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'm actually stunned that it's almost the end of the year, and I have a lot of announcements and things to share before we dive into this week's horoscope. The first one is I just want to thank you so much for your wonderful response to my boundaries talk that I gave at the Witches Confluence and shared in last week's episode. I really was very, very touched by the response to that, and hopefully I'll get to share more stuff like that on the podcast and on the internet in general.

And if you want to learn more with me, you can always either join me over on Patreon, where I drop content a couple times a week, or/and you can take classes with me. And I have a shop page on my website at lovelanyadoo.com/shop, and you can just find a bunch of classes there. Now, speaking of classes, this year, I'm going to do something different. So, typically, I do a year-ahead forecast on the podcast, and this year, I'm not doing that. Instead, I'm going to do a couple other things.

The first thing is I am co-facilitating a class. It will be a webinar, so you can join from anywhere in the world. It's called Facing 2025 Together: Astrology for Community Care and Resistance. And I'm facilitating it with Dean Spade, the author of Love in a F-ed up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell Together. And not only will I share the transits of 2025 and what to expect, but we will be having conversations about and getting practical tools for how to cope, how to develop strategies, and turn towards community and collective power. So I'm really excited to share this. This will be available on a sliding scale, with the bottom of the scale being one single American dollar. So check out the event. Join us if you like. I would certainly love to have you.

Now, I'm also going to be creating content about the astrology of the year ahead on my Patreon, and I will announce it, as I do, here on the podcast. And some of that stuff will be accessible to anyone and for free, as long as you subscribe on Patreon, and some of it you can purchase or you can join me on Patreon to check out. So I'm going to drop a lot of content over the course of the year, and probably a good concentration of it in the next couple of months. So stay tuned for all of that.

And while we're on the topic of 2025, which is of course right around the corner, we will have a New Moon on December 30th, on the second-to-last day of the year. But this week, on December 15th, we have a Full Moon. Full Moons are not when you manifest. Full Moons are when you release and you let go. And so this December 15th Full Moon that I'm going to talk to you about in a few minutes is the last Full Moon of the year. It's a time for releasing. On the 30th of December, we're going to have the last New Moon of the year⁠—time for imbibing, for setting intentions.

So I wanted to just kind of put that in your sweet little noggin because we're stepping into a radically new time in 2025, and I'm guessing you can feel it. I mean, you can see it in the world around you if you pay attention to the news or the lives of the people around you. But I think a lot of us are feeling it in our bones. We are on a precipice, and the precipice is a biggie. 2025 is going to be a major shift. And whether we are thinking about the ongoing genocides that are happening all over the world for cobalt, for land, for power, and out of that classic Uranus in Taurus lack of value of certain people and an overemphasis of value of others⁠, whether we're considering the drones that are flying over New Jersey that are apparently the size of SUVs or the people taking back power in Syria from Assad, whether you're obsessed, like many of us are, with the very important conversation around the Robin Hood figure Luigi Mangione, we are looking at the impact and the effects of not just Pluto in Aquarius but the kind of swell that happens before this tide shifts.

If it seems chaotic, my dears, that's because it is chaotic. When we think about Pluto in Aquarius⁠—which is now where we're at. Pluto is in Aquarius until 2044, so 20 years of this, right? We are just still in precipice times with this transit, and it is chaotic, right? It is chaotic. Pluto is survival, and Aquarius energies are revolutionary. So here's something to consider. If our survival mechanisms act unintelligently and out of fear, without consideration, without first getting present, it makes a person dangerous to themselves as well as to others. Now, this can be applied to you in your own internal world, how you engage with love and substances and work and health, and it can also be applied to us as a collective because, certainly, Aquarius does relate to collective energies. How people act when fear drives us⁠—that is not usually our best selves.

So strategy and intention-setting paired with a willingness to dare to explore what is possible, to take risks, to embrace futurism⁠—like really envisioning what could a future look like, and how can we take steps in the present to co-create that future⁠—that's some of the best parts of what Pluto in Aquarius has in store for us. But part of what makes 2025 such a precipice year is that all the outer planets are ingressing, a.k.a. moving, into a new sign. That's unusual. So, while Pluto is already in Aquarius⁠—I mean, Pluto just got here. In 2025, Saturn and Neptune are both going to join Chiron in Aries, and Uranus is going to finally leave Taurus and enter into Gemini. Jupiter is also going to change signs this year. That one's less surprising.

