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, I'm doing something a little different. I invited my patrons to ask me questions about witchy, woo, mediumship stuff in honor of Halloween. And that they did. So I'm going to answer a bunch of those in one of my episodes where I answer so many questions.

And before I do, I just want to give you a heads-up that November 6th and 13th, I'm going to be taking a little bit of a break from the midweek episodes. I'm still going to publish. I'm going to publish older readings that you might not have heard.

But on to our first question. It comes from Kat, and Kat asks, "Is there any correlation between spirit guides, ancestors, and ghosts? I often feel that the space of my ancestors/guides is quiet and even empty. I'm also not in a physical location that my ancestors or even recent family members inhabited. So is there any reason to think they're tethered to a particular geographical spot? Otherwise, it seems like my biological ancestry wasn't down with lingering around."

So this question is a really important one because I think, a lot of times, people kind of confuse spirit guides with ancestors and conflate all of that with ghosts. So, very briefly, I can say that ghosts are the energy of people who have died who were once humans, and they're now here or they're still here. And they tend to be a little stuck, just a little stuck. They can be tethered to a location, but not necessarily. That's really different than ancestors.

Now, the concept of ancestors is really a popular one right now, but it's also a very old concept, and it is applied differently in different cultures. And I think that it's really important to cultivate education about your own ancestral history⁠—what are the practices, beliefs, etc., that come from your lineage, your cultural, ethnic, religious lineage, whatever it is⁠, geographical lineage⁠⁠—to pay attention to those things because our ancestors are those who came before us.

Now, we can refer to ancestors as our elder living people, our ancestors, as well as people in spirit. So, really, what we're talking about when we're referring to ancestors, from my perspective⁠—and there are many perspectives spiritually⁠—what we're talking about is people who have passed away who we are related to, either biologically related to or in some meaningful way related to. They've passed away, and they show up in some meaningful ways for us at times. That's generally what we mean when we're talking about ancestors.

Now, ancestors are not spirit guides. Spirit guides are spiritual guides. They are not humans. They were not once your grandmother and now a spirit guide. Spirit guides are spiritual beings who are there for you. And from my belief system⁠—and of course, this is just a faith-based belief system, but from my belief system, each and every one of us have spirit guides. They are always connected to your best interest. They're always there to help. Some people may call them angels or guardian angels. I call them spirit guides. And to be clear, they are not related to your ancestry. They are not ghosts. They are completely different things.

Now, if you're having a struggle receiving the wisdom or tapping into your spirit guides, that doesn't mean they're not there. It simply means you're not consciously connecting with them. And in my experience, the best way to connect with your guides is to be grounded, to get present, and to develop a practice of receiving because when we seek our guides, then we're doing it with our head. We're doing it with our ego. Developing a practice of receptivity empowers you to receive the often very subtle level of communication that occurs from your guides.

Now, in regards to your ancestors being related to where you are physically⁠—not at all. Don't worry about that. When we're talking about people on the spiritual realm, in other words, people who are now dead who no longer exist in a meat suit, they are in no way tethered to physical location or material time as we understand it as humans. The human condition is a physical condition, and it is locked into time. It is locked into space. Your body is only in the location that it is in at a given time. It cannot be in multiple locations at once. But your spirit can.

And so, in order to have connection with one's ancestors, we don't need to be anywhere physically close to where our ancestors were. Now, that might make it easier for you as a person in a body to be open, to be receptive, to connect with the energies that you associate with them. That just makes it easier for you so that you can receive the message. It doesn't make it easier for them to be close to you, because in the realm of spirit, there is no separation. Separation is part of the physical condition of being human.

And also, don't invite ghosts into your house. We don't want to cultivate ghosts. Ghosts are like a lot of energetic dust bunnies. They're not necessarily a problem, but they're certainly not an asset either.

My next question is from Stephanie, who asks if there are times and transits when we're more sensitive to other beings, like, say, during Halloween, and what happens during those times. Stephanie says, "I'll randomly get nightmares but wonder if it's because of some other reason, like eating too much or reading a creepy book. Is it ever good to tune in to this or prepare for this energy?"

So there's a lot of parts to Stephanie's question, and the first one is, yes, there are definitely transits that make us more sensitive to the spirit world. Generally speaking, Saturn makes you less sensitive to the spiritual world simply because when we're going through Saturn transits, we're more likely to be learning lessons of the material condition called your humanness. Neptune transits can make you way more porous, and so you may be significantly more receptive or sensitive to energy beings.

That said, a lot of Neptune transits will make you so sensitive that you can't really use the information that you're getting, or the lesson associated with those sensitivities is to cultivate healthier, more intentional boundaries. So there's not a completely simple answer to this, but there are absolutely times when we are more sensitive.

On a less astrological tip, many people believe that on Samhain, or Halloween, or Day of the Dead, that the veils are thinner. And I don't have a strong opinion about that one way or another. I'm a medium myself, and so I do not find myself more sensitive to dead people around Halloween than I do on any regular-degular Tuesday. That's just now how I am. But because there is the collective field, the morphic field, of so many people being attuned to otherworldly energies, it creates more susceptibility for the collective. And that may impact you personally in a really meaningful way.

