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.

As you know, devastating fires have shaken Hawaii, and the people there need your help. If you've ever been a tourist in the region and enjoyed any of the magic and beauty of the lands, this is the time to give what you can. You can lend support by donating at any of the links that we've dropped in show notes. Even a small gift can make a huge difference in this time of crisis.

Welcome back to Ghost. This is Episode 350, which⁠—I don't know⁠. That's a lot of episodes. And if you've been with me since the beginning or if you're just joining for the first or the third time, I want to say thank you because I love astrology, and I love getting to share it. It is my life's work. You know I've been thinking about it. I started meeting with clients back in 1994 because jes suis old. Also, I started young.

There's something really special that happens when you've stayed with the craft, any craft, for so many years. There's a way that it becomes a huge part of you. And my love of astrology is not just about my love of the use of astrology, like my use of astrology. It's also about my love of sharing astrology so that other people can use it. And I know that most people aren't going to do the intensive study and practice that I've done. That's reasonable. But I do hope that as you listen to Ghost and you do other forms of research with astrology, that you are using it in a way that supports your life, that helps you to make sense of yourself and others and work with timing, and doesn't have you pathologizing yourself or others or damning yourself or others.

And I think in these days of le internet, and of course increasingly with AI, we need to be particularly careful about the sources that we reference and trust. And I'm bringing this up because it keeps on coming up in my Patreon, which⁠—by the way, if you're a patron, thank you very much. I love you. I want to just really make sure in this time of Retrogrades⁠—we've got Venus Retrograde now. We're going to step next week into a Mercury Retrograde, where they're going to have a fun little overlap. We really want to make sure that, whether it's with astrology, the news, anything you're studying or researching, that you check your sources and you consider your sources because not all sources are equal. And that's not judgy. That's just reality.

I want to encourage you that if you're using astrology to make decisions in your life to understand yourself or to understand other people, that you're using resources that are actually trustworthy. So I want to just have you put that in your little pipe for smoking, if you'd like. If you'd like. You can vape it, whatever.

The other thing I want to say before we get deep into our horoscope today is last week's Joy in the Time of Apocalypse, the cosmic gathering that I did with Sonya Renee Taylor and Adrienne Maree Brown⁠—it was fucking spectacular. It was joyful. I want to thank you so much if you were there. There were just so many people there, which was wonderful, and it was just a really heartfelt and uplifting experience even though we talked about some rough stuff for part of the time.

And if you missed it and you want to tune in to that conversation and join the Discord group that has kind of emerged from that conversation, hold tight. We haven't figured out how to make it available to everybody, but we will figure it out. And when we do, I will announce it here. But if you did join and you haven't gotten the email yet, it's probably in your spam folder. So check your inbox. If you were there, you will have access to the replay of the class until the next Full Moon, which is on the 30th of this month.

Okay. This week, we're going to look at August 13th through the 19th of 2023. As always, I am using Astrology for Days, my astrologer's pro tool, to track the transits. So, if you are wanting to track the exact time of the transits, have a little in-app ephemeris and place to keep your notes and predictions and thoughts and musings, you can go ahead and subscribe to that over at astrologyfordays.com. But if you don't want to do all that, that's fine. I've got you covered.

This week starts off on the 13th with a Sun conjunction to Venus. It's happening at 20 degrees of Leo and 28 minutes, and it's exact at 4:16 a.m. So, if you have anything at around 20 degrees of a fixed sign, you're the one who's going to feel this the most. A Sun conjunction to Venus is in general quite a lovely transit. The identity and the will⁠—the Sun⁠—and our needs for balance and diplomacy and security and safety and romance and love, all of these things⁠—they're in alignment. They're sitting on top of each other. They're on the same page.

This is, generally speaking, a lovely thing. It can be a time for extra flirting, extra playing, extra enjoying things. If you're a creative person, this could be a time that is extra creative. And of course, there's so much extras because it's in Leo. But we want to keep in mind that Venus is Retrograde. And so, while this is, generally speaking, typically a pleasure-seeking moment, a time for just relaxing and connecting, what we want to remember is that the Venus Retrograde is asking us to reflect on where we feel safe and how we feel safe and with whom we feel safe.

It's also asking us to reflect on how we create safe spaces for others, for the people in our lives, on all the levels. Venus is, yes, very much related to romantic relationships, but we have romantic dynamics with lots of people that are not sexual in nature. It's not about dating romance. Sometimes it's just about having a sense-based connection with someone or having an aesthetic appreciation of someone.

