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.

Jessica: I want to welcome you, Tamara, to the podcast. I know that no one else knows this but us, but your video didn't work for this call, and I am getting to be a tampon for our conversation. It is a true joy and, I hope, a sign for things to come. So thank you very much for letting me do that.

Tamara: You look great.

Jessica: What would you like a reading about today?

Tamara: So I'll just dive into reading my question, which is, "For the last while, I've been wondering about the idea of boundaries versus discernment. I feel I'm a very sensitive and empathic person and have had to learn the hard way of how to know where my boundaries are. But as a result, I feel with the kind of hardening of my edges has come a fear of outside versus inside, or a kind of othering that then happens to the world around me⁠—this as opposed to discernment, in terms of me knowing who and what I am able to allow myself to weather in situations without being so affected or afraid of losing myself in them. And so where this has manifested most presciently is in situations where I feel I might have to defend my version/understanding of reality, meaning the knowings and intuitions I have about, let's say, life and certain woo experiences I've had through concerted discernment versus hiding by putting up boundaries.

"And what's so confusing is that I feel like I boundary or hide myself because I actually also doubt my own sanity or ability to discern. I feel caught between worlds without knowing how to commit fully to woo because what if my intuition is wrong and I'm just not intelligent enough to figure it out? Of course, the two are not mutually exclusive. I just feel very troubled by this bind."

Jessica: Okay. This is a really great question. And I want to say that you've asked, Tamara, that we do not share your birth information, so I'm going to kind of share what I'm seeing in the chart. Where does this come up? Is this coming up in your professional life, in your personal life, with your family, just in your head? Where is this coming up the most?

Tamara: Well, I think it's been pretty much a big theme in all areas, but quite a lot in personal relationships I have found this to be most challenging⁠—romantic partnerships and other relationships.

Jessica: Is this like a chronic thing that's getting worse now? Is this something that's just kind of becoming clear to you now? What's the timeline on this?

Tamara: Well, it's kind of gone through different flavors, I guess, throughout my life and different forms that it's taken. I think now I'm a little bit more aware of these two sets, that there is maybe a difference between a boundary and a discernment. So that's where I'm at right now. But before, and I would say in the last ten years, it felt very emotionally painful, I think. And now I'm trying to work with myself as opposed to against myself in terms of my outlook on reality, really, and my subjective experiences.

Jessica: Yeah. Let me just dive into your chart. The first thing I want to tell you is that you have two stelliums. They're both mutable stelliums. The first one is in Pisces. You've got Jupiter, Sun, Venus, and Mercury all in Pisces. So this means a lot of things, but one big thing that it means is that you're very woo, like so woo. You are very sensitive. You feel energies so much. When somebody has so much Pisces in their birth chart, it's kind of like navigating the world as a loofah sponge. You're just pulling in everything. And much like a sponge, when you're pulling in everything, it's hard to discern between all of the individual things because your nature is to kind of soak it up all at once.

Your Pisces stellium is all in the tenth house. So you have a tenth-house stellium, but it's in Pisces. A lot of people⁠—they hear tenth house, and they're like, "Career." And yes, sure. Absolutely, career. But it's not exclusive to career. It's also to a sense of meaning and purpose. It's where we point our lives, and not just in a material way, and certainly not just in a material way in the context of it all being in Pisces. I'll come back to that in a moment.

The other stellium that you have is three planets. You've got Saturn, Mars, and Uranus all sitting on top of each other in the seventh house in Sagittarius. This is a very different kind of mutable stellium. Having Saturn and Mars sitting very close to each other⁠—Uranus is the furthest from Mars and Saturn. Saturn and Mars are sitting on top of each other, and this placement gives you a bit of a defensiveness, a bit of a rigidity. There's a right way to be, and there's a wrong way to be. And this conjunction can lead people to having boundaries that are rigid, so they're not really boundaries; they're more like rules. "You have to agree with me, and if you don't agree with my version of reality, then you're against me. And I don't know why you're against me," is a feeling that is very common for people who have this conjunction.

Now, what's so challenging about these two separate conjunctions is that they are both very real, very strong parts of you, and they have very different needs. I actually chose this question before looking at your birth chart, but when I saw your chart, I was like, "Oh, yeah, this makes sense that you're struggling to understand how to have a boundary that is, first of all, but then having a boundary that is flexible and adaptable⁠—that part can be really hard for you, in particular to have a boundary that not only is expressed and maintained with others, like with people outside of you and in an adaptable and flexible way, but holding it in that way within yourself, because what I'm kind of gleaning from the way you've asked your question is that your Mars/Saturn conjunction is doing all the heavy lifting when it comes to identifying your needs and limits and managing reality and boundaries, whereas it's your Piscean self that needs to learn that stuff.

Within your question is kind of this other question, which is about your perceptions energetically or spiritually or psychically. Can you clarify that part for me, the part about your intuition?

Tamara: Right. I think it's very linked to formative experiences which I had growing up where, when I was very young, I got involved with a New Age kind of spiritual group⁠—I must have been around 10 or 12⁠—with my mother. And I think what this did for me was introduced me to this kind of very real spirit world. It was a group that actually had someone who was a voice channel. And I felt, looking back, that maybe because of my nature⁠⁠—I'm quite impressionable, or there's this need to believe. And so I was very enthralled by this world of other beings and the possibility to communicate with them and that there even was this intangible, ephemeral other space that existed, which, for me, on an emotional level, felt and even feels very real.

