Welcome to Ghost of a Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Lanyadoo. I'm an astrologer, psychic medium, and animal communicator, and I'm going to give you your weekly horoscope and no-bullshit mystical advice for living your very best life.

Welcome back to Ghost of a Podcast. This week, we're going to talk about the astrology of August 27th through September 2nd of 2023. There's a lot to talk about, including this is the last week of Venus Retrograde, which means it is the last week that Mercury and Venus are both Retrograde at the same time, as well as it being the last week of Venus Retrograde.

Now, to give you a sweet little reminder, Venus went Retrograde July 22nd, and it's ending on September 3rd. And we're going to be in a Venus shadow period until about October 7th. And as we are in this final week of Venus Retrograde, I do really want to encourage you to consider what's been going on in your life since late July, what has been activated in your relationships⁠—in your relationship to money and your values⁠—what may have been stimulated by this transit or not. Venus Retrograde can really trigger stuff within our relationship to how we look, to our self-worth. It can kick up really intense feelings around wanting to avoid conflict, or it can kick up some consequences to having avoided conflict or how we've handled conflict because Venus is related to diplomacy, amongst many other things.

So, while we're still in it⁠—but we only have about a week left⁠—it's a good moment to really just take some time to do some reflecting, not just on our values and our relationships and self-worth and our finances⁠—all the things that Venus governs⁠—but also on this very period of the Retrograde. This is just a really good use of astrology. It's flowing with the current of the energy in the world. It's working with the energy that is activated in ourselves and in the world around us. And doing so can just be really⁠—it can be really useful. It can be really inspiring, depending.

And if you are somebody who's trying to learn about astrology or learn about your birth chart, a really useful thing to do is to figure out what house transiting Venus in the zodiac sign of Leo has been moving through and to really reflect on what that's actually meant for you. And if you're like, "What the hell is a house?" well, then you can go to my website or a million other places online that offer free chart-drawing tools, and within that, there are lots of different systems you can use, house systems that you can use. And if you're interested in the topic of house systems, personally, me, I use Campanus houses for everything except for the general work of Sun-sign horoscope writing.

But I have an episode of Ghost of a Podcast about house systems. Maybe I actually have two separate episodes about house systems. They're Episodes 111⁠—that's the one where I really unpack with fellow astrologer Tony Howard what house system I use and kind of break down all the house systems. And if you're interested, that's a really good resource for getting a good download on house systems. But also, I have Episode 125, which is on interceptions. And in Episode 99 of the podcast⁠—it's titled "How to Read a Birth Chart⁠"—I, of course, touch on houses. And then, finally, I've got Episode 103, which is just about the houses themselves, so what each of the houses means.

And these episodes are from a series I was doing called Hot Takes back during the early year or years of the pandemic. And I have a bunch of these Hot Take episodes that are kind of breakdowns of astrology⁠—how to use astrology, how to understand it. So, if you're newer to the podcast or if you missed those or just want to revisit them, those are some good episodes to listen to. And if you want to listen to them on my website over at ghostofapodcast.com, all you gotta do is click on the Listen Here button when you find the name of an episode, and it'll bring you not only to the audio but the full transcript so you can read along if you want or need. Okay? Okay.

And speaking of clarifying things and also explaining things, during a Mercury Retrograde, I want to remind you that you can still register for my August 29th class on Mercury Retrograde. I'm calling it Mercury in Gatorade: A Mercury Retrograde Party. And I'm calling it a fucking Mercury Retrograde party because it'll be fun. I like to think all my classes are pretty fun, but not just that, but because we need to stop catastrophizing Mercury Retrograde. It's annoying. It's messy. It's troublesome in various ways. But it is far from a trauma or a disaster. Really, it really is. If you're experiencing disaster or catastrophe in your life, it is not because of this Retrograde, or any Retrograde, really. That's just not how Retrogrades function.

So, in this class, I'm going to break stuff down. I'm going to touch on what it means to have Mercury Retrograde in your birth chart⁠—in the context especially of a Mercury Retrograde transit⁠—different ways to kind of approach your nervous system, your mind⁠—because Mercury⁠—and a little woo. We're going to get a little woo. I'm going to give you some ritual stuff. It's going to cover a lot of bases and to be as practical as you would expect from me, your Jessica, a Sun, Moon, and Rising in Capricorn.

