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 looking at the astrology of November 26th through December 2nd, 2023. Here we are in the last month of the year, unbelievably, a little bit. There are really just four transits that we're going to talk about this week. We got a Full Moon, which is a really big transit, and then a couple other heavy hitters occurring this week.

I want to, before I kind of detail the energy, simply acknowledge the emotions of it, the mental stress of life at this time. And I want to acknowledge grief because one of the transits that we're going to be feeling throughout the week that won't be exact until next week on the 3rd of December is a Venus square to Pluto. Now, Venus square to Pluto is a transit that kicks up our grief, our resentments, our pettiness, frustrations, insecurities, shame. Pluto governs all of the taboo, sticky, and really private emotions that we feel that are connected to our sense of survival, our survival mechanisms.

Now, survival mechanisms get activated whether or not our survival is tangibly, actually being threatened. Humans are complicated, and our psychology, our emotional experiences, our emotional bodies, our epigenetics, our cultural conditions⁠—all of these things influence us all the time in ways that we are consciously aware of and unconscious of⁠—both. There is so much happening in the world right now, and our awareness of what's happening in the world is amplified by social media and the news in general. Because of this, what we are feeling is really intense.

And in walks⁠—and again, I'm going to tell you about all the transits that are exact this week, but I want to start with what we are experiencing with Venus square to Pluto because as this enters into the group chat, if you will, on the 27th, we're going to start really feeling the effects of it. We are likely to be experiencing our grief as individuals a lot more intensely. So you're going to feel your feelings of shame, of grief, of intensity, of resentment, of all that kind of stuff. Now, the thing is that it's not just you. It's everybody. This transit impacts everybody all over the world in all conditions with all predispositions. And when we are experiencing the struggle of grief or shame or anger, when we're experiencing any kind of threat towards our survival, perceived or real, as an individual, it gets really amplified when those same feelings are being experienced on a collective level.

So, whether we are acknowledging some sort of tragedy or challenging experience that happened in your social circle or the ongoing wars in this world, the reality that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism⁠—and that has real-life effects when considering things like the atrocities happening in the Congo and how we all have mobile phones and computers; we are all using cobalt all the time. And I don't know how to stop. I don't know how to stop using these products that have such profound real-life effects on human lives.

If we're considering the ongoing climate crisis and the fears that it sparks around our ability to survive, to think about the next 20 years, 50 years, 70 years, as a very challenging step, and then to consider the relentless wheel of fate that speaks to how history repeats itself over and over, and our individual and collective tendency to not learn from the past, to not learn from our own past, our own patterns, our own participation, our own behavior or inability to show up, as well as to learn from history⁠—these collective conditions that I just named and others are felt very individually, very personally to each of us in the specific context of our own personal histories, our current circumstances, and our current resources, in addition to a myriad of other factors.

But they're also felt on a collective level, which amplifies both the personal and the collective. And these are conditions that are so complicated because of how personal they feel, how personal they are, but also, we are bumping up against how other people cope with the same fears, the same existential threats, the same material threats that we ourselves are going through. So, ultimately, it brings us to this place where we must cultivate acceptance and presence with our most challenging activations and emotions while also making room for other people who are going through the same thing in their own way to have their own emotional struggles, their own challenges with being present, their own process with wherever they're at and whatever they're coping with.

And this is exceptionally difficult. This is exceptionally difficult because when we feel tenderhearted and our individual survival mechanisms are activated, we tend to be less tolerant of others and significantly more self-protective. We tend to kind of treat things with a hammer instead of a feather. In other words, we tend to get very Plutonian, all or nothing, yes/no, good guy/bad guy. And the truth of the matter is that when we are activated in our survival mechanisms, when we are in a Plutonian state of activation, we tend to be harder, more condemning and punishing, towards ourselves and others. And depending on your situation, depending on your circumstances, depending on the minute, you might be turning that heavy-handedness against yourself or against others.

