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 is Episode 400, and I gotta say I am very proud of that. That's a big number. I just love making this podcast, and I make it with my forever fiancé. We are a team of two doing what we do. And we started this podcast with GarageBand and the free microphone that comes with my smartphone and, to be fair, some blankets behind my head.

I just want to say, if there's something that you want to do, something that is in your heart that you feel aligned with, I want to just encourage you to do it because making Ghost of a Podcast is just a source of complete joy for me. I really love creating this for you. So I just want to thank you. Whether you just started listening in this episode or you've been with me from the start, I want to thank you because not only do I want my work to be of service, but it brings me joy. It really allows me to do what I love, which is talk deeply about astrology, about the world at-large and our own internal world and how they are connected and how they're not. So yeah. Thanks for joining me here at Ghost.

And we are going to look at the astrology of February 2nd through the 10th of 2024. Before we get into the specifics of this week's transits, I want to just encourage you, especially if you're in it for the astrology, if you're studying astrology/practicing astrology, I want to invite you to really reflect on how differently world events are playing out now that Pluto has shifted into Aquarius. It's tangible, right?

Within that, I want to remind you that energy is not good or bad. Energy is just energy. As we cultivate more awareness of how it flows or not, we are better able to work with that. So being able to identify energy at play is really powerful. It's really helpful for our own internal evolution as well as our ability to show up for and with the world.

When we're in a state of attachment⁠—our attachment about what we expect to see or how we need things to go or how we need people to behave or whatever it is⁠—when we're in a state of attachment, it's not really possible to assess how energy is or isn't flowing. And so one of the things I want to invite you to bring awareness to in general in life, and certainly this week, is how and when your attachment to things looking or feeling or going in any particular way shows up.

Being able to notice how you feel and have authentic care and even investment without attachment⁠—it's really a skill worth cultivating. It requires that you allow yourself to be genuinely and gently curious, not scientifically curious, but genuinely gently curious, to be in a state of receptivity to receive the moment as it is without analysis, without trying to fix things. The truth of the matter is, if energy is energy, then it can be worked with. It can be transformed. It can be reconfigured, but only when we are able to work with that energy.

In regards to your spiritual health, your internal mental and emotional processes, this week and moving forward, I want to encourage you to notice the energy of your thoughts and to notice the energy of your emotions, notice the energy of your body, and to strive to be genuinely and gently curious about them instead of indulging your knee-jerk reactions, instead of indulging your survival mechanisms. And I mean this, of course, only in situations where your survival is not at play.

Now, this week starts off with the first three exact transits all happening on the 5th of February. Exact at 3:49 a.m. Pacific Time, we have Venus in Capricorn at 16 degrees square to Chiron, 16 degrees Aries. Later that morning, 4:27 a.m. Pacific Time, the Sun at 16 degrees of Aquarius forms an exact sextile to Chiron, same degrees of Aries. And then, less than an hour later, 4:58 a.m. Pacific Time, Mercury forms an exact conjunction to Pluto at 0 degrees Aquarius and 30 minutes. It's a lot.

So, if you are feeling all the feelings on the 3rd, the 4th, the 5th, the 6th, the 7th, well, then it's going to make a lot of sense. So let me say that center transit, the Sun sextile to Chiron, is a lovely transit because what it does is it empowers us to stay present with painful content, to be able to work with the flow of energy, to come to a place of greater resiliency or healing. It's a lovely, supportive transit. And so we want to recognize this gift as it's showing up in the stars. I would want to recognize this gift and work with it.

This transit will bring wounding to the surface, but it does it in such a way where we experience the energy that we need to rise to the occasion and to grow, to come into greater alignment. So this transit is incredibly supportive, incredibly supportive to all the other shit we have going on right now.

 Now, the Venus square to Chiron is a particularly stressful transit. Honestly, so is the Mercury conjunction to Pluto. They're both really hard transits. So the Sun sextile to Chiron⁠—we don't want to forget that it's active. And there's other overlapping transits that are supportive that are going to be exact on the 7th, which I'll talk about in a moment. But there is a lot of support for dealing with the energies of Venus square to Chiron and Mercury conjunction to Pluto, but we need to fully understand the energetics of these two transits.

