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. I want to start this week's episode by extending my heartfelt and deep gratitude for all of the really wonderful messages I got for my birthday and the really lovely reviews that you wrote for my podcast. I really, really appreciate it, and it warms the cockles of my twelfth-house Capricorn Moon, which is not an easy feat and deeply, deeply cherished. So thank you so much for that.

And I have an announcement to make, which is that it's almost February, a.k.a. Valentine's Day and Black History Month. And you know what that means. It means Black Love Month on Ghost of a Podcast. I will be centering Black joy and Black love in all its shapes and sizes, not just romantic love. So, if you are Black and you want a reading with me on the podcast about anything, go ahead and use the hashtag #BlackLove when you send in your question to me via the contact form of my website at ghostofapodcast.com. And this is for an opportunity to get a reading with me in the midweek episodes, which I do hope you are listening to because I love creating this horoscope, but I really love giving readings. And I love sharing them with individuals but also with the collective. And hopefully, you love them, too.

But okay. Let's get into this week's horoscope. We are looking at the week of January 21st through the 27th of 2024. I should remind you that we are in Aquarius season, and Pluto is now in Aquarius. If you missed last week's horoscope⁠—that would be Episode 394⁠—then I definitely encourage you to listen to it. In particular, listen to the last half because I go deep into Pluto's transit into Aquarius. So that is not an episode for you to miss if you're an astrology nerd like me. And so we should be expecting a meaningful tonal change in society. And depending on how that hits your birth chart, depending on how sensitive you are to collective conditions, you're going to be feeling that shift pretty quickly.

Now, that said, the first exact transit that we have this week doesn't happen until the 25th of January. And on that date, we have two very important transits. The first one is a Mars square to Chiron. This will be exact at 9:15 a.m. Pacific Time, and it's happening with Mars at 16 degrees of Capricorn and Chiron at 16 of Aries. The exact degrees are 15 degrees and 51 minutes. That transit is exact at 9:15 a.m., and then we have a Full Moon in Leo exact at 9:54 a.m. Pacific Time. This is happening with the Sun at 5 degrees and 15 minutes of Aquarius and the Moon at 5 degrees and 15 minutes in always-extra Leo.

Okay. We got a lot to talk about here. A Full Moon in Leo in general is going to kick up big emotions because Leo tends to be big. Now, part of why it's big is because it's a fire sign. So how does fire come in? It tends to woosh in. But it's also a fixed sign. And so we tend to have emotions that are not only passionate and powerful but also a little stubborn.

When we have a Full Moon in Leo, there is a meaningful theme around the tension between intention, which would be Aquarius, and attention, which would be Leo. And this theme is really important when we think about Pluto's ingress into Aquarius. What we give our attention to is power. And it's not just powerful in terms of your mental health, your emotional health, and the direction and experience of your life on a personal level, but also, in this increasingly digital world that we live in, what we give our attention to is really powerful. And we are living through a time where we need to be a lot more intentional about where we give our attention because that's power. That's currency.

So we start off this Pluto in Aquarius time with a Full Moon in Leo where Pluto is sitting right on top of the Sun and directly opposite to the Moon. We've got Pluto still at 0 degrees and 9 minutes of Aquarius, and that's just 5 degrees off of the Sun and Moon. So, right away, what we know is that this Full Moon is going to be messy. It's going to be intense because Pluto triggers our survival mechanisms.

And so, whether we are dealing with this on a psychological and emotional level where you feel unsafe, you feel triggered, you're emotionally really resonating with past traumas, and you're feeling compulsively engaged with your most challenging and scary emotions. So, whether it's happening on that level or on a more material level where your actual material well-being is being threatened⁠—and of course, keep in mind when we are going through a material threat, it doesn't just affect us on the material levels. It also, of course, hits our mental health and our emotional health.

So whatever level you're experiencing Pluto on this Full Moon, it's going to be fucking intense. It's going to be intense. And what I want to point your attention to is attention. It's the need to be mindful about where you will allow your energy to obsessively return. And it's going to be obsessive because of fucking Pluto. So where you're going to allow it to return⁠—to a certain extent, you may not feel like you have a lot of control over that. Depending on your circumstances, you may or you may not. If you're in serious dire straits, then you may not be able to control where your attention goes because it needs to go into your survival.

