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.

Darlings, darlings, darlings, welcome back to Ghost of a Podcast. This week, we're going to be looking at the astrology of September 17th through the 23rd. And I am very happy to report Mercury Retrograde is over. Venus Retrograde is over. Yeah, we're in the shadow period, but it's over. And so you may find that the messiness that was Mercury Retrograde eases. Unfortunately, the ease⁠⁠—you're not going to feel it immediately, due to some other astrological events which I will tell you about in just one moment. But it's nice to know that you can't blame your problems on Mercury Retrograde anymore. You gotta find something else. Right? Okay.

So, before I get into the details of this week's horoscope, I want to talk about something that's happening astrologically in a broader sense. And it's something that I really just touched on in the 2023 year-ahead forecast, and it's related to Saturn and Neptune both being in Pisces. Now, Saturn is at only about two degrees of Pisces right now, while Neptune is closer to 26 degrees of Pisces. So they're not conjunct, but they are both very much in the zodiac sign. And that is a pretty unusual thing, largely because Neptune takes about 165 years to move through all of the zodiac signs. And so it is not frequent that it is in any sign, let alone the zodiac sign of Pisces. And a lot of things have to come together for Neptune to be in Pisces at the same time that Saturn is in Pisces.

So this is a really important astrological development, and it is one of several indicators of worker-led movements fighting against ruling classes. And it's not exclusive to worker-related movements, but it's populace movements. It's movements were the people come together because of collectively shared conditions. And this makes sense because the zodiac sign of Pisces very much governs how we are all interconnected and how we are all part of something much larger than ourselves.

And when we're dealing with reality-based Saturn and spiritual Neptune, it is not surprising that we are individually and collectively dealing with strikes, deep disillusionment around capitalism and other structures that kind of hold us apart and have us living in inhumane conditions. And also, on the flip side, it is very much about people like the billionaire who⁠—I'm not going to name his name, because fuck that guy⁠—saying the quiet part out loud, that the 1 percent want people to hurt economically so that we have no choice but to work harder and longer for them, that we should remember our place is to serve them and not the other way around.

So this is the kind of conditions that the last time Neptune and Saturn were both in Pisces, that were happening around the world. I mean, it's very different, but the ruling class is oppressing the bulk of the population. And so much of the world's population coming together to fight for their own freedoms and for their own autonomy and for basically more humane conditions⁠—this is what we would expect of a time when Saturn and Neptune are both in Pisces.

Now, the last time these two transits occurred, there were a lot of people-led movements, and unfortunately, they were not especially successful. But we can learn from history. It's one of the very important reasons to study history, and it's also one of the many really useful things about astrology, is for us to understand the time we're living in and how it is connected to the past.

And so I think it's really important that we come together in a structured way, which is part of where the conversation about unions is so important, because are unions perfect? No, they're not perfect. But they are a structure, and they're an important one. And we are seeing strikes all over the world, from UK to Japan to Australia, Sri Lanka, the U.S. And here in the U.S. alone⁠—I mean, I have this massive list. I was going to make this list of all the strikes to tell you about that have been happening in 2023 in this country, but the list was too long. It was so long.

And there's a lot of them that you probably know about, like the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike, but there's also the United Auto Workers. We have healthcare workers, flight attendants, nurses, pilots, teachers. Marvel Studios is voting to unionize. We had 80 Starbucks stores unionizing just this year alone. The list could go on and on and on. But we are in a time where it is not only important to come together but to have some structure to how we come together, because Piscean energies, when there isn't enough structure, can kind of dissipate. And that doesn't really help us as a people. It doesn't help us to get shit done.

Another thing about Piscean energies that are really important⁠—and this is very much about the big picture of what's happening 2023/2024 in astrology, but it's also related to this week's horoscope. We'll get there in a second. But to be sure, Neptunian energies/Piscean energies are about sacrifice. They're about self-sacrifice and also sacrifice in a larger sense. This can be felt on a personal level but also collectively.

And it's important to acknowledge that not all sacrifice is good or bad. But when it comes to people-related movements, it tends to be that the most is asked of the people who have the least. What I'm trying to say is the people who have the least end up sacrificing the most, which is not how it should be in a just society. Meanwhile, we have people who have the most and are the most unaccustomed to sacrifice, who often buckle first within people-led movements. And we're seeing this all over town, of course, with people in Hollywood. But this is where we must be thinking in terms of collectivity.