So Venus is related to our values, and that plays out in a bazillion different ways, from the things we stand up for and we stand for in the world, what we actually prioritize with our attention, with our behavior, with our finances. It governs our personal finances in general. So Venus is related to what you own and also, of course, beauty and self-image. And it can be, in some ways, related to self-worth.

So Venus is a really rich and important planet for us to be paying attention to. And when it forms a square⁠—which is a challenging aspect⁠—to Chiron, the wounded healer itself, what we have is our core wounding around any or all of those themes, depending on what's going on in your life⁠—we have wounding around those themes emerge so that we can really have greater self-awareness about where we're at in relationship to those issues.

And so, for you, this might be more about beauty image, the way you look, that kind of shit. For somebody else, it might be more about money. For somebody else, it might be more around relationships, a feeling of loneliness or their relationship to love. I know we're near Valentine's Day, where there's a bunch of fucking bullshit pressure on all of us to be loved in a particular way. And I just want to remind you to reject society's projections of what love is supposed to look like, about when love is supposed to show up, because honestly, those societal projections are based on so many things, from our life span being so much shorter than it is now and around old heterotypical family units and gender roles that⁠—even if you're super into those things, we don't need to organize our lives around the timeline pre-prescribed to us around them.

Anyways, Venus square to Chiron is just going to bring up some shit around that. It might show up in your life in a way where it's like, okay, you're not exactly thinking about that, and then your friend or some person online that triggers you⁠—or your mom or whatever⁠—says or does something that triggers those feelings inside of you. So it might not feel like the call is coming from inside the house. It might feel like it's coming from outside of you. Honestly, it doesn't matter.

What matters is that you understand that whatever trigger is active within you, what's really going on now is you have the opportunity to cultivate greater awareness around where you're at in relationship to those needs. And you may find that you're prioritizing and placing value upon things that you actually don't fucking care about. This is a theme that we discussed pretty in depth in a reading I gave recently called "I Hate My Face." So, if this kind of stuff feels really pertinent to you right now, you might want to listen to that episode.

When we are in a state of attachment to the way we think things are supposed to be, how we're supposed to look, how our relationships are supposed to go, we are essentially closed off to the way that they can be. This week has a lot of challenging astrology, and in particular, this day has a lot of challenging astrology. But the challenge is an opportunity. It's a pain-in-your-ass opportunity, but an opportunity nonetheless, to become more present and to come to greater acceptance of whatever is in this present moment, wherever you're starting from, because by resisting the present, by resisting acceptance, you're basically blocking your blessings because it's hard to evolve from this place if you're in a state of denial about what this place is, where it is, even how you got here.

This transit is likely to kick up relationship issues. It's uncomfortable. It's a little unpleasant. But again, I would point you towards your values. Make sure that the things you're prioritizing, the way you're engaging, the conduct you're willing to accept from others, all reflects your values and to make sure that you are not placing too much value on one person in your life at the expense of yourself, or vice versa, valuing yourself to the expense of caring for and respecting the value in others.

Now, at the same time, we have a Mercury conjunction to Pluto. And this transit is really hard because Mercury is your thinking. It's your attitudes. It's your friendships. It's how you communicate. It's how you listen. And Pluto deepens things. It brings an intensity and compulsiveness to our thinking. So it can be really helpful for doing the fucking work, getting to the root of a thing. In particular, this can be a great time for therapy, like really analyzing and exploring not just what you think and what you believe but what motivated it. Pluto helps us touch into trauma, or it forces us to touch into trauma, depending on how you want to look at it.

But the downside is that it can also trigger our survival mechanisms, whether or not they're appropriate. So someone disagreeing with you, someone having a different deeply held belief, is actually not someone attacking you. Somebody having a different worldview from you is not inherently about you at all. If you can accept that that is a reflection on them, then there's some more space that you can experience between yourself and others. And in that space, you have a lot of options around how you're going to engage with that person or not.