And it may be that you're obsessing on something in a way that doesn't make that situation better, and it causes you harm. And unfortunately, when Pluto is so intimately involved in a Full Moon, as it is in this Full Moon, we run the risk of feeding our most intense, compulsive driving emotions instead of our healthiest ones. And often, our most intense and powerful driving emotions are triggered by maladjusted coping mechanisms born from trauma. Having those does not make you a bad person. It does not make you a failure in any way. It makes you a human. That's all.

Pluto is in everybody's birth chart. And this Full Moon is written in such a way that it is meant to trigger us in ways that bring our attention to our pain. And it doesn't do this because life is unfair and terrible, although it may be, in fact, unfair and terrible. It does this so that we bring our attention to healing. Whenever we're dealing with Pluto, we have to let go of something. There's a need for sacrifice. And it's not this Neptunian sacrifice where we're martyring ourselves, but instead, it's releasing our attachments to the attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, people, situations, etc. that no longer serve us.

And the process of letting go is generally quite painful. But in order to leave room for something new, for something better, for something healthier to emerge, we must release attachments. And so, this Full Moon, you may find yourself fixated on something that brings more pain than healing. So I'm not saying fixating on painful things is inherently bad. It is not. Not everything that feels good is good for you, and not everything that feels bad is bad for you. But if you find yourself fixating and doing so in a way that makes you feel terrible and doesn't improve your situation at all, then you know you've kind of lost your way.

And when we are in a state of Plutonian activation, the general rule is it is not a good time to act or seek solutions because we're too triggered. The exception to that rule is when your actual safety and your actual life is being threatened, because our flight-or-fight mechanisms are Pluto. And when our flight-or-fight mechanisms are activated but we're not actually in danger, then the assignment is to be able to get present and to self-soothe enough that we can better identify what our situation is⁠—in other words, so we don't make things worse with how we respond to them. This is not easy. It's not fun; it's not easy.

And to make matters more complex, we have a Mars/Mercury conjunction in this chart. And it is square to Chiron. So, as I said, Mars and Chiron are exactly square to each other in this chart. But we have a not-yet-exact square between Mercury and Chiron. And what this means is that we are likely to be in a deeply ruminating and agitated state. When Mercury and Mars sit on top of each other, what tends to happen is we feel defensive. Our thinking⁠—Mercury⁠—turns towards Mars, which is punch-punch, bang-bang, fuck you. It's ego conflicts.

When we have Mercury and Mars conjoined, we tend to jump to conclusions. We tend to allow our ego to drive our thinking and to over-identify with our right to defend ourselves. And I say over-identify because, unless you are actually being threatened, you may not need to defend yourself with the same force or with the same quickness that you are inclined to feel that you must during this Full Moon. And the fact that Mercury and Mars, both in Capricorn, are forming a square to Chiron deeply intensifies this.

In the context of the Mars square to Chiron, we want to keep in mind that Chiron is our core wounds and Mars is defensiveness, anger, the ego. So we are likely to be really struggling with the tension between our drive to protect, defend, and assert ourselves and our sense of worthiness, our sense of woundedness. And when we act out, when anyone acts out aggressively from a place of pain instead of a place of pain and clarity, we are more likely to act in ways that unconsciously generate more evidence of our core wounding because Chiron can have us feeling like a victim, but Mars can have us acting like the aggressor.

And so we want to stay focused as much as possible on cultivating tolerance for our own strong emotions this Full Moon. So pay attention to your strong emotions, your defenses, your deep wounds and insecurities, because the potential of this Full Moon, like every Full Moon, is healing. And healing can only occur when we are integrated, which means when we're holding what hurts. And that's going to be particularly hard because Pluto conjunct the Sun and opposite the Full Moon⁠—ouch. That's a lot of hurt. And then Chiron squaring Mars⁠—it is a lot of hurt. It kicks up a lot of feelings of vulnerability around even being here, being in a body.

For many people around the world, this is going to look like threats around one's actual body autonomy, one's actual sovereignty, one's actual physical safety. And for many other people, this is going to happen on a more psychological or behavioral level. It's not going to be about your survival on material level, but we don't want to just survive this life. Ideally, we want to be able to thrive, to experience abundance and love and safety. And this Full Moon is unfortunately written in such a way that we are unlikely to feel confident in that.

