kind of what's up, and it's kind of the assignment.

So, anyways, back to the Sun opposition to Chiron. It triggers core wounding around your self-worth, and it also does this in ways that often play out interpersonally, as oppositions do. So that means I might be in relationship with somebody who happens to be excellent at the one thing that I'm just so low self-esteem around, and it makes me feel like shit about myself. So it's about me and you. Or it may be us and them. Somebody's trying to oppress a group and keep us down.

If we try to take a hawk-eye view of this, part of the reason for this or the opportunity within this is that this opposition between the Sun and Chiron can help to clarify what's most important to us. The glyph for the Sun in astrology is a circle with a dot in the center, and you are that damn dot. We all have that dot. It's our center. It is our core. And when we talk about alignment, what we're talking about is aligning with the core of our truest self.

Where the Sun opposition to Chiron really hurts is where we're not in alignment, where we're not true to ourselves, where we are acting out in reaction to projections or bullshit or trauma or pain or whatever else it is, instead of what's the most true for us. And when we get activated, it's hardest to know what's true. It's hardest to find our center. But that's exactly what the astrology of this week, very much including this transit, is asking us to do.

Now, when we're dealing with the Sun opposition to Chiron, we're not just dealing with our wounds, although for sure we are. We may also be dealing with people who embody or represent our wounds to us. Because it's an opposition, you may play the role of Chiron with someone intentionally or unintentionally, and someone may play that role for you. What this means in kind of plain terms is that somebody who is hurting you may also be somebody who loves you and you love. Part of the lesson of Chiron is the complexity of love and the complexity of pain, the complexity of healing and the complexity of suffering.

It's not that the good guy makes you feel good and the bad guy makes you feel bad. We are all the bad guy. We are all the good guy. I mean, some of us maybe not, but generally speaking, right? We are complex. And when we are able to be present with nuanced and complex realities and answers, we're closer to the truth, oftentimes. We're closer to the truth. So do your best to be interested in your activation, interested enough in your activation that you sit with it and you explore it, because a Sun opposition to Chiron can help us to become more clear about what gets activated and how that does or doesn't take us away from alignment from our own core.

In the context of everything that's going on, this is going to be a lot. You may get more value from this breakdown of the transits this week by looking at it in a couple of weeks and reflecting on what it is that happened than you get in this moment. Sometimes astrology is like that; we have to kind of take a moment to reflect on what happened during the transits because while it was happening, we were too in it to understand it clearly or completely. That's life.

The next thing we've got is luckily a little bit of support. On the 13th, we have a trine between Mars and Saturn. Mars will be at 1 degree of Scorpio⁠—technically 0 degrees and 55 minutes⁠—and Saturn will be at the same exact degrees of Pisces. So we've got Mars trine to Pisces. This transit is stabilizing, thank God. Because both of these planets are in water signs, it can be particularly emotionally, energetically, or spiritually stabilizing. So, again, this is a lovely gift this week.

The stability that Mars trine to Saturn gives is it empowers us to actually feel our strength⁠—to use our strength, more specifically⁠—because Saturn is all about utility, and Mars is about our energy, our ambitions, and our strength, our vitality. So this transit can basically help us with staying power, with perseverance. It can help us to mobilize based on what's important to us in assisting those actions.

So this transit is something we definitely want to tap into this week. And of course, you're going to feel it the strongest if you have planets at around 1 degree of a water sign or any fixed or mutable signs. So fixed signs are Scorpio, Taurus, Aquarius, and Leo. And those mutable babies are Sagittarius, Pisces, Virgo, Gemini.

But it's really helpful to know that this energy is active, that we can tap into it, that we can steady our energy, our intention, our ambition, our passions, and keep them aligned with our big-picture goals, work with systems that are already in place, tap into resources that already exist and use them⁠, use them for hopefully making things better and more sustainable. We want to keep in mind that Saturn is related to conservatism⁠—yes, for sure⁠—but also conservation. So we can conserve our energies with all the Saturn activation this particular week.

And that brings us to the 14th. On the 14th, we have a Solar Eclipse in Libra. It is exact at 10:55 a.m. And we have the Moon and Sun both at 21 degrees and 8 minutes of Libra. And on the same day, exact at 3:31 p.m., we have a Mercury opposition to Chiron. What could possibly go wrong?