If we accept and believe that we are all interconnected in that Piscean way, that we are interconnected to each other, to people we do and don't know⁠—we're connected to the planet; we're connected to our ancestors and to the future⁠—then building a just and safe world has to be incumbent upon us all. And hopefully we all believe that. I don't know. Maybe we don't. There's a lot of us, so we don't have to all agree on the same things.

But this astrology, the broader astrology of these times, is asking us to explore our own relationship to sacrifice. And here in the United States, where I and many of you live, more than most other places, if not any other place, when we are considering our relationship to sacrifice and self-sacrifice, we must consider our relationship to toxic individualism. And the word "toxic" sounds so judgy, but let's take the judgment out of it. We all have toxicity in our systems and in the world around us. And it's not awesome, but it's kind of part of the program here as a human.

So looking at the ways in which our relationship to individualism is toxic is really valuable. It's just really healthy and valuable. And within that, we have the opportunity to explore how we show up for others, how we show up for ourselves, how we show up in the world or not. This shouldn't need to be said, but I might as well just throw it in the mix: don't support scabs. Don't be a scab, right? Don't watch shows or patronize businesses that are known to be scabs or known to be cruel to their workers. And obviously, we can't⁠—I mean, that's most of the world, so we can't always do that. And that is life. But it's a good general direction to point yourself in.

If you have financial abundance, look at your relationship to mutual aid, tithing, donations, whatever resonates with you. If you have energy to spare, if you have time, it is valuable to look at your relationship to the same things: mutual aid, donating your time, supporting causes or individuals or whatever it is. All of this Piscean energy requires us to not just be connected in consequential ways but to understand that is a part of our spiritual experience as humans.

And the flip side of being connected to ourselves spiritually, being connected to the world and to others, is Piscean disassociation, checking out, waiting for other people to take care of it, being martyrs instead of showing up in a way that is healthy. A lot of people have a really negative association with the concept of sacrifice. And I think that, again, there can be really unhealthy ways that we experience and express sacrifice. But sometimes we just need to let go of our individual concerns, our ego drives, and find ways of participating because it's the right thing to do. And other times, that's not it.

So, within the concept of sacrifice, within the concept of collectivity, we must have boundaries. We must have collective boundaries and individual boundaries and energetic boundaries. These are really important things that I see playing out in the world and I bet are majorly playing out in your life or in the life of someone close to you, because hey, man, it's written in the stars, see?

Now, we're stepping into Eclipse Season. We're not exactly there yet. In the context of these larger astrological themes and the upcoming Eclipses, I just want to put a bee in your bonnet, and I want to get you to start thinking about this: are you willing and able to make sacrifices for what you believe in? Can you live in accordance with your values? And when you can't or if you can't, what is the cost to your mental health? What is the cost to you spiritually? You don't need to have answers. Exploring questions is a path, and it's a really valuable one to set yourself on. So I invite you to explore those themes.

Related to that⁠—not precisely related to that, but related to that, I do want to share that I'm going to be teaching a class on October's Eclipses. We have a Solar Eclipse happening on October 14th and then a Lunar Eclipse on October 28th. So, on September 30th, I am going to be teaching a class on those two Eclipses because we don't want to do spiritual work⁠—we don't want to actually even do too much on and immediately around the Eclipses. So I wanted to create a resource to educate and support you around understanding what these Eclipses are about and healthiest ways to engage with them.

And this class will be, of course, taught from a humanistic perspective because I am a humanistic astrologer. That's just how I do it. So we're going to keep it human-centered because whenever we're dealing with Eclipses, whenever we're dealing with the Moon, the Moon wants us to be present. That's really what the Moon wants, and so that's what we're going to do. We're going to get emo, we're going to get present, and we're going to do some learning to support you to step into Eclipse Season with confidence. And the link to register for the class will, of course, be in the description of this episode and on my website.

Okay. So let's get into the details of this week's horoscope. The first exact transit of this week is happening on the 19th of September, and that is a very challenging Sun opposition to Neptune. As I mentioned just before, Neptune is at 26 degrees of Pisces. And so we have the Sun at 26 of Virgo opposite to Neptune at 26 of Pisces. Now, this transit can be really demoralizing. It can kick up feelings of hopelessness and panic and make you feel really disassociated. It can make you feel confused, exhausted, a.k.a. pretty fucking anxious and uncomfortable in your own skin.