When we are dealing with Venusian themes, we are dealing with like and love and getting along. And so how you get along with others is something to really consider this Sun conjunction to Venus Retrograde. And it's especially something to consider because so many of us do things to get along with others that honestly aren't authentic. And when we compromise our authenticity for approval or getting along, yeah, that's not great.

One of the things that I really want to encourage you to be considering on and around the 13th is how you're showing up around others. And if you come to realize that you're not being authentic, that you're kind of being nicey-nice or accommodating in ways that compromise your authenticity, you don't need to feel bad about it. You don't need to torture yourself about it. But bringing that awareness into the present moment⁠—that's where change begins if change needs to occur.

And sometimes we recognize we're doing something that's not super authentic, and we make the call, "Hey, it's worth it." But we can only make that call if we are present with whatever it is that's happening. And Venus is a planet that is typically very conflict avoidant. Venus literally governs diplomacy, and so it can really want to not come at conflict sideways⁠—no, but it can make us want to find a way to mediate the conflict instead of get into conflict. Mars wants to get into it. Venus wants to mediate it.

And so, again, this Sun conjunction to Venus Retrograde is an opportunity for you to cultivate greater self-awareness about how you do or don't do that and how you handle other people coming at you with love or with shit you don't want. The thing that I like about this Sun conjunction to Venus, which⁠—again, it's not an uncommon transit. It happens pretty routinely. I don't usually think it's particularly spectacular in its effects. But the thing I like about it in the context of the Venus Retrograde is that it may really crystallize some things for you about the Venus Retrograde because the Sun is your core self. It is your will and identity.

When the core self is present with all those Venus Retrograde themes, you're going to have a pretty good sense of what's going on for you this Venus Retrograde. So, if you need to show up⁠—and you know you need to show up⁠—this is the moment, my friends. And if you've been kind of⁠—I don't know⁠—waffling about whatever Venus Retrograde themes are activated for you, be it finances, gender, self-worth, beauty, romantic relationships, whatever⁠—or all of it, I guess⁠—that Sun conjunction to Venus can strengthen our willingness and ability to really show up and participate. So⁠—I don't know⁠—tap into it if you can.

And I kind of already said this, but it's worth repeating. If you're an artist, get messy. Get creative. Really explore because this transit can be incredibly playful. And if you have been having a rough time, or not, it's nice to tap into play. It's nice to tap into creation for the sake of creation. Making out not because you're trying to be goal-oriented about it, just because you're having a lovely moment connecting. Enjoying putting on makeup and getting dressed up to hang out alone at home just because it's fun to do. It's that kind of shit. It's about exploring beauty and play, not just about doing the research of figuring out what your values are, which I of course encourage you to do, but it's also⁠—it's playful. So enjoy that.

Now, if there's anything to watch out for this transit, it's only that you can avoid conflict in this transit, or you can overdo it with delights. So overdoing it with a delight might be spending too much money, lounging for that extra hour and now your butt hurts, that kind of stuff. So all delicious things in moderation. That's, I guess, the ideal, anyways.

Now, the next exact transit that we have this week is on the following day. It's on the 14th. We have an exact trine between Venus Retrograde and Chiron. Venus Retrograde is at 19 degrees and 45 minutes of Leo, and Chiron is at the same degrees of Aries. When Venus and Chiron have a harmonious aspect⁠—so that would be a sextile, 60 degrees, or a trine, which is 120 degrees apart⁠—what we have is an opportunity to work through our wounding and basically our baggage, and to do so in a way that creates more comfort and ease and doesn't further damage our self-worth or self-esteem. That's the positive potential of a Venus trine to Chiron.

Now, we want to remember Venus is Retrograde, so we're already being asked by Venus to do some internal work, to not just focus on what happened in our relationships because so-and-so said this and so-and-so said that, but instead to be able to reflect on how we participate, how we show up for ourselves and others, what our values are, what we are actively and unconsciously consenting to, and to even strive to understand the values that we hold, again, conscious and unconscious values that we hold that underpin why we consent to certain things in our relationships, why we participate in the ways we do with the people that we like and love or want to like and love.