So, first and foremost, I taught a class on the Eclipses. It was supposed to be an hour. It was actually almost two hours long. And it is for sale on my website. Just go to lovelanyadoo.com/shop, and it's the first class you see. So, if you are interested in learning about the Eclipses in an in-depth away, I have a ton of information there.

Solar Eclipses are New Moons, but they are New Moons that have significantly more influence. A New Moon typically influences us for about a month, and a Solar Eclipse⁠—it's about a six-month influence. So it's a big deal. We tend to feel Eclipses build. So, for several weeks leading up, we feel the energy mounting, mounting, mounting. This particular Solar Eclipse, as I said, is in Libra. We've got a Sun/Moon conjunction in Libra. Mercury is sitting on top of those two planets as well, and Chiron is sitting opposite them all.

So we know that we're all going to be feeling our core wounds activated around this time. It's not just that you're feeling your core wounds, but so is your bestie and your enemy and your brother and your mother and your landlord and your local politician⁠—and, and, and, and. We're all feeling it.

So the opportunity this Solar Eclipse is that we come into such a self-awareness that we are able to get aligned, but we are likely to be coming into awareness of our wounding. That's the fucking rub, that it's challenging our understanding of ourself and challenging us to not define ourselves only by our wounding or only in reaction to our wounding, because that ends up being an unintentional and often unconscious perpetuation of our very wounds. And it's something that we all do to one extent or another.

Mercury opposite to Chiron⁠—it really challenges our attitudes, our beliefs, and essentially our minds. Mercury governs your mind. It's what you believe, how you believe it. It's how you talk to yourself. I'm talking tone. I'm talking language. It's how you communicate with others. It's how you listen or don't.

When Mercury and Chiron are involved in an opposition, which⁠—we have this a couple hours off of exactitude in this Solar Eclipse chart⁠—we know that we are likely to be dealing with negative thinking or thinking that is influenced by hurt and pain and scarcity. So it's important to know that this Solar Eclipse may very well illuminate our core wounds around our beliefs about ourself, the world, or other people.

We really have to excavate our beliefs. And the thing about the zodiac sign of Libra is, yes, it's very much about relationships, but it's also the zodiac sign that governs the law, diplomacy, justice, fairness. And so, if we are willing and able to go deep into the concepts around fairness and justice, then we can get past superficial levels and get into true equity and equilibrium, which⁠—I mean, kind of appealing, right?

This Solar Eclipse is likely to kick up a lot of self-worth issues, a lot of self-doubts, a lot of feelings that are really rough. All the transits I've been talking about this week are activated in this Solar Eclipse chart. So we have the Pluto/Mars square, now out of sign. We have Pluto squaring the Sun and Moon in this chart. And this, again, will kick up our survival mechanisms, kick up our sense of fight, flight, or fawn, our desire to protect ourselves at all costs, to be really easily activated and triggered.

Now, I want to remind you that Eclipses are a terrible time, the worst time, to do rituals. This is not the time to be imbibing consciousness-raising drugs. This is not the time to be doing spiritual rituals. It is a terrible time for manifesting. This is because the Solar Eclipse is the magic. The Solar Eclipse is the trip. The Solar Eclipse is the ritual. And we are meant to be present for it. That's it. There may be tons of strategies that you read about or hear about on the internet that you can do to time and coerce and manipulate the Solar Eclipse. But I want to say don't do any of that shit. I mean, obviously, do what the hell you want. But don't do any of it, because this is a Lunar transit.

The Moon is your emotions. It's your feelings. And how can you feel your feelings from any moment but the present? You can remember what you felt before. You can imagine how you're going to feel later. But in this present moment, you can access your emotions; be present with what you're feeling. That's the work of an Eclipse. You can figure it out later. You can analyze it later. You can strategize for it later. But now be present. You don't need to do anything. Just be present.

Eclipses both obscure and illuminate. So it's really not possible, it's not wise, to try to figure out exactly what it means right now because you don't have all the information. You're not supposed to. You're supposed to be emotionally present, to be working on this⁠—whatever this is, whatever is up for you in your life emotionally. And the truth is so many of us like to work on things psychologically, physically, but we don't do it emotionally. And there's a lot of societal reasons why that is.