So, if you want to register for the class, you can do so by following the link in show notes or going to my website or using the Linktree that I have on social media. Oh, I should say one last thing. It's Mercury Retrograde, so there will be technical difficulties, and we're just going to roll with it. We're just going to be as graceful and understanding as we can because Mercury governs flexibility, adaptability. That's what we're here to do.

Now, there's something else I want to say before we get into the details of this week's horoscope, and it's, have you noticed the mounting, intensifying energies in the world? I mean, I'm going to assume you have. And maybe you have because you're feeling it⁠. You're feeling it in your own personal life. You're feeling it in your gut or your chest or your head. You're feeling this sense of things becoming kind of hotter, and I don't just mean the climate crisis, although⁠—holy shi⁠t— so much is happening with the climate. It feels very much⁠—all of a sudden, in some ways, it's just a lot of fire, a lot of flood. There's a lot happening on this Earth. Also, there's a lot happening all over the world with people coming together and standing up for their rights, fighting for what they believe in, fighting for freedom and liberty.

That's on the collective level. Now, you may be feeling this on a personal level. I think a lot of us are. And I've been really looking at what astrologically is happening that would bring us all this intensity, and some of it, if I can just have you peek behind the curtains with me for a moment⁠—some of it is, I think, somewhat unknowable in that the climate crisis is a global event, and I don't think that there is an established reliable astrology for it, partially because it's somewhat novel. This is a new thing. It's human created. And just because it's human created doesn't mean that there wouldn't be an astrology for it, but it is really hard to cast a chart for something like the climate.

And there are certainly other things happening astrologically that we can turn to for looking at worldwide revolution and of people-led movements, populace movements. And they are things that I've touched on in the year-ahead horoscope and I'm going to get to again in a coming episode. But I do want to name this one sweet little thing called Jupiter conjunction to Uranus. Now, this transit is not going to be exact this year.

When we're looking at larger social movements, when we're looking at big, worldwide astrology, we use a much wider orb. We can see that Jupiter and Uranus are eight degrees apart right now, and they are activating so much in the world. And you want to keep in mind that Jupiter is about freedom and expansion, and Uranus is about individuation and liberty. Uranus is related to queerness, and I don't mean gayness, but I mean things that are odd, things that are considered eccentric or counterculture. And you want to remember that what is considered subversive or counterculture is relative to the culture we're discussing or the time that we're discussing it in.

But when Jupiter and Uranus come together, there is a deep cry for freedom. There is a deep need for freedom. And these two planets are in the zodiac sign of Taurus. So, again, what you want to do on a personal level to try to see, "Okay, these planets are close to each other"⁠—what might it be activating in you? They're not conjunct, but what might they be starting to light up in you? That's what you would look for. Where is Taurus in your birth chart?

And then, when we look at larger events, we can see that so much of the energy that is mounting for people to demand freedom for Queer rights, for women's rights, for the right to practice whatever religion or not that you want, and even rights for privacy and autonomy on the damn internet⁠—all of these things are related to this transit. And so we want to really track these things as they mount. These two planets will be sitting on top of each other in 2024, so we have quite a while for this energy to mount. And I'm watching it with great interest and some excitement.

This can be explosive. It can be explosive energy, which is absolutely not inherently good or bad but can be dangerous and harmful, hurtful, to people. So when you're feeling just exuberant and like nothing can stop you is a time where you can kind of do great things and really grow, and it's also a time where you can, maybe unintentionally, run over people because you're so focused on your own energies, your own lived experience, that you aren't really focused on everybody else's. So these are things to⁠—it's just like it's really in my head because there is such heat and passion, and there is a lot of directions that it can go.

So, all of that said, let's get straight into the horoscope of this week. Again, we're looking at August 27th through September 2nd of 2023. The first exact transit this week is on the 27th, and I kind of touched on it last week because you started to feel it on that Saturday, the 26th. And that is a Sun opposition to Saturn. We know that this transit is a bit of a boner killer. Saturn is all about restrictions, constrictions, consequences. It can be related to hardship, or it can be related to simply hard work.