But Mercury conjunction to Pluto⁠—because it triggers our survival mechanisms, it can often have us feeling so activated that we react in a way that reflects that activation instead of what's actually happening. And sometimes, your activation and what's happening are the same thing. A lot of times, they're not. And sometimes, people act in ways where you're like, "Where the fuck is this coming from? It's just not at all what we were talking about." But everyone has their own shit. Everyone has their own triggers.

And so this Mercury conjunction to Pluto overlapping with Venus square Chiron is absolutely going to kick up meaningful activation in a lot of us, maybe all of us. Within that, we have the opportunity to go deep because Pluto wants us to go deep. And if you want to keep it on the surface, you're more likely to have bigger problems and feel more attacked during this transit. When Mercury and Pluto are in aspect to each other, when they're transiting each other, we have a tendency to fixate and to be compulsive, to basically circle the drain of an issue that is painful. And that's not necessarily the wrong thing to do. There are moments that call for that. But if it's not constructive, if it's not helping you to stay in the present moment, if it's creating more chaos in your thinking and feeling or feeding the chaos inside of you, then it's not a good use of this energy.

Again, energy is energy. It can be worked with. And this energy calls for deep analysis, deeply listening to others. If you're going to speak, say what you really mean. Say what you really want the other person to hear. A lot of people lie because people lie. There's a lot of reasons why people lie. But a lot of the times, we lie to others because we're lying to ourselves because we don't know how to be in the truth of the thing with ourselves. No value judgment, not in this moment, not right here. That's not good or bad. It just kind of is. It's part of being a person.

And regardless of what you thought or felt when I just said that, you have for sure lied to other people at times in your life, unwittingly or with awareness, because of the lies you tell yourself about the world or about yourself or what have you. Unfortunately, it's one of the many things that are a part of the human experience. We have complicated psyches, and we do not always know how to hold a thing when that thing is painful to hold, when that thing doesn't line up with our narratives or our beliefs or our expectations.

And when these challenging transits occur, they occur so that we are confronted with the truth or the pain of keeping our distance from the truth. And while that pain and while those confrontations can be fucking unpleasant, they're really useful. They're really, really useful. And because Mercury and Pluto are both in Aquarius, it gives us that spark of curiosity. It lends itself to cultivating or strengthening our ability to be innovative, to perceive this from a different perspective, and to be curious about that.

The key with all of this is to stay in a state of curiosity instead of trying to pin down answers. You can explore the path for the answer, but I wouldn't encourage you to try to make anything set in stone on and around this date, because there's too much energy, too much activation happening in order to do that well.

On a more social level, Mercury conjunction to Pluto can be associated with major political developments and can be associated with words and laws being used in a violent way. So we want to be aware of that. And if you feel called to speak on something because it is a betrayal of your values⁠—it is a betrayal of what you believe to be just and humane⁠—then do what you need to do. But don't start shit if you don't want to get into it, if you know what I mean, because everyone's going to be feeling super activated on and around this date. So choose your battles with intention because there's only so many battles over the course of so much time that any one of us can sustain⁠—in a healthy way, anyways.

Now, the other thing to know is that this is going to be a risky, tricky time for propaganda and for making sense of the news. And so, if you are finding that your algorithms are just pumping you full of outrage, take a breather. Get offline because if outrage is our primary motivation, it's going to be really hard to sustain the work of working towards justice.

In particular, Mercury conjunction to Pluto can coincide with propaganda⁠—malicious propaganda, very specifically, so not unintentional misreporting, but intentional. In the times of Pluto in Aquarius, we're talking deep fakes. We're talking fucking weird AI, shit, right? Stuff that I don't know how to talk about yet because it's such early days and I am not an expert in such matters. But we know that these things are happening. And so that means we must cultivate greater critical faculties when online, when consuming any amount of news, any kind of news.

Mercury conjunction to Pluto may put you in a position where you are being really persuasive towards others or others are really persuading you. And again, it's important to take a beat, not set anything in stone, because these transits are meant to trigger our shit. And so, if you know you run gullible, if you know that you're looking to be mad at someone because you're just fucking in that state right now, or whatever it is, this is a time to expect triggers to emerge. And the best thing you can do in response to those triggers is show up with curiosity. Return to the awareness that you have around your own attachments, your own shit, your own activation.