And when we look at global conditions, I think a lot of us are feeling existentially unsafe right now in the world. Whether we're talking about political and social conditions, we're talking about the climate, there's a lot to feel threatened by. And because Mercury is squaring Chiron, our thoughts are not likely to go to the most optimistic place. Luckily, this Full Moon is forming a T-square to Jupiter. Now, I say "luckily." Let me come back to that in a moment. But briefly, let me say a T-square is when you have planets formed in an opposition, both or all pointing towards a square to a third or whatever planet.

So we've got Jupiter at 6 degrees of Taurus and 41 minutes forming a square to the Sun and Moon at 5 degrees and Pluto at 0 degrees. This configuration places a lot of weight on Jupiter. Now, if we were going to have a Full Moon that formed a T-square, Jupiter is honestly the best planet that it could be doing that to. But it's not an unqualified blessing. Jupiter is associated with luck and healing. Jupiter gives us resiliency, which is a really powerful thing. And even though Pluto and Chiron, Mercury, Mars⁠—they're all kind of pointing us towards focusing on what hurts the most, and it points us towards our own deepest inner wounds as individuals and on a collective level.

And of course, it's important to remember that when people are scared, we don't tend to act our best. And individuals who are scared, honestly, sometimes show up and act their very best and sometimes are part of a stampede and act their very worst. But when groups of people tend to be scared all at once, this is when we don't do our best. And so this is an important thing to pay attention to in the world. There's a lot of fear and a lot of entitlement, and it plays out in a lot of different ways depending on the situations we're looking at.

Now, coming back to Jupiter, Jupiter brings about healing. And so there is a positive aspect here to this Full Moon where the potential for healing and regeneration, for having a broad-minded and expansive perspective on what's happening, is very strong. That's the good news. Now, the bad news is Jupiter moves fast, kind of like Mars does, kind of like Mars and Mercury. But they're all very reactive planets. And we all know that Full Moons tend to have us in our feelings and being really reactive.

So, with Jupiter sitting where it is, we are likely to be dealing with a lot of propaganda. And that's on all sides, in all directions. We are likely to be dealing with reporting that is not inherently reliable because it was done too quickly. So people do not process enough data in order to get it out. That is a risk with Jupiter as a focal planet to this T-square.

The danger with Jupiter is that it's that planet that can be a little bit pushy. So, when we're dealing with Jupiter, we can often think about soapboxing or preaching to others, which can bring about change and can also push people away because you're trying to force your worldview or force your hot take on someone else.

This Full Moon honestly is just fucking messy. It's really messy. The best way to deal with this is to focus on your own healing, to focus on your own self. I have to strongly, strongly discourage you from doing any kind of drugs, especially consciousness-raising drugs, on and around this Full Moon. I would give it a wide berth, to be honest. Not only is Pluto heavily involved, but we've got Chiron, and Venus is forming an admittedly wide, but a square to Neptune. So this is just way too much energy to do anything to compromise your energetic field, your energetic boundaries, or to just introduce more chaos into your life. I just strongly don't recommend it.

I would also say this is not a great time for energy work. So let me give you a little context for that, depending on how woo you go. When I say it's not a great time for energy work, in general, Full Moons are all about letting go and releasing. They're not about calling in or manifesting. And in particular, this Full Moon is so chaotic and has such strong energy to it that unless you are crystal clear with your energy, it would be easy for things to go sideways on you.

So, if there's any amount of energy work that you are going to do, I would encourage you to have it be getting in alignment with yourself, for coming into this present moment with all the support available to you, and releasing your attachment to what does not serve you. That is a really good way to work psychologically, emotionally, spiritually/energetically with this Full Moon energy because it's a lot of energy.

And it is wise to be somewhat self-protective at this time. So, again, when I talk about being self-protective, I simply mean don't invite in elements that are stronger than you, because the Full Moon itself already is. It's a heavy amount of energy. It's a heavy amount of energy. And it will be hard for most of us to manage our boundaries, and that's not just about your boundaries around what you need. It's also about respecting the boundaries of others. And so give yourself the gift of focusing on your own healing, your own participation, your own choices during this Full Moon.