But I was also so aware of interacting with my schoolmates and the other world that I was moving through. And so I felt like things split a bit, or I started to compartmentalize this kind of secretive inner world that I felt didn't have to make sense or for me to be able to explain it to be real, and because I was sort of afraid of maybe it not being⁠—and I think this has really followed me into adulthood in some ways, where up until 2017, I'd actually still been involved with this group and very much felt like it was a double life, but yet found myself in situations where I was friends with physicists or being in situations where I was confronted with other arguments for how the world works. And so it became this very divided, objective/subjective thing in my head, which I've been trying to bridge in many ways.

Jessica: I want to just kind of interject a couple things here. So the first is I don't know any nine-year-old that has the kind of experiential ability to discern what's real and what's not real. Any nine-year-old is introduced to a spiritual or a creative concept, and the adults around them say, "This is true and this is real." Of course, we're going to believe it, or we're going to be inclined to believe it. So I want to just kind of interject that, because part of what you're describing is your experience, and you chose it until a couple years ago, obviously, right? This spiritual group is really important to your whole life. And it is worth saying you were born in '86, so you're very much a grown-up. That was a long time that you were in this group.

The other thing is you have a stellium in Pisces. Being in a spiritual group that is a little bit woo and out there⁠—right up your alley, like super-duper up your alley. So it's not shocking to me that this was your lived experience. But here's the problem. In your birth chart, you have a T-square that points to Saturn. You were born on a Full Moon. You were born with the Sun in Pisces and the Moon in Virgo, which is why you are both, yes, very spiritual, but in terms of managing your emotional welfare, you do need to discern what is real, what is not real, what works for me, what does not work for me.

Whoever was born on a Full Moon⁠—I mean, it just makes you super emo, just super emo and somebody who kind of has really strong cycles emotionally. Does that track for you?

Tamara: Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

Jessica: In your birth chart, both the Sun and the Moon each form a square to Saturn. So they oppose each other, and they both square Saturn. That creates a T-square. And the focal planet to T-squares⁠—in this case, Saturn⁠—are always a very big deal. And your T-square pushes to Saturn in the seventh house and Sagittarius. So, for you, finding an ultimate truth that everyone can agree on⁠—Saturn in Sagittarius⁠—is a really big trigger. It's something that you feel exists and that you should have a handle on, whether or not that's true. It's one of the struggles of Saturn in Sagittarius, seeking the truth that applies to all people in all situations at all times.

Now, let's make it more complicated. Because you have Saturn in the seventh house, what other people think is really important to you. And even though literally every point in your birth chart⁠—or almost every point in your birth chart⁠—says, yeah, you're a little bit of a weirdo; yeah⁠—and for me, weirdo is a compliment, so no shade. But yeah, you're open to all manner of things, and you see things from complex perspectives. That Saturn in the seventh house is, "I want to be known by other people as normal. I don't want to make any waves. I don't want to rock the boat. I just want people to perceive me as normal and realistic and reliable." You want people to know that you have reality on deck. I don't know why I'm using all these nautical metaphors, but do you know what I mean? That's just what keeps on coming up.

Tamara: Totally. Totally. It makes sense. Yeah.

Jessica: This screws your shit up because not only is this here⁠—now, Mars is not a focal planet to the T-square, but Mars is conjunct your Saturn. It's not just that you want to be perceived as normal, but your ego is linked into this drive. And so, when you're worried that you're not perceived as normal⁠, which⁠—if you're part of a spiritual group where there's a channeler, yeah, that's not super normal, right? I don't think that means it's bad, but it's certainly not the most normal thing in town. Then there is this part of you that needs it to be right and real as agreed upon by all the people at all times in order for it to not make you feel defensive because Mars is there.

Tamara: Yeah. Totally.

Jessica: Your question is⁠—it's not like you're asking a material⁠—I mean, you're a Pisces. You have a Pisces stellium, so of course, you're not asking me one material thing. You're asking me a lot of very big, nuanced things, right?

Tamara: Yeah.

Jessica: But I can say very materially that you are allowed to be wrong. And when it comes to matters of faith, I think it's really important that we all hold space, whether it's for deep woo or religion, that part of our faith, no matter how deep it runs, if we're being humble, should include, "I could be wrong about this. There could be no God. There could be no nothing." I mean, we all have our spiritual experience, but we could all be wrong. And that doesn't mean that we are wrong. It's just faith requires belief in the unknowable, like mystery. And it requires a level of humility⁠—humility or hubris⁠—to have faith, I would say.

And there's a lot of people all over the world who have a lot of hubris within their faith. But I would argue in deference of, okay, humility is actually the way to go. And so, within that, you're allowed to be wrong. You're allowed to be right about some things and wrong about others. You're allowed to evolve in your understanding or your utilization of spirituality. And by being willing to be wrong, it makes you bolder in asking questions and exploring what's true. I'm not saying, "We could all be wrong, so fuck it." Obviously, I'm not⁠—I mean, maybe not obvious to you, but I'm definitely not saying that.

I'm saying if we are willing to be comfortable with making mistakes or being wrong, then we automatically become more flexible and adaptable; therefore, we can do more self-investigation or investigation into whether it's a relationship or your truth versus their truth. Do you prefer that your friends agree with you about your spiritual and energetic perceptions?