And because we're dealing with the Virgo/Pisces polarity, some of this transit's energies are meant to kind of hold up a mirror to you around whether or not what you're doing day to day in the material world supports your mental and spiritual health, whether or not it's sustainable on those levels. I think the theme of burnout is very much in the air, and much of this has to do, again, with Saturn and Neptune both in Pisces. But we don't need to be astrologers to look at what we have gone through in the last several years culturally, socially, with the pandemic⁠—so medically⁠—to know that, yeah, so many of us are dealing with burnout. This is what's happening.

And a transit like the Sun opposite to Neptune can trigger feelings of burnout, so maybe not technical, official burnout, but you just may be fucking over it on this day. Or you may be perfectly fine but dealing with someone else who is super over it and just doesn't have the energy to give. The thing to know about this transit is when the Sun opposes Neptune, you or others are more likely to be gullible. You or others are more likely to misunderstand things.

So it's not Mercury Retrograde vibes, but as I kind of alluded to at the start of this episode, Mercury Retrograde is over, but the Sun/Neptune opposition is confusing. And because I feel super off, I may say something important to you in a way that's convoluted, or I make a mistake, I use the wrong word, and it just sets you off; it triggers you, or it just gives you the wrong information. And then you go off and waste your time or go off and feel weird, like, "Why don't you understand the thing I said?" It's confusing.

And so, because of this, people tend to feel insecure and uncomfortable and awkward and anxious and all the things I mentioned. If you are somebody who really derives meaning and confidence from what you do and you don't have a really strong resource in what you are, even when there isn't external evidence⁠—you're not proving yourself⁠—transits like this Sun opposition to Neptune are going to be especially hard because the Sun opposition to Neptune generally puts us in situations where we are not getting the kind of validation and reinforcement that we need or want. So it sucks.

And again, I tell you the degrees and the zodiac signs of the transits so that you can look at your own birth chart and see, "Is this most likely to directly impact me?" So, if you have any planets at around 26 degrees of a mutable sign⁠—so that's Virgo and Pisces and Gemini and Sadge⁠—you're going to feel this. And if you don't have anything anywhere close to the 20s, then you don't have, really, as much to worry about.

But again, I want to remind you that when planets are opposite each other, we often experience the transit as an interpersonal thing; it gets projected out⁠—me/you, us/them, that kind of thing. So here's the thing. This is not the time to try to⁠—I don't know⁠—send out your proposal or put yourself out there in some big, bold way, because the energy is just not strong.

The Sun opposition to Neptune wants us to look within. It wants us to sit in the discomfort, not necessarily to do anything, but to be present with what is. And when I say present, I mean distinctly not attached. And oftentimes, when we're putting ourselves out there, we are attached. We're attached to a projected outcome that we want. We're attached to our identity or insecurities, etc., etc. So I want to just encourage you, to the best of your ability, to track your attachments.

If you can, reschedule major things that are happening in your life away from the 18th, 19th, and 20th. And don't do shady shit, because if you do shady shit on and around this date, it is likely to really suck your energy from you and have negative consequences. And you might be dealing with other people who are doing shady shit on purpose or not on purpose. And this is, again, why you just⁠—if anything major happens on and around this date, you just give it 72 hours before you make any final assessments if you can. And if you can't, oh well. Triple-check. Do your best. You gotta live your life. You just want to use this to help you, not to freak you out.

This is a terrible time for doing drugs. I'm not talking about pharmaceuticals. Take your damn medicine. I'm talking about recreational drugs, consciousness-raising drugs. This is not a good time for it. This is not a great time for blurring boundaries, because Neptune already blurs boundaries so much. If you are energetically really sensitive person, this is the time to be doing your boundary work on an energy level as well as a psychological level, as well as a behavioral and material level. Do all the damn levels because Neptune blurs the boundaries between worlds in many ways.

So this is not the time to be like, "Okay. Cool. I want to blur the boundaries between worlds. I'm going to eat all the mushrooms. I'm going to call in the dead people," whatever it is. This isn't the time for that. This isn't the time for that. This is the time for turning within and seeing what's there, supporting yourself. When we go through challenging transits to or from Neptune, we want to think about nurturing the self instead of denying the self or challenging the self, whenever possible⁠—and it's not always possible, but whenever possible.