When we're talking about your personal life here, look for the roots within you of your own choices, your own participation, your own beliefs, because you can achieve healing, meaningful healing, this Full Moon in this regard. If you try to change others, force others to see things how you see them, you're likely to find yourself embroiled in power struggles. And that may be, honestly, just a fancy distraction from dealing with your own shit. And we all have our own shit. You know?

So, that all said, I want to just acknowledge this Full Moon on more of a social and collective level. I imagine that this is going to be a really intense time, or I should say continue to be a really intense time. And finding ways of participating in the world and being a force for change, a force for good, is really important. And it's also really hard for a lot of us finding our way of participating that we can sustain that feels aligned for us, that does challenge us⁠, because oftentimes, when we're engaging with the world and we're trying to be kind of like a force for good and to authentically change things that need changing, we need to sacrifice some things. We do need to sacrifice our comfort, our confidence, sometimes our time, our energy, our money⁠—whatever it is.

Pluto speaks to that in this Full Moon chart. It speaks to us needing to wrestle with the question of, "What am I willing to let go of? What am I willing to do? And what cost am I willing to pay?" And you don't have to have the answers, necessarily, this Full Moon, but to wrestle with the question⁠—that's a powerful thing, and it's right on time.

Palestinian journalist Bisan is calling for a global strike in support of Palestine from January 21st through the 28th, in which we divest from the empire of war with collective action of no work, no shopping, and no school. This is about making a sacrifice, and we all have different levels of ability to do this. If taking off all week is not possible for you personally, consider centering your action on Monday, January 21st, as it is especially important on that day. If you can't do everything, you can consider picking one action, like not making any purchases or using your social media to post about Palestine.

You don't need to get this perfect, but let it be a time when you bring awareness to how you participate in the economy and the power of your dollar, your attention, and your time. Lots of little actions can create big change. By slowing the economies in our countries, we can get local politicians to prioritize calling for a cease-fire and demand consequences to the Israeli Government for the genocide they are committing against the Palestinian people. Cease fire now, end the siege, and end the occupation. Free Palestine.

We are in the middle of the second-largest COVID surge of the whole pandemic. According to Dr. Raven Baxter, the virus that causes COVID has the ability to hide from your immune system and mutate in different parts of your body, places like your nervous system, gut, and more. COVID can lead to long COVID, a potentially debilitating disease, and it's still killing people. Center community care in public, and mask up whenever and wherever you can.

The next exact transits we have are an exact square between Mercury and Chiron as well as the Sun and Jupiter. So Mercury will be at 15 degrees and 53 minutes of Capricorn, Chiron same degrees of Aries. We've got the Sun at 6 degrees and 50 minutes of Aquarius, and Jupiter the same degrees of Taurus. These two transits I just talked about in the context of the Full Moon, but let's talk about them a little bit more specifically.

Mercury square to Chiron⁠—it points our thinking and our attention to our wounds, to trauma. This may mean a lot of different things. It can put you in a position where you have conversations with people that dredge up some past triggers and traumas, and it feels really bad. Or it can dredge those things up, and some healing can occur; some synthesis or deeper understanding can come together.

This may be a time where you just come across a post somewhere, and it just speaks exactly to the struggle that you have deep within you and it clicks. Squares are not always bad. They're intense, and they're a little sharp in the way they come about. So it may be triggering but also really helpful.

The key with a Mercury square to Chiron is to listen. Listen to yourself. Listen to the way you're talking to yourself. Listen to what you're actually saying to yourself. Listen to what you say to others. Actually listen to yourself. If your system is saying, "I don't know what to do. I'm exhausted. I don't know what to do. I'm exhausted," then maybe have a damn seat. Take a seat. Tend to your exhaustion. Allow your system to kind of reboot if it needs to.

And it's important that we listen to others. Sometimes you get a message⁠—and that can happen in a bazillion different ways. But you get a message, and part of it is shit. It is not for you. It is not meeting your standards in whatever way. And another part of it really speaks to something you need to learn or to understand. Being able to listen doesn't mean taking in everything equally and making it your own. It means being able to take in information and work through it, to discern which of that information has value for you and how much value.

