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. This week, we are looking at the astrology of February 18th through the 24th of 2024. I'm going to jump right into your horoscope but remind you if you want to be tracking the transits with me, you can use the same tool that I use. It's Astrology for Days over at astrologyfordays.com.

So, this week, I want to begin by telling you about two things that are happening. The first is, on the 15th of February, the Sun enters into Pisces. And then, on the 22nd, Mercury enters into Pisces. So, as the Sun and Mercury enter into the mutable water sign of Pisces, it joins heavy-handed Saturn and idealistic Neptune. So now we've got four planets in the zodiac sign of Pisces. And while I don't tend to focus much on Solar ingressions, I do want to take a moment to acknowledge this shift in energy because Pisces Season can be a time where we, in general, experience overload or burnout. And this is because our sensitivities become stronger. This isn't like a magical thing. It's just that it can feel like the boundaries between ourselves and the world or other people become thinner.

The effects of Piscean energies increase our sensitivity to our spiritual experience. A lot of times, a lot of us are not focusing on our spiritual experience because we're busy living our fucking lives, or we think we're focusing on our spiritual experience, but we're really over-intellectualizing it or whatever else. So, this week and over the course of the next month, I want to bring your attention to your energetic boundaries because boundaries are not about keeping the world or other people out. They're about holding yourself together. They're about knowing where you begin and where you end and knowing what you can do in a healthy way and where you step out of alignment with yourself.

The reality is we are living through exceptionally painful times. We're watching on our phones as people live through unspeakable, unimaginable suffering. I don't know⁠—how do you deal with that? Is there a healthy way of dealing with that? It creates this cognitive dissonance where, one minute, you are deeply aware of this profound and unjust suffering that is happening in the world, and the next minute, you're like, "Oh, I gotta go into the coffee shop and get my coffee to go because I gotta make it to work on time." Like, what? How do you live with that?

And for many of us who are COVID-cautious, especially those of us who have remained concerned about COVID for the last four years⁠, we are constantly living with this as we see this mass disabling event rip through our societies, but most people are walking around without masks and acting as though COVID was not a mass disabling event, that it was not deeply dangerous. I mean, it's now currently unlikely to kill most people, but we are learning more and more about this disease that is really frightening. And so it's really hard to navigate the world in this regard.

If you pay attention to so many different things that are happening in politics, if you live in the United States and you see the just harrowing onslaught of mass shootings all the time, if you pay attention to the climate⁠—all of these things that deeply concern me and I bet deeply concern a lot of you⁠—and I know from reading reviews some of you are not that concerned, and you do not want to hear about it with your astrology.

But here's the thing. As an astrologer, and in particular an astrologer who doesn't just do horoscopes⁠—I'm also giving in-depth personal readings to people. So I receive your questions, and I receive a lot of questions every week from you. And I see in your questions and the questions that people send me about asking for a reading, and it feels like they're just asking about their own individual experience, but the things that run through these questions reflect the immense strain of living with so much information available to us about so many terrible things happening all at once. How do you live through it and not be traumatized by it? How do you live through it and go through life as normal?

It is really hard. I mean, it's really easy for a lot of people, and it's really hard for a lot of people. I want to just acknowledge that. This is what's happening now, and it is really challenging. And with Pluto's ingress into Aquarius, the role that technology plays, that it is playing in our revolutions, in the best and worst of society, are just starting to unfold, just starting to unfold. But I want to stay focused in this moment on this week's Sun and Mercury ingression into Pisces.

As we experience the shift in energy, what we can do is bring our attention to ritualizing self-care. So what that might look like is setting the intention to create specific amounts of time every day where you care for your body⁠—you make sure that you are tending to your physical health in some meaningful way⁠—where you ritualize prioritizing joy or play, doing something that is life-affirming, that gives you that spark of life, of the joy of being alive⁠—if you are somebody who is chronically online, ritualizing time that you get off of your devices.