Intimacy is so fucking hard, isn't it? Intimacy is such a challenge. And in last week's horoscope, I spoke with you a bit about the difference between impersonal and personal love. Venus is, generally speaking, related more to personal love, to our one-on-one relationships. But many people really struggle with that form of love for a bazillion really great reasons. And I want to just say before I get a little bit deeper into this transit that there is no fucking Venus placement that means that you cannot have love or that you will not have love. There just isn't. Now, there are some Venus aspects that make it harder, more challenging, easier, more flowy, for sure.

But astrology is vast and complex. If I had a penny for every time somebody with Venus in Virgo told me that they read somewhere that they would never have love, I mean, my God, I'd have so many dollars. But the truth is that's not how astrology works. We don't want to use astrology fatalistically. And it's really important to know that something as complex and nuanced as our ability and willingness to love and be loved and attract love and show up for love cannot be delineated by something as simple as Venus in a sign. Okay? So I want to just put that in the universe for you to play with.

And that brings me now to Chiron, to the Chiron part of this. Now, Chiron, again, is related to our core wounding. The wounds that Chiron represents are the wounds that don't heal. That's the very nature of Chiron. They don't fully heal. But this is the really important thing for you to understand about Chiron, but also just about freaking life: we don't have to have all of our wounds healed. We do not have to be the picture of health and wellness. No, we do not.

What we ideally do need and what we should certainly orient ourselves towards is shifting our orientation towards our pain, towards our wounding. So perhaps you had something happen in your early developmental experience which is a Chironic wound that fucked you up in some way, that really is hard for you in a way that you're not even thinking about half the time because Chironic wounds are deep. They're in your bones. No amount of healing work is going to make that⁠—⁠poof⁠—go away. But what we can do is relate to it in different ways. We can hold it in different ways. We can cultivate empathy and kindness and patience and tools and resources for coping with that pain point inside of us.

When we're dealing with something like Venus and Chiron in conversation, we have the opportunity to work with our core wounding around our values and our value. For a lot of us, our value can be wrapped up in the way we look. It can be wrapped up in the way we feel other people feel about the way we look. It can be wrapped up in whether or not we have people in our lives and whether or not those relationships are easy or loving or not. It can be wrapped up in our finances, what we own, what we got. All Venus. That stuff is all Venus.

And so this Venus trine to Chiron is an opportunity for us to bring more awareness to those very themes. And it's not easy. But luckily, because it's a trine, we have the opportunity to make progress, have greater ease and flow, and strengthen our tool kit, strengthen our willingness and ability to show up in whatever ways we need to based on where we're at and where we're from. Life can be challenging. Love is inevitably going to be challenging in life. That's part of things. Living in a capitalist system and having to deal with your personal finances⁠—again, challenging. Challenging to orient yourself around your values or to just freaking survive. At the very least, everybody has to deal with how we relate to what we've got and what we don't have.

And this transit of Venus trine to Chiron is an opportunity for us to really work through that and make progress with greater ease than we might at other times. And so we note that, first, the Sun and Venus Retrograde have met, and now Venus Retrograde is forming a trine to Chiron. This is all happening in fire signs. So things may move quickly for you. They may move quickly through you. So some shit may happen that might really stimulate and trigger things.

Now, none of these transits are what we call hard transits. They're not going to be kicking your sweet little hiney. But it's still challenging. We're still dealing with challenging themes. And so, if you have friends and loved ones you can talk to about this stuff, please do. Because both of these planets are Venusian, it is about relating. It's about intimacy. So share your feelings. Share your thoughts. Share where you're at because sharing is caring. Am I right? It's just a good way to work with these energies.

And again, these are not challenging transits, but they are engaging us with challenging themes. So, from my perspective⁠—and to be fair, I'm a freaking Capricorn, right? But from my perspective, that is divine because it means we can get a lot of work done without a lot of pushback from our insides or the Universe. It might land differently to you, but I will say this. If an opportunity arises around these dates and that opportunity is creative or interpersonal or financial, really take a moment to tap into your damn values. Take a moment.

Venus is Retrograde. You're supposed to be learning about yourself through your lived experience, but not just through your lived experience⁠—through that rule of re, through reflecting on your lived experience so that you can reassess if needed, and then recalibrate or not.

Now we get into the more challenging part of the transits this week. Okay. We have, on the 15th, an exact square between the Sun and Uranus. This is exact at 7:35 p.m. We've got the Sun at 23 degrees and zero minutes of Leo, and Uranus is at the same degrees⁠, 23 degrees and zero minutes⁠ of Taurus.