Tamara: I'm not looking for validation or affirmation so much as encouragement, I guess. It's interesting that you mentioned, kind of, the ego because I do feel that it is so present in this kind of fear that comes up, which inhibits me from asking questions or wanting to learn or have conversations. And I think that I have a varied group of friends who kind of all weigh in with quite different perspectives, and I really enjoy the challenge of this. But it does make me uncomfortable when I'm pinned down and asked to have an opinion or be very sure of an idea or a position. It makes me quite uncomfortable.

Jessica: It's interesting because, on the one hand, you've got a Mars/Saturn conjunction in Sagittarius and a Sun/Jupiter conjunction in Pisces. You're very opinionated. You definitely have strong beliefs. There is no way you don't. I won't buy it. But at the same time, having Saturn in the seventh house and Venus in Pisces⁠—both of those things, in very different ways, make you a bit of a people pleaser. You don't want to rock the boat, again, right? You want people to not feel offended or upset by your take on reality or what you're feeling or needing or whatever.

Tamara: Yeah. Totally.

Jessica: Then, my dear, you have a Uranus/Mercury square. Uranus is in Sadge; Mercury is in Pisces. And they square each other. And Uranus is in the seventh on the cusp of the eighth, and Mercury is in the tenth on the cusp of the eleventh. And so you do have lots of different kinds of friends who have lots of different kinds of beliefs, and you are a naturally curious person. But you can feel trapped by one answer, one relationship, one way of looking at the world. This is kind of a confusing thing because, on the one hand, you get real fixed in your beliefs. No one's going to convince you of something you don't want to believe.

And on the other hand, you don't ever want to pin yourself down. It's very Uranian. It's like you want the freedom to change your mind at any moment. And so defining things, declaring your beliefs⁠—there is this part of you that's just a little allergic to it. And that is different from the other thing I named, which is there's this ego-based defensiveness that you have because it's hard to be humble because you're so scared of being wrong or being perceived as wrong. So these are two different parts of your nature, and they're not the same even though they kind of end up doing the same thing.

Tamara: Yeah.

Jessica: We're kind of describing a bunch of parts of your nature. Is there a question that's kind of crystallizing for you around what you want me to speak to or what you would like advice or perspective on?

Tamara: Well, I guess I'd just like perspective on these tendencies that I have and this kind of inner conflict that I feel so acutely. It really feels like this ripping apart, almost, inside of me. It's almost schizophrenic-like. And to find a peace, like with greater understanding of⁠ my nature and these aspects of myself, to stop wanting to be different or fight it and kind of learn or see how to find a balance.

Jessica: So, when you say it feels almost schizophrenic, what is "it"?

Tamara: I guess this kind of ping-pong between what I perceive to be this inner intangible, knowing, intuitive guided by senses versus thinking in a more rational, logical way, or being able to argue for something, or being able to kind of have a very clear understanding of the world and be able to describe exactly how it works.

Jessica: I mean, what you're describing is being a person with four planets in Pisces. So let's just start there if that helps you with self-acceptance at all. There is a math, and astrology is the math. It would be easier for you if you could live with the fairies that live at the base of the tree in your garden. Not a lot of people have four planets in Pisces. Let me start there. Just because of the way things move astrologically, that's not the most common thing. And it is a hard thing to have so much Pisces in the chart, spiritually speaking.

You have this amazing internet connection, just amazing internet connection, but you don't have a search engine. So you have access to all of this data, and it's constantly coming in. And yet navigating it and pinpointing what it means and where it comes from and what to do with it⁠—you need a search engine for that. When you are in yourself and you are tapping in spiritually, you're able to do these things where you're making connections. And with all this Pisces, they're more like visual and conceptual than analytic.

Tamara: Yeah.

Jessica: It's more visual and sense-based. And then, when you go and you talk to your friends and they're like, "Well, why did you make that decision?" all of a sudden, it's like describing a dream; you have to describe your process, which doesn't make a lot of sense on an external 3D level because you're tapping into a sense of interconnection as a way to navigate your inner world and then, therefore, the external world. Now, if it weren't for Saturn and your Virgo Moon⁠—also, I didn't mention, but should, Pluto in the damn sixth house. Because of these other things⁠—Saturn, Pluto, and the Moon⁠—you're like, "No, no, no, no, no. 3D is important."

You could have your exact same nature and have a couple things be different in your chart and think 3D wasn't that important. Lots of people don't think it's important, but you do. One way to navigate this is to make the effort to drop into your body and keep on coming back to your body when exploring your inner world, whether it's spiritual navigation or intuitive navigation. Does that make sense when I say that? I know that wasn't a complicated sentence, but I also see your birth chart.

Tamara: Sort of. Yeah. It makes sense having to drop into my body because it gets very loopy [crosstalk].

Jessica: Very loopy. I would say your body is the search engine. It's a reference point. It's like it gives you an algorithm that you can return to. I don't know if internet is a very good metaphor for you. Is it?

Tamara: It's working.

Jessica: Okay. It's working. Fabulous. Okay. Good. In the spiritual group that you were in for 30 years or something⁠—right? 20-something years, 30 years, something⁠—I don't know how long, but a long time.

Tamara: Yeah.

Jessica: Was there any practice of returning to the body?

Tamara: Yeah. There was. It did give us tools and exercises to do meditation techniques and breath work and stuff like this.

Jessica: Meditation is brilliant, but that's definitely not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is closer to breath work, and breath work is one idea. It's not the only idea. But when I say returning to the body, I do mean not having to stop everything to find your body. The problem with meditation is it's like we can integrate meditation into our daily lives, but it is like you have to stop interacting with other people. You have to stop working. You have to stop everything and then meditate, which is brilliant; I'm not knocking it.