With this transit that we're experiencing of Venus square to Pluto, it activates our relationships. It activates our awareness and embodiment of our values. It activates our sense of personal security and scarcity and our survival mechanisms related to that. And it's a lot. So I want to encourage you to notice when and how you are experiencing activation and when and how you are becoming punishing or slipping into that Plutonian all-or-nothing, where you're sorting things into good and evil and you are looking to punish and condemn people or punish and condemn yourself. Bring awareness to this.

The truth of the matter is punishment and shame and condemnation⁠—it's good for governments. It's good for corporations and entities, but not for individuals, not for people. It doesn't work to help bring about healing. It doesn't work to facilitate evolution. And it doesn't come from a state of acceptance. Each of us as individuals, who are we to condemn another?

Here's the thing, the balm, the salve for soothing the isolation and grief and shame that a Venus square to Pluto can trigger and that these times we are living in, these collective conditions we are living in, can trigger, is now and will always be community. It's finding communion and allyship with others. It's building coalitions with others⁠—not people who are perfect, not people who agree with you completely, 100 percent, and have the same position as you on all things and articulate it in the same way in all ways, but people who you can build and sustain community with.

This is vulnerable, and it's soothing. It's a risk, but it's a risk that can help build worlds instead of break down worlds. And listen. When it comes to Pluto, there's a time for demolition, and there's a time for rebuilding. In reality, those times overlap. They overlap in messy ways. And this week, you are likely to be feeling this in regards to how you feel in your personal life and in your relationship to the collective. This requires adaptability. And adaptability is not Pluto's strength, necessarily, because Pluto tends to be focused on survival. So, when we're in a state of running from a bear⁠—our survival mechanisms⁠—we're not thinking adaptively. We're just trying to get the hell away.

So, again, this is where I want to bring you back to noticing when you're activated, bringing awareness to your activation, and doing your best to not act out against yourself or others from that state. In regards to building community with people, the reality is we are all different from each other. You might know a bunch of people who are just like you, but if we want to build communities and coalitions, if we want to invest in mutual aid, if we want to build a future that is safe and humane and where peace is, in some meaningful way, at the center, we must be able to collaborate and build bridges with people who are different than us, who hold different priorities, who perceive the same situation from a different vantage point because of any number of reasons, and to understand that we do not need to agree on all things in order to be allies to each other.

In a personal relationship, we do not need to agree on all things and never fight in order to be in a healthy relationship. We only need to remember that we are allies and we are teammates in that relationship. And from that perspective of understanding that we share the same goal, which is to have a healthy, happy, sustainable relationship, then you start to work on the details of how you're fighting about a thing.

When our security feels threatened is when we tend to cling most tightly to our security blankets or our survival mechanisms. And a Venus square to Pluto is going to activate that all week long. So what I want to point you towards is the cultivation of your willingness and ability to invite others into your emotional experience, to feel what you feel with others, to cultivate visions of hope and possibility, to make plans, to weep, to connect with people so that you can cultivate shared visions and build those shared visions for a future.

And I want to say I am really focusing on this on a social level, primarily, in my read of this this week. But in next week's episode, don't worry; we're still going to be feeling the Venus square to Pluto, and it won't be exact until next week. In next week's horoscope, I will talk about this in a more personal, one-on-one perspective. But I want to say, when it comes to understanding collective conditions or our personal relationships in the context of Venus square to Pluto, it's kind of the same thing.

It's essential that we don't allow our personal activation to block us from cultivating love, connections, security, and peace. And also, the only way to cultivate those things is to acknowledge our shitty, fucked-up, complicated, messy, sticky feelings and needs and activation so that we can work through it. And this is going to be a messy time. This is going to continue to be a messy time. And while that might sound really terrible to you, it's actually an invitation. It's an invitation to cultivate presence with what is and to endeavor to make sure that even when you feel at your worst, you are acting in ways that reflect Venus, your values.

Whether or not you are where you want to be, which⁠—how many of us are exactly where we want to be at this exact moment⁠—it's about pointing yourself in the direction and embarking upon the path or staying on the path. It's not about perfection, and it's not about proof. It's about the way.