And when the Sun, the planet that governs our vitality and our will⁠—it is a bright light that does not want to be restricted. It wants to be seen. It wants to be valued. When the Sun is opposite to Saturn, what we have is generally a sense of being compromised, like our circumstances or specific people are kind of forcing our hand, forcing us to dim our light, forcing us to curb our potential or our energy. It can be a real boner killer. It's not fun.

When the Sun forms an opposition to Saturn, what we will often find that we're doing is kind of bumping up against our own control issues or the control issues of others. So that might be literally a neighbor is being loud and you are stressing yourself out, or a neighbor has asked you to stop being so loud and you feel cramped in or something. You can be the Saturn; you could be the Sun in this situation. And you may, in multiple situations, play different roles during this transit.

The thing that we're meant to be learning here is boundaries and consequences. And I don't mean boundaries in a Neptunian context. I mean it in a Saturnian context, which is to say, what are the rules and regulations here? What are your rights and your responsibilities here? What is it that you need to do or needs to get done? We often feel like we don't have the energy to get that done or make progress, or the progress we wish we were making, during this transit. And therefore, it can lead to feelings of insecurity, guilt. It can make us feel just depressive and down.

It's a transit that tends to coincide with lowered vitality, and you're going to feel that in particular if this transit stimulates anything in your birth chart. So that would mean that you would have something at about four degrees of a mutable sign. So the mutable signs are Virgo, Pisces, Gemini, and Sagittarius. So, if you have any planet in a mutable sign, you want to check and see if it's early degrees, if it's going to be aspected by this particular transit. So this is where you want to know not only what zodiac sign you have any planet in or important point in your birth chart, but also the degrees because you can have lots of mutable placements, and they may be in the late degrees of a sign, in which case you're not going to feel it especially.

So I want to just come back to Saturn, which is related to our father issues, theoretically. It's not really always about the father. It's about the paternal parent, which is not exclusive to gender. It was at one time, because of nurture, not nature. But I think we have to be mindful that the Saturnian parent is not always the father figure at all.

This transit, especially if it's hitting your chart directly, can bring up issues with your Saturnian/paternal-style parent or somebody who plays that role with you. So that might be your partner or your bestie or your roommate or your boss or your landlord. You get where I'm going, right? Saturnian figures. And a Sun opposition to Saturn, because it's an opposition⁠—right? Whenever we're looking at oppositions, they tend to be experienced relationally. So we may have struggled with that person, whether it's an active struggle or it's like, "I feel all these feelings"⁠—that kind of struggle.

The more agency you can locate in yourself to understand that you have choices in how you engage, the better, because Saturn can lead us to feeling pretty demoralized. And what we're meant to do with Saturnian energies is conserve our energies, be patient, to persevere, and not just in some willy-nilly way, but with intention, having a sense of long game, having a damn plan.

So, if you find that you keep on encountering people who play a particular role that reminds you of somebody from your childhood⁠—or maybe it is your parents, and they keep on playing this role⁠—you can keep on focusing on the other person all you damn want, obsessing on what they said, they did, what happened in their life, didn't happen in their life, is very common for us in relationships. It's also⁠—it's a huge waste of our precious energy.

What you want to do with this transit⁠—I would say in general as well⁠—is to identify how you're choosing to participate in things as they are. How are you participating? What narrative do you have running? How can you best use your energies, conserve your energies, and utilize your energies? Both of those concepts, of utilization and preservation, are both related to Saturn. That's how you make the most of this transit.

Now, I'll say some people will experience this transit as a real giddyap and go moment, like a moment where you feel like, "Okay. I know what needs to be done, and I've got the drive to make that happen." So, if you're somebody who can really focus and get shit done, this transit can help with that. It can help the focus. It can help you do the administrative-style tasks, the boring tasks, the unglamorous things⁠—get those things done to support your big-picture goals. Again, the gift of Saturn is not glamorous, but it is really useful. That's Saturn for you.

So that's what's happening exactly on the 27th, but that's not the last you're going to hear of this Sun/Saturn opposition.