These are things that you can choose to do at any time, obvi. But during this Piscean Season, I want to invite you to really try⁠—to really try⁠—because when we're dealing with Piscean energies, we can feel like we're falling apart. We can feel an increase in anxiety. And this is directly connected to us feeling an increase in empathy and our intuitive senses expanding. When we have an increase in empathy and an increase in intuition, what can occur is it comes in kind of like a wave crashing at your face or like a lot of ambient noise all at once. It is hard to make out what you're feeling and the way to best react.

And so what most of us do when we get overwhelmed with Piscean or Neptunian energies is we shut down. And whether it comes to⁠—I don't know⁠—dealing with your bananas work life or dealing with the heartbreak that is inevitable to feel when you're paying attention to what's happening in the world, it is important to find ways of sustaining your efforts, of sustaining your own life. That is not a denial of seeing other people suffering. It is instead the only way to stay in the game, to stay in your efforts.

Listen. Movements, social movements, your dreams, your hopes for your personal life⁠—they may be seeded, they may be first imagined and even built on, idealism. But they are sustained with hard work and time and patience. This is where we look at how all zodiac signs are⁠—they're not just points. They're not just individual points. They exist in connection with all the other zodiac signs.

So this is where with⁠—when it comes to Piscean energy, if we ritualize it, if we ground it, then we're getting the wisdom of Virgo, its opposite sign, and the magic of Pisces. And the same thing is true of the reverse. If Virgos all work and without meaning, it becomes very rigid and can become very judgy and stuck. But when inspiration and meaning⁠—that Piscean magic⁠—is brought to Virgo, then it becomes this really beautiful, inspired, sustainable thing.

So I want to just bring your attention to the question of how can you sustain your efforts in the things that are important to you, whether it's how you engage with the world or how you manage your own life, the stresses, the good things, the bad things⁠—whatever? When we're dealing with Piscean energy⁠—and we are dealing with a lot of it, with Saturn and Neptune all of 2024 both being in Pisces⁠—we must pay attention to our relationship to perfectionism because perfectionism, which is very Piscean and also very Virgonian in different ways⁠—when we're dealing with perfectionism, what can happen is we set ourselves up so that no matter what we do⁠—no matter what we do⁠—it's not enough. So what's the point? If I can't appreciably be moving the needle, what is the point in trying at all? And that is so demoralizing. It leads to helpless and hopeless feelings, which are some of the negative experiences we can have in this kind of Piscean/Neptunian soup.

So, again, I come back to ritual, ritualizing, creating habits that are life-affirming and empower sustainability. That right there can be so powerful in your life and in the world and help you to stay connected to your agency, to your sense of understanding about what you can do and what you choose to do. And within that, I will say something to you that I've probably said several times before on the podcast, which is, in life, doing what is right because it is right is a powerful way to engage. If we are only doing things because of our attachment to results, because we really need to see a result right now, then we get really burned out and we miss out on opportunity, on possibility in the moment.

So this is a powerful time for fortifying and prioritizing your spirit, including but not limited to your own boundaries, having a greater awareness of what your boundaries are. This will help you to sustain whatever efforts are most important to you. And I think, for a lot of us, it's finding ways of engaging with the world. Many people have recently been radicalized by terrible things that are happening in the world. And it is important to understand that this is overwhelming. It is emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually overwhelming to really understand the full breadth of cruelty that humans are capable of, to understand, let alone bear witness to, the suffering of people around the world and to understand your own privileges. It can be harrowing. It can be really hard, and it's not like life stops to let you catch up.

That said, though, progress is progress. Small, small, small bits of progress are progress. And if you don't look for the wins and if you don't look for the possibilities, then there is a risk that you will feel utterly crushed by the losses and the dead ends. And that does not help anything or anyone⁠—anything or anyone⁠—but the broken systems. So finding a way to balance self-care and engagement in all things in your life, finding a way to make choices⁠—maybe not great choices in bad situations, but the best possible choices in front of you at this moment⁠—that's what helps to sustain the work, whether you're going through something in your personal life that is really difficult or you're engaging with struggle in the world.