As I said, luckily, we have some really supportive transits happening at the same time. On the 7th, we have two exact transits that will overlap with all these other bad boys. We've got Venus forming an exact trine to Uranus. Venus is at 19 degrees of Capricorn, and Uranus is at 19 Taurus. That's exact at 1:25 p.m. Pacific Time. And then Mars is forming an exact sextile to Neptune at 26 degrees. So Mars is at 26 of Capricorn; Neptune is at 26 of Pisces.

We are going to be experiencing the effects of the Mercury/Pluto transit, as well as the Venus/Uranus transit, until the 9th. It just so happens that on the 9th, we have a New Moon. Again, I'll get there. There's so much happening this week. But we have this lovely overlap of Venus trine to Uranus and Mars sextile to Neptune. Now, I'm going to start by telling you about Mars sextile to Neptune because I'm especially excited about this transit.

When Mars, who governs the ego and violence, forms a sextile to Neptune, which governs the higher self and empathy and communion⁠—when these two planets form a sextile to each other, our ability to show ourselves and others grace is really expanded, which I fucking love for us. I think it's a good look for all of us right now, especially this week.

Mars sextile to Neptune increases or sensitivities to other people. So Mars is so driven by ambition and the desire to prove itself, to get shit done, to go faster and further, while Neptune⁠—Neptune is really much more about spiritual energy. It's much more about our intuition and compassion. And so Neptune can gently redirect Mars to a direction that is more spiritually and socially fulfilling, while at the same time, Neptune is kind of like fog. And so it can be directionless. It can be not super motivated or driven. And this Mars sextile to Neptune is driving clarity around motivation and intention to Neptune.

So, even though there's all this relationship stuff and potentially self-worth stuff that's kicked up by the other transits I've been talking about, Mars sextile to Neptune supports us in showing ourselves and others grace, in aligning our energies and our goals to what is most spiritually aligned. So this is a time for tapping into your spirituality and allowing your spiritual convictions and beliefs to become more part of your motivations. There's a great power that the passion of Mars brings. And when we are infusing that passion with empathy and care and consideration for others, regardless of what side they're on or whether or not it benefits us individually, that right there is a beautiful thing. And it's not just a beautiful thing this week with these transits; it ages well.

In honor of Valentine's Day and Black History Month, February is Black Love Month on Ghost of a Podcast. If you're Black and you've got questions about love of any kind⁠—I'm talking self-love, romantic, love for your job, family, the place you live, whatever it may be⁠—then send me your question through the contact form over at Ghost of a Podcast today. The midweek episodes all month long will feature selected Black love questions. Just make sure to use the hashtag #BlackLove in your question.

Now, the other exact transit that's happening on this day is an earthy Venus trine to Uranus. These are both earthy transits. So Venus trine to Uranus is a really fun transit. Venus trine to Uranus combines the themes of relationships and values and self-worth with individuation and innovation and the willingness to try new things or do old things in a new way. So Venus trine to Uranus can be exciting. It can be refreshing, and it can open doors.

This is a great transit for working through your relationship issues, which, as we've already noted, is on the docket for this week. And within that, basically, this transit can be helpful to working through your relationship issues in a relationship, like if you're with somebody, whether it's a friend or a lover, and it can also help you to work through your relationship issues, like your issues around the themes of relationships. It can expand your perspective about beauty. You might be scrolling through social media and come across somebody who looks a certain kind of way that makes a connection for you or makes you feel something really positive about the way you look or some of your beauty shit; it helps you to work through that.

This transit can also help you shift your relationship to money. Now, that could come through something actually happening, like you find money that you didn't think you had, or you have the opportunity to buy something that's an investment in your future. And this is most likely to occur if you have something in your birth chart that would be aspected by a Capricorn or a Taurus planet at around 19 degrees. This transit can bring you a really lovely opportunity which you would want to take.