I need to tell you about The Partnership. It's the nation's disability and disaster hub led by and for disabled people throughout disasters in the U.S. and across the world. They fill the gaps in the traditional humanitarian response for people with disabilities and is the only U.S. disability-led 501(c)(3) organization that prioritizes equity, access, disability rights, justice, and full inclusion of people with disabilities, older adults, and people with access and functional needs before, during, and after disasters and emergencies. Disability-led, inclusive emergency management is paramount for the equitable future we're aiming towards together. Learn more and give what you can at disasterstrategies.org/donate.

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.

States across the U.S. have advanced a record number of bills attacking Transgender rights and threatening the health and safety of Trans people and their families. Whether you're Trans and looking for support or an ally wanting to help, here are three organizations to know about. There's MTUG, or Metro Trans Umbrella Group, serving Trans people directly in the St. Louis area; Transgender Education Network of Texas, which is an advocacy and resource group; and lastly, A Place for Marsha, which facilitates safe housing for Trans individuals escaping transphobic states. Check out these resources, signal boost, and support them however you can.

And the reason why you're going to hear more about this Sun/Saturn opposition is because on the 30th, at 6:36 p.m. Pacific Time, we have a Full Moon in Pisces at seven degrees of Pisces. And this is called a Blue Moon. The reason why it's called a Blue Moon is because we have one Full Moon per month, and then every once in a Blue Moon, as the expression goes, we have two Full Moons in a month. And this is one of those months where we have two Full Moons. One was at the start of the month, and here we have our second Full Moon. This one is in Pisces, and it is happening, as I said, at 7 degrees and 25 minutes of Pisces.

And that means, my loves, Saturn, sitting at 3 degrees and now 33 minutes of Pisces, is conjunct the Moon at 7 degrees of Pisces. And they're both opposite to the Sun, giving this Full Moon a heavy fucking vibe. Saturn conjunct the Moon makes us feel depressed⁠—so not clinically depressed, but literally, it takes the air out of your tires kind of thing. Saturn is heavy and consequential, and the Moon is tender and is really cyclical. It's all about ebbing and flowing. And Saturn is like, "Ebbing and flowing? No. We do steel. We do wood. We make it permanent. It's out of concrete."

So the weight of Saturn on the Moon can be really difficult to deal with. And as we know, Full Moons are all about emotions coming to the surface. And when we're dealing with the polarity of Virgo, where the Sun is, and Pisces, where the Moon is, what we're dealing with is the tension between material rituals and habits that we must have in order to be healthy or get our shit taken care of⁠—so Virgo is all about the mundane, and Pisces is all about the ethereal. It's all about the felt. It's our sense impressions. It's about our imagination and our ideals, which is⁠—again, it's opposite energies of Virgo.

So having Saturn sitting on top of that Moon in Pisces⁠—straight out the gate, it can be quite painful. So you may be feeling heavyhearted. It's like a very literal interpretation of those two planets sitting on top of each other. You may be feeling heavyhearted. You may be dealing with feelings of loneliness because Saturn can make us feel alone even when we're surrounded by people who love us. It can bring up complicated feelings around family and belonging in general.

Because it's a Full Moon in Pisces, it's just going to be really emo. If you are somebody who is at all sensitive to other people's energies, this is going to accentuate that. And because Saturn is sitting on top of the Moon, because the Sun is in Virgo, because Mercury is Retrograde in Virgo, this is a really important Full Moon to consider what you do to take care of yourself. What are the things you do? What are the habits you have around self-care and self-management? What are the rituals and routines that you perform to inspire you, to support you, to create safety and wellness and foundation for success in your life?

And it is really complicated. It's complicated. Most of us have a bunch of tools in our tool chest, but we don't use them consistently or at all⁠—only when we're supremely desperate. And what this Full Moon time, so what this Full Moon specifically but in particular because we have these Retrogrades⁠—focusing in this moment on Mercury Retrograde, but we've got the two big Retrogrades⁠—this is really a time for following that rule of re's: to reflect so that you can refine because Virgo energies want us to refine.

