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 September 3rd through the 9th of 2023. And I want to remind you that in the midweek episodes right now, I'm kind of getting into the Saturn Return. So, if you missed the last episode, Episode 355, I gave a reading to somebody in their second Saturn Return. And this upcoming Wednesday, you'll hear me giving a reading to somebody in their third Saturn Return. Yes, we go through three Saturn Returns if we get to live that long. So you definitely don't want to miss it, and if you haven't already subscribed to the podcast so that you get alerts when new episodes come out, this is a great time to do it. I mean, Mercury is Retrograde anyways, so it makes us all a little more forgetful.

Before I get into the nitty-gritty of this week's astrology, I want to address something that I do that I know really annoys some of you. I mean, it makes many of you feel seen and it's really helpful to many of you, but also, it annoys many of you. And so I want to address it. It feels important. And it's about COVID. I want to talk to those of you who are annoyed with me that I talk about COVID. I certainly try to mention it most weeks on the podcast in one way or another. And I just want to acknowledge that I do this.

You see, we live in a society that is so individualistic. It's capitalistic, and the governing bodies themselves want us to think about our health in general, and certainly this highly contagious airborne pandemic, in wholly individualistic terms because if we think about it as something that's all about our individual choice, something that's all about what I choose to do for myself⁠—"If it hasn't affected me, then it's not a problem for me" kind of thing⁠—then we all keep participating in the capitalist system without a hitch. We keep on going to work. We keep on spending money. That's really what the system wants. And if we end up getting sick with something like long COVID or having any kind of long-term health issues, well, that's on us as individuals, not on us as a collective.

So we as individuals think about COVID in terms of our own individual comforts, our own standard of living, and we prop up the system. And when I talk about the system, I'm talking about fucking patriarchy. I'm talking about capitalism. I'm talking about the systems that we all know are set up to hold so many of us down. It is very American to not distract ourselves in the prime of our youth with immune compromised people, with people who are sick, with the elderly, with the needs of small children. That falls on the individual to care about those people. So, if you have little kids in your life, if you've got old people in your life, then it's on you to care about that. But for the rest of us, fuck them. And that just doesn't work for me. In every way, I'm just kind of against that.

There are so many reasons why I continue to talk about COVID, but a meaningful one within it is that I'm a damn astrologer. I'm an astrologer, and I see what's coming. We are still in Pluto in Capricorn times. Since 2008, we are in the last gasps of Pluto in Capricorn. And Pluto will not return to the zodiac sign of Capricorn for another 250 years. We must be looking now at capitalism and our own individual relationship with it, how our behavior does or doesn't prop that system up, as we move into Pluto in Aquarius, which is a transit that has already begun. We've already had our first hit of Pluto in Aquarius.

Pluto, because it is the slowest-moving planet⁠—it governs collective conditions. And I've heard some people say something that I strongly disagree with, which is that Pluto in Aquarius is about individualism. It is not. It is about collectivism. It is about community. That is very much what Aquarius is, but not community and collective movements and agreements based on obedience, but instead on collective care, community care. And it doesn't take an astrologer to see, but here I'm using a lens of astrology to discuss, how our need to be empathetic⁠—not just with our damn thoughts and prayers but with our actual actions⁠—to shift our behavior so that the concerns of the collective are our concerns.

This is really important, and it's important in the short term, but it's extra important for the long term, for what's coming for us. And there are a lot of pressures coming for us. And again, it doesn't take an astrologer to see what those are amid the climate crisis, collapsing infrastructure, racism and violence and so many other things that are happening in the world. We need to be willing to consider our relationship with individualism and toxic individualism. And we're all toxically individualistic in some way or another. It's one of the shit sides of being a human. But it's something that we can all be mindful of and work on.

So, bringing it back to this topic of COVID, which⁠—I know that some of you are just so annoyed that I keep on talking about it. I'm going to keep on talking about it for as long as it's a concern for the collective. And again, it doesn't have to be a concern for the healthiest and largest group of people in order for it to be a concern for the whole of society, in a healthy society. And if you've just been like, "Fuck it. I don't care," and then you start to realize, "Oh shit. Maybe I should be more conscientious. Maybe I should have my actions reflect community care more," change your mind. Change your actions. It is a mark of emotional and spiritual maturity to be humble enough to change your damn mind, to change your viewpoint and shift your actions.

