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, where we talk about astrology and the world and you. This week, we're going to be looking at the astrology of October 6th through the 12th of 2024. I want to acknowledge a couple things just at the top. October 7th marks the one-year anniversary of, as you know⁠—I don't have to explain⁠—the events in Palestine. And there are many things that can and will be said about this. But I want to just acknowledges that this is a deeply human struggle.

So many humans have lost their lives, have lost loved ones. So many people have suffered in so many ways, some unimaginable. Very few of us have been untouched by what has happened and will continue to happen in the region. I want to just acknowledge this from an emotional standpoint in this moment and acknowledge the impact of such continued human suffering, environmental suffering, in Palestine for Palestinians and the effect it's having on all of us around the world. I want to just acknowledge it and hold space for how important it is for us to act in solidarity with what is just and right and to hold empathy for the loss and grief that so many of us are feeling.

I don't have any answers or anything terribly wise to say. I just want to acknowledge it from an emotional standpoint and encourage you to do whatever you can to hold on to your humanity and tap into your capacity for empathy in how you hold your thoughts, feelings, and understanding of what's happening in the world but also in how you treat yourself and other people.

Something else I want to acknowledge that's happening in the United States is that Hurricane Helene has devastated so many people in the South and Southeast here in the United States. And I'm just going to drop some links for mutual aid in the episode description, and I want to remind you about this organization called The Partnership, which is led by and for disabled people throughout disasters in the U.S. and across the world. And they're a great org to give your money to because disabled folks are often left behind in disaster relief and in disasters in general. So give what you can. Do what you can. Mutual aid⁠—it's the future.

Okay. So, if you're emotionally present for the content of either of these things I've named, it's heavy and a lot. So take a breath. Get into this moment before we get into this astrology. Okay? So the first thing I want to tell you is that on the 4th of October, which was just a couple days ago, Mars entered into its Retroshade period. So the Retroshade of a planet is not the Retrograde, you see. The Retroshade is basically like now we're in the degrees where Mars is going to Retrograde over later on.

Mars goes Retrograde December 26th of 2024 through February 23rd of 2025. So we are now in the Retroshade of Mars until basically Christmas. What could possibly go wrong? So let me just give you a little context for how to consider the Retroshade of Mars. For those who are astrology students and who properly fucks with astrology, you can add the layers of data of what zodiac sign Mars is transiting through because it is retroshading right now in Cancer, but it doesn't retrograde until it hits Leo. So there's context there, which is more than we're going to talk about in this moment. There's also the context of whatever transits from here until Christmas that Mars makes to any planets globally or any planets in your birth chart, they're going to be⁠—you're going to feel them again when they come back in the Retrograde.

Now, just broadly speaking, in the Retroshade of a Mercury Retrograde, what we are meant to do is start to tap into that reflection that a Retrograde requires. So this is where you want to be a little bit more intentional about what you do because Mars is your motivation. It's your energy. It's your actions. It's your body. It's your passions. And so this is a great time to maybe slow down a little bit. Maybe get a little bit more intentional, tapped into whatever it is that is going on inside of your body. What is motivating your actions? How are you stewarding your energy? How are you actively engaging with your ego? Is it going off of triggers and activation, or are you intentional about it?

Mars in general, as I said, is related to the body, is related to the whole damn meat suit. And so many of our triggers and activations originate in the body. And so this is an important time to tap into your body health. How are you relating to your meat suit? Are you taking care of it? Are you living it? Are you judging it? Are you fixating on a weird dot on the side of your face when what you should be doing is breathing and drinking more water?

Mars is about action. It's about what we do. So this is a great time to notice what activates you. What motivates the things you do? We are not in a Retrograde. You can go ahead and do your things. There's no, "Don't do this; please do that," in a Retroshade. However, what comes up now will come back around during the Retrograde. So the more present you are, more intentional you are, the better. And you know what? You can't always do the best. That's okay. Just do the best you can do in this moment. And if you can't do great, try to learn from it. That's the assignment of being in this life, from my perspective. So something to pay attention to, not something to fixate on, something to obsess on.