If you can, nap. If you can, drink lots of water. Do things that you know are fortifying, nurturing, grounding, and supportive to your mental and physical health because doing that will create a foundation that you have in your sweet little meat suit so that you can cope with the wonkadonk energy that is Sun opposite Neptune.

That brings us to the 20th, and we have a lovely transit happening on the 20th. And this one, because it's overlapping with the Sun opposition to Neptune, I think will really support us through that Sun opposition to Neptune. It's not going to take the transit away, but it's going to support us. Now, at 10:21 p.m. Pacific Time on September 20th⁠—so, if you're on the East Coast of North America or if you're across the pond, as they say, this will be happening on the 21st. But the Sun is at 27 degrees and 59 minutes. We're going to call it a cool 28 degrees of Virgo. And Pluto is at 28 degrees of Capricorn.

Sun trine to Pluto is a great transit. It is one that, if you make use of it, can be incredibly helpful. The Sun is the identity. And again, we've got a couple Sun things happening already. You got Sun opposite Neptune, now Sun trine Pluto. The Sun is the identity. It's our will. It is our center. It's the center of you. It is your vitality and your sense of self. And Pluto is intensity and transformation. Pluto is related to our survival mechanisms, which⁠—survival mechanisms are really core to so much of our coping skills, our mental health.

When the Sun and Pluto are connected by transit through a sweet little trine like we have here, we can have deep, moving, transformational experiences that are not especially traumatic or painful, which may even otherwise be those things, but they are not during this transit. Pluto helps us to face things, and the Sun, again, is about our central identity, our central energies. And so, with this energy, we can absolutely work on transmuting, transforming, and healing something.

This is a good transit for repair. Now, the closeness to the Sun opposition to Neptune⁠—I wouldn't be too bold day one, but I would say that this is a good time for working on internal repair. If there is a person or situation that you have to make repair to⁠—you have to acknowledge wrongdoing and try to show up and participate in a way that brings about healing⁠—then this is a great time for doing it.

The Sun trine to Pluto⁠—it makes it so that we have the energy and the kind of insight, the tenacity, to do a thing, to move things forward. So, if you need to deal with people who have power over you, who typically intimidate you, if you need to put yourself out there and kind of show up big, this transit's really supportive. And this is all kind of the opposite of what I was saying about the Sun opposite Neptune. So it's nice to have these two transits close to each other. It'd be nicer if we didn't have the hard one, of course, but this is a good transit to tap into, especially after the Sun opposition to Neptune.

Another thing that I really love about this transit is that it's helpful for all kinds of therapies, for getting deep into your psyche and confronting things. So, if you're an artist, if you're a scientist⁠—whatever it is that you do, whatever it is that you're passionate about⁠—this transit can help you to get deeper. And the depth of perception that Pluto can bring can be super expansive. Now, our survival mechanisms can clamp down when we perceive too much or we perceive things that are challenging, right? That's a thing. But with a Sun trine to Pluto, that's not what happens. So I would encourage you to be a little bold around how you go about supporting yourself, how you go about understanding yourself and others and situations, because this transit's really great for all those things.

The last thing I'll say about this particular transit is that if Mercury Retrograde, if the Sun opposition to Neptune, revealed something to you about the way you're living that just isn't sustainable, that isn't healthy, revealed to you some habits that you just know aren't congruent with your spiritual and mental health, then the Sun trine to Pluto is a powerful transit for confronting that, making the change, activating around that awareness.

So you may want to put your best foot forward, as the saying goes, and initiate a new way of being. It can be really small because change is change. Evolution is evolution. Energy is energy. We don't want to quantify these things and be like, "Oh, my progress is small." Progress is fucking progress. Open yourself up to the progress you've made, and make attempts towards some form of transformation, healing, progress⁠—whatever the hell it is⁠—in your life because the energy is there to support you.

And that brings us to the last exact transits of the week. Now, the first thing I'll tell you is on September 22nd, we move into Libra Season. Happy birthday, Libra. And if you are somebody who really pays attention to and feels the shift in solar seasons, September 22nd at 11:50 p.m. Pacific Time, the Sun moves into sweet, sweet Libra. So enjoy that.