But regardless, when we're dealing with Moon transits⁠—certainly Eclipses⁠—it's all about showing up emotionally. So whatever's going on in your life, don't abandon TLC. That's tender loving care. Don't forget to tend to your emotions to the best of your ability and to have grace for you yourself and others to do a terrible job of it as we all struggle as well.

Now, in regards to the relational aspect of this particular Eclipse⁠—because, of course, the Sun and Moon and Mercury are all in very relational Libra, and Venus, its ruling planet, is opposite to Saturn⁠—no longer exact, but tight enough⁠—our relationship patterns, our core wounding and beliefs, our attitudes about our relationships, are going to be activated. That might be through actually experiencing things interpersonally with others, and that might be because it's just up in your head or it's up in your heart. You, me, and everyone else⁠—we're activated around our relationship stuff.

And then there's all these other transits⁠—Mars/Pluto, Sun and Mercury/Chiron, Venus/Saturn⁠—that are kicking up our defenses and our insecurities, but not just yours. You want to remember mine, everyone's, all of ours. And so our survival mechanisms within our relationships and within our relationship to relationships is activated.

How you engage, whether it's in the privacy of your own inner universe or how you treat others or how you respond to others, how you engage with others⁠—whatever it is⁠—is all going to be very revealing. And it's revealing of you because what you do and don't do, what you say, how you say it, whether you listen or not⁠—that's all a reflection on you. And I'm not saying that to be punitive. We don't want to go into Saturnian or Plutonian condemnation and judgment. It's not about that.

It's about getting a real pulse check. What's real? Where are you right now? Who are you right now? What are you right now? Having self-awareness empowers us to be here now, whether we like it or love it or hate it or feel mixed about it⁠—whatever⁠—to be here now. And from now, from the present moment, we can assess. We can take rest, take pause, catch our breath. We can make plans. We can move forward⁠—or not. But the key is to be here for whatever it is that comes up. And what comes up is supposed to be a lot. That's the assignment. It's core wounding. It's survival mechanisms. It's a lot.

So remember this thing that I've said probably seven million times on the podcast, which is not all bad feelings are bad for you, and not all good feelings are good for you. We want to be able to have the ability, the emotional intelligence and maturity, to be able to sit with our emotions so we can assess what to do or what not to do, how to engage, how to show up. And that often requires an internal balancing act, sometimes a behavioral balancing act or mental balancing act, but a balancing act where we don't just take a stance and maintain it without nuance, but instead, we are adaptable, present but adaptable. To me, that's kind of the dream. And it's a challenge. It's meant to be a challenge.

Now, my loves, as I said, I unpack the Solar Eclipse in much greater detail in my class, which you can find on the website. I also talk about it a bunch on my Patreon. So I've got lots of resources that you can tap into this Eclipse Season. I really hope that you show yourself and others care and patience.

Now, I'm going to run through these transits one more time because they were a lot. But of course, if you're interested in tracking the transits, I do encourage you to subscribe to my astrologer's pro tool, Astrology for Days. It's for students and professionals. So, if you're at that level, it is a really useful resource for tracking the transits and planets and your own interpretations of them. So you can get that at astrologyfordays.com.

Here we go with the list of transits that are happening this week. On the 8th, we have an exact square between Mars and Pluto. On the 9th, we have an exact opposition between Venus and Saturn. On the 10th, the Sun and Chiron are exactly opposite. On the 13th, we have an exact trine between Mars and Saturn. And then, on the 14th, we have a Solar Eclipse in Libra, 10:55 a.m., and a Mercury opposition to Chiron, also exact on that day.

I hope you take really good care of yourself and others this week and that you can strive to be a part of this world that reflects the world that you want to live in. That's not always easy to do. But this week, my wish for you is that you make that a goal and that you're able to embody that in some meaningful way.

All right, my loves. Thank you for joining me for this week's episode. I hope you are tuning in every Wednesday to listen to the readings that I offer. If you would like a reading with me, you can always send your question to me by filling out the contact form over at ghostofapodcast.com. I'll talk to you in a couple days. Buh-bye.