Again, if Mars is related to your motivations and your triggers, then some of that stuff is deep inside of you. It can get kind of unconscious. So presence helps you to get more conscious. And that self-awareness empowers you to have more and better options. Now, we often have more and better options than we think we have, but we're so locked in our perspectives and our habits and our triggers that we miss out. So, again, slow it down just enough to be present, and with that presence, become a little more aware. And then you're using the Retroshade to the best of your ability.

That brings us to our first exact transit of the week. And I don't know what's going on in October. October is a bananas month. Now, historically, the only place you can get my bonus episode of Ghost of a Podcast has been on the kittens level of my Patreon. I have now made the bonus episode available for purchase, so you don't have to become a patron in order to access it. But it is available for purchase on my Patreon account, so over at patreon.com/jessicalanyadoo. So, if you wanted to listen to the month-ahead forecast, you can go ahead and purchase it there.

There's a lot of things happening over the next several months. Things are really mounting. So okay. Back to the 8th. On the 8th, we don't have one exact transit, my friends. We have three exact transits. The first one, Tuesday, October 8th, at 3:22 a.m. Pacific Time, Venus forms an exact trine to Mars. This is a lovely transit. Venus will be at 18 degrees and 38 minutes of Scorpio. Mars will be at the same degrees of Cancer, being a little Retroshady. But again, we're not overthinking it.

This is a lovely trine between water signs. Venus is all about connection and, "I want to give a little. I'm going to take a little." It's that balancing ebb and flow of intimacy. Mars is, "I know what I want. Let's make it happen." When these two planets form a trine to each other, especially in a water sign, what we tend to have is a greater flow of getting along, greater flow of connection between you and other people. This also applies to your creative pursuits. And there are so many different levels on which we have creative pursuits. So, whether we're talking about making art or building coalitions with people or spiritual work, this transit softens the aggressiveness of Mars and pushes Venus out of its codependent tendencies. So it's absolutely lovely.

This is a great time for socializing in general, connecting with people in general, making art, clarifying your values, acting on your values, and even moving through your finances. If there's a project you have to do to figure out your money or get clear about manifesting money or some shit like that, this is a great transit for that.

Now, a little bit later on that day, at 5:23 a.m. Pacific Time, Mercury will be at 21 degrees and 20 minutes of Libra, and it will form an exact trine to Jupiter at the same degrees of Gemini. So Mercury is details. Jupiter is the big picture. And so what we have here is these two planets coming together so that you have an easier time appraising the details of the big picture or the big picture within the details. In other words, you enjoy the forest while taking in all the glory of the individual trees.

This is a great transit, again, for socializing, for connecting with people, for learning new things, for communicating effectively, taking in information really properly, like hearing what people have to say⁠—and I don't mean auditory hearing; I mean getting it. This is a great time for making plans because, again⁠, big picture and details⁠—check, check. This is one of those transits that can kind of increase the tempo of your day. So you may find yourself running around, talking to a bunch of different people⁠—and by talking, I mean DMs, texts. I don't necessarily mean mouth talking, but communicating with a lot of people, taking in a lot of data. It's a fun, dynamic transit.

The problem is only that it overlaps with a challenging transit between Mercury and Chiron. So let me say more about that Mercury/Chiron and then come back to Mercury/Jupiter. So, at 7:36 a.m.⁠—and I want you to note these are all happening in the early morning Pacific Time, so it's all kind of close to each other⁠—Mercury will be at 21 degrees and 29 minutes⁠—it's moved just a teeny, tiny bit⁠—of Libra, and it will be exactly opposite to Chiron at the same degrees of Aries.