But all to say this is a shift in an era. Within that shift, we are all invited⁠ not so gently to change, to evolve, to grow. That's scary, and it's hard. And also, it's exciting, and it's ripe with potential. As you consume astrology content, especially predictive content like horoscopes and predictions for what 2025 has to bear, I want to encourage you to take as constructive of a mindset as you can. A lot of times, when we turn to tools like astrology to tell us what's going to happen, we do it out of fear, right? And when you turn to a predictive tool out of fear, it's going to be pretty easy to find things to be scared of. Or I suppose if you find astrologers who just talk about positive things, then maybe it'll make you feel better.

But the truth of the matter is astrology, when we're using it to predict what's going to happen in the year ahead, is really a tool for understanding history. So that can be the history of the world when we're talking about mundane astrology and what's going to happen. Are we going to have a war, or are we not going to have a war? That kind of thinking. When we're trying to predict out what's going to happen with technology, let's say, we would use astrology as a historical guide to literally look at patterns with how humans evolve with technology or combat, etc.

But it's also a tool for understanding your history. The last time that a particular aspect happened in your birth chart, what was going on in your life? If you understand that⁠—maybe you were ten years old, and so you were fighting with your mom. It doesn't mean when the transit happens again in your 30s that you're going to be fighting with our mom. But it does mean that the themes that were at the root of the struggle was about or your role in the struggle or your feelings or the coping mechanisms you developed as a result of that struggle⁠—that's what gets reactivated.

When we understand that astrology is a tool for understanding our own histories so that we can evolve and not keep on traversing the same landscape inside of ourselves in these ever-tightening circles⁠—this is really what we call trauma patterns. If we find ways to use astrology to help us to see what's possible so we can strategize and innovate, this is the best use of astrology. But it's exceptionally hard, or maybe not even possible, to do that when you turn to the tool out of fear.

So all to say check your motivations. And for the astrology students in the room, you may note I'm using the word "motivations." That's a Mars word. Let us not forget that Mars is Retrograde, right? And it is opposite Pluto. So this is a really powerful time for checking your motivations and taking responsibility for how you use astrology, making sure you don't use it in ways that are ultimately not helpful⁠—not helpful to you, not helpful to the people around you.

So join me for my class, Facing 2025 Together: Astrology for Community Care and Resistance. You can get tickets on my website. There will also be a link in the show notes of this episode. It'll be in my Linktree and on my website and all the places. Also join me over on Patreon for more, more, more 2025. And if predictions make you stressed, use other tools. You don't need the astrology right now.

Now, as promised, let's talk about the last Full Moon of 2024, happening on December 15th at exactly 1:02 a.m. Pacific Time. Full Moons are always a time for releasing. Emotions come to the surface so that we can become more aware of them. So the emotions are the Moon, and the self-awareness is the Sun because a Full Moon is always when the Sun is exactly opposite to the Moon, to degree, not just to sign.

When that self-awareness paired with emotionality comes to the surface, a lot of us show our asses. It is very easy to act out during a Full Moon. And this is why emergency responders are often very busy during Full Moons. When your emotions spike, it's pretty human to not sit with those emotions but instead act out of them. Now, the Sun is in Sagittarius⁠—very impulsive⁠—and the Moon is in Gemini, also not known for self-restraint. So I want to invite you to be as intentional as you can about the way that you process your emotions.

Now, fun fact: Mercury goes direct today, but several hours later. This Full Moon is exact at 1:02 a.m. Pacific Time, and Mercury goes direct at 12:56 p.m. Pacific Time. So we are still in a Mercury Retrograde moment, and that's particularly of note because Mercury is the ruling planet to Gemini, and this is a Full Moon in Gemini. So we know that our emotional impulses can get distracted, can kind of be all over the place, can get scattered, and we want to apply the rule of re's. We want to be reflecting, and that's really hard to do when you're having an emotional spike or you're really reactive.

The very cool thing about experiencing a Full Moon in Gemini is that it can open your mind. You can open your mind so that there's more room for your emotions to show up and reveal themselves to you. But that requires your mind is not so open that you don't have any intention, that you're not processing. The tricky thing with Gemini energies is that lots of things can be true at once, and this is wise. But when we take that truth that lots of things can be true at once and we hold it out of proportion, what ends up happening is nothing's true. There's no point. There's no intentionality. And then things can get really messy. Things can get dishonest. Things can get messy.