But what I'm talking about for you is finding a way to notice when you've left your body and then having a practice around returning into your body, so whether that's your feet or your gut⁠—whatever it is⁠—but finding a way to return to your body so there is a way that you're tapping into that tenth house a little more. You're tapping into your Virgo Moon a little more. You're tapping into your Pluto in the sixth a little more. And that will help you to feel more integrated with your spiritual life because what happens when you leave the body, which is what I think you do 90-something percent of the time⁠—when you leave your body, then you come back; you're like, "Oh shit. Here again. What will I do with here? How do I explain here? How do I explain the rest of myself to this place, this body, this material world?"

And it starts to feel very Saturn in the seventh house, a.k.a. heavy. It's this thing you have to navigate. And so, if you had a practice, what would happen is your spiritual evaluations, the beautiful, fun parts of you that tap into your intuition and the spiritual, would have to move a little bit slower but they'd be a little bit more reliable. Does this sound like a bummer? Does this sound doable? Does this seem kind of impossible? What comes up for you around this?

Tamara: No, no. It sounds dreamy. This is the kind of stuff that I do feel helps me function. Yeah. I do like dancing, and I like working with my hands, and I like being very earthy. I feel that this is actually a need, like a deep need, for me to somehow just literally be on Earth. Otherwise, I would have never made it this far.

The City of Atlanta has leased 381 acres of the Weelaunee Forest on stolen Muscogee land to the Atlanta Police Foundation for a police military facility funded by corporations. The Atlanta Police Foundation is building a police militarization facility for police to train in urban warfare. The plans include military-grade training facilities, a mock city to practice urban warfare, explosive testing areas, dozens of shooting ranges, and a Black Hawk helicopter landing pad. Here are some ways for you to support the defense of the forest and Atlanta. Donate to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund at ATLsolidarity.org to support legal costs for arrested protesters and ongoing legal action. Call on investors in the project to divest from Cop City and the builders of the project to drop their construction contracts. You can get information about all of this at defendtheatlantaforest.org and learn more about Cop City at stopcop.city.

We all know how important it is to continue to mask in public indoor spaces, and that's why I want to tell you about projectN95.org. Their nonprofit mission is to protect communities and those who live and work in them by providing equitable access to resources that keep people safe through COVID-19 and beyond. If you're unable to afford high-quality respiratory protection, Project N95 may be able to help. And if you can afford to buy yourself high-quality masks, this is a great place to buy them. Visit project95.org to keep yourself and your community safe.

School boards and lawmakers around the country are banning and challenging books at a pace not seen since the 1980s. The American Library Association tracked 729 challenges to library, school, and university materials and services in 2021. And librarians have even been threatened with criminal charges and jail time in some places in this country for lending out challenged books. You can contact your representatives about this issue by emailing, calling, or tweeting at them. And above all else, buy banned and challenged books. Support the important work of authors who are being banned or challenged, and in the process, support independent bookstores. My favorite bookstore, Marcus Books, is the oldest independent Black-owned bookstore in the country and has a banned and challenged book list on their website. You can go to marcusbooks.com to see this list and to shop, or visit whatever independent bookstore that you love. Support banned and challenged books and authors today.

Jessica: As a spiritual person myself, I am deeply convicted that we came into this life and in these bodies because that's part of the lesson. We are not meant to transcend the body; we are meant to live within the body. We are not meant to transcend the 3D; we are meant to live within the 3D. Transcending the 3D is death. Transcending the body is death. But within life, we wouldn't have come here in these bodies if we weren't meant to understand the spiritual nature of the body and to care for the body and to protect the body and to enjoy the body and to fuck with the body and all the things in between and all the things I won't name.

I think, for a lot of us who are on a spiritual path, we tend to see the material and the spiritual as really different, but they aren't inherently different. We are just in a state of separation, and so we call them different. There's a lot of reasons for that, but within your birth chart specifically, yes, you have a really intense amount of Pisces in your chart, but it is in the tenth house. It is in the place of Capricorn, which means that you can tap into that sea goat. People talk about Capricorn as the goat. It's not a goat. It's a sea goat. And a sea goat is a mythical creature that doesn't exist. It is a goat with a fishtail.

As a person with so much Pisces and such a strong Saturn, it would be easy for you to be like, "Oh God. Material reality," but material reality can be accessed through the emotions, through spirituality. It's just that that makes everything move a little slower, and there has to be little bit more of a systematicness to it. So, if you're going to tap into your intuition, it might behoove you to create some sort of system where you⁠—I don't know. There's a million ways you could do it. For me personally, if I'm trying to get psychic information about a person, I've created a system. I have to hear their whole name out loud. That's why you hear so many beeps on my podcast. I'm asking for the whole name out loud, and that is a system I've created with my own guidance and also a ritualistic system within me that helps me to protect from receiving psychic information when I'm not asking for it. And it helps me to tap in deeper, right? So it's a little ritual.

I used to⁠—there was this psychic who had this really great TV show. She was a great psychic. And she would do this thing where she would wear a hat, and her intention with wearing a hat was to keep her energy in her head. And then, when she'd meet with clients, she'd take off her hat. That was a ritual. And it's not like that inherently does anything. It does something if you set intention and you ritualistically return to that intention. Then the ritual gets stronger.