We are in tumultuous times on a lot of levels. And our governing systems want us to be as individualistic and isolated as we can be because we are not powerful that way, because if the most vulnerable amongst us and the most powerful amongst us are only thinking about ourselves and protecting ourselves, then we're easy to control. We can't come together for social movements. And it's really important that we do. It's important that we do because we fucking have to, and it's important that we do because we have in recent years gone through a massive astrological shift. And it calls for community-mindedness. It calls for community engagement. It calls for a willingness to build coalitions that are inclusive, which means not always building coalitions with people who we perfectly agree with. All to say we need each other, and we deserve each other.

So, anyways, like I said, this week, we're looking at the astrology of September 3rd through the 9th of 2023. And we start off the week on the 3rd with Venus going station direct⁠—huzzah. Our Venus Retrograde is over. Now we only have Mercury Retrograde. I know a lot of people online are like, "There's seven million planets Retrograde." Again, I will repeat to you something I've said many times, which is I do not pay a lot of attention to the outer planets⁠—that's Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto⁠—when they're Retrograde because they don't have a lot of personal impact on us when they're Retrograde. They really don't.

When Mercury, Venus, and Mars go Retrograde, we really feel it on an individual level. The outer planets, not so much, unless you're already going through a transit personally to one of those planets; then you're going to feel it, but not because the planet is Retrograde, but because the Retrograde motion of the planet means that your transit is going to last longer. That's all.

So, as of the 3rd, Venus is no longer Retrograde. It will remain in its Retroshady period until the 7th of October, and that's just going to be a time for all the things that came up for us, all the things we did and didn't do during the Venus Retrograde in regards to our values or whatever themes were primarily up in this period⁠—those things we're going to kind of be reviewing. And we will be able to engage with them with a less Retrogrady vibe.

So the exiting Retroshade⁠—in other words, the post-Retrograde Retroshade⁠—is a time for us to really sort through the Retrograde time. But I will say that Mercury is still very much Retrograde. And I want to thank everyone who came to my class on Mercury Retrograde, Mercury in Gatorade: A Mercury Retrograde Party. It was super fun. I will remind you that this Mercury Retrograde is a little messy. It can have an impact of scrambling our thinking, bringing up our kind of defensive or reactive thoughts and feelings, and has us in our bodies around our own confusion, which might sound good, but it can just add to anxiety, which can add to defensiveness or paranoid thinking or feelings. So it's definitely a smooshy kind of Mercury Retrograde.

And in regards to the classic Mercury Retrograde advice⁠—which is don't sign contracts, don't make life altering plans, triple-check that email before you hit Send⁠—we just want to double down on that this Mercury Retrograde. Now, that said, Mercury is pretty active in this week's horoscope. And on the 4th of September, Mercury Retrograde will be forming a trine to Jupiter. This is a great transit. Generally speaking, we love to see this transit. Any time you hear me say something is trine to Jupiter, you know it's going to be a pretty good time. There's not a lot of downsides of any planet trining Jupiter. So that's just a hot tip for you.

When Mercury, the planet of friendship and communications, trines Jupiter, which is the planet of big communications, big news, big expansion, learning things in a big-picture way, what can happen is our thinking kind of clicks. It's like you're able to grasp the big picture without ignoring the details, which is fucking fantastic. Because Mercury is Retrograde, this may be more in psychological or your innermost emotions kind of contexts and not necessarily around big projects that you're working on. But it is certainly useful for projects and work stuff as well.

Mercury trine to Jupiter tends to make our outlook and our perspective more resilient and optimistic and positive. And that is really helpful because when we're not bogged down by what-ifs or scarcity, we can often see more of the positive on the landscape. That's really helpful. This transit can coincide with good news coming your way, and that good news may be literally in the news. There may be good news. Or it may just be like you hear something nice; so-and-so said that your hair looked good today. Good news. So this is just a nice transit for socializing. It's a nice transit for connecting with people, whether it's virtually or IRL. It's a great time for just relaxing in the company of others.