What's particularly of note in this Full Moon chart is that the Sun and Moon are forming a T-square to boundaryless Neptune. So this Full Moon is an absolutely terrible time to be doing consciousness-raising drugs. I know a lot of people do that on Full Moons. I would advise not to during this one. Neptune is not a good trip. And in fact, what you're meant to do whenever going through a Neptunian experience is to practice being present without attachment. It's very hard. It's very hard to do, especially when you have big emotions, because most of us, most of the time, are attached to our identities and to our feelings and to how things are supposed to be or how that person was supposed to act.

When we have a Full Moon in Gemini and it's forming a T-square to Neptune, the assignment is to hold it lightly, to let it go. And when I say let it go, I mean let it dissolve. Let it fall out of form, and don't try to control or track or contain where it goes and what happens next. It's a very spiritual assignment, right? It's very hard to do. And letting go, letting the things that don't serve you⁠—whether they're your own habits, your own ideas, relationships, goals⁠—letting those things go doesn't mean not having intentions. It doesn't mean not having boundaries. It doesn't mean not caring. It means that you are embodying your truth to the best of your ability in the here and now, and you're not trying to control anything else. You're allowing people and circumstances to reveal themselves to you as they develop. Again, it's really simple, but it's really hard.

This is where we return to the theme and that I really focused on last week with you, which is boundaries, because Neptune, as this really important player in this Full Moon chart, will run amok in your life if you don't have boundaries. The truth of the matter is you can have great boundaries; that doesn't mean other people respect your boundaries, and it doesn't mean other people have boundaries. And that is not yours to hold.

This, again, is where I want to invite you to let go. You can't control other people. The Sun is in Sagittarius, and Sagittarian energies are inspiring, and they're exciting, and they're expansive. But they're also the energies that want to drag a horse to water and shove its face in that water until it drinks. If I explain to you, if I prove to you my idea is a great idea, you'll agree, and then everything will be fine.

And so that part of you that thinks that way, that part of you that feels that way or acts that way against your better judgment⁠—that's a great part to invite to your conscious awareness, to tolerate the emotions that are motivating that kind of behavior, and to practice letting it dissolve, letting it go. If you are doing any kind of end-of-the-year spiritual work, this Full Moon, my sweet friends⁠—this Full Moon is your time to be intentional about and emotionally present for what you want to let go of in 2024 or what you want to let go of now.

It's very possible, maybe even likely, that if you have anything at around 24 degrees⁠—which is where the Sun and Moon are⁠—of a mutable sign⁠—so we're talking about Gemini and Sagittarius, Virgo and Pisces⁠—you're going to be pretty damn exhausted this Full Moon. You may feel tapped and drained. Your body just may need to rest. You may need silence. So, if you've been thinking, "Oh, social media⁠—it's eating my brains," okay, take 48 hours off, 72 hours off, whatever you can tolerate. Neptune has a way of being exhausting, and experiencing your emotions is hard work, so that also can be exhausting. So, if you're tired, give your body what it needs. If you need a break, take a break. Just don't do it in a way that creates more problems than it solves. So I'm not encouraging you to drop everything and expect everyone else to carry it for you.

Having healthy boundaries means acknowledging and honoring your commitments, the ones that you made. So it's about owning the expectations you've set with other people and honoring those things while also owning your own needs and honoring those. And there's no way to do that perfectly. It's not symmetrical, and it's not something that we can be perfectionistic about if we want to be happy. It's a practice, and it's one to muddle through this Full Moon.

Another thing that you may experience is further confusion. It's like Mercury Retrograde is over. Yay. We would expect clarity. But in fact, this Full Moon is so murky and soupy. So understand this: Mercury Retrograde⁠—it's almost over. Later today, it's over. And this Full Moon is a kind of important emotional push to be emotionally present with what you don't understand, what you're frightened of⁠—because Neptune is associated with anxiety⁠—with the needs of your body, whether they show up through your mental health or your physical health. And for most of us, most of the time, it's a fun little combo platter of the two.

Allow yourself to simply be present. And if you've got major stuff planned, like if you've got big plans, if you've got to take care of people, if you've got something that requires a lot of focus and concentration, just make sure you're drinking buckets of water. Whenever we go through Neptune transits⁠—hot tip⁠—drink extra water. Make sure you're fortifying your body. When we go through Neptune transits, especially anything with the Neptune and Moon or Neptune and Sun, we want to fortify the body instead of starve the body. The more grounded and present and nurtured the body is, the easier it is to experience the emotions and sensations that Neptune triggers. And you want to be present for that shit so that you can heal, and the next time it comes around, it's that much easier.