And then, on the 23rd, we have an exact transit between Libra's ruling planet, Venus, and Chiron. So we'll have Venus at 18 degrees of Leo and 29 minutes forming an exact trine to Chiron at 18 degrees of Aries. So we have this little hot-to-trot fire trine. This transit can really help us to get in touch with our values around past wounds, trauma, that kind of good Chironic stuff. And the ways in which it can help us is to really consider how we are identified with our own hurt, to consider whether or not our self-worth and our self-image is linked to our wounding.

And because it's a trine, this can be a time where we're like, "Oh shit. I don't have to be my past. I don't have to be my wounding." And it can be a time where we release. The transit is not inherently about release, but it is about flow. And when Venus gets involved with Chiron, it can absolutely be about relationships, which I'll talk about in just one second. But I wanted to start with the part that's about our values, the values we hold in ourselves and the values we hold in the world, like things that we want to pattern our lives around.

Venus is related to self-worth. It is related to how we show up around others and what we believe about ourselves in that regard. So this is a really useful time, and keeping in mind that the transit of Chiron through Aries is really putting us in contact with our wounding, with our hurt, that is really core around being in a body, around our identities, around being true to ourselves. Venus is here to help right now, and that's a beautiful thing.

This can be a time where you are connected to or clear about these issues around your identity or overidentification with past hurts and come to healing. And it's not some big, huge lift when a trine is involved. It's just something clicks. You know how that is, where sometimes you're like, "Yeah, I know this concept. I get it. I've thought about it before a million times," but then it's just⁠—something happens along your path, and you're like, "Oh. Oh. Now I get it," and it just fucking clicks? This trine, and trines in general, can offer us that. So stay open.

Now, the thing about relationships is that Venus trine to Chiron can have us in a situation interpersonally where we have the opportunity to kind of embody past hurts to allow our triggers to become our current reality, and we make a different choice. So, oftentimes, when we're dealing with trines to Pluto or to Chiron, we're still dealing with painful and intense themes, but we're doing it with more grace. We're doing it with greater perspective. And it's not painful, or it's not terribly painful.

And so, again, I want to really encourage you to pay attention to your own themes in relationship⁠—in your relationship to yourself as well as to others. And when I say those themes, part of what I'm really trying to get at is your past does not define your present or your future. It informs it, but it does not define it. Because you had painful, hurtful, challenging experiences in the past does not mean that you will have them in the future at all. It means that you have something to learn from them. It may also mean that life is terrible and people are awful or situations are tragic or whatever. It might mean any number of things. But finding meaning in our experiences can help us to heal from them.

And when we're dealing with Venus, we are dealing with meaning. We're dealing with value. We're dealing with self-worth. We're dealing with love and care. And so, if you find yourself triggered this week in general, certainly on and around this date, try to remember that you have a lot of options around how you engage, who you engage with, and that you deserve to be happy and you deserve to have love and you deserve to love yourself and make an effort in those directions, in any of those directions, all of those directions. See how that works? Because this transit can really help us to make progress. And as I said just before, progress is progress. It can be teeny tiny, and teeny tiny progress around core wounding can be monumental, just really change your life. So, again, I would say tap into these energies as best you can.

And that's it for this week's astrology. That's all the transits we're going through. I want to thank you for joining me this week and every week, and I want to invite you to join me over on Patreon, if you're so inclined, because we get super woo there and very astrological. So we have fun. And if you already are a patron, I want to thank you very much. You know I fucking love you guys. Thank you very much for supporting me there and also for learning with me there and exploring topics, kind of deep and more light, but all the topics we explore.

And of course, if you haven't already hit that Subscribe button wherever you listen to podcasts, please do, because you do not want to miss an episode. Episode 359 was a really tender, wonderful reading about⁠—well, I don't want to spoil anything for you, but I will say broadly about having boundaries with family members in times of crisis. It was good. It was deep.

If you're an astrology student, I want you to know the reason why I generally share the birth information of the person who's getting the reading is because I want you to be able to pause the audio, cast the chart, and look along with me so that you can learn how to read a birth chart. Hopefully you're using this podcast as a resource not just for horoscopes but also how to look at, think about, and interpret a birth chart.

Don't forget to register for my class, The October Eclipses: A Humanistic Approach: Practical Astrology with Jessica Lanyadoo. That's the whole title. Let's get emo. Let's get emo.

Take good care of yourself and others now and tomorrow. All right. I'll talk to you in a couple of days. Buh-bye.