Now, Venus trine Uranus is also a great transit for sorting through your finances and just making different decisions about how you engage with your own financial life. This can mean looking at the ways in which maybe your spending is supporting companies that are invested and profiting from the genocide of the Palestinian people or the genocide of people in the Congo. I mean, there are so many companies that do so much fucked-up shit. It is a valuable practice to look at the companies that you frequent, look at the power of your dollar, and make adjustments when you can, how you can. Venus trine to Uranus is a great transit for supporting you in doing that.

Now, because we're going through all these other major transits, the thing I want to point you towards the most is that Venus trine to Uranus can help you to engage in your relationships in ways that create progress. Progress. And depending on where you're at in your various relationships, that's going to look a lot of different ways. But none of this happens by pure magic. It's like the energy is there, and we either work with the energy to generate more of that energy, or we work against it. Or I guess we can just be completely inert and just see what happens. But the more intentionally you go about aligning with your values⁠—Venus⁠—to create progress⁠—Uranus⁠—the better.

Between this Venus trine to Uranus and the Mars sextile to Neptune, there's so much energy at play on and around this date to support you to show up in your relationships in ways that reflect your very best parts instead of just your triggers⁠—thanks, Mercury conjunction to Pluto⁠—or your wounds, your core traumas⁠—thanks to Venus square Chiron.

All of this said, we have to talk about what's happening on the 8th because on the 8th, we have an exact square between the Sun and Uranus. It's happening with the Sun at 19 degrees of Aquarius and Uranus at 19 of Taurus. This transit is upsetting. Now, luckily, it's overlapping with these two other lovely transits that I just told you about.

But Sun square to Uranus is a transit that tends to bring about the unexpected. So things can come out of left field. You may feel really just restless and nervy, like your nerves are on end. It may make you feel irritable or a little defensive. This transit can be associated with accidents for that very reason, because Uranus is associated with our nervous system. And our central psychological and physical energies, our vitality, is the Sun. And so, when these two planets are in this uncomfortable position to each other through a square, we can often find ourselves acting or reacting in a nervy way. And that tends to not always be the most graceful thing.

This transit requires adaptability, flexibility, and a willingness to change or an openness to change because Uranus brings about change. And you're probably going to have to make some adjustments. You might have to make some changes. And that might be happening on a really big scale in your life. It might be that plans that you're really counting on, all of a sudden, you find out aren't going to work out. It may be that something happens in your relationships that you were not counting on, and it just has you questioning everything.

But it also might be that you're just going about your day at work, and somebody that you're relying on to do something so that you can do your own job doesn't do it. And so, now, you have to be innovative. You have to decide whether you're going to get bent out of shape or you're just going to adapt. And that's really what Sun square to Uranus teaches us or is trying to teach us, that things are not in our control, that if we double down in the presence of change, it often just makes things harder. Sun square to Uranus teaches adaptability. And the more able you are to accept what's happening and then adjust your expectations, your energy, your approach as needed, the better.

If an opportunity comes your way on or around this date⁠—and you want to keep in mind that tomorrow we have a New Moon in Aquarius, so this transit is going to be a big part of that New Moon. If opportunities come your way, you want to hold them lightly because Uranus is unpredictable. It's really hard to know what's going to happen with Uranus. And so you can't necessarily rely on what you're perceiving, how other people are behaving, opportunities to stay as they seem. Whatever you're dealing with may be reliable, but it may not.

That's the fucking thing about Uranus. You just can't know. It literally governs the unpredictable. So plans or commitments made on and around this date are going to have an unpredictable vibe about them. So, if you have to take a job or sign a contract, you gotta do what you gotta do. But just know there will be this thread of unpredictability in the mix.

And that brings us to the New Moon. We've got a New Moon in Aquarius at 2:59 p.m. Pacific Time on Friday, February the 9th. Now, this New Moon is occurring at 20 degrees and 40 minutes of Aquarius. So you may want to check your birth chart to see if you have any important planets or points at around 21 degrees of a fixed sign⁠—so that's Aquarius, Leo, Scorpio, and Taurus⁠—because you all are going to be people who feel this New Moon the most. If you got a planet around there, yeah, you're really going to feel it. But anything in a fire or air sign at around 21 degrees, you're going to have a nice little bump from this New Moon, too; trust.