All right. So that brings us to February 21st. And on February 21st, at exactly 11:14 p.m. Pacific Time, Venus and Mars finally meet up. And I say they finally meet up because last week, Pluto sat on top of Mars at the start of the week and then Venus at the end of the week. And Venus and Mars were not yet conjoined. And if you're newer to astrology, the word "conjunct" or "conjoined" when I reference planets meeting up⁠—it means they're at the exact same degree of the exact same sign.

So, here, we have Venus at 6 degrees of Aquarius and 58 minutes, and Mars is at the same degrees of Aquarius. So they're conjoined. The influence of Pluto is still very faintly being felt. So we still have a little bit, but within a day or two, it's gone. So we're at the very fine dregs of feeling the heavy, transformative, and intense energies of the Pluto conjunction to Venus and Mars. So whatever power struggles you have been going through in the last week, your perspective may be shifting by the 21st of February.

Venus conjunction to Mars is a transit that intensifies our desire to be connected to other people and to have connections with other people that feel good. Venus and Mars are two of the most relational planets in the zodiac. Mars is chemistry. It's play and competition and conflict. It's sex. And Venus is sensuality. It's getting along. It's collaborating. It's enjoying yourself with others. And so, when these two planets come together, it kicks up your desire for love and connection. And that may play out by you becoming aware of the relationships in your life and how meaningful they are to you or, conversely, the relationships in your life and how they're not quite working for you.

The truth of the matter is you can be partnered and have a ton of people around you and still be lonely. You can be physically literally alone and feel connected and held and supported. Our external circumstances are not the only factor at play when considering how we feel, how loved we feel, how much love we feel for others, the level of support and connection we experience. So, if you're putting yourself out there, if you're socializing and dating, you may have a fun, flirty time, especially if you have something at around 7 degrees of Aquarius or any fixed sign. So the fixed signs are Aquarius, Leo, Scorpio, and Taurus⁠—to which I say be open. Have fun.

There's no negative side of this transit to be worried about. It's just like put yourself out there, and be open to connecting with people, because this transit can make a particularly good time to make new friends or have new flirtations or go on first dates. But it's also a good time for actively getting engaged in creative projects. And those creative projects can be kind of like what I was just talking about, the creative project of strengthening your self-worth, of developing healthy habits and investigating, in a real-life day-to-day sort of way, how you are or are not embodying your spirituality. I mean, all of that is creative. But also, it's a great time for creative projects like making a table, writing a poem, etc., etc.

So, basically, what I'm saying is creativity, love, sex, play⁠—these things are life-affirming, and this transit is really good for all of them. But it's not a completely unqualified blessing because Pluto is lurking, so there's still the intensity of Pluto dragging us a little bit into our survival mechanisms, dragging us a little bit into our old traumas or the vulnerability that we experience around feeling so intensely.

So, whether you use this as a time for creatively tending to yourself or improving your relationships or just kind of getting out there and having a little bit of fun, this transit is, quite frankly, a gift. And the best way to receive the gift is to be present for it.

So that brings us, my loves, to the 24th of February. And on the 24th of February, we have two exact transits occurring. At 4:30 a.m. Pacific Time, we have the Moon at 5 degrees and 23 minutes of Virgo sitting exactly opposite to the Sun at the exact same degrees of Pisces. So we've got a Full Moon in Pisces. That's what that means. Later in the day, at 8:01 p.m. Pacific Time, Venus and Jupiter form an exact square. So the Venus square to Jupiter is very strong, almost in exactitude, during the Full Moon and in the Full Moon chart.

Now, as you can imagine, based on all the stuff I said about this Piscean energy we're going through, this Full Moon is likely to be a time where, honestly, you want to check out or you just find yourself exhausted, dealing with burnout or overload or helplessness or hopelessness⁠—all of those really hard Piscean feelings. But your presence is required because it is a Virgo Full Moon. Virgonian energies are not just analytic.