With Pluto in the sixth, there can be this feeling of getting trapped in ritual. It can make you feel stuck sometimes, especially if those rituals are put upon you. So I want to say this is something for you to play with because you have a Virgo Moon, and ritualistic conduct is very good for your emotional body. Within that, you may have a ritual⁠—like, let's say, wearing a hat⁠—when you want to keep your energy in and you know you're in loop-the-loop land, which happens. As Pisces energies, it'll happen.

You might be like, "Okay. I'm going to wear hats." And then, after six months or four years or whatever, you might wake up one day and be like, "This hat thing isn't working. This is not for me," and just stop doing it and change your mind and do something else. So we don't have to get locked into our rituals. We can evolve with them.

Tamara: Yeah. It helps me with this kind of tendency for self-denial. It helps, that actually just acknowledging and working what I have in a constructive way.

Jessica: Good. And that tendency towards self-denial⁠—I mean, that's Saturn. You're literally using textbook words of Saturn. In terms of that T-square to Saturn in the seventh, you are probably going to be drawn to intimate relationships with people who are much less woo than you, who are either stick in the muds or people who are just kind of very rooted into the 3D. Has that been your experience?

Tamara: It has. And it's like it's brought a lot of challenge and difficulty. I'm like, "Why? Why does it have to be like this?"

Jessica: It doesn't.

Tamara: "Why do I have to suffer through this?"

Jessica: It doesn't have to be this way. But the reason why that's what's happening is because you're not owning your Saturn. You're only experiencing your Saturn as a way of kind of being forced into experiencing your Saturn. You're trying to be a beautiful loofah sponge, and every once in a while, you tap into your body with your Virgo Moon, and you're just hoping that you can kind of stay there. And because you're not owning your Saturnian drive to consequence and consistency, you're projecting it out.

From my perspective as an astrologer, whenever we have parts of our nature, parts of our birth chart, that we don't know how to experience and express and hold, the Universe is cool with that. The Universe is like, "Fine. We'll just bring you a person, and that person or situation will experience and express it for you. Now you're forced in." The thing to know is that the more that you explore your Saturn and your Saturn/Mars conjunction, the more you strive to find a healthy, self-appropriate way of embodying it, the less you're going to need to attract to you Saturnian people that are not what you would want them to be.

So you're always going to have Saturn in the seventh house, which means regardless of how much Pisces you have in your chart, you're probably always going to do better with a monogamous relationship. Is that what you tend to do?

Tamara: (laughs)

Jessica: No.

Tamara: Up until the last year, but I'm trying something different at the moment.

Jessica: Okay. Yep. Mm-hmm. We can talk about that in a second. But let me say Saturn in the seventh is really good at monogamy. Now, listen. You got a lot of Pisces in you, so you're like, "Love shouldn't have boundaries. Love should be completely open and equal," and all this kind of stuff. Absolutely. Sure. Also, you have Saturn in the fucking seventh house as the focal planet of a T-square. So, even if you find a way that is healthy and self-appropriate to be poly or non-monog, you're probably going to need a primary partner, basically a bestie, a partner in crime. That's what Saturn in the seventh wants.

Saturn in the seventh wants to know that you have home within a relationship, and partnership is really important to Saturn in the seventh. And that partnership has a certain level of consistency to it. It's kind of like⁠—again with my nautical⁠—I know nothing of boats other than they make me seasick and I enjoy them. But having Saturn in the seventh often means that you seek to partner with an anchor so that every once in a while, you can throw the anchor in the boat and then just go off to sea. But if you get lost at sea, you just throw the anchor down and you're home.

To me, this is a beautiful thing. If you read astrology blogs and books, they'll often say terrible things about Saturn in the seventh. But that's not⁠—I don't actually think that that's how it functions in real life. Saturn in the seventh means that you can be a really good partner, but you have to own your own Saturn in the seventh⁠—that you can be a little exacting. You can feel like there's a right way of doing things and wrong way of doing things, and you've done it the wrong way. And there's a part of you that can be withholding with people in intimate relationships. Now, I don't know if you've experienced that part of you, because you may have only manifested people who express it for you.

Tamara: Express the⁠—my⁠—

Jessica: The kind of withholding or punishing or judginess.

Tamara: Yeah. For sure.

Jessica: So you've experienced people who do that. But have you noticed that you do those things?

Tamara: Yes. Yes.

Jessica: Okay. Okay. Good. It's not good because, "Yay. Keep on," but it's good because if you can own that that's a part of you, then you can humbly work on that part of you. And the more that you work on that part of you, the more integrated it becomes. And the more integrated it becomes, the less the Universe needs to shove it in your face with the person you're dating or your bestie. You capiche?

Tamara: I capiche.

Jessica: Yeah. The reality is you have so much mutable energy in your chart, like so much. And so you're easygoing. Go with the flow. You're not the one who's going to force your will on a situation. That's completely true. But what's also completely true is you are very fucking certain of your way being the way, and you can get real locked into it and uncompromising. And when people don't behave the way you feel they should, yeah, you can become very withholding. And because of all that Pisces energy, you don't think you're being withholding. You think you're just retreating to take care of yourself. But deep inside, because you are self-aware, you must know that you are doing it in a way that is punishing to the other person.

Tamara: Yes. I am aware of those kind of manipulative tendencies.