Sun square Uranus is an upsetting transit. When you hear me say upsetting, you may think bad. It's not bad. It's just like an earthquake. It upsets things. It moves everything around in ways that you weren't expecting. That's how Uranus functions. It just throws in curveballs, basically. It's a sports metaphor that I don't understand but I use a lot.

Okay. So Sun square Uranus can play out in a number of ways. And whenever we're dealing Uranus, it's going to be difficult to predict. Uranus can be very explosive. It literally governs explosives. What this means is things can kind of pop off in ways you are not planning or expecting. This is why Uranus is associated with accidents. And certainly, whenever we go through a square to or from Uranus, we become a little bit more accident prone. This is in part because our energy is so funky-dunct that we are not focused on the present moment. We're not fully present in the moment, and then accidents can more easily occur. So, if you're feeling all twisted around inside of your brains, look twice before you cross the street. Maybe drive a little slower, that kind of thing.

Uranus governs our nervous system. When we have a Sun square to Uranus, oftentimes people feel tense or nervy. So this can translate to being distracted, being irritable. It can translate to being jumpy or just⁠, if you're somebody who already has a tense nervous system, being really on edge, being anxious. It can play out in all those ways, but the truth of the matter is it can also make you feel excited. If you have the capacity to be open-minded, to be flexible and adaptable, it can bring about changes that expand your worldview, change what you thought was possible, and facilitate new experiences that are, again, exciting and bring you closer to being authentic within yourself.

Now, the Sun and Uranus, when they are together, can really be a time where our circumstances change. Something shifts that we weren't planning, and then we get to totally be a different part of ourselves, embody a different part of ourselves. And that can be incredibly cool, right? That can be incredibly cool. It can help us to show up in new ways and, through that experience, find new ways of being, even when the transit's not active.

If surprises, upsets, things not going according to plan makes you want to kind of clamp down and force everything to stay as it was, yeah, you're going to have a harder time with this energy. So adaptability is required. That's what's happening. You're going to be feeling this the 14th, 15th, 16th, especially the 15th. So adaptability is required. And if you find that you just do not want to be adaptable, you cannot be adaptable, you cannot change, you will not change⁠—that's interesting. Look into that. It may be because of a fantastic reason, and you cosign on your own attitudes. Or it may be that you're in your way. It may be that you've got a habit that has become a rut, and it's worth investigation.

It's important to remember that there's a reason why these transits occur. It's so that we can not get stuck on our path, so that we can continue to evolve. Now, if I was at the helm of all things, would I make a lot of these transits a lot easier? Hell yeah, I would. But it's nice to know what the meaning is so that you can make the most of it if it is a pain in your ass.

Now, because the Sun is square to Uranus so close to Mercury going Retrograde, you may have technological problems. This is just kind of how it goes. Try to be patient. This may be a moment that teaches you how reliant you are on whatever technologies you use and might be a great reminder for you to put things in place for when shit breaks.

This transit may require that you change. That's Uranus for you⁠—wants us to change. It wants us to evolve and grow. And it is important to remember that this transit is occurring in fixed signs. So change may not be that easy. But it is really valuable to be able to note where you're not willing to change, where you're not even willing to consider change, where it feels too hard, or where you feel super defensive around being asked to change.

I also think there's something important to consider around the difference between conceding a point here or there versus compromising yourself overall as a whole. Sometimes we need to make small concessions in order to achieve our larger goals of maybe getting along or getting a project done with somebody or whatever the hell it is. As long as you're not compromising your values, your central self, in order to do a thing, it is maybe not so bad. I mean, maybe it is. I don't know. But maybe it's not. Again, what Uranus wants us to do is ask questions and to ask questions of the things that we think are set in stone. This is the gift and annoyance of Uranus, is that it really has us questioning everything.

Now, back to this thing I said kind of at the start of my description about explosions. This transit can be associated with outbursts. So it may be from you. It may be from somebody on the street that you don't know. And it might be from somebody that you're in relationship to. And if you are dealing with some sort of an outburst, this transit can lead to violence. It's not inherently a violent transit, but it certainly can. And I think it's worth noting that we are living through some really exceptional times where the climate is violent. Social conditions are heightening, and there's just a lot going on.