And when people think of Virgo, they will often think about judging and analysis. And that's a part of Virgo, absolutely. But it is a mutable earth sign. It's the only mutable earth sign. And so there is a materialism to Virgo and an adaptability that we want to tap into this Virgo Full Moon⁠—in other words, developing rituals, habits, however you want to think of it, that are life-affirming, that help you to get here now and to attend to whatever is salient, whatever is true in the here and now.

That said, an important thing for you to know is that the Sun at 5 degrees of Pisces is in a sandwich between Mercury at 2 degrees of Pisces and Saturn at 9 degrees of Pisces. So this means that the Moon is opposite to all three of these planets, so three out of the four Pisces planets right now. The Moon is opposite. And this creates a great deal of tension. And in particular, because Saturn is involved, it is consequential. Some people hear the word "consequences," and they shudder. But the truth of the matter is this is a really good pulse check.

Where have your intentions and your impact not aligned in how you treat yourself, in how you treat others, in how you show up for the things that are important to you in the world? This is not an invitation to be judgy towards yourself or others. It's an invitation to discern because Virgonian energies are all about discernment. And to have healthy discernment, it really helps to be clear about what your values and ideals are.

This Full Moon is going to feel really heavy and hard for you if you don't actually know what's important to you or if you have an ideal system of what's important, but it's not really connected to how you actually live, like your day to day to day, because Virgo is about the mundane. It's about the day to day to day. A Full Moon brings things to the surface. As the Moon is opposite Mercury, the Sun, and Saturn, it's going to bring to surface issues within our friendships. And you may not be able to evade or avoid how you actually feel about a dynamic in a relationship.

You may also find with Moon opposite Mercury that your emotional attachment to your beliefs is intensified, and this can lead to doubling down because Saturn's involved. If you're going to double down on what you believe, I want to encourage you to check in with your motivations because sometimes we double down on what we believe because it's too hard to admit we're wrong or it's too hard to seriously look at nuance in a situation. And sometimes we double down on what we believe because we've done that work, and we know what we damn well believe.

And for most of us, different times are going to bring up different things. This Full Moon is asking you to question your assumptions. It's asking you to be adaptable. This is a mutable Full Moon. So I want to encourage you to strive to be curious and adaptable in the presence of your own rigidity. You may incur consequences, and those consequences may be kind of like what I've been talking about⁠—psychological, emotional, spiritual. You may be experiencing the effects of having pushed yourself too hard.

And if that's the case, a little pinch of humility will go a whole long way. Humility involves or requires a willingness to acknowledge your own limitations, imperfections, and mistakes without seeking to punish or diminish your self-worth or value. And this is a topic that we're exploring in my Patreon, kind of like egos and souls and responsibility and how to embody it all. So, if that is something that is of interest to you, if that's something you're really working with, you can join us over on my Patreon to get deep into it and ask me whatever kind of questions you have. A link to join my Patreon is always in the episode description. It's at patreon.com/jessicalanyadoo.

This Full Moon is going to require humility. And what we will often do⁠—and it's certainly a risk with this Full Moon, but what we will often do when we realize that we're wrong is, instead of focusing on the ways in which we were wrong⁠—instead, fixate on how we got to be wrong, how other people were fucked up or how we were led astray in some sort of way.

And it is important, with all this Piscean energy, to align with your agency and take responsibility for what you have or haven't done, not so that you can guilt yourself or feel like shit about yourself. That is not the work. I mean, guilting yourself does nothing. It really does not serve you in any way. It doesn't mean that me and you and everybody else doesn't feel guilty sometimes, but isn't a particularly productive impulse and emotion.

And so, if you find yourself feeling guilty, ask yourself, what can you own? What can you learn? How can you, moving forward, use this information to do or be better? That is the gift of this Full Moon and of Saturn in general. Again, perfectionism serves no one. You are not meant to be perfect. You are not meant to be flawless. You are not meant to be a machine who can have healthy emotions and healthy reactions to your emotions all the time. That's not the point of spiritual healing. It's not the point of psychological healing. It's not the point at all.