Mercury opposite Chiron is quite a challenging transit. And while Mercury trine Jupiter is such a supportive transit, we want to hold these transits together so we can synthesize the data. So let me tell you a little bit about this Mercury opposition to Chiron. This transit can kick up negative, self-hating, stuck beliefs that you hold about yourself. And they may be general beliefs that you hold about yourself. They may be specific to your mind, your intelligence, or communication in general, to friendships.

And because it's an opposition, we know that oppositions, especially by transit, tend to be experienced oppositionally. So it's between you and someone else or us and them. So the us and them can happen in your personal life, but it can also happen on a collective and social level. We certainly have a lot of us-and-thems in the world, unfortunately.

But here we have this transit triggering core beliefs that come from past wounds and triggers. We know that our core wounding sometimes is from our lived experience. It's like I walked into traffic; I got hit by a car, and it is a thing that really stuck with me and fucked me up. Okay. That's a core wounding, but we have other kinds of core wounding, from inherited conditions that are not just based on our lived experience but our ancestors' lived experience. We have core wounding from things that we don't remember experiencing when we were really little kids. And we know that when humans experience trauma, a lot of times, we block it out. We don't remember that shit at all.

And so, a lot of the times, what happens when our wounds are activated is we start acting out or thinking in ways that reflect our lack of self-awareness more than our self-awareness. That sucks. When you're doing that, the way you know you're doing that is you're confused. You're utterly confused. You're utterly confused about what's happening, about why other people are reacting the way they are about how you even got here. That's when you know you have been acting or you are still acting out of unconscious, perhaps unprocessed, trauma.

Instead of trying to figure things out when you are in a state of activation⁠—because when you're in a state of activation, you're only going to be processing data through that activation. So we can't come to clarity when the whole problem is we're lacking clarity. What we can do when we're lacking clarity is come to presence. Practice self-awareness, not so that you can be conclusive so that you can figure out what to do. That can't be the motivation if you want it to work.

Cultivating self-awareness and presence is uncomfortable. It forces you to sit with but not attach to your shitty, self-harming, mean-spirited attitudes that you hold about yourself or others, allowing yourself to own your thoughts, not attach to your thoughts. Yes, these are my thoughts. It doesn't mean anything, necessarily. Thoughts are thoughts. They're just thoughts until you attach to them, until you act on them. You're allowed to think anything you want. You can have fucked-up thoughts as long as you don't attach to them and act on them, passively or assertively.

Allowing yourself to cycle through your own wounding, to let the wounded parts of you have their voice but to be a good enough steward of your own welfare that you don't attach to them, that you don't make them bigger than they already are⁠—that's what we call healing into adulthood. And we all have negative beliefs about ourselves and about other people. When Mercury forms an opposition to Chiron, what we tend to get activated around is our negative beliefs about your thinking, your mind, your attitudes, your friendships.

So this transit may find you experiencing yourself or your relationships or other people in a way that's really just confusing and activating, and it feels like it comes out of nowhere. And if it feels like it comes out of nowhere, you know that there's an opportunity for you to practice being present even when you feel fucked up, to practice being curious, authentically curious, even when you feel fucked up. And you know that thing that we do⁠—you do it. I do it. People you're friends with or whatever do it⁠—is we say we're being curious, but really, we're being defensive. You know what I'm talking about, when you're defensive? You're like, "I don't get it. It doesn't make any sense." That's not curiosity. That's defensiveness using the language of curiosity.

Curiosity means you cannot center your foregone conclusion. You cannot center defending yourself from injury, perceived or real. That's not what curiosity is. So I'm not saying don't have boundaries. I'm not saying put yourself in harm's way. I'm saying be curious about your own thoughts, your own beliefs, and your own actions⁠—what you've said, what you've done, how you've listened, how you haven't⁠—that brought you here. You can't control other people. You can't control the world. But you can strive to control your actions. You can strive to navigate your internal landscape as a foundation for making better choices. That's all, right?