This is one of those transits where you just want to be tracking your own energy and your own participation. Don't start shit if you don't want shit. This is not a time where you need to get into it with people unless you feel that you need to get into it with people. When we get stimulated by Uranus, it makes us feel out of control. It makes us feel anxious or nervy. What a lot of people do is they're like, "I feel bad. Now I'm going to find somebody else who's annoying me, and I'm going to let them fucking know." That is a redirect of energy that can cause more harm than help. It's not kind to yourself. It's certainly not kind to whoever is eating your shit.

And because we're dealing with Uranus, this could particularly happen online. If you're feeling really agitated, maybe stay out of the comment section. No matter how righteous you feel, stay out of the comment section. Experiment with how it could feel to stay with your own energy and not project it outwards on others, again, unless it's absolutely necessary.

The last thing I'll tell you about this transit is it is inherently unstable. And so this is not a good time for making permanent decisions. I think, before Mercury Retrograde, a lot of times, people kind of rush to sign the contract, make the choice, buy the ticket, whatever. And I'm not going to tell you that's right or wrong, but I will tell you the 14th, 15th, and 16th⁠—not the time to do that. It's just not the time. Sun square Uranus is a bad time for making permanent decisions or locking yourself in because Uranus governs the unpredictable and changeable.

So keep everything that I've said in mind about the Sun square to Uranus as I tap into the New Moon in Leo, exact at 2:38 a.m. on the 16th of the following day, because the Sun square Uranus is very much an active part of this New Moon. And on this same day, we also have another transit that is exact. It is a Mars trine to Uranus. Mars and Uranus are both at 23 degrees of Virgo and Taurus respectively. That transit is exact at 6:53 a.m., several hours later, but still in the morning. So it's all kind of tightly happening here.

We've got a lot to talk about. Let me get into this New Moon. New Moons always occur when the Sun and Moon are at the exact same degree, same sign. And a New Moon happens approximately once a month. So this is our New Moon in Leo. Leo is getting a lot of attention and energy, which means all you fixed-sign-dominant people are really feeling the astrology lately, right?

So we've got the Sun and Moon at 23 degrees and 17 minutes this New Moon. Now, I want to let you know Uranus is at 23 degrees of Taurus and zero minutes. It is 17 minutes off of being exact. That is a very freaking tight square between the New Moon and Uranus. And I cannot stress enough how important looking at the Uranian influence is to understanding this New Moon.

Everything I said about the Uranus square to the Sun still applies here. but we also now have Uranus squaring the Moon. So, while a New Moon in Aquarius is a really powerful time for getting passionate and present for what really matters to us, for bringing our energy and engagement to, again, whatever it is that is most salient for us, the fact that Uranus is forming a square takes all bets off the table, see, because what Uranus does is it creates upsets. It shakes the energy up, and it makes it so that we do not have stability.

So this is not a good time for setting intentions. This is not a great time for doing any kind of manifestation work. New Moons generally are; they are the time of the month where we want to plant seeds. But because of Uranus's influence, we do not want to do that this particular month because Uranus is all about being present as things shift or get shaken up. And if you are present for changes, then you can respond to them in a way that is appropriate and aligned in the present. If you're too busy clutching on to your plans or your expectations or what you're trying to call into being, then you're not going to be present in the way that we are meant to be when Uranus comes by square or opposition, but especially by square.

So, while the New Moon in Leo would typically be a great time to plant seeds or start some new project that you feel really passionate and excited about, this New Moon is not going to give us that exact kind of energy because Uranus is meant to throw us off course, and not so that we're on the wrong path, but so that we get out of our own way and experiment and explore what else is possible.

This New Moon may come with some serious surprises. It may be that because Uranus squaring the Sun and Moon makes us feel anxious and restless, we may do things we weren't planning on doing or act in ways that we weren't planning on acting. So maybe you were planning on saying, "Excuse me. Please pass the mustard," but instead, you say, "Uh, past the mustard," and it lands different. And because everyone is going through this energy, everyone's likely to be kind of acting and reacting in nervy ways, you know? Nervy ways.

The Moon and New Moon transits are all about our feelings. That's the Moon's thing, is emotions. And Uranus is heady and nervous-systemy. So the battle between being in your head and being in your heart is one I imagine we will be experiencing this New Moon. And honestly, it's a good battle to be engaged in. It really is because I think most of us struggle with that, like engagement between, "What do I feel?" versus, "What do I think? Am I telling myself a story about what I feel? Do I actually feel this? How do I sit with my emotions?"