Now, there's a lot going on this New Moon. Straight out the gate, a New Moon in Aquarius is always an invitation for us to change, to break patterns, to break habits, and to step into possibility instead of probability. The beauty of Aquarius is it empowers us to be innovators, to honor our individuality, and to make changes that have us breaking with convention or expectation. This can be a really beautiful thing. It can also be a really messy thing. But whenever we're taking a chance to step out on our own and to be true to ourselves, especially when the chance requires breaking with convention, you kinda gotta take a risk.

The other thing about Aquarius energies is that before Uranus was discovered, we attributed Saturn as the ruling planet to Aquarius. It co-ruled Aquarius and Capricorn. Then we discovered Uranus, and that is, of course, what we use now. It is a much better fit. But the thing about that Saturnian history that Aquarius has is that it speaks to our individuality, and not just the individuality in the context of individuation, but also in the context of how we are existentially alone, how we belong to ourselves; we need to belong to ourselves. And sometimes that feels sad and bad, and sometimes that is the greatest freedom of all.

Aquarius breaks from those Saturnian/Capricornian energies by breaking with convention. Aquarian energies are eccentric and all about exploration and innovation. So this New Moon is an invitation to explore. And because we're talking about a Moon, it's to explore your own internal landscape, your emotions, your identity, your sense of self, and your relationship to yourself. Now, we want to keep in mind Uranus is at 19 degrees of Taurus. So Uranus is forming a square to this Sun and Moon, this New Moon. And that promises us the unexpected. It promises us that this lunation is going to be pretty nervy because, again, Uranus governs the nervous system.

A Uranus square to a New Moon is going to both spark potential and also the unpredictable and chaotic feeling. Pros and cons. Pros and cons. This energy can absolutely help us to come into awareness about our patterns, our emotional patterns, our inner patterns. And that awareness can feel like a crisis, and it can be really upsetting. It can happen through things really going sideways on us. Or Uranus has a funny way of just giving us these bolts of knowing, these bolts of impulse, that feeling that you're just gripped with where it's like, "I have to turn this way," or, "I have to get out of this relationship," or, "I have to go to this person," or whatever the hell it is.

So what we want to do is pay attention to those strong impulses, both internal and external forces that are pushing us towards change. By staying really aware of this energy, we can fall back on our fucking free will. Sometimes change is put in front of us. Opportunities are put in front of us to test how well we know ourselves because not all opportunities, even opportunities that look good on paper, are good for you now. And it does require self-awareness to be able to assess what's a great idea but not a great time for that great idea versus what's good for now.

Now, all of the transits I've talked to you about this week are active here. So we're at the tail end of, but we still have the intense thinking of, the Mercury/Pluto conjunction. We still have that Venus/Chiron square having us really question our values and our self-worth and whether or not our relationships are a reflection of patterns that we need to outgrow or a reflection of our values, our sense of valuing ourself as well as our values with other people.

In this New Moon chart, we also have Venus and Mars sitting on top of each other and Mars and Pluto doing an out-of-sign conjunction. So the risk of power struggles⁠—it's pretty damn high. It's pretty high. I mean, I'm sorry. I just report the news. It's pretty high. And so, again, what I want to bring your attention and intention back to is energy because energy is energy. Energy is not good or bad. Energy is energy.

And so, this week in general, but this New Moon in particular, it's going to be really important that you are aware of your energy, that you are staying present with your energy, that you are taking responsibility for your energy, that you are exploring how your energy is or isn't flowing. You can't control your circumstances. You can't control your feelings, your impulses. You certainly can't control your past. But what you can do is bring awareness and intention to the present, and this New Moon is an invitation to do exactly that.

Because Uranus is forming a square to the New Moon, to the Sun and Moon, we have a New Moon that is marked for revolution, for rebellion. And we know that these things are happening all over the world. People are rebelling. People are revolting. That can be scary. Some of it, I would say, is people are fighting for human rights. And some of it, I would say, is governments and corporations fighting to keep people as far down as possible so that they can maintain control.