So let's get even more emo and talk about the Full Moon. We have a Full Moon in Gemini on November 27th, and it is exact at 1:16 a.m. Whenever we have a Full Moon, that means that the Sun and Moon are exactly opposite each other. And in this case, the Sun is at 4 degrees and 51 minutes of Sagittarius, and the Moon is at the exact same degrees. We're going to call it 5 degrees.

So we've got the Sun and Moon opposite each other at 5 degrees of Gemini and Sagittarius, the Moon/Sun respectively, and Mars is conjunct the Sun. It's at 2 degrees of Sagittarius. So what this means is that the tension of a Full Moon in Gemini, which has so much to do with communication⁠—it's about verbally communicating. It's what we read. It's what we learn. It's what we unlearn. It's also how we listen. And so, when we are dealing with a Full Moon in Gemini, the potential here is that things are really busy. There's a lot of information kind of coming back and forth, and it's super stimulating.

Now, this could be a really good thing. It could be a really challenging thing. This can lead to misinformation and disinformation or jumping to conclusions, gossip breaking, and that gossip may or may not be based on truth. It can lead to breakthroughs in communication where you finally figure out how to communicate that thing that is really important to you or you learn something that is equally important to you. Because it's a Lunar transit, it's heartfelt. It's about how we feel. Because we're dealing with these mutable communicating zodiac signs of Gemini and Sadge, it is a lot about the back-and-forth or exchange of data and how we sort through that data.

Now, to make things more complex⁠—because you know how the Universe likes to do that⁠—we have another exact transit on this day. We have Mercury, at 24 degrees of Sagittarius and 55 minutes, forming a square to Neptune at the same degrees of Pisces. This is exact at 5:27 a.m. Pacific Time. As always, if you want to be checking the transits alongside me, you can use the tool that I use, which is Astrology for Days. It's an astrologer's pro tool or an astrology student pro tool that you can subscribe to over at astrologyfordays.com.

Mercury square to Neptune is a really challenging transit. It's important to note that Mercury is in Sagittarius, just like the Sun and Mars. And this intensifies the spontaneity of Sagittarius. It's that drive to get the answer, just get to the end of the puzzle. "I don't want to do all the details. That's Gemini. I just want to get to the end of the puzzle. I want to find the prize at the end of the rainbow." Very Sagittarius.

And so Mercury in Sadge is forming a square to Neptune in Pisces, in its ruling sign of Pisces, which unfortunately creates confusion, feeling scattered, anxiety, discombobulation, exhaustion, dysmorphic feelings. It's a real complicated transit. So I'm going to talk a little bit more in depth about that in a second, but I want to stay focused on this Full Moon. Again, your strongest and most consistent impulses are not reliably your wisest ones. It's a Full Moon. And whenever Full Moons occur, the reason why they bring up so much shit, and the reason why you notice them so much, is because it kind of highlights tension between what you feel and your identity or how you want to be recognized.

And so this Full Moon chart suggests that there is a real risk that we will place how things seem or how we want them to be over how they are, that we'll try to barrel through the sticky, icky part of feeling your feelings and go straight to ideas, solutions, great spiritual reliefs. And the reason I say great spiritual refliefs is because fucking Neptune. What I imagine that this Full Moon is going to do is to reveal to you something of yourself that is hard to keep track of and stay associated with, emotionally present with. And so, on the one hand, it's a great opportunity to come to greater self-awareness. On the other, more realistic hand, it's a challenge. It's a challenge to feel really strong impulses and restlessness and impatience, and even inspiration and vision, and to not chase all of that excitement but instead to stay emotionally present with where you're actually at.

Now, let's add a little complexity to the mix, okay? The Moon is opposite Mars and the Sun, and they're all square to Saturn. So Saturn is at 0 degrees of Pisces and 58 minutes. We're going to call it a cool 1 degree. The Saturn square to Mars that we talked about last week is still very much active, and so is that Sun square to Saturn. We're feeling it. We're feeling it. We're feeling it. If you may remember, that's a sense of frustration, a sense of things not moving in the direction that you want or as quickly as you would like, being made aware, like viscerally aware, of obstacles or steps or obligations or red tape or limitations⁠—all Saturn words⁠—so limitations to your plans, to your vision, to your ability to express yourself or get shit done the way you want it done.