This is really tricky stuff. And the Uranus square to the New Moon in Leo is going to activate that, and that activation can bring greater self-awareness if we are willing to sit with whatever it is that comes up without making strong conclusions. This is really important, but it's not easy, because Mercury and Mars are both in Virgo. They're about three and a half degrees apart. So it's not an exact conjunction, but they are conjunct. And Mercury conjunction to Mars is reactive. It can put us in a defensive frame of mind. We may say things in a way that comes out more blunt or sharp than we mean to, or others may do that. And that's annoying.

Mercury and Mars, when they conjoin, square, oppose each other⁠—any of that kind of stuff⁠—it means that we're annoying. We are annoyed by other people, and we ourselves can annoy ourselves or others. And the irritability that this transit stimulates paired with Uranus squaring the Sun and Moon can lead to a lot of, again, combustive energy, a lot of explosive, defensive⁠—or even paranoid when it's turned inwards⁠—or self-critical energy. So we want to pay close attention to where we allow our minds to linger and our ability and willingness to have emotions that are upsetting or not quite what we want to be feeling.

Do your best to not rush to weave a story or create a defense for your strong emotional reactions. That'll really help you this New Moon. And this will plant seeds. It will plant seeds of your own mental and emotional health and wellness, and your ability to tolerate your own feelings and reactions is something that you want to be intentional about, that you want to plant seeds around. And you don't have to do this through a ritual. You can just do this through living your damn life. Now, if you want to do rituals, I'm not getting in your way. Do your thing.

But much like I always say during the Eclipses, you don't want to sit down with a beautiful tarot reading, all your individual little pieces of paper cards, and put them down on a blanket in a park during a windstorm. And Uranus, my friends, is that windstorm. It is an unpredictable set of energies that is meant to move things around. So, in general, I think it's a good question for us to ask ourselves this Venus Retrograde⁠—but also, of course, completely separate from Venus Retrograde⁠—what is it that compels us to rush to make things stable, certain, and secure? And is that impulse to make things stable, certain, and secure coming from a healthy, well-adjusted place or from fear? This New Moon is a great time to be asking yourself that kind of question.

Now, just to make things a little more juicy and complex, we have Venus sitting on top of the Sun and Moon. Venus is at almost 19 degrees, and that's four degrees away from the Sun and Moon, and it's also Square to Uranus. So this Venus Retrograde is a part of the mix. It's our values, and it's our willingness and ability to be loved, our relationships.

This New Moon may really throw a wrench in your relationships. It may really surprise you or, again, stimulate some sort of conflict or fight that you were not planning on participating in the way you do. So, if you find yourself really agitated by people, my advice to you is to be very freaking intentional about what you say and how you say it. And if you don't feel that you can control those things, like your reactions or your tone, it's perfectly reasonable to say, "Oh, I'm in a mood. I feel really testy. Don't take it personally. I'm going to try to stay silent and not engage," or some version of that.

We can use astrology to help us get ahead of our own bad behavior. And if somebody else drops shit in your lap, you may have a strong impulse to react. And that may or may not be bad. It's not inherently a good or a bad thing to react. You may have to deal with something. But it is also okay, if we're not talking about somebody treating you poorly as part of an ongoing pattern of treating you poorly⁠—if somebody typically treats you well but just acts out during this New Moon, yeah, you can be like, "Oh yeah. I know about astrology. I saw that coming. They must be really struggling with themselves because they're acting like a fool."

So, as long as it's not part of a pattern, it's not a bad way of being because having compassion for others is in part about not personalizing how they do or don't act around us, because a lot of the times, the way that a lot of us are behaving is in reaction to our own internal mess and not really about the person we're interacting with, which is not good or bad news. It just kind of is what it is.

Now, back to this New Moon, we also want to pay attention to Neptune forming an opposition to Mars. Neptune is at 27 degrees of Pisces. We've got Mars at 23 degrees of Virgo. So that's about four degrees off. Now let me tell you Neptune opposite Mars is a destabilizing transit in a really different way than the Uranus stuff. It's destabilizing because Mars is all about our ego. It's about vitality and virility. It's the planet that is associated with getting up and getting shit done. Neptune is all about the ether. It's about spirituality. It's about nonattachment. It is the least productive planet in the zodiac, and it's not meant to be a productive planet.