And then, finally, to your point about eating too much before bed or reading a creepy book, those are not energetic sensitivities. Those are anxieties. And in the realm of energetic sensitivity/anxiety, a lot of people experience a great deal of confusion trying to navigate between what are your anxieties versus your intuition. And this is a very important practice to cultivate, tapping into your own lived experience enough that you can identify the differences between your anxieties, the way they feel, the way your thoughts move, the tone of voice that you hear in your head when you talk to yourself, versus all those same things around your intuition. It takes practice to identify this, and grounded practice. But it is absolutely a practice worth cultivating.

My next question is from Katie, and Katie says, "Okay. I have three planets in my eighth house: Moon, Pluto, and Saturn. Am I drawn to dark things? Yes. Am I out here breaking generational curses? Yes. Am I the specter at the feast? Absolutely. Do I see dead people? Yes. Basically, I'm Lydia in Beetlejuice. The issue I have is, how do I stop all the dark shit from consuming me and dragging me down, especially during dark times like these with multiple genocides, climate change disasters, and murderous psychopaths running the show? I know a flower can't blossom without the shit, but it feels like it's a lot of shit and not much bloom right now. I don't want to be some ignorant love-and-light flake, but I don't want to feel completely hopeless about the world either."

So this is such a great question, and I think it applies to people who are super eighth house and sensitive like you are, but also to anyone who cares about the world. Being sensitive, being tapped into otherworldly experiences, having access to our intuition or the ability to talk to dead people or communicate with animals, whatever it is⁠—all of these things exist here. They exist here from the vantage point of your body and your physical experience and the physical experience that your soul is having as a human this round, if you believe in it coming around in rounds.

Whether or not you are sensitive because of your mental health or you're sensitive because of your spiritual access, the answer is ultimately the same. When you are aware of what isn't working in the world, what the problems are, that awareness empowers you to be motivated to find answers, to be a part of the answers. And so the way to stop the heavy shit from consuming you and dragging you down is by participating in the world. It's by finding ways of honoring your emotions, your perceptions, your understanding, and creating space in your life to experience the emotions associated with that awareness and then, from a strategic place more than an emotional place, identify what you can do, what you can do maybe this weekend or what you can do once a week or what you can do monthly⁠—to think about strategically, what can you do short term, long term? What can you sustain? What are your skills?

You might think the best possible thing to do is to protest on the streets, but maybe protesting on the streets doesn't actually work for your work schedule. Maybe you can't afford childcare, and you would need it in order to hit the streets⁠—whatever. There are countless other things you can do. Don't let perfect be the enemy of progress. Don't let puritanical thinking stop you from taking small steps towards progress, to co-creating conditions that can help the realities we find ourselves in, because here's the thing: we are in frightening times. It's always frightening times for at least some groups of people in the world, always.

Humans⁠—we're pretty fucked up. This human condition is very fucking complicated. And so honor the ways in which you feel hopeless. Those feelings are real, and they're not bananas. They come from something. Create space and time for you to feel those feelings, but don't linger too long. Identify the actions you can take to be a part of the solution. And if you don't know what those actions are, find organizations that are doing the work, that have been doing the work, and fall in line. Do things to support them. And if you have a lot of eighth-house placements, you may want to work behind the scenes. You may not want to be the center of attention anyways. So that could really work.

But I want to just hold space for the reason why you're sensitive is not so you can pray it away or love-and-light it away. The reason why we're sensitive is so that we can use our sensitivities to motivate us to act in ways that better reflect our humanity, our empathy, and our care and investment in the welfare of others. So that's the damn move.

Now, my last two questions are directed towards me and my experience as a medium, so I'm going to do a little bit of personal sharing with my path here. Okay. The first one comes from Cam, who asks, "When did you have your first experience speaking to the other side? Was it something that just happened to you, or did you have to hone this skill? What would you recommend to someone who wants to learn how to communicate with spirits who've passed on?"

So, for me, I'm not positive when the first time I communicated with, as you say, someone on the other side⁠—a dead person. But the first time I did it consciously, I was in a session with a client. And it was a client because I was already working professionally as an astrologer. And this client asked me to speak with their dead mother, and I told them, "I'm sorry. You're confused. Astrologer doesn't mean medium. I don't have the ability to do that." And they kind of pressed, and they just wanted me to try.

And so I did, and the information was right there. I just was able to communicate with her, and it was very subtle. It was very subtle. It wasn't, as I often say, like having the voice of Morgan Freeman booming in my head. It wasn't like you see on TV where I was looking with my eyes at a dead person. It was subtle. And after that experience, I thought it was just a fluke. But clients kept on coming to me and asking me to do this, and I kept on saying, "No, I don't know how to do it," until finally I had to accept because I had so many evidential experiences that it was really happening.