Generally speaking, when we see this transit, it's a good time for making plans. It's a good time for organizing your intentions. Because Mercury is Retrograde, it's a good time for reviewing your plans, for exploring possibilities and exploring potentialities. That's what you want to do here. It's not a great time to solidify plans during a Mercury Retrograde in general, but if you're going to do it, I guess this is the day. I guess this is your moment if you have to.

Because of Jupiter's expansiveness, Mercury trine to Jupiter can coincide with some sort of spiritual evolution, some sort of spiritual⁠—something clicking. So, if you are doing important work on yourself in, again, your healing journey psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, this transit⁠—something might click for you. You might hear an idea that you've been struggling to comprehend come together, and as it comes together, it just lands in your system different. It's a really great transit, like I said, for understanding. And so it's a good time to listen and to be open to other perspectives or to deepening and broadening your own perspective.

Now, I know this is going to sound random, but if you are tootling around your neighborhood⁠—you got shit to do in your life and you're just moving around your neighborhood⁠—this is a good time to take a different route than you would typically take. Mercury is your neighborhood. It's kind of like the parts of town that you go to a bunch, so not just the neighborhood you live in, but the places that you call your neighborhoods. And Jupiter⁠—it wants something new. So, if you usually walk down Main Street and take a left at Market Street, maybe take a side street this time. Don't take the same route, or at least walk on a different side of the street, or if you're driving, ditto. The key is to be open to doing things differently and to be receptive to what shifts or doesn't as you do.

That brings us to September 6th. On the 6th of September, we have a Sun conjunct Mercury Retrograde. The Sun and Mercury meeting up can create really strong bursts of energy, bursts of clarity, because the Sun is your identity and Mercury is your ideas; it's your mind. And they're sitting together, and they're in agreement. They're in complete alignment. And so, yes, you may be able to see things clearly. You may have insights, especially because this particular Sun/Mercury conjunction is very close to Jupiter. It's very close to Jupiter.

So there is the potential here for being able to see yourself or your situation so clearly that you reorient yourself in a way that is so effective and so useful. This is absolutely possible. It is equally possible that your identity and the story you tell yourself about who you are and who you're not, the story you tell yourself about how other people perceive you or experience you or what's happening in your life and what it means about you, can get really strong. And that can be a problem. It can be a strength. It can be an asset. But it can just as easily be a problem.

This is the thing about conjunctions, is that when our perspective is so tightly aligned, we can sometimes not see outside of our own perspective. And so, if you experience contrast on and around this day⁠—and when I say contrast, I mean people in situations saying to you that you are a tree when you really believe yourself to be a bush⁠—then it's important to be open-minded, to explore, "Why would this person say I'm a tree when I'm so certain that I'm a bush?" Explore. Explore your own identity. Explore your own ideas. Explore possibilities of who and what you are because we don't want to let our ideas shape our identity in ways that aren't reflected in embodiment and action. We want to make sure that our ideas about ourselves are backed up with embodiment and alignment, which is deeply related to action.

The Sun conjunction to Mercury can help us to focus. It can help us to be adaptable and to be inquisitive and curious and to explore possibilities. But it takes intention to do that. It really does. And when the Sun and Mercury meet, we often have really busy days. Lots of things can come up in a way that wasn't exactly in the plans because, remember, we're all going through the Sun/Mercury conjunction, which means we're all going to be kind of sped up.

However, because Mercury is Retrograde, we don't want to forget that rule of re's: reflecting on what's happening within you, within your own narratives, reflecting on your plans and whether or not they're still in alignment with what is right for you. This is a really good idea this Mercury/Sun conjunction. I mean, really, more than anything, try things out. Experiment. And notice how it feels, not just how other people react, although that's important data, but how it feels, whether or not it's in alignment. That's really⁠—especially when we're dealing with the Sun, it's what it's all about. It's about getting centered and acting from your center.

So, when we talk about the concept of alignment or a lack of alignment, it has a lot to do with whether or not you are activated from your center, because when you're activated from your center, you're in alignment. And when you're not, not so much.

And that brings us, my loves, to the last exact transit of this week. We have a Sun trine to Jupiter exact on the 8th of September. And this is another absolutely lovely transit. The Sun trine to Jupiter⁠—again, note it is a trine to Jupiter⁠—helps us to get centered. It helps us to get aligned. And it does so in part by making us feel a little more resilient and stronger, better. And stronger and better is relative, but I mean a little stronger than you did yesterday, a little better than you did a couple days ago kind of thing.

