March 16, 2024
412: Horoscope - Pre-Eclipse, Pre-Retrograde + 3 Major Conjunctions
Listen
Read
Welcome to Ghost of a Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Lanyadoo. I'm an astrologer, psychic medium, and animal communicator, and I'm going to give you your weekly horoscope and no-bullshit mystical advice for living your very best life.
Welcome back to Ghost of a Podcast. This week, we're going to look at the astrology of March 17th through the 23rd of 2024. There's a bunch of transits happening, which of course I'll talk about. But there's also this mounting energy as we approach the first Eclipse of Eclipse Season on the 25th of March, so next week. That'll be a Lunar Eclipse in Libra.
Now, before you start getting all like, "Oh my God. I have to go look up what this Eclipse is about," I would recommend, as an astrologer, maybe don't do that this Eclipse Season. Maybe instead of getting super analytic and in your head and trying to predict how it's going to feel and what you're supposed to do, how about just do what the Moon wants us to do, which is tap into your feelings? Just feel your feelings.
I know it sounds overly simple. But there's a way that astrology can make things sometimes overly complicated. In particular, when we are frightened, when we have fear over the hard-to-process-and-stay-with emotions—which I imagine most of us are experiencing, given what is happening in the world right now and our relationship to it, because the first Eclipse that's coming is a Lunar Eclipse in Libra. Whenever we have a Full Moon in Libra, as that Eclipse will be, it is very much about our relationships.
And so this brings up this important emotional theme of, how do you show up? How do you show up relationally? And when we think about our relationships in the context of Libra—and I will get more into it, of course, next week. But when we think about our relationships in the context of Libra, it's really about our intimate relationships. But in the world we're living in now, we have not just personal relationships, but we have these parasocial relationships, which are honestly not the same as intimate one-on-one relationships, but they take up that same space.
And so, whether you have a parasocial relationship with a celebrity or somebody who educates you—I don't know—like an astrologer or something like that, or you have a parasocial relationship with somebody in Gaza living through unspeakable trauma or somebody with a serious illness that you follow on social media—I mean, whatever it is, it is impacting you in a way that is deeply personal. It's that Libra Moon vibe. It is deeply personal. But because it is parasocial, which—if you don't know what a parasocial relationship is, it is essentially kind of a one-sided relationship where you are receiving a lot of information in public from someone that is not receiving any information about you.
And so, in that kind of a dynamic, there cannot be the same flow of intimacy and there cannot be the same kind of resolve as we would see in more traditional, typical relationships that are between individual people, so they're a two-way street. All to say, this week, as we build towards the Eclipse on the 25th, I want to invite you to really practice acknowledging and staying present with your feelings in response and relationship to others and to know where you shut down, where you blossom, where you hide, and where you show up.
These are really kind of—again, they sound really basic, but that's the work of learning to work with and embody the Moon. I'm not a big fan of a lot of techniques with the Moon, which a lot of astrologers are, and there is nothing wrong with that. But it kind of obscures the whole freaking point to me, which is to learn how to feel your feelings, to learn how to experience empathy without abandoning boundaries. This is really hard.
A lot of times, people go all in on empathy and then just blow through their own boundaries. And so then you're a sponge and you're miserable or don't have a lot of empathy for others. And then everything is about you and what does and doesn't work for you, which can not only be kind of shitty sometimes, but it can also pen you in so that you feel really isolated because you are isolated through your own coping mechanism.
I invite you to be present with the messiness this week, the messiness that is a normal part of having emotions and being in relationship to other people in any context. And it's valuable to remember that Eclipses both obscure and reveal. What's important about this is that some things become really emotionally present and salient during Eclipse Season, while other things feel really out of reach and really just hard to tap into and hard to process. And that's the nature of an Eclipse. This is not a time to come to an analytic assessment. It's not a Mercury transit; it's a Moon transit. We are meant to be in the feelings. And a lot of times, what that requires is the ability to be in uncertainty and ambiguity and into a lot of layered paradoxical truths. This is the assignment of the Moon. The Moon governs the tides. We ebb and we flow. The Moon lights up darkness some time of the month, and it is hard for us to see a lot of other times of the month. Again, this is part of the process of being a person with emotions.