Mercury square to Chiron can also make you feel like you're not being understood or your voice isn't being heard. And whether or not that's the case, it's something for you to bring more awareness to, bring more intention to, and make choices, if you can, of how to work through those things. Mercury is in Capricorn, so we want to be somewhat systematic. We want to be somewhat organized about how we engage with those problems if they emerge.

Sometimes people don't understand because they don't fucking want to understand us. And in that case, does it make sense to keep on trying? Sometimes people don't understand us because we actually aren't communicating effectively. Sometimes people don't understand us for some other kind of reason. It is important that we strive to understand our own participation in what's happening and we strive to understand the motivations of the people we're engaging with when we're trying to be heard and understood. Mercury square to Chiron really kicks this up.

Now, luckily, the same day⁠—although, of course, it's exact much later in the day⁠—we have a Sun square to Jupiter. And this transit is very supportive comparatively. Now, Sun square to Jupiter tends to make us feel a lot more resilient, optimistic, emboldened. Some people feel lucky. I don't know how lucky anyone's going to feel around this Full Moon, but Jupiter can make us feel that way. But what the Sun square to Jupiter does is it energizes. It brings a lot more juj to the conversation, which can be really helpful with all of this heavier energy that we're dealing with.

The problem is the Sun square to Jupiter can also make us arrogant. It can incline us to not listen to others, to double down on our perspective just because we want to win or we just are overdoing it in a classic Jupiterian way. The good news of this transit is it makes it easier for you to be more generous with yourself and with others. This energy encourages us towards civic engagement. It encourages us towards considering the perspectives of others and, again, being generous with others as well as with ourselves. Again, the negative is that we can kind of overdo it or be so generous that we come back around and put a crown on our own head, being like, "Look at how generous I am. I'm so wonderful."

So the best way to make use of this transit is to bring your attention back to your own morals and beliefs. Jupiter governs those things. What is it you truly believe? And are you being broad-minded? Are you being tolerant? Are you being considerate of your differences from others, of your needs, of your learning curve and of that of others? Jupiter is really helping us out this week, but it will take some intentionality to make use of this work. Now, luckily, the Sun is in Aquarius. So there's energy here to point our thinking, to point our attention, towards our own resiliency or our resources that help us to be resilient.

Now, one more thing I'll say about these two transits, and in particular the Sun square to Jupiter, is that it's unwise to take on too much on and around this date. Remember Full Moons are when we put things down. We let things go. It's a time for release. The fact that Pluto's involved⁠—double that. Double that message. And the Sun square to Jupiter, and in particular because Jupiter forms a T-square to the Sun and Moon on the Full Moon⁠—it can have us taking in or taking on too much.

You don't have to heal everything. This is not your only opportunity to engage with these energies. Don't worry. Do what you can, and it's okay⁠—in fact, it's good⁠—to have a little energy left over once you're done doing what you can. Basically, what you want to do is not wear yourself down and wear yourself out.

And that brings us to the 27th of January. And on this day, we have two exact transits. Exact at 6:59 a.m., we have Mercury at 17 degrees and 18 minutes and Mars at the same degrees of Capricorn. So we got Mercury/Mars conjunction in Cap, and we've got Venus at 6 degrees and 1 minute of Capricorn forming an exact sextile to Saturn at the same degrees of Pisces.

And as always, if you want to track the transits with me, you can subscribe to my astrologer's pro tool, Astrology for Days, over at astrologyfordays.com. Or you can just wait for the transcript to come out in a couple days after this episode.

Okay. Mercury conjunction to Mars. This, as I mentioned earlier, can be a bit of an agitating transit. And this is because Mars is sharp and defensive, often aggressive. And Mercury is your mind. It's your thinking. It's your attitudes. It's how you speak, and when I say "speak," I'm including type. And it's how you read messages, so whether I'm talking about literally reading or how you interpret what other people say. So Mercury conjunction to Mars can have us feeling really irritated and agitated. It can have us feeling defensive and restless. You may find yourself in kind of an argumentative frame of mind, just bumping into people and being annoyed that they were there in the fucking first place.

This transit can coincide with you fighting with people. And I want to say fighting is not inherently a bad thing or a wrong thing. But if you're going to fight with someone, make sure you're fighting for something, not just against something. And if you don't know what you're fighting for, then you may just be fighting because you feel like shit. And in that case, you would do better to just sit around feeling like shit instead of stirring the pot unnecessarily.