In any case, what we can expect this New Moon is the unexpected. We can expect people to rise up and act out. We can expect governments and corporations⁠—because who are we kidding; they seem to have pretty much equal power at this point in many regions of the world⁠—to act and react in unpredictable ways. Whatever it is that you choose to do, however it is that you choose to participate in this period, it's important to remember two things.

One is, in the words of Paulo Freire⁠—I hope I'm pronouncing that right, guessing I'm not⁠—washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral. And if you're going to take a stand, take a stand for what and who you value, making sure that you are centering empathy and compassion and the humanity in others, even people you don't like or don't agree with.

This can be a time of great revolution in your internal process, in your emotional and psychological growth, and in the world. And as we know, while Aquarius can be a very progressive and open-minded zodiac sign in many ways, it's also a fixed sign. The thing about Aquarius energies⁠—I'm not talking about people who have a Sun in Aquarius; I'm talking about Aquarius energies—is that the energetics of Aquarius can be quite rigid in its thinking. And so we may find ourselves confronted with our own rigidity in our psyches, in our hearts, in our minds, and in our spirits.

And it is really powerful, when you encounter rigidity inside of yourself, to just take a pause and hang out with it for a little while. Just be present with your own rigidity and try to be gently curious about it. This may seem like a passive move, but when we're talking about the Moon, it is a passive energy. In other words, the progress we make is sometimes simply through presence and receptivity. And capitalism and patriarchy will tell us that these are not actions. But we know better, right? We know better.

We know that the reason why we are not present, the reason why we do not stay present with our emotions, is because it's hard work, because it is really hard work. Being in a state of receptivity instead of always seeking and trying to change or make things happen is also labor. It doesn't look like labor from the outside, but that doesn't mean it isn't a form of labor. And so, again, with all this Aquarian and Uranian energy, you are likely to be confronted with your own rigidity. And that's great because it allows you to learn more about yourself in this moment, which gives you ultimately more options on how you choose to engage with this moment, what parts of yourself you are nurturing and why.

Now, something else that's happening in this chart is we have Mercury forming a square to Jupiter. Now, this transit will be exact the next day on the 10th, but this is an active transit in this New Moon chart. And Mercury square to Jupiter may have us jumping to conclusions. Now, Uranus and Jupiter are the two most reactive, impulsive planets in astrology. And so, because they're both squaring other planets⁠—Jupiter is squaring Mercury; Uranus is squaring the Sun and Moon⁠—what we have is a high likelihood of reactiveness, of jumping to conclusions and not sitting with feelings, not being gently curious but acting out of impulse and centering restlessness.

I must reiterate, when we're dealing with a Moon transit like this⁠—we're talking about a New Moon⁠—we are meant to work in the energetics of the Moon. That is receptivity, empathy, patience, presence, kindness. Jupiter square to Mercury, especially because Mercury is still close enough to Pluto to give it that extra intensity, is going to have us really wanting to jump to conclusions, speaking before we fully process things, and generally being broad-minded. Now, broad-minded is not a bad thing. Broad-minded is a great thing in lots of ways.

However, sometimes, when we take too broad of a perspective and we look at the big picture to the exclusion of the details in 3D reality, in this moment, it can have us kind of jumping in the pool before we check to see if there's any water in it. So Mercury square to Jupiter further indicates that we are likely to have a hard time with focus this New Moon. And that means we want to be as emotionally present as possible.

For this reason, I'm going to encourage you to not use any facilitators. I would not recommend this as a good time to take a trip or do any major drugs during this New Moon, because it is requiring presence, real presence. And I know a lot of people feel like they have an easier time being present with the use of drugs. It's nice to experiment with the use of recreational drugs or spiritual enhancers, but I would say this is a good time to experiment with the naked mind; see what comes up. Of course, take your fucking medicine, though, right? I'm not talking about that. I'm not trying to give medical advice here at all.