This transit is really supportive in part because it helps to align us with a sense of abundance, a sense of gratitude, optimism, broad-mindedness, generosity of spirit towards ourself and others⁠—you get the picture. It's good news is what I'm trying to say. And in fact, when the Sun trines Jupiter, sometimes we get good news or we generate good news through our actions. This can be on a really personal level, or it can be there's actual news in the world that's good.

You just may be feeling good on and around this date. You may be feeling resilient. You may be feeling open. It's a great time for socializing. It's a great time for exploring your big-picture plans, your vision for the future, and what's possible for you psychologically, spiritually, that kind of thing. If you're on a health journey⁠—and I'm talking mental health, emotional health, spiritual health, or physical health⁠—this transit's really helpful. If you've been seeking a practitioner, an expert who you can lean on for support around this stuff, yeah. Search on this date. It's really supportive.

Really, the whole week is good time for doing that kind of research, but we can just find ourselves in the presence of the right resources or willing to actually access and use the right resources during the Sun trine to Jupiter. This is a time where, if we are open, a lot of really lovely things can happen. And Jupiter favors meteoric, big chutes of change or insight or fun, and that can certainly happen. But this is all happening in earth signs. Jupiter is in Taurus, and the Sun is in Virgo.

So this can be just really grounded shifts of just feeling good around somebody or having set a goal for yourself around something in your health journey and having achieved it, no matter how small or large, and feeling a little better as a result. So this is absolutely a transit we want to pay attention to. It's a transit that we want to make use of because it is lovely.

Now, whenever we have a planet trine to Jupiter⁠—and this week, we have both Mercury and the Sun forming a trine to Jupiter⁠—some astrologers are going to predict luck. They're going to say this is a lucky aspect; this is a lucky day of the year, and you're going to be lucky. And I really⁠—I don't know. I don't know. I don't really see it that way. Jupiter empowers us to shift our perspective so that we are open, and we're open in a positive way. And things can flow our way more easily because of that.

But I don't want you to walk around town expecting luck to befall you and you get disappointed if that doesn't happen. It's not super realistic. But what is realistic is that you can make use of this transit. So put a little bit of effort towards something that's important to you, and you are likely to find positive results. You are likely to find things flow or come together for you. And that is fucking lovely.

I didn't give you the exact degrees or times of any of the transits this week. I don't know why. I'm going to blame it on Mercury Retrograde. But I'll do it for you now. And of course, if you're interested in tracking the transits, you can always subscribe to my astrologer's pro tool called Astrology for Days. It tracks all the transits for you and has an in-app ephemeris and note-writing tool so you can track your predictions and what actually happens and use it as a tool for learning astrology. Or if you're like me and you're using it to write horoscopes, it's a great tool for doing that. And that's at astrologyfordays.com.

So, on September 3rd at 6:20 p.m., Venus goes direct at 12 degrees of Leo. On the 4th of September, we have a Mercury trine to Jupiter. Mercury is at 15 degrees and 35 minutes of Virgo, and Jupiter is at 15 degrees and 35 minutes of Taurus. On September 6th, we have a Sun conjunction to that Mercury Retrograde, and it's happening in Virgo at 13 degrees and 37 minutes. Because it's a conjunction, they're both in Virgo. We knew that. Right? Right. Okay. And on September 8th, we have a Sun trine to Jupiter. The Sun is at 15 degrees and 33 minutes of Virgo, and Jupiter is at the same degrees of Taurus.

And that's your whole horoscope, my loves. I hope you make the most of it because there is a lot of really lovely energy in the stars this week. If you want to know more about what's happening in September astrologically, you can join me over on Patreon at the kittens level and get my monthly bonus episode of Ghost where I delineate all of the transits for the month ahead. So it's a really great resource if you're in the market for such things, plus I drop lots of astrological and all forms of spiritual and woo content over there. So you can join me there. It is my happy place on the internet. And I appreciate all of my patrons, so thank you if you're one of them.

I hope you got a lot of value from this week-ahead forecast and that you use it not to freak yourself out, not to get superstitious and weird about astrology, but to help you navigate the challenging and supportive energies that are running through the world and your life.

All right. I'll talk to you in a couple of days. Bye.