A couple more things I'll just note about what's happening this Full Moon⁠—there is a Saturn/Jupiter square that has been building for quite some time. It'll be exact next week, and we are experiencing it in this Full Moon chart. What's important about that is when Saturn and Jupiter are at 90 degrees from each other, a big question is, what's enough? What's too much? Should I prioritize my responsibilities or my freedom? It's just really kind of like a core challenge and question.

And in this particular case, the Moon is in Gemini, and so is Jupiter. And Neptune is in Pisces, and so is Saturn. So we have a very strong reiteration here with this theme. We also have, still, some remnants of that Saturn/Mercury square that was exact on the 6th of December. So we're still feeling that transit, and that just puts everyone in kind of a negative frame of mind. It puts you in a scarcity-mindedness, which is not particularly helpful, given that Neptune kicks up anxieties, a fear of the unknown.

As I mentioned, Mars Retrograde is opposite Pluto. It's also opposite Venus. And so this struggle to embody your values and not just struggle against yourself or others, but struggle towards alignment, honesty, healing, embodying what you cherish, your values⁠—these are some of the ongoing themes that are the underpinnings of this very important Full Moon in Gemini. All of this said, don't overthink it. Don't overthink it. Keep it simple. Nurture and fortify your system. Make sure you're taking care of your basics. Strive to be present.

Now, that brings us to our next exact transit happening this week, and it's happening on Wednesday, December the 18th, at 6:29 a.m. Pacific Time. And on this day, the Sun and Neptune are exactly square to each other. So this transit was active in the Full Moon chart. We are feeling it. It's kind of dragging out the effects of that transit. Again, it's exact on the 18th.

This transit⁠—as I said, it can make you feel damn exhausted. It can make you feel exhausted. It can make you feel anxious. It can compromise your sense of vitality and virility⁠—we're talking about the Sun here. And that can make it hard for you to be excited or optimistic or motivated. This transit can be associated with things falling apart because Neptune's all about disillusionment or things dissolving, literally. If you are somebody who struggles with a martyr or savior complex, yeah, that's very Neptunian. This transit can trigger it.

This can also be a time where you over-idealize someone or even yourself. This can be like delusions of grandeur or projections of grandeur. So you may tell yourself that somebody you know or somebody you have a parasocial relationship with is perfect and never struggles and is so much better than you in some way. That kind of thinking is illusionary at its core. And as this energy is at play at the same time as the Mars/Pluto opposition is dragging out, what we have is the risk that you imagine that other people are so much better than you or have it so much easier than you, and then you resent it. And then you are basically really mean to yourself about it or have really kind of toxic thoughts about that person or what they have or what you imagine they have.

So, again, these are all things to be clocking your self-awareness around. And then, if other people act in ways that you find to be surprising, confusing, mysterious, unsettling, just remember that the way that these transits shake down in each of us is going to be unique to our own shit and complicated things we have happening in our lives and in our psyches. So people might be acting fucking weird is the upshot, and this is not a good time to insist on clarity or try to project onto others what you think is really happening and why they're really doing what they're doing or not doing. Instead, try to be open. Hold things lightly as possible.

This is a poor time for spiritual work. Neptune squares, conjunctions, and oppositions are a poor time for spiritual work in general because it's hard to be grounded and centered enough to make use of that and to have healthy boundaries. And when we do spiritual work and we don't have our boundaries well protected, if we don't have clarity of intent and clarity of what you are and what you're not and what you're letting in and what you're not, then you're vulnerable, and not in a super awesome way.

This transit is confusing, and it's meant to be confusing. So, if you feel confused, nurture yourself. Don't beat yourself up. And if you're one of those people who has an email-centric life, as so many of us do, you may want to add one of those "Thanks for your patience as I take a little while to get back to your email" kind of email responders. Buy yourself some time, if you can, by being clear about your boundaries and communicating in a way that is easeful for you.

And while we're talking about Neptune, it is relevant for me to speak to your physical health. As a lot of people travel for the holidays, finding ways of moving through the world where you're taking good care of yourself and others is, quite frankly, a joy. It's also annoying and inconvenient. But it turns out I'm kind of idealistic, and so my ideal is that we all take actions, even inconvenient ones, to take care of each other, and especially the most vulnerable amongst us.