So I promised you that I would come back to that Mercury trine to Jupiter. So, happily, the fact that the Mercury trine to Jupiter is occurring at the same time, overlapping with our Mercury opposition to Chiron⁠—what this means is generally one of two things. Either the Mercury trine to Jupiter can further goad you into being defensive, further goad you into feeling entitled, to yelling at people, not listening to people, yelling at yourself, not listening to yourself⁠—that kind of shit⁠—or it can help you to be authentically curious, to consider the details of what's happening now in the context of the bigger picture of your life, of the world if we're talking about social and political issues.

Each thing on its own is very interesting. But without context, without synthesis, it's noise. We need synthesis. We need context in order to move beyond seven million details that are disconnected from each other or feel chaotic to work through. So the Mercury trine to Jupiter can really help our Mercury opposition to Chiron, or it can kind of enable it. I think, for most people, it's going to be a real help. But you want to just keep in mind that you're not getting too goaded. And the effects of this transit are going to last us just a couple of days, but these are important days. They're important days for your development, for your relationships. We are going to see people and systems acting out to protect themselves.

Now, that brings us to the last exact transit of this week, but I gotta tell you little bit about next week because it's so fucking bananas. But let's stick with the last exact transit of this week. On Saturday, October the 12th, at exactly 12:35 a.m. Pacific Time, Jupiter forms an exact sextile to Chiron. And this makes sense, given what we were just talking about happening on Tuesday, the 8th. But Jupiter will be at 21 degrees of Gemini 19 minutes, and it will form an exact sextile to Chiron at the same degrees of Aries.

This transit is good. We are happy that this transit is happening. It is powerful. It brings about opportunities for healing, for growth, for expansion⁠—wonderful. Chiron is core wounding. Jupiter is healing and expansion. It's a resilient planet. And when two planets form a sextile to each other, which is a 60-degrees angle, we have this dynamic spark of energy, like a little burst of energy. And so this transit brings us an opportunity to make connections, to come to awareness and have a synergistic burst of healing.

This transit can be really lovely because it can bring you that moment so many of us are often looking for when things kind of come together or gel or make sense, or you just are like, "Ah. I got it. I don't have to do this thing that really hurts me," and just⁠ something shifts⁠—or not. Don't feel bad if that doesn't happen. The problem with astrology is⁠—maybe it's a problem with astrologers⁠—is that sometimes we promise this spectacular thing that'll happen, and then it's really hard to catch the more subtle version of it, or you're disappointed that it didn't happen.

What I'm describing can be dramatic and really obvious, and it can be really subtle and foundational. Or it might not hit your chart in a way that does much of anything. This is the thing that we want to keep in mind with the global transits, which are the transits that anyone does in a horoscope that are not tuned specifically to your birth chart, is that certain aspects are simply going to activate your birth chart in different ways than others.

This transit activates your ability to heal, make connections, to better understand what's happening, even in the stuff that hurts. This can be a time where you stay with your activations, you stay with your triggers, you stay with your pain, and by staying present with it without judging it or being mean to yourself or shutting off, something shifts.

This is the thing. This is the thing. When you're wrapped up in a pattern – maybe it's a pattern with your dad. Maybe it's a pattern with everyone who activates something inside of you that reminds you of the dynamic with your dad⁠—whatever it is. When we're in a pattern, what we tend to do is ritualistically show up and play our role. We keep on doing the same thing, essentially, in the same kind of situation over and over again. And things don't change.

When we keep on doing the same thing over and over again and the other person keeps on doing the same thing over and over again, and we're just outraged that they don't change, that's interesting, isn't it? When you change the way you participate in a pattern, not only are you actually changing, actively changing⁠—you're no longer doing the thing that isn't working, you have evidence to prove⁠—but you're also creating a new environment in which other people can more easily change.

And this is not about free labor. This is just about how energy works. When you no longer play your role, it makes it a little harder for the other person to play their role. And you learn a lot about people in that context. If you do all the changing and the other person isn't changing, that's really important information. If you no longer play your role, however, you may find that other people start showing up different as well. Transits like this, Jupiter sextile to Chiron⁠—they can help with that. They can find you just being caught up in your activation, in your patterns, and acting just a little different, leaving room for someone else to act different. That's synergy for you, right?