Now, that said, I did have to hone my skill. When it comes to psychic work or mediumship or any other kind of woo skill set, it is just like any other skill set. Natural aptitude is great, but even somebody with the biggest natural aptitude⁠—if they do not hone their skill, if they do not practice and mentor or study or learn in some meaningful way, then it's just not going to be as sharp or adaptable of a tool as if they would do those things.

There are people who teach mediumship, and there's even a place called the Spiritualist Church, which is a church of mediums. And these churches exist throughout North America and Europe, and they are places where you can go and sit in on services where mediums give readings and talk about their experiences. And that's a great place that's free for you to check in with. There are also schools and stuff like that.

I am a firm believer in two things. One is, if one is going to cultivate mediumship⁠—the ability to communicate with people who have passed on⁠—it is really important to, alongside that skill, cultivate grounded presence⁠—the ability to be grounded in your body, to be present⁠—and healthy boundaries⁠—energetic boundaries, also behavioral and psychological boundaries⁠—because when we hang out in the middle⁠—that's why it's called being a medium, right? You're sitting in the middle between two planes of existence, very different planes of existence. When you hang out in the middle, there's a lot of data coming at you on a lot of levels all the time. So having healthy boundaries becomes really, really important.

So that's one thing. The other thing is be careful what you ask for. Being able to communicate with people who have passed on is a skill, and it is a skill that opens up a door. And it doesn't only open up the door to the very people that you want to communicate with. It can open up the door and who knows who walks through? It's important not to idealize this experience or to imagine that everything is good and lovely when doing this work, because it can be quite challenging.

And if you are very clear and consensual about that and you're down to work on being grounded and having good energy boundaries, then finding a mentor or a teacher is probably the best way to go. But whatever you do, don't rush it, because a skill like this can come in fast or come in slow, but if it's coming in slow, it's coming in slow for a reason. So have faith. Have faith in the process.

My last question comes from Amy, and Amy asks me, "When you're doing readings for clients or reading our inquiries here, does it often occur that clients' deceased loved ones will present themselves to you? What do you do if and when that happens?"

So that's a really great question. When I am reading questions that you send me for the podcast, which I do several times a week, I make sure to shield up. I put my boundaries up high because I do not want to encounter any spirits. And I think it's really important to have healthy boundaries. So that is a thing I do. So, when I am reading inquiries, I do not encounter deceased people.

When I am doing readings, I often do encounter deceased people. They will come up. And what I do is honestly dependent on the situation. Most of the time, if a lost loved one shows up, they show up for a reason, and it comes up in the conversation. And you've heard readings on the podcast where the person came to me with a question that wasn't necessarily about a lost loved one, and yet we ended up talking to a lost loved one. That happens. Sometimes⁠—not often, but sometimes, it's simply not relevant to the reason why the living person has contacted me, and so we don't talk about it.

Now, you may have noticed if you've been listening to the podcast for many years that I used to do more mediumship on the show than I have done in the past year or so. And that's for a really good reason. In 2020, when there was mass death from COVID happening all over the world, as a medium, it was really traumatic. Now, let me be very clear. I am not trying to in any way, shape, or form place my trauma as bigger or ahead of the suffering of the people who got ill and perished or the people that they left behind, to be very clear. But as a medium, it was a very intense and immersive experience, and it left me with some trauma.

And in my understanding and experience, the healthiest way to cope with and recover from trauma requires a lot of things. It requires therapies of sorts⁠—you know, having conversations, exploring the emotions, being strong enough to sit with what came up⁠ and also giving oneself space to not sit with the trauma, right? There's lots of layers of coping with trauma. A big thing that trauma recovery requires is space and time.

And I find, especially in our culture, we have a tendency to try to push through things. We power through it. And it is, as a triple Capricorn, completely in my nature to power through things. However, I try to make it a practice to not power through trauma. And so I've been giving myself space and time away from my mediumship skills, which doesn't mean I don't talk to dead people, because I do. Sometimes it comes up in readings. Sometimes it comes up in my life.

However, I have shifted my relationship to that part of my work as a way to give my insides time to recover and heal. And I think it's an important thing for me to share with you because you, too, might need to give yourself permission in some way, on some level in your life, to just take a step back from something that really rattled you. And that's okay, even if that thing is something you're highly identified with. Maybe it's part of your work. Maybe it's part of your life in a big way. Mediumship absolutely ticks all those boxes for me.

 But my ability and the need for my ability is⁠—it's not going anywhere. And I can best honor my sensitivities, my boundaries, all that kind of good stuff, by respecting my own limitations. And I encourage you to do the same thing. It's a practice. It's not easy. But it's really the pursual of being a good friend to yourself.

If you have enjoyed this episode and would like to pick my brain and ask me more questions, you can always send me a question through the contact form on my website over at ghostofapodcast.com, or join me over on Patreon, where I have an ongoing series called The Ghost Baby Series where I answer your questions on all manner of woo. And I do it outside of that series as well. I invite you to join me there, and I want to remind you to practice healthy boundaries this Halloween season. Talk to you in a couple days. Bye-bye.