Now we're adding the Moon to the mix, and not just the Moon⁠—a Full Moon. And so this can kick up depressive feelings, feelings of isolation, feelings of loneliness, feelings of sadness, which can lead to exhaustion. Saturn is a taskmaster. Saturn is the reality principle. It governs our bones and our teeth and our epidermis, the organ of the skin. It's the shit that keeps us together and not just oozy, smooshy messes. Right? Saturn. And that's the great part of Saturn. It keeps us together. It keeps us accountable. It helps us to stay realistic and associated in the reality that we find ourselves in in the 3D, and not just the reality we find ourselves in, but the stage and step that we're at within the reality that we find ourselves in in the 3D.

However, when Saturn is squaring the Moon and the Sun and Mars on a Full Moon, it's going to feel heavy. It's going to feel heavy. It's going to feel heavy because it's consequential. And so that's the gift, but it's also the burden of this Full Moon transit, is that it is consequential. How you engage with your thoughts, with your beliefs, with the news, how you engage with others, how you communicate, how you listen⁠—all of this is heavily consequential this Full Moon. And keep in mind that Venus/Pluto square is active in this damn chart. Okay? We start to feel the effects of the Venus square to Pluto on the same day, on the 27th. That's where we start to feel this transit.

So it would be really easy for you or for the people around you to respond to the complexity of this energy defensively. So we're back to fucking defenses, aren't we? When we're in a state of self-defense, we are not dealing with nuance. We are not sorting through the complexity of our emotions. We're running from the bear. We're getting out our hammer and trying to smash the thing to bits. It tends to be a state where we are more focused on getting away from or getting towards a thing instead of pausing to reflect and understand what's actually happening, to sit with the complexity of our emotions, the urgency of our emotions, and to better understand them before we act out in response to them.

This Full Moon has a lot to teach us, but you have to be willing to learn. This takes humility. This takes accountability. These things are easier said than done, but this is a really valuable Full Moon. In the context of the world, I mean, again, we may see major developments around journalism, whether it's around our need to defend and protect the free press or it is about our need to become more literate around the media. Media literacy is a matter of integrity these days because we are all consuming so much media so much of the time, and a lot of times, we're not even realizing that's what we're doing. And so being able to sort through data and not allow our knee-jerk reactions to drive all of our beliefs and behaviors.

I'm going to say to you what I've said to you many times before: you are a kitten with wings, probably, but you still have to deal with the rest of the world. The rest of the world has trauma, and the rest of the world hasn't worked through it, and the rest of the world is activated and busy and burned out. And people act out. People act wrong. So you may be just twirly-whirling through your days, a puppy with wings⁠—yeah, I changed it. That's okay. And you still have to deal with jerks or, more realistically, people who are activated and behaving in ways that reflect their activation and their fears and their defenses instead of their most aligned and authentic selves.

And so what we cannot do is change the realities we find ourselves in. That's what we can't do. We can't change our circumstances in the blink of an eye. That's not one of our options. This is not The Matrix. This is real life. Sorry. Sorry. I love that movie. But this is real life. So we gotta start where we are in the material realities we find ourselves in and then, from there, make the next best possible choice. That's all.

Now, because Saturn is in Pisces, because Mercury is square to Neptune, we are likely to want to shut down and disappear or, in the context of the Mercury square to Neptune, create some sort of spiritual concept that is so idealistic and disassociated from reality it in effect empowers us to not have to do shit in the 3D. People who are spiritual, of all denominations⁠—so super woo and New Age, super religious and conventional⁠—we all run the risk, because Neptune⁠—right? Neptune is like high spirituality. We all run the risk of spiritual bypassing, bypassing accountability and responsibility in the 3D. And with a Mercury square to Neptune, yeah, it can really happen. It doesn't help that Saturn is in Pisces as a focal planet to a T-square with the Full Moon, but all to say it could really happen.