Jessica: Yes. Excellent. Cognitive awareness is fabulous. I mean, this is what astrology gives us: cognitive awareness. Yay. But it doesn't do the work. You can be incredibly self-aware of your patterns, but until you bring more presence to those patterns, they don't evolve. And so, now, whatever else is happening within your life, I want to just really ground you into the need to own these parts of you that don't match up with the parts you really, really like because it'll make you healthier, it'll make you happier, and it'll also change what you are unconsciously attracting into your life.

I want to say a word about boundaries versus discernment. I hear the word "boundaries" from you, and I actually think you mean rules versus discernment. Does that seem right?

Tamara: Yeah. I can entertain that.

Jessica: Yeah. Entertain. Entertain with me for a minute because everybody has a different feeling about boundaries. I'm obsessed with boundaries. I love boundaries. I put hearts around all my boundaries. I'm obsessed with boundaries. But I'm a triple Capricorn. I have a lot of rules. And there are a really big difference between rules and boundaries because rules⁠—they're unbending and unyielding. They're moralistic, whereas boundaries are flexible and adaptable, yet strong.

The way I often describe this is⁠—I don't know if you've ever seen⁠—I wear a lot of glasses, and I will often wear heavy, big frames. If I drop those heavy, big frames, they will break. They are heavy and big. They are strong, but they're not flexible, whereas there's a metal that a lot of frames are made by called titanium, and they're really thin and they're incredibly strong. Sometimes what looks very strong and what is bigger and takes up more space is actually ultimately weaker. What boundaries are are something that we do not have to enforce; we have to embody. What rules are are things we have to enforce. What's a good example of a boundary or rule that you want to have in your relationships?

Tamara: I would say a kind of respect in terms of listening and being very present when someone's explaining or trying to explain themselves or talk. I feel quite particular about being present with someone when they're telling a story or sharing.

Jessica: Are you saying you want them to do the same for you?

Tamara: Yes.

Jessica: Okay. Instead of telling me what your need was and your boundary, you told me what you did for other people. And that is defensive. It's not like classic defensiveness, but it comes out of discomfort with owning your needs, preferences, and boundaries. Our needs, preferences, and boundaries⁠—we defensively guard them. If you were saying to me, hopefully a safe person who this is not coming up with⁠—if you couldn't say to me what you needed from other people but only what you give to other people, then I imagine you're not being clear with people you're in a relationship with until they've crossed the line. Is that a fair assessment?

Tamara: I'd say that's quite accurate.

Jessica: Yeah. That's not effective. I'm assuming it doesn't really go well in your relationships when you, like, "Aha. You just did this thing and it's really fucked up. Let me explain why."

Tamara: Yeah. It's not great.

Jessica: No. It's not great. Being able to identify, "It is really important to me when I'm talking that even though sometimes I might meander to get to the point or I might say it in a different way than you would say it, it's really important for me to feel like you're listening." Active listening is a really big deal. It's a totally fair boundary. It's a totally fair need. When you clearly articulate to someone, "This is really important to me. I try to do it for you because it's important to me to both offer it, but also, I'm showing you what it means. The way I listen to you, that's what I'm talking about. Listen to me with eye contact, with body language. Don't just be quiet. Listen to me." Right? That's what you're saying?

Tamara: Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica: What I want to give you advice to do, first of all, is think about your boundaries. You can write them out. If you were to write out the one that you just told me, it would be kind of like a prose poem. Mercury in Pisces⁠—it would be a prose poem. You would write out all the feelings and vibes but not necessarily a clear directive. First, you write your prose poem. Then you take out, in bullet-point note form, all of the things. Does that seem like something you could do?

Tamara: Yeah. Yeah. I'm writing it down as we speak.

Jessica: Okay. Good. That's what I wanted to hear you say. Good job. Good job. You're going to take your bullet-point notes about what you're actually trying to say here, and then you're going to make sure that you are speaking your preference and need in a clear and actionable way and that you're not talking about what you do; you're talking about what you're asking for, because it's too confusing for someone else to sort through that. When we are in a state of discombobulation, anxiety, burnout, overwhelm, it's really hard to access ourselves and process things. But that internal state can make us incredibly selfish without realizing it because we're asking the other person to be completely present to sort through our cues, but we're not actually communicating with them. So we're asking them to do more labor to understand what we're saying to then give us what we need.

And there's no need to be guilty or feel bad about this, even a little bit⁠—like, even a little bit. But it is important to recognize that your discomfort with being blunt about what it is that you need is because you don't want to be mean, and you don't want to be too much, and you don't want to be harsh, in part.

Tamara: Yes.

Jessica: But it's actually kinder and gentler to be clear because then the person can actually give you what you want, and then they can get more of you. They can have better times with you. So that's one thing, okay? So that's one very big thing.

Now, the other thing I want to say is, if you tell me⁠—not the way you described originally, but if you were to be like, "Okay. Jessica, we're friends. I need you to actually listen when I'm talking. You know when I'm talking? Listen to me," and I'm like, "Of course I'll do that. Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah," and then you're talking to me about something deep and real and I don't do it, you can refer back and be like, "Hey, remember when we talked about this? It would mean so much to me if you would listen. I'm not really asking you for advice right now. I'm asking you just to be present."

If I then proceed to not do it, here's my personal Capricorn rule with that: three strikes. You got three strikes. Now, this only works⁠—the three strikes rule⁠—if you yourself are clear about your needs, if you're not being cryptic, if you're not dropping hints or clues, but if you're being clear and forthright⁠—

Tamara: Yes. This makes sense.