As you use this tool of astrology to understand that you are in your feelings and you're meant to be in your feelings, you don't want to forget that so is everyone else. And what people are doing right now—what you are doing, what I'm doing, what we are all doing—is revealing ourselves. So, if somebody is all of a sudden super defensive this week, if somebody is all of a sudden super in their heads this week or super disassociated, like doing whatever they can do to tune out, that's a reflection on where they're at in relationship to their own ability to embody their own emotions, to stay present with their own emotions.
And we don't want to use this information to judge people—again, bad use of astrology. But it is valuable to have a sense of where others are coming from because we have a tendency, especially when we're activated—the Moon—or another way to say that is when we're super in our feelings, we have a tendency to personalize things. "So-and-so is being rude to me because they're mad at me." And maybe they are, or maybe that's the only way they know how to engage with their own emotions. And that's good information for you to have, right? It's good information for you to have that we're all really triggered right now, and everyone's going to engage with that in their own unique way.
And as we will further unpack this week through the transits that are occurring and next week through the Eclipse chart, recognizing what you don't like about other people sometimes is data that you use to decide, "Okay. I'm not going to be in relationship with this person anymore." And sometimes it's just data that helps you to get more present and to have more real, honest, and authentic relationships with people.
Having a healthy Moon in your birth chart requires self-awareness, but it also requires boundaries, and not boundaries to keep other people out, but instead, boundaries so that you're clear about where you begin and end so that you can hold yourself together with empathy and kindness in a sustainable way, and from that safe place inside of you, you can reach out to others. You can allow others to come in, or you can assess, "Yes, that person in general, but not this person now," or, "Yes, this person yesterday, but not this person today." That adaptability and flexibility—or in more Lunar words, that fluidity—is a meaningful part of the Moon, and it's a good thing to be considering in Eclipse Season. Okay? Okay.
So, that all said, let's dive headfirst into this week's horoscope. We start off on a Sunday, the 17th of March, with the first exact transit. We have a Sun conjunction to Neptune, which is exact at 4:22 a.m. The Sun and Neptune are both at 27 degrees of Pisces and 22 minutes. The Sun conjunction to Neptune is a very important transit. Now, we were feeling it on the 16th. We're feeling it the 17th and the 18th.
And this transit—it increases your sensitivities, and it does so because the Sun is your will. It's your identity. It's your vitality. It is a huge part of who and what we are. When the Sun sits on top of Neptune, Neptune drains the energy of the Sun because Neptune is about fog. Neptune is about sea spray. When it comes to Neptune, in a way, there is no "there" there. It is high spirituality, high arts.
And so, when the Sun and Neptune meet in a conjunction, especially in super sensey, dreamy Pisces, what happens is we pull in so much extra information. Our sensitivities just make us more loofah-spongy. And that can be a lot, especially if you're already a sensitive person or if you're living through exceptional times, as we are now, wherein there is so much collective grief and anxiety that is right there for anyone who is sensitive enough to experience it.
And so this transit can coincide with feeling just fucking exhausted, like exhausted like you're tired but not just, "Oh, my body is sleepy," but just world-weary—that kind of exhausted. If you can nap, do nap. If you can put your body in a soft, safe place, I mean, please, please do. And that soft, safe place may be in your bed, and it may be hanging out with somebody you really trust. It may be putting yourself in nature. Neptune loves nature.
This transit can kick up some major anxiety because Neptune introduces us to both what we don't know, other people's energies, including collective energies—so the people around you in a very personal way but also in a more collective way—and it increases the drive for meaning. And so, when all of this information comes up and comes in in such an intense way, as it does with this transit, it's just like there's too much noise. It's hard to make sense of what's happening.
So this is where the transit can get us into trouble, in part because we make assumptions about other people or situations that are based on being flooded with feeling and sensations instead of based on what's actually happening. So, if you can avoid making any major decisions during this transit—72 hours—strong recommend. And also, if you can avoid any kind of major contractual negotiations/processing within your relationships during this transit, that would be ideal as well because, again, things don't tend to be really clean and clear during this transit.