And so, again, I want to just bring you back to accountability, accountability not just to your spiritual beliefs but also to your own behavior and the impact it has. And so, again, this comes back to the complex survival mechanism stuff that the Venus/Pluto square activates within us, a feeling like, "Well, if I'm suffering, I'm entitled to acting however the fuck I want because of the depth of my suffering." That is a very human impulse or conviction, and it is one worth investigating. It is one worth being self-aware around so that you can make choices⁠—healthier, hopefully, choices.

The thing to know about the Mercury square to Neptune⁠—and I should say Mercury is the ruling planet of Gemini, and we've got a Full Moon in Gemini, so this is a very important transit within this Full Moon experience. As it confuses our thinking, it can unintentionally create major problems. It can make you feel like you're being misled or lied to, or you could be misleading or lying to somebody else without realizing it. And again, this is likely to all come from confusion, but also scarcity issues, defensiveness.

We want to be exceptionally careful about conspiracy theories this Full Moon, and in this week in general, because of the activation of Mercury square to Neptune. We want to be really careful about being taken advantage of or taking advantage of others. This is an important Full Moon to consider your boundaries because Mercury square to Neptune⁠—it taps our energetic boundaries as well as our mental boundaries, our psychological boundaries, which, of course, directly impacts our behavior and therefore our behavioral boundaries.

But at core, this transit of Mercury square to Neptune taps on our energetic and psychological boundaries. So how clear are you about your boundaries? Is it time for you to take a moment and reconsider your psychic hygiene? And if you're like, "What the hell is psychic hygiene?" I have an episode of the podcast about it, and there's lots of other resources in the world other than me that you can do your own research into. If you are on my Patreon and you just put "boundaries" or "psychic hygiene" in the search bar of my Patreon, you'll find a ton of stuff there. And if you're not a patron yet, around the 1st is a really good time to join because I drop the month-ahead horoscope on the 1st of every month on the kittens level of my Patreon.

But anyways, the theme here is healthy boundaries. And the truth is, with all that's going on in the world, I don't know about you, but I have been ignoring my boundaries around social media and news consumption. I've not been doing a consistent job of managing my boundaries, and I can feel it. I can feel it. I bet a lot of you are experiencing something really similar. And that might look like completely disassociating from things or being hyper-associated with the world and with news. The truth of the matter is this Mercury square to Neptune is going to activate our need for psychic and psychological boundaries. And if you don't have them, or where you don't have them, you're likely to feel particularly tapped.

This transit can really kind of have us double down on burnout and double down on disassociation and anxiety. So you may be feeling really tired as a result of this transit this week, and certainly on this Full Moon, you may be feeling just really kind of scattered. You may be feeling awkward. And I want to share with you that an excellent way of navigating a Mercury square to Neptune is by using your breath, by connecting to your breath. And I want to acknowledge this is not going to work for all people or all bodies in all moments, so this might not be a match for you. But it is certainly very in line with a Mercury square to Neptune, in particular a Mercury square to Neptune in Pisces transit and a Full Moon in Gemini. All these things are related to the breath⁠— so to really tap into your breath as a resource for getting into your body, slowing things down, staying in the moment.

And again, there's a bazillion resources on the internet for free for you to access if you're like, "I don't know how to do that." Find something that soothes you, and practice using your breath to return to the moment and return to your body. I do readings every week in the midweek episode, and I'll tell you this issue of breathing comes up in almost all the readings I do. And each and every time, even though the person I'm giving a reading to has heard me give a million readings and knows that I talk about breath all the time, they still don't do it. I mean, I don't do it. It's incredibly easy to forget to breathe and to kind of abandon our body as a way to cope with overwhelm.

But we actually have more access to our resources and tools when we are present. So, if anxiety or overwhelm or exhaustion or any of the other things I mentioned activate this Full Moon and in general this week, you may want to return to the tool of your breath. A little patience, a little empathy, a little slowness, coming back to the moment so that you can then do the things that need doing, which may mean doing less. It might mean doing more. It may mean doing different. It's at your discretion. But it is worth noting this Mercury square to Neptune. And I should say that we will be feeling the effects of the Mercury square to Neptune until December 3rd⁠—all week, in other words.