Jessica: ⁠—which you're very capable of being, by the way, because yes, you have a lot of Pisces, but you've got Jupiter conjunct the Sun⁠—very forthright⁠—and Mercury square Uranus⁠—very forthright. So you can be forthright. If you are managing your boundary⁠—you're saying, "Hey, I'm asking you for this thing," and I keep on not giving it to you, whether I say, "Yes, yes, yes," or I say, "No. I'm just not giving it to you," after three times, now it's on you to protect your boundary⁠—not to assert your boundary, but to protect your boundary. So, when I say this, what I mean is do not process with people who you do not trust. Do not give your faith to people who break your faith. And I'm not saying ever at all. And this is a difficult thing for you to navigate, and I think it's kind of at the center of your question.

If, after a certain amount of time, you've given me a lot of very real chances to be your friend in a way that makes you feel loved and held and cared for and I have failed all of those chances, then it becomes important for you to own, "I have needs from a close friend. Jessica is not fulfilling those needs, and I have to adjust my expectations of this person, which includes adjusting how much I trust this person," because if we're embodying our boundaries, then we're not waiting for other people to take care of them. Instead, we are taking care of ourselves. Can I ask, does that feel sad to you?

Tamara: It doesn't make me feel sad. I think it makes me afraid.

Jessica: Afraid of what?

Tamara: Afraid of being seen or even, in a very weird way, afraid of existing, afraid of even realizing that I exit. It sounds so dramatic, but it gets to that level at times.

Jessica: Yeah. That makes sense. It makes perfect sense. It's kind of at the core of your question, your multipronged question. If you were to truly accept, "I am here. I am alive. I take up space. My experience is my experience, and that's valid and real and all the things," then yeah, you're going to have boundaries. You're going to take up space. You're going to be able to not wait for me to blow up our friendship or pick a fight with me, and then I do something terrible, and then you feel justified to leave the friendship. Then you'll just leave the friendship.

The way that your chart is written⁠—and also, just the way that most people handle conflict, unfortunately⁠—is it's easier to be the victim than to be, potentially, the perpetrator. And the advice I'm giving you will mean that you are exercising your agency, which puts you at risk for being the perpetrator. And it takes you out of a state of being the victim in a situation, which is actually your preferred state, even though you don't enjoy it even remotely. If we're going to have a meltdown, me and you as friends, you would much rather me be the bad guy than you be the bad guy. And I think that's part of the unconscious motivation of not even saying directly what your boundary is but instead saying what you do for others.

Tamara: Yeah. It makes sense. And I just wonder why I have these tendencies.

Jessica: There's a lot of layers to the answer of why. The first layer is don't know that it matters. And I say this as an astrologer who has the answer to a lot of whys. At the end of the day, it matters what you're going to do with it more than how it came to be. I am a little bit of the astrologer who's like, "Yeah, astrology is great. And also, throw it away." The why is not always important.

Now, another answer is, girl, you got a stellium in Pisces and Saturn as the focal planet of a T-square. That's why. That's why. There's the math, okay? We can look at your own parents and your own early developmental experiences, and we can have a conversation about why that's why. You can see a therapist for that, but I'm sure you've done some work on that. There's a lot of whys. It's because you're a woman in the world. If you think you're the only woman who's got this problem, oh my God, you are wrong, wrong, wrong. That's a real thing.

So why is interesting. But you spend a lot of time and energy in why, and it hasn't changed anything. I would instead point you towards self-acceptance. Self-acceptance is not consent. It's not investing in things you don't like. Self-acceptance isn't writing yourself off of responsibility. Self-acceptance is only self-awareness. It is accepting, "This is where I am now. This is what I have done to date. This is how I feel now." And if you can accept that, you are creating an emotional, spiritual, and physical foundation with which you can change, evolve, grow, where you can use your analytic understanding and apply it to situations.

But unfortunately, this is a real⁠—you gotta tap in. You gotta tap in and accept yourself and where you're starting from. Everybody wants to know why. I want to be exceptionally clear. Literally everybody wants to know why, especially when they're talking to an astrologer. Why wouldn't you ask that question? There's no reason. Of course you'd ask why. And also, people with a lot of water-sign stuff in their chart, especially Pisces and Cancer, can be in a state where it's much easier to be the victim, like, "Things happened to me. Why did they happen to me?" than the perpetrator: "I am the creator of things that hurt."

That is about protecting yourself from feeling responsibility, and it is really important for me to identify that. Again, no shame. No blame. It just is what it is because you have Saturn as the focal planet of a T-square, and that placement means you can spend your life, as I imagine you have done, feeling guilty and bad and like you have to make up for some sort of terrible mistake or taking up space at all. With just as much effort and pain, you can work to take responsibility and own, "I don't have the answer." When a friend asks you what the answer is and you don't have the answer, you can always say, "I don't know. I have a million theories, and I don't know." That's perfectly fine to say.

Tamara: Yeah, and not so feel threatened or weak around it.

Jessica: Correct. Correct. Correct. It's about owning that Saturn. Humility means taking ownership of what you do know and what you don't know and allowing yourself to have boundaries around it. And again, boundaries aren't rules. They're not regulations. So you ask people to participate, and if they show you that they cannot or will not participate, then you change the rules. You know what I mean? You change your expectations. You change your participation so that you're not waiting for someone else to embody your boundaries. Easier said than done. This is not easy. If it was easy, it wouldn't be fucking Saturn. And if it was easy, it wouldn't be life. And if it was easy, it wouldn't be a T-square.