The point is to learn from mistakes, to grow, and to evolve. And that takes humility because, a lot of times, what we do is we make mistakes or we run into shitty luck or bad things happen, and our psychological response, our spiritual response, and our emotional response is punishing. And when we are busy punishing ourselves, we're not giving ourselves the grace we need in order to learn.

Pay attention to these themes as they come up within you and around you this week and especially on the Full Moon. But that's not all that's happening within this Full Moon chart. We also have a Jupiter square to Venus that will be exact in a few hours after the Full Moon, but it's also really closely square to Mars. So Jupiter squaring Venus and Mars gives a great deal of resiliency to this Full Moon experience. So Jupiter can make us feel more willing to work through difficult things. In regards to self-worth, Jupiter really gives us a buoyancy and, again, a resiliency that we need with this kind of heavy Saturn opposition to the Moon and Saturn conjunction to the Sun and Mercury.

And that resiliency can help us to be humble, to actually learn what we need to learn. The problem is Jupiter and Venus are not super motivated to do hard work. And so there is a way that, especially if this is your typical nature where you want to not confront difficulties and kind of stay at the surface of them to keep things pleasant and okay and moving, that you may try to kind of, again, skate the surface of whatever comes up this Full Moon. And I gotta say that is not in your best interest. This is an opportunity to do some work. So do some work.

The other thing about Jupiter square to Venus is it can be a transit where we blow a lot of money, where we take some sort of chance, or we overdo it in some way. And on its own, Venus/Jupiter square is actually quite lovely. There's things to be worried about, like overspending or proclaiming love before you really know for sure if you are in love⁠—that kind of thing. But typically, this transit⁠—the problems with it are not that bad.

Jupiter square Venus and Mars can help to strengthen our self-worth. It can help to strengthen the ego in a healthy way. But again, it does require internal direction. It's important that you keep in mind this Full Moon to be intentional about what you're choosing, what you're centering in your thinking, in your feeling, and in your actions.

Having Mars and Venus conjoined square to Jupiter would typically be great for romance, but you know Saturn. Saturn's kind of a boner killer. So I'm not expecting this to be the most romantic time. But I will say, if you do have a new friendship or a new romantic or sexual relationship beginning on or around this date, it's important for you really to consider your choices and whether or not you're centering self-worth, how you're centering it, and whether or not you're learning from the past, from your own past experiences, because again, Full Moons in general⁠—certainly Saturn specifically⁠, it does dreg up our patterns from the past. So these are important things for you to maintain self-awareness about, okay?

Now, one last thing I'll say: Full Moons are a time to let go. They're a time of release. If you feel like, "Ugh, I do not have the energy inside of me to start new habits," then may I gently suggest ceasing bad habits? Pulling back from individual bad habits that you have active in your life may be a lot easier than starting something new this week. And that's okay. Progress is progress. It doesn't have to be big progress. It doesn't have to be quick progress. Progress is progress. And it's important to pull perfectionism out by its roots however you can, wherever you can.

My dears, that's the astrology of this week. I'm going to do a quick run through the transits. On the 15th, the Sun enters into Pisces. And then, on the 22nd, Mercury enters into Pisces. On the 21st, Venus forms an exact conjunction to Mars. And then, on the 24th, at exactly 4:30 a.m. Pacific Time, we have a Full Moon in Virgo. And later that day, we have a Venus square to Jupiter that is exact.

As we end this week's horoscope, I want to remind you that love is a catalyzing force. It is motivating, it is strengthening, and it is powerful. But there's also great beauty in the receptivity of love. I want to urge you to center and prioritize love as a catalyzing force in how you relate to yourself, to others, to your goals, to the things that are important to you in the world, because this is not just a sustainable motivation, but is a strengthening, fortifying, life-affirming motivation.

I hope you take really good care of yourself and others, and I will talk to you in just a couple of days.