I've said it before. I'll say it again. The things that hurt you, the things that are fucked up in the world, the trauma you've endured⁠—all this shit⁠—it's the path. It's your path. It's not necessarily fair. It's not necessarily great. It's not necessarily bad. But it's the path. And when you accept you are where you are⁠—we are where we are⁠—then we stop losing energy trying to distance ourselves from the realities wherein we find ourselves. And now you have more energy with which to cope, to get the right kind of help, to adapt⁠—whatever. Whatever is needed. And again, transits like Jupiter sextile to Chiron are really supportive in helping to facilitate that.

So I want to encourage you on and around this date, and generally the whole week, to ask yourself, "What role am I playing in this? Is this a dynamic I find myself playing in many relationships?" And if the answer is, "Yeah, I am playing this role in many relationships," then you know that you are the common piece. And that's great information for you to have because you can strive to change how you engage. You can strive to change how you even engage with your own thoughts and feelings. It's much harder to change external things. You can shift internal things. And there's freedom in that. There's endless possibility in that. And Jupiter loves to remind us of what's possible. This transit can help increase your self-awareness so that you have access to more possibilities. That's really uplifting, right?

Now, as I said, that is the last exact transit of this week. But I would be remiss if I didn't give you a heads-up that on Sunday, October 13th⁠—so day one of next week's horoscope⁠—we have a bunch of really challenging transits. Mercury will be square to Pluto. Mars will be square to Chiron. The Sun will be opposite Chiron. The Sun will also be trine Jupiter, which is a lovely transit. But those other three⁠—they're fucked-up energy. They really are challenging. And I'm not saying we can't make the most of it. We can. We will do our best. But you're going to be feeling these transits as they build up by the end of this week. And so there is the energy of power struggles, ego struggles, and a confrontation with your own core and existential wounding. That's being activated this week, even though the transits responsible for this shit are not activated this week.

This is where I want to just kind of bring your intention back to the present moment, back to curiosity, the resources that you have, and the people that you're connected to. And when I say the people you're connected to, I primarily mean your direct human connections and not just your parasocial connections, but those too. We are in a state right now where things in the world are happening fast, and a lot of them are really scary. This is not just activating social and political conditions. If you think that social and political conditions have nothing to do with your spirituality, then you don't understand spirituality.

Spirituality is not separate from how you engage with the world. Spirituality is not separate from how responsible you are to the people in your community, whether it's your immediate community or the broader community of humanity. Spirituality is not just something we do in a ritual on a Full Moon or in a religious institution. Spirituality is part of our sense of self. It's part of the human condition. It's part of the natural world that we live in. And if you use it as a resource for your own wellness and you use it as a motivation for how you show up with and for others and the world, then life is a lot easier to live.

Tapping into resources is a skill. It's a skill. It is a challenging skill to cultivate. Some of us are a lot better at it than others, but I don't think anyone's excellent at tapping into resources all the time. And this is going to be a time, October 2024, where you want to be really intentional about when you ask for help, how you ask for help, whether you're talking about your relationship with yourself⁠—like how you listen, how you show up, etc.⁠—or out in the world.

We need to hold each other up. We need to be there for each other. And when one does that through abandoning the self, it's martyrdom instead of community. When one does this out of a false sense of superiority, then it's saviorism instead of community. And in order to have healthy, robust communities, we have got to be a little healthier and more robust in ourselves. So it's a practice. It's just a practice. It's just a practice.

What astrology does is it tells us what's on the menu of what we're meant to practice at a given time. So I hope that this forecast helps you to navigate whatever comes up this week and to prepare for what comes up next week.

As always, if you want to learn more with me and do more woo/self-care with me, you can join me over on Patreon, linked in the show notes. But whatever you do, I hope you are taking good care of yourself and others. And I will talk to you and just a couple of days. Buh-bye.