None of this is easy, but it is all exactly on time because in February of 2024, so in just under a year from now, you're going to go through your Saturn square. Saturn will square itself. And this is the first major crisis sent of Saturn to itself since your Saturn Return. And so you can prepare for this transit by doing all the work we've been talking about today. It's about owning your own capacity for discernment, for self-reliance, for having boundaries. You don't need to worry about what it means for your relationships. You only need to worry about embodying your Saturn. That's the work.

Do you have any final question that is related to what we've already been talking about?

Tamara: It's been very helpful.

Jessica: That's awesome. Thank you. Thank you. You can't see that I'm clapping my hands because I'm a tampon without hands, but I was clapping my hands.

Tamara: No, I think you've helped me home in on what the root of my question really is because I think I tend to spiral out into this feeling of needing to understand reality and be able to convince others or myself around what I'm feeling and to feel like I need to justify it. And I think breaking it down and focusing on what you've mentioned around owning the responsibility around Saturn⁠—yeah. It's humbling.

Jessica: I will share something, which is⁠—you know I'm a medium, right? So I have the lived experience of being out with friends or being in a park or anywhere in the world, and then all of a sudden, I will have the experience of being in direct contact with a dead person or dead people, and nobody else is having that experience. I am alone in that experience when I'm having that experience. It's not like my friends are like, "Yeah, there's a dead person right there." No. Mm-mm. No. And it's a very uncomfortable thing, and it requires that I do all these things to protect myself and stay grounded.

I do not share this reality with others. And because of that, I don't usually talk about it when it's happening because if I were to talk about it, I would of course be like, "Do I sound like a banana, like an unripened banana?" It doesn't matter whether or not I believe in my own lived experience. Some things on the spiritual realm cannot be talked about as they're happening. And that's okay. And some things on the spiritual realm are not meant to be talked about at all. There are plenty of things that I would never talk about in public or with most of my friends that I experience spiritually, that are very real for me spiritually, because some things are allowed to stay sacred and private.

I'm just sharing this with you because the world we live in makes it seem like everything should be fucking put on your feed, metaphorically but also literally on your feed. And I don't think that's the case at all. It is perfectly fair to question your experience of reality. In fact, I personally always have a kind of traditional therapist because their version of reality and how they view the world, the lens that they view the world from, is very different than mine. I talk to dead people; that sounds, again, a lot of bananas to a lot of people, especially traditional therapists.

And I think it's good to question our reality, especially when we are woo. You used the world "spiral." Pisces is a spiral. Pisces is a spiral, and that's a beautiful thing. And sometimes it can spiral you out to part of the ocean. You're like, "I see no land. Oh shit." And so it's good to have people who are anchors in your life, who live in lighthouses, and that's what they do. That's good for us. And that also means that sometimes you're going to be having a spiritual experience and being like, "I don't know if this is real," or, "I feel so certain that it's real, but the second I want to talk about it, it seems bananas."

It's okay⁠—in fact, I think it's healthy⁠—to have that dynamic. And my whole life is dedicated to all the spiritual stuff I do. I don't question the spiritual stuff I do on one level, and yet I also always, constantly, always question it. I think that's part of having an experience that is spiritual. You know?

Tamara: Yeah, it does. And it's very helpful to hear from you, and I really feel the truth of this. And it's very guiding.

Jessica: Good. I'm so glad. Yeah. I mean, you can hear somebody like me talking on a podcast and being like, "I have such certainty." And I do. I really do. And also, I question it. It's both. It's an "and also." I personally tend to be very suspicious when people have no questioning; there's no, "Wait. What? Wait. Am I sure?" I think it's important to question. What we do, what we humans do, is we look for proof and evidence to substantiate our lived experience. Some of that's really healthy and necessary so we don't fall off the deep end, lose ourselves, and some of it is insecurity, the human condition. We're a social animal.

It's okay that they both exist at the same time and they are messy and they contradict each other. If we don't resist that messiness and we don't resist that contradiction, then we don't have to fight it. Then we can be like, "Oh, this part's showing up. Oh, that part's showing up." And that makes it a lot easier to live, like a lot easier to live, if you can just accept that it's a mess.

Tamara: Yeah. I think that could⁠—it's so nice to be able to give oneself permission to do that.

Jessica: Yes. Yes. Yes. It is. That permission will change in different moments, in different moments of your development, in different relationships. Different people are safe in different ways. And it's about having, again, some flexibility within ourselves so that we can be adaptable and we can accept what other people are showing us of themselves, and we don't have to have a big drama or a big showdown in order to be like, "This person has to be demoted because they're showing me that we're not compatible, not because they're a bad person and I'm a good person. It's because we're not compatible in this way, and I have to adjust my expectations."

It's okay to have that adaptability. And then, when they show you different evidence⁠—maybe in six months or in a year, whatever⁠—okay, cool. Now they're in a different tier of intimacy. The more adaptable we can be within ourselves to trust ourselves, the more successful relationships can be across the board⁠—spiritual ones, material ones, everything in between.

Tamara: Thank you.

Jessica: It is my pleasure. I'm so glad this worked out.

Tamara: You as a tampon is just⁠—what a thing to behold. So thank you. This is seared into my memory [crosstalk].

Jessica: I'm so glad. Thank you so much for sending in this question and for showing up in all the ways you did.

Tamara: Thank you so much, Jessica.

Jessica: It's my pleasure.