Because of Neptune's influence on the Sun, this is not a great time to do anything that weakens your auric field or your energetic, psychological, or behavioral boundaries. And so, for this reason, it's not a great time to hang out with somebody who's kind of a frenemy, who you don't really trust, who doesn't really make you feel good about yourself. It's not a great time to tax your body unnecessarily. And if you're going to start some sort of new health regime, taking new supplements—anything where you're taking something new into your body—this is not actually a great time to do it. Again, it's 72 hours. It's not a big deal, but it's just not a great time to do it.
During this transit, the system wants to be fortified. So your psyche and your physiology both need to be fortified. We need extra nurturance, extra TLC. So, to the best of your ability, try to do that. This is a time where a little bit of escapism may really help you. It's just important to make sure that however it is that you strive to escape doesn't create negative consequences for yourself or others down the line. So this is where we want to take a harm reduction approach to thinking about how it is you engage with checking out, tuning out, or tuning in.
Now, the other thing is you may access great empathy or have a really powerful spiritual experience during this transit. All of that is great. You just want to make sure that you don't give away your power to anyone or anything, that you don't put yourself in an unsafe situation—so, again, we want to return to the idea of having healthy boundaries—and that you don't seek to make assessments about your experience until after the transit's passed, like several days after it's passed.
If you can do that, this might be a time where you become deeply moved by some spiritual or artistic content. And because of the nature of Neptune, that move may shift you in a powerful and expansive way, or it may be a total solution. Neptune—what are you going to do, right? That's how that works.
Now, the next transit of the week is on Wednesday the 20th at 10:27 a.m. Pacific Time. And it's Mercury at 18 degrees and 18 minutes of Aries, and Chiron 18 degrees, 18 minutes of Aries. So we have another conjunction. This one will overlap with the Sun conjunction to Neptune, but on this date, the 20th, the Sun conjunction to Neptune is over.
So Mercury conjoined Chiron—this transit—I'm really going to be paying attention to what happens on and around this date because this transit puts us in direct contact with our beliefs and attitudes about our very worthiness, or wounding around worthiness, around our right to be here, our relationship to our body and embodiment in general.
This is a tough transit, and it is likely to have a lot of people activated, triggered, and defensive, unfortunately. This is a time you may have friends or colleagues, people that are just pals, people you know around, that you have any kind of comradeship with, say something or not say something that triggers your core wounding—old wounds, old hurts, painful beliefs that you hold about yourself and that you've kind of always held about yourself, so heavy shit, right?
Mercury is our friendships and our comrades and our colleagues. When it sits on top of Chiron, it triggers Chiron. And so, here, we have this extension. First, we had the Sun conjunction to Neptune creating a lot of messiness and confusion, and now we have ourselves really defensive and activated. So this is where any way in which you may have fanatical beliefs or beliefs that are rooted in idealism, religion, deep woo, any of that kind of stuff, you may be feeling really like you want to double down, dig in your heels around those themes, or you may be dealing with other people who are behaving in that way or who are feeling that way.
So this can be a real fucking mess, unfortunately. You may say hurtful shit, or you may say something that's not that bad, but the way you say it is kind of awful. Or per usual, you may be a living angel, make no mistakes, never be rude or mean or have a negative thought in your head, but you deal with other people; they may be doing these things to you. This is a hard transit, but it's also a conjunction. Conjunctions happen when two planets are sitting on top of each other—in other words, zero degrees apart. It's the beginning of something.
And so, whatever it is that gets activated inside of you—which is not just about what's activated inside of you; it's about what's happening between you and others and how you show up to that occasion—try to take ownership of it. Try to own how you participate in dynamics. It doesn't matter if the dynamic is completely unfair and if the other person or persons are 100 percent wrong and you're right. However you choose to show up, however you engage, it's not about right or wrong. It's about you being able to identify and understand who you are in this moment. That kind of information is exceptionally valuable, but it's easy to miss out on when we get distracted by our own activation or we get distracted by our dynamics with other people.
Mercury is about our minds. It's about our mental awareness. And so this transit can really help us to get clear, to become aware about something about ourselves that really is powerful and moves the needle in a way that is just so healing. But again, you've got to be willing to stay with mess, to stay with paradox, and to not allow your defenses to drive your car around. You know what I mean? You want to get your intentional, humble, present parts on board.