So, when these two planets sit opposite each other, we can feel freaking exhausted. We can feel easily depleted. And that can lead to feeling down on ourselves. If you're feeling easily defeated, if you're feeling like you just don't have the juj to make a thing happen, then it can lead to paranoid thinking. It can lead to insecurities and sadness and just feeling victimy or just off. So having this Neptune/Mars dynamic at play in the context of the rest of the chart, for me, is a little bit of a red flag because it lets us know that it may be easier to be in the head than the body because Mars is related to the body.

So, armed with that knowledge, my advice to you is to stay with the heart, to not let your head overrule your heart. And that doesn't mean that your feelings are facts, and it doesn't mean that you should prioritize behaving in any way based on your emotions. But it does mean, by honoring your feelings during this Lunar transit, you can learn more about yourself and facilitate your own growth and evolution, which is foundational to how you participate in your personal life and in the world.

Now, speaking of the world, we've got this New Moon that is bound to bring about surprises. And it's happening during this Venus Retrograde. Uranus is squaring Venus, the Moon, and the Sun. And so we may see legislation or some sort of behavior in public that directly impacts women and Genderqueer people, Queer people in general. Thank you to Uranus. And this is likely to be a curveball. So it could be great; it could be terrible. I don't know. It's just likely to be surprising.

Because Neptune is opposite to Mars, we want to watch out for religious extremism coming from men and patriarchal systems, patriarchal representatives. Neptune is related to devotional religiosity. It's not, per se, religion, but it is the deep devotion to the word of God or whatever. And as we know, so many wars and terrible, hateful behaviors have been justified over the course of time through religion. And so this is something we want to watch out for in the world, and we want to remember that spirituality is not meant to take us out of reality. It's meant to help us by guiding us towards acting in integrity, towards acting with empathy and kindness towards ourselves and others, including but not limited to, but including others who we don't know, we don't understand, or even we don't agree with.

Now, I'm not talking about having the back of somebody who is actively trying to harm you or hold you down, but somebody who is different from you and you just don't get it and you don't particularly like it⁠—it's not your fucking business, right? We know that. I feel like we all know that, but it's worth saying because we are living in really intense and potentially very violent times. And we want to make sure that we don't allow our own participation to get petty when what it needs to do is evolve, when what it needs to do is focus our precious and limited energy on what's important, what's valuable, instead of what tears others down and what's not our fucking business.

Okay. So I got one more thing to say about the New Moon. In this chart, we also have a Mars trine to Uranus, which is exact, and a Venus square to Jupiter, which is not exact. And these transits are incredibly helpful because the Venus square to Jupiter empowers us to be more empathetic, to be more loving and generous towards ourselves and others, and it brings in that Venus Retrograde, which is helping us to reflect on our values. And it does so in a way that is Jupiterian. It's expansive. It feels good.

The Mars trine to Uranus also feels good and helps us to take risks and to kind of get out of our own way. There is a lot of positive potential in this New Moon as long as we are willing to be adaptable, as long as we're willing to be curious and learn from our own reactions, learn from our own emotions, not just from our situations. These are powerful times of transition. And within that, we are meant to change and be changed. The best we can do in response to that is bring intention and integrity to the mix⁠—not always easy to do, but it is a really good practice to embody.

Now, my loves, I thank you so much for joining me on this week's episode of Ghost. I hope you also heard the most recent episode, 349, of Ghost, where I did a reading about breakups and how to not obsess on astrology and other woo shit online when you're feeling off. And so, if you missed that episode, it's easy to find wherever you listen to your podcasts. Also, I hope you know that I drop a transcription on my website. So, if you just want to read through the stuff I talk about, it's there for you to enjoy.

Finally, if you want to send me a question so that you can get a free reading on the podcast, you can do that over on my website, ghostofapodcast.com. But let me tell you what. Every time Mercury goes Retrograde, people get real sloppy with the questions. So read the pro tips. Check them out because those pro tips will help you to get your question chosen. And while you're on my website, I've got lots of webinars that you can purchase. You can check out my book. Peep around. It's cute in Lanyadoo world. I promise. It's very cute.

All right. Take good care of yourself and others. Don't forget we're living through a COVID spike, so mask up, wash your little paws, and I will talk to you in just a couple of days. Buh-bye.