Okay. I'll give you one last bit of advice based on this New Moon, and then we'll talk about the last transit of the week. And this last bit of advice, my loves⁠—reread that text before you hit Send. Watch your tone of voice⁠—not just what you say, but how you say it⁠—because everyone's going to be a little on edge this New Moon and prone to act before we fully think. So make sure you didn't say something in that text that you didn't really mean to say. The more intention you can bring to what's happening inside of you and how you're behaving, the better.

And that brings us to the 10th of February, the last transit of this very long week in astrology. We have a Mercury square to Jupiter. It is exact at 5:25 a.m. Pacific Time. And Mercury is at 8 degrees of Aquarius; Jupiter is that 8 of Taurus. So we have these same fixed-sign energies at play. Mercury, of course, is our friends, our beliefs, our attitudes. It's what we say. It's how we listen. And Jupiter is big and growth-oriented and expansive.

As a result, this transit can have us kind of distracted, having a hard time listening properly, jumping from idea to idea, and basically not dealing with details very efficiently. So this transit is not great for focus, but it is great for big-picture thinking, so exploring what's possible as opposed to making proper plans. This is a great transit for talking through things, again, as long as details aren't required and you're working on listening.

I cannot stress this enough: this New Moon in Aquarius and the Mercury square to Jupiter⁠—now that I think of it, all of the challenging transits that are happening this week, especially when you think of them in context of each other, can make it really hard to listen to others. And I don't think, as a society, we're great at it anyways. But it can make it really hard to listen to others because of the level of activation that we're all likely to be experiencing as individuals. So it's definitely something to bring your awareness to and, again, bring your intention to.

Mercury square to Jupiter can be associated with soapboxing, basically preaching to others what they should think, what they should believe, what they should say or do, and again, not having a dialogue, not having an exchange. And so, if you catch yourself doing it, try to pull yourself back. Make sure that you are listening as much as you are speaking.

To that end, I will say that the way you act online is the way you act. You online is you. So make sure you're not being an asshole on the internet because you're having a bad day or because you just want to tell other people what time it is. If you believe in what you're saying, if you feel that you need to educate people or you're willing to have a real exchange, go for it, absolutely. But I feel that we as individuals need to start taking way more responsibility for how we engage online because of how much our online lives are our lives. And it's not for everyone, but I think it's for a lot of us at this point.

Now, another advantage of this transit is that it really empowers us to learn something more. So, if you're willing to listen, if you're willing to have your ideas and attitudes expanded⁠—maybe challenged, but certainly expanded⁠—this transit is excellent. And finally, I would say that another thing that we really want to be open to and aligned with is how this transit makes it easier for us to forgive. Sometimes, letting things go is the gift you give yourself. It's not a concession to something shitty that happened. It's giving yourself the gift of not carrying the burden anymore. So something to look for this Mercury square to Jupiter/New Moon.

Now, my dears, that's a lot, and that's what's up this week. And if you are interested in going deeper into any of these themes, I invite you to join me over on Patreon, where we talk astrology and woo, and I also have a bonus episode of Ghost of a Podcast out on the 1st of every month where I break down the astrology of the month ahead and drop a Sun sign horoscope associated with it. So you can find me over on patreon.com/jessicalanyadoo, and the link is always in the episode description.

So okay. I'm going to run through these transits one more time. On the 5th, we have an exact square between Venus and Chiron, an exact sextile between the Sun and Chiron, and Mercury forms an exact conjunction to Pluto. On the 7th, Venus forms an exact trine to Uranus, and Mars forms an exact sextile to Neptune. These are lovely transits. On the 8th, the Sun forms an exact square to Uranus. On the 9th, we have a New Moon in Aquarius at 2:59 p.m. Pacific Time. And then, finally, on the 10th, Mercury forms an exact square to Jupiter. That's it, folks.

I want to thank you once again for joining me here on the 400th episode of Ghost of a Podcast. If you haven't already hit that Subscribe or Follow button, please do because it does really help podcasts in general, and certainly little DIY podcasts like this one. Stay tuned for the next episode of Ghost of a Podcast, out on Wednesday. I'll talk to you in just a couple of days. Take care of yourself and others. Buh-bye.