You may feel sad or bad on this Full Moon. That is certainly possible. But what's not working, what feels bad, is what's trying to draw your attention. And if you can be responsible to yourself, that's really powerful. Now, I'm really focusing on self-care and self-maintenance and all of that, and I'm doing so because it's really what's coming up during this Full Moon. But also, I want to clarify because the better you are at maintaining your own emotions, your own mind, your own habits, the better equipped you are to show up for others, to let other people know, "Hey, I would love to hear about what's going on with you right now, but I'm not in the right headspace. I'm going to call you tomorrow," or whatever. Being able to be responsible to yourself means that you can be responsible to others. And that's really important.

So when I'm talking about self-care, it's not to the exclusion of showing up for the individual people in your life, your community, the world at-large. It's understanding that that's a foundational requirement to doing those things⁠—not always, not for everyone, but generally speaking.

But if you⁠—I don't know⁠—are like most people living through a global pandemic, the topic of health and the habits we have for keeping ourselves and our communities safe and healthy has been really up for the past few years. And this Full Moon may be bringing a lot of stuff up. COVID is spiking. And we have proven ourselves as a species to be real assholes in the way that we have engaged with this. The outrage that people feel, the agitation that people feel, the entitlement that people feel to not mask, when long COVID exists⁠—it's a failure on a bunch of levels, but one of those levels is a failure in empathy⁠—Pisces⁠—and community-based behavior and thinking⁠—Saturn/Moon conjunction in Pisces.

So we may see more right-wing eugenicist bullshit happening in left and right spaces because, unfortunately, the left is absolutely guilty of this, too, the toxic individualism of just being like, "It's not my problem. I'm fine." So this may be a time for you to reconsider. And all that means, my sweet darling friends⁠—popping a mask on in indoor spaces, public spaces. That's all. That's all it means, literally.

This Full Moon has a loose opposition between Mercury and Neptune. That's Mercury Retrograde and Neptune. So that kind of intensifies these Virgo/Pisces polarity feelings and needs, both on the individual level and in the collective. And kind of in plainer terms, it can lead to more confusion, a greater need for empathy and grace with ourselves and others, and it can intensify the mushy messiness of this Mercury Retrograde.

We also have that Venus Retrograde forming a square still to Jupiter, which is a lovely thing. It is a lovely thing. That particular aspect is good for relating to others and feeling connected. So that's a nice little support to that Saturn/Moon heavy, kind of lonely energy. Jupiter/Venus square means that it can be that if you get outside of your own scarcity-based feelings and you reach out to people, that there is authentic connection, that there is love, that there is support. So it's certainly worth trying.

But here's the rub. This transit alone is lovely, Venus/Jupiter square. But in the context of everything else that's happening, the risk that we confuse attention for love is real. Not all forms of sweetness exchanged, interpersonal ease, and socially getting along is equal. Some of it is really superficial and cannot have enough depth to it so that it can't hold what's actually happening for you, who you actually are. That can make you feel lovely in the moment, but it doesn't touch the loneliness. And we all have loneliness inside of us. It is chronically there in a really intense way for a lot of us all the time, and then it only comes up in special moments for others. But it's kind of part of the human condition.

And when we have a Full Moon that brings up so much emotion, that is a time for things to come to the surface to be released. When we have a Full Moon in Pisces, with Saturn sitting on top of it especially, during this Mercury/Venus Retrograde time, it is a particularly important time that we don't just seek connection or distraction⁠—that we seek quality of connection that actually supports us in loving ourselves and sharing love with others, receiving love, giving love, intimacy.

And so that might come through a casual encounter, and it might come through something more deep. But this Venus Retrograde square to Jupiter is asking us to not just seek connection but to seek connection where there is an agreement on values. And that's real big. It's a really big thing, and it's something that I think all humans struggle with at least sometimes in our lives if not all the damn time.

And because of the Saturnian element of this Full Moon, and even, I would say, because of the Retrogrades having us look within, this can be a Full Moon that is meaningfully pivotal in our internal organization around our sense of belonging, our willingness and ability to care for ourselves and others. But it's not pivotal in a Uranian or even a Jupiterian way where it's just like, "Bing," like something happened, and you just feel like you turned a corner and everything is clear.