A lot of times, in the places within ourselves that are most vulnerable, that hurt the most, is where we don't realize we are acting out. We don't realize that we are perpetrating harm on others because we're so consumed with our own pain and our own intense trauma past. And not everybody has trauma. I mean, I think kind of everybody as trauma. It is kind of traumatic to be in a meat suit. But I know some people do not identify as having had trauma. But we all have hurt, and we all have issues that we are meant to come into healing about in this lifetime. This is one of those transit that will reveal some of that to you. And it may through dynamics, but it's a conjunction, so it really just may be something between you and you.
Do your best to stay present with whatever it is that is truly up for you. And of course, if you have anything at around 18 degrees of a cardinal sign—that's Aries, Libra, Capricorn, or Cancer—then you're really going to feel this extra, extra. But it's a big one for everyone, so giddyap and get on board for not only staying present but for learning from your past, allowing your activation in the here and now to inform you about what needs more attention and more sorting through from your past in your present. It's not easy work, but it is really good work if you can get into it.
That brings us to Thursday, March 21st, and we have two exact transits overlapping with that Mercury conjunction to Chiron. The first one is a Sun sextile to Pluto that's exact at 1:03 p.m., and it's occurring with the Sun at 1 degree of Aries and 42 minutes and Pluto at the same degrees of Aquarius. Later that afternoon, at 4:09 p.m. Pacific Time, we have a Venus conjunction to Saturn. So we've got Venus at 12 degrees and 27 minutes sitting on top of Saturn at 12 degrees of Pisces and 27 minutes.
So, first, I want to just bring your attention to—that is not one but three exact conjunctions this week. So we really want to pay attention to that fact because there's not always conjunctions. That's not always happening. And in particular, each of these conjunctions is from an inner planet to an outer planet. Conjunctions are not inherently bad or good. They're not inherently easy or hard. They can kind of go either way in all of those respects.
But what we know about conjunctions is that they are an intensification of focused energy. Now, the fact that we have these inner planets sitting on top of outer planets tells us that this is going to be important societally. It will be important throughout generations because that's how the outer planets affect us. Technically, Jupiter and Saturn are called societal planets, and then Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto we call generational planets. But I honestly feel that Saturn and Jupiter are generational planets as well. So with that information do as you will.
But these three conjunctions that we're dealing with this week—and I know I haven't told you about Venus/Saturn yet; just wait. But these three conjunctions mark a meaningful shift in energy. Because they're conjunctions—they're happening at zero degrees—it's a turning point. It's an opening, if you will. It's a beginning of something. And don't think I forgot that Jupiter and Uranus are sitting on top of each other. They're not exact yet. They'll be exact in April. But that energy is bubbling. It's percolating. It's making us all restless. It's stimulating an excitability that may feel chaotic. It may make you feel like your nervous system is going zing. Or it may be expansive. It might make you feel like, "Fuck it. I'm just going to try new things"—or a little bit of both.
So that's happening. That's happening. It'll be exact in April. If you want to know more about it, make sure you listen to my year-ahead forecast. Also, I'm going to talk about it more soon. Don't worry. But that's happening. We're fast approaching an Eclipse, and all this shit is happening at once. So, basically, what we are being kind of pointed towards is the need to be present so that we can engage with new beginnings on whatever subtle or dramatic level is relevant for you with as much self-awareness and intentionality as possible because these are fertile times. We are living through such fertile times. Not easy times, not great times, but fertile times. And that's a powerful thing.
Okay. To the transits. Let's start with the first one that's happening on this date, and that's the Sun sextile to Pluto. And I'm so happy it's here because it is a really supportive transit. The Sun sextile to Pluto strengthens your sense of vitality. So bye, Neptune. Now Pluto's in the house. And it kind of deepens our ability to feel into things, to get deep. This is a transit that can intensify your drives, and that could be your sexual drives, your drive to have deep experiences, to heal something, to create something. I mean, it can be anything, as long as it's deep, because it's Pluto.