When Mercury and Mars sit on top of each other, we have the ability to embolden our thinking, to put ourselves out there, to be more courageous, to be more assertive. And that can be really powerful, especially if it's something that you're needing in your life. The trick is to not be a rude dude, and Mars can be a totally rude dude. It's about recognizing that it's not just what you say; it's how you say it. It's not just your intention; it's the impact of your words and your actions⁠—words, Mercury; actions, Mars.

Do your best to think before you act. And if you find yourself fixated on vengeful or petty thoughts, then maybe keep your mouth shut. The pot needs no stirring this week. It will be well stirred by the Universe on its own. You can learn a lot about your own ego, your own defensiveness, your own relationship to entitlement, with this transit. But the only way to do that is by tolerating those feelings, which most of us don't do. Most of us act on those feelings or shut down in reaction to those feelings.

So, if you notice this shit coming up at any point this week, if you feel yourself having your typical reaction to those impulses, emotions, thoughts, sensations, do your best to stay with them, even if it's only for 30 seconds. Stay with them because when we project out our shitty thoughts and feelings onto others, it doesn't actually improve your shitty thoughts or feelings or the root cause of the shitty thoughts and feelings in any way, shape, or form. It only creates a secondary problem.

This is kind of core to what this transit can kick up: the impulse to create secondary pains and problems because we don't know how to tolerate the thing that's really bugging us, but also, within that, the opportunity, the potential, to sit with our own restless, defensive, funky, uncomfortable thoughts and sensations/feelings⁠—so Mars is body feelings more than emotional feelings⁠—to sit with them so that we have more self-awareness, so we have greater agency around how we choose to respond to our reactions. Not easy work, but really good work if you can get it.

Now, luckily, the Venus sextile to Saturn is here to stabilize us. Venus and Saturn are both very security-oriented planets. And so, when they form a happy sextile, as they are doing now, what happens is we are able to kind of stabilize ourselves in our values and what we believe to be the right thing to do, which is really well timed. Venus sextile to Saturn can help to ground us in such a way that we don't react out of the principles and beliefs that we've dug our heels on, which is more related to the Sun/Jupiter square.

Venus sextile to Saturn helps us to act in ways that reflect our values. Really, that's the most important thing I can say about it. And that is a gift. It's a gift any day, but this week, with the transits we have going on, it's something we want to pay close attention to. So, again, this transit is happening at 6 degrees, Venus at 6 of Capricorn, Saturn at 6 of Pisces. So, if you have anything around that degree of a zodiac sign that would be aspected by Capricorn or Pisces, really bring your attention to it because this is a transit that can really support us in making the most of the more provocative transits that are occurring this week.

Another thing to consider is that Venus sextile to Saturn can be a transit where you can resource your relationships. You can resource the people in your life. And I don't mean that in an icky way. Venus sextile to Saturn is really about being able to lean on people who you respect, who have earned your respect, who you can count on. Now, unfortunately, the other transits that are happening speak to interpersonal drama, so it's not a perfect gift, this Venus sextile to Saturn. But if there are people that have earned your trust, do not hesitate to reach out for support. Just make sure to check in first and be like, "Do you have the bandwidth for me right now? Can I ask you some questions? Can I lean on you? Can I talk to about what's up for me right now?" Ask. Don't just dump on people, because we're all going through all of these transits.

But ultimately, this transit really supports us in being able to recognize the value in people, situations, dynamics, and to express that value to others in a way that makes them feel valued, and also to receive the care that others feel for you⁠—to receive it and to really take it in. So I want to make sure to point your attention towards that because it is such a gift any day, but certainly this week, which is so challenging.

That's the astrology of this week. I'm going to run through the transits one more time for you. On the 25th, we have a Full Moon in Leo that is exact at 9:54 a.m. Pacific Time. We also have a Mars square to Chiron. On the 26th, we have an exact square between Mercury and Chiron as well as the Sun and Jupiter. And then, on the 27th, Mercury forms an exact conjunction to Mars, and Venus forms an exact sextile to Saturn.

Thank you for joining me here this week and every week for this love letter that I write to you in the language I love most, astrology. I hope you are taking really good care of yourself and others, and I will talk to you in just a couple of days. Buh-bye.