Now, that brings us to the last exact transit happening this week. On Thursday, December 19th, at exactly 6:11 p.m. Pacific Time, we have a lovely trine between Venus and Jupiter. Venus will be at almost 15 degrees of Aquarius, and Jupiter will be at the same place of Gemini. This is a lovely transit. When these two planets come together, it's loving. It's lovely. People get along.  It's easier to be more optimistic, to be more generous with yourself and others. It can make you feel a little sassy, a little sexy. It can make you feel really open to socializing with other people, to letting them in, and showing up for them. It's a lovely transit. It can be fun for staying home and playing dress-up with clothes that are in the back of your closet. It can be fun for doing a review of the best music of the year, getting into music and art and creativity as a balm for your soul. It can also be a great transit for just breaking bread with people, socializing, connecting, whether you do that in meatspace or digital space. It's all really good with a Venus trine to Jupiter.

If you are a person who buys presents for the holidays, this transit is actually really good for shopping. It just makes shopping easier and better. You'll find the things you want kind of thing, and you'll like the things you find. And also, this is a transit that doesn't incline you to overspend, so that's kind of nice. But as a gentle reminder, you have power. Every time you spend your money or your attention⁠—you bring your presence to a company⁠—you are investing in them. So use that power wisely. Do your best to avoid giving money to companies that vote against your interests, that would underpay all of their employees. And that's not possible to do all the time in capitalism, and sometimes it's just not possible to do given your circumstances, whether they're financial or otherwise. But it's a good goal. It's a good intention to set, and it's a good thing to have in your mind, that you have power. And when Venus trines Jupiter, it might be easier to find alternatives to those big, creepy corporations and to shop local or at least support companies that are not against your values and ethics.

Now, I would be remiss if I didn't say one more thing about this transit. It's good for love. If you have something around 14, 15 degrees of an air sign⁠—which is Gemini, Libra, and Aquarius⁠—or a fire sign⁠—we're talking about Sagittarius, Leo, and Aries⁠—this is going to be especially lovely for you. Venus trine to Jupiter can just be a great time for flirting. It can be a great time for, again, expressing and experiencing like and love, which can be romantic. It can be platonic. It can be sexual. It can be some subtle or dramatic combination of them all. Whatever it is, it's fun and it's nice. So my greatest wish for you is that you have a fun, lovely, nice experience with this transit⁠—really, with any transit, but this one is good for it. So giddyap if you can.

Now, on Saturday, December 21st, it's the Solstice. At 1:20 a.m., the Sun moves into Capricorn, and we have the seasonal Solstices whenever the Sun moves into a cardinal sign. So, here, we have the Winter Solstice with the Sun moving into Capricorn. This is the day with the fewest hours of sunlight throughout the year. And after the 21st, the days start to grow longer and longer until we reach Cancer Season in the summer. I want to just acknowledge it because there's something that feels pretty monumental about this shift this year.

Pluto has now left Capricorn, and it will not return for 250 years. We have come out of a major cycle, from 2008 until last month in 2024, of Pluto transiting through the zodiac sign of Capricorn. Now we're moving into a new cycle, a fresh cycle, where Pluto is in Aquarius. There is something meaningfully different about this Winter Solstice than the ones we've experienced in recent years. And so tap in. Notice if you feel a difference. Notice if you feel a shift inside of you, if you feel a shift in the collective, if you feel a shift in your community.

Self-awareness doesn't have to be conclusive. It doesn't have to be something that you can analyze and write in a dear diary or present a talk on, but it's something worth noticing because when you notice a shift in energy⁠—even if you don't know what it means or exactly where it is, if you notice a shift in energy, it reflects your own self-awareness within time and space, a.k.a. energetically. And that's powerful. That self-awareness can be applied in so many ways that help you to live in greater alignment, in healthier ways and happier ways, but also to participate in your life in healthier ways as well as in the world at-large.

So I want to invite you to just take a moment at some point on the 21st to just slow down and notice⁠—just notice what you feel. Notice the world and how it feels to you, not with your phone in your hand, not while you're in the middle of a meaningful conversation with somebody else. Really stop and notice. And happily, the astrology of this week asks you to do that in many ways over the course of many days. So it's a pretty tight story the stars are trying to tell this week.

I'm going to run through the transits one more time for you. And also, as always, you can check out my website for the transcript if you want to get deep into anything I said. On December 15th, Mercury stations direct, and we have a Full Moon in Gemini. On the 18th, we have an exact square between the Sun and Neptune. On the 19th, Venus forms an exact trine to Jupiter. And on the 21st, it's the Winter Solstice, Capricorn Season. And that's your horoscope for this week.

I hope you take really good care of yourself and others, and I will talk to you in just a couple of days in the midweek episode, when I give one of you, my beloved listeners, a reading. Talk to you soon. Buh-bye.