This transit helps us to feel empowered, like we can do it, like you've got the energy. You've got the reserves. You've got the resources. And that kind of obsessive-compulsive energy that can be triggered by Pluto, especially with the more challenging transits or aspects—it gets channeled and funneled in a really productive way during the Sun sextile to Pluto. So what we can do is stay with a thing. And that might look like staying with a challenging conversation that you have to have with somebody. It might look like learning something that's a bit challenging for you to learn one way or another. It might—fingers crossed—look like you having a sense of access to your own vitality, your own strength, so that you can stay with your feelings and navigate what they're about with more presence.
Now, this transit, the Sun sextile to Pluto, as well as the Venus/Saturn conjunction, which I'll talk about in a moment, will feature in our Eclipse chart. So we do want to pay attention to these transits because they're important but also because of how they're connected to the upcoming Eclipse.
So this transit helps us to go deep. It helps us to get deep within ourselves and with others. And honestly, it may just show up as a little bit of wind beneath your wings through these more challenging transits, or depending on how it hits your chart, it may feel really powerful. It may help you to have these sparks of insight or growth. So it's exciting. And it is wise for you to check your chart if you have anything at around 1 or 2 degrees of either a fixed sign—so that's Aquarius, Leo, Scorpio, Taurus—or a cardinal sign—that's Aries, Libra, Capricorn, Cancer—because the Sun is in Aries and Pluto is in Aquarius.
That brings us to the Venus conjunction to Saturn, which is less of an exciting transit. Venus is your values, and Saturn is the rules. Venus is the impulse to get along and to be liked, and Saturn is the drive to keep up with the Joneses, to make sure you have a good reputation, that you are properly respected. Venus can be all about your deep values, but it can also be about keeping shit on the surface. Venus can be very social butterfly-y and very surfacey, how things look instead of how they are, that kind of shit.
Saturn is Sisyphus with the ball. It is existentialism. It is depression. So, when Venus sits on top of Saturn, what can happen is you feel really bad. You feel bad because you don't feel connected to other people or you don't feel accepted by other people. You feel isolated or lonely. And I want to say, who amongst us doesn't feel lonely? We are living through a time that there was an epidemic of loneliness. This transit—it kind of brings all that to the surface. It may show up for you in an existential Saturnian way where it's not really about something specific; it's about everything all together. Or it may show up as very real problems between you and other people show up.
So you may be going around life having connections with people where you don't really share what's going on with you, where you don't really talk about what's up and what's real for you in some part of you—maybe all of you, or maybe just in some parts. And then a transit like this comes around, and it makes you feel fucked up about it. It makes you feel lonely and sad and stuck. And it is true that a Venus conjunction to Saturn can really illuminate the pain of being in a rut, of overemphasizing security and stability to the point where you get stuck or not emphasizing security and stability to the point where you feel unmoored.
It is really valuable during this Venus conjunction to Saturn in Pisces to tap into your values. What is it that you actually care about? What's actually important to you about how you connect to other people but also about the world? What are your values, and are you sharing that in your relationships? Are your values reflected in your relationships? Because if they're not or if you don't know what your values are, then transits like this are more likely to be painful because sometimes self-awareness is painful. But it's useful, right? It's useful.
And there is a value in staying present with what isn't working, staying present with what feels bad so that you can better understand it. It's really important that we find ways of tolerating our own pain so that we can better understand what it's really about, what it's reflecting. And the more complex and analytic your description of your problem is, a lot of times, the less emotionally embodied it is.
So what I want to encourage you to do, if you're feeling at all fucked up by this transit, is to try to identify what is or isn't working with really simple emotional language, not to obscure nuance, but instead to get to the root of what you're feeling so that your awareness about the complexities of yourself and your past and your future and your relationships and their pasts and their futures and all those kinds of important details—they don't obscure your own emotions, your own truth, your own values from you, as they often can.
This may be a time where you decide you need to shift something meaningful in your life to better reflect your values. If that's what you're coming to, trust it. Trust it because Venus conjunction to Saturn can be a time where you adjust course in a way that helps to improve your life appreciably. Happiness is incredibly important. It is so important. Purpose, happiness—these things are very important. But there are so many people selling you so many ways of thinking about this, and there are so many ways that people struggle around this. But it's actually kind of simple.
Happiness comes as a direct result of living in accord with our values. When you are living in a self-appropriate way, you're happy. I mean, I'm not saying you're giddy. But this is what leads to authentic happiness, inner peace