The expectation I have of this Full Moon is that it's more Saturnian. Again, it's kind of like tilling the soil, planting the seeds, and next season, the growth that we have, the crop that we have, is better, is different. I'm a fan of that. I think that's really great because I would rather have sustainable results than quick results⁠—not that they can't have been at the⁠—we can have sustainable and quick. But Saturn is conjunct the Moon, so I'm not going to bank on that.

Just because things don't radically change in an observable way immediately doesn't mean they haven't changed in meaningful or even radical ways. We want to be patient with our progress. All this Virgonian energy⁠—Sun, Mercury Retrograde in Virgo⁠—it can be quite perfectionistic. It can be looking for purity. And purity and perfection are terrible goals for humans, who are not meant to be perfect.

The ideal of purity is⁠—there's contexts in which it's great, but we have to be realistic and honest about in the context of our spirituality. It is a white colonial concept that, especially in our modern world, in online spaces, can quickly lead us into white supremacist, Christian nationalist, very homophobic, transphobic, racist places. We want to be really careful with purity culture and with the ideals of purity, which, again, are very related to Virgonian energies.

Freedom is not freedom from feeling bad. Freedom is not freedom from pain. Freedom is not allowing yourself to be defined by your problems alone, not allowing yourself to become nothing but your pain. And to listen. Some situations, we are nothing but our pain. That's life. But this idea that so many people in spiritual spaces have and so many spiritual practitioners promise is that all pain is bad; you should avoid all pain. All pain is a problem. That just is idealistic.

I see a pipe dream, in my view, because if the human condition was meant to be all ease, all joy, all flow, completely natural, no interventions, no struggles, then riddle me this, riddle master: how come we have Saturn? Explain to me Uranus. What is going on with Neptune? And also Pluto. Huh? Even Mars. Even Mercury. None of the planets describe a pure and perfect life, a pure and perfect person, a pure and perfect choice. What we want to be able to do is simply our best given all the considerations, right? Simply our best, and to keep on trying and growing. That's really it.

So show yourself some grace if you're not there yet, if it's not it. And show others grace as they fuck up, as they will, as we all will. Now, of course, I'm not encouraging you to eat shit. I'm not encouraging you to have no discernment. We want to have discernment. But let that discernment empower our common sense and not be used as a tool to veer us away from things that feel bad even when they're real.

Anyways, so this is a big Full Moon, a big, emo, powerful Full Moon. That's it. That's the whole horoscope, two major transits. It's enough. As we say, dayenu. It is enough. I will add this one very important detail, which is that this week includes the 1st of September, and on the 1st of September, I drop a bonus episode of Ghost of a Podcast. Well, on the first of every month, I drop a bonus episode of Ghost of a Podcast where I delineate all of the transits of the month ahead. And it is exclusive content only on Patreon.

I love my patrons, and I love all the stuff that I get to post on Patreon. It's a space where I get to answer a lot of questions and unpack spiritual and astrological concepts. I've got a couple classes, fall classes, teaching two different tarot decks. And we get super woo. I mean, you know, if you're into that kind of thing, you may want to join me there. And the link for that is all over the damn place. It's on my website. It's in my Linktree and in show notes. So there's no excuse to not join, unless of course you don't want to, in which case that's a great excuse.

All right, my loves. Thank you for joining me this week and every week for Ghost of a Podcast. If you get value from the show, please do consider hitting that Subscribe or Follow button wherever you listen to your podcasts because it does really help. And again, if you get value from the show, please do write a positive review. It really makes a difference, and also, it touches my damn heart.

I'm going to give you one more heads-up, which is that on this upcoming Wednesday, you're going to be able to hear a reading about the second Saturn Return. I'm giving somebody a reading who's going through their second Saturn Return. And then the following week, I am giving a reading to somebody who's going through their third Saturn Return.

Yeah, all you young people being like, "Saturn Return, Saturn Return," there's three if you get to be that old, which is super cool. And I'm very excited to be able to have done both of these readings and to share them with you because there's a lot of readings I've done about the Saturn Return, which you can find in my feed, but not as much on the second two, like the one that happens closer to 60 and closer to 90. So yeah. I'm really excited to be able to share those, so don't miss a damn episode is what I'm trying to say. Why would you miss out? Don't do it.

Okay. I'll talk to you in a couple days. Buh-bye.