That brings us to our final transit of the week. We have a Mercury sextile to Saturn. This transit is exact at 7:27 a.m. on December 2nd. It's happening with Mercury at 1 degree of Capricorn⁠—oh yeah, Mercury entered into Capricorn on December 1st. It's happening at 1 degrees of Capricorn, and Saturn is now at 1 degrees of Pisces and 12 minutes. We want to keep in mind we are feeling the Pluto square to Pluto mounting, mounting, mounting. It's going to be exact on the 3rd. We are also at the tail end of, but still very much feeling, the Mercury square to Neptune.

So these things meaningfully influence the kind of environment of the Mercury sextile to Saturn. Now, Mercury sextile to Saturn is such a grounding and stabilizing transit. It promotes clear thinking, clear-headedness, the ability to kind of sort through information and for it to not feel like a slog. So this is excellent timing to have this going on. But as I always observe with sextiles and trines, if we don't set the intention to really activate and mobilize from the energies of those transits when there's something harder going on, we don't always feel it.

So you really want to pay attention to this transit. It is excellent for helping us sort through data, which is really helpful with that Mercury square to Neptune, which makes everything feel confusing. This transit can sharpen our critical thinking skills. So it's about not just going off of habit but staying present and associated and observing your own thoughts and staying mindful about what you're taking in and how you're processing it. Saturn is really helpful for that, and Mercury in Capricorn can be really helpful for that as well.

If there's boring shit you need to get done, like sorting through your inbox or something⁠⁠—you know, shit that needs to get done but that's not super fun⁠—this transit's actually quite helpful for it. It just helps you to not feel burdened. Saturn can feel burdensome, but because there's a sextile to Saturn from Mercury, it doesn't feel burdensome when we're doing the shit that needs to get done. It can just actually be quite grounding.

This transit helps us to stay interested and actively engaged. So it's a real gem in the context of the other transits we have going on this week. It can help you to stay curious. While this transit's not really, per se, helpful for adaptability, it is helpful for staying associated and present for coming up with practical and sustainable solutions. So it's, again, a really important time in the week where I want to encourage you to organize yourself, to check in with yourself, with your relationships, and if there are conversations that need to be had.

If there is communications that are important, where you need to read an important letter or you need to say something to someone, this is the best day to do it, the 2nd. Now, this is mitigated by the fact that the Venus square to Pluto is exact on the 3rd, and it's not just exact on the 3rd; it's exact at 5:29 a.m. Pacific Time, so kind of early in the day. But regardless, this transit is really helpful in a lot of ways. The more we can do to maximize those ways, the absolute better.

This transit can help you to make plans, and those plans are more likely to be realistic than at another time. Now, again, if you're making major plans and major decisions, I would urge you to be really grounded in your approach to make sure that you're checking in with yourself emotionally so that you're not making plans out of a state of activation from Pluto or Neptune. But, that said, the transit is lovely and very supportive and very well timed.

Now, I'm going to run through the transits of the week for you one more time. On the 27th at 1:16 a.m., we have a Full Moon in Gemini. On that same day a few hours later, we have an exact square between Mercury and Neptune. On the 2nd of December, we have a Mercury sextile to Saturn. And I talked a lot about the Venus square to Pluto, which we're going to be feeling from the 27th of November onwards, throughout the whole entire week, and will not be exact until the 3rd. I'm going to talk to you about it a lot more on the 3rd.

And that, my dears, is your damn horoscope. My hope for you this week is that you are able to prioritize and protect the things that you value most by slowing down and really showing up for them and, within that, making sure that you're showing up for yourself because self-care is interconnected with community care every day, but especially in a world on fire. Our ability to move through complexity on a personal level is intertwined with our ability to show up with nuance and for complexity, for collective conditions.

I hope you treat yourself and others with love this week, and I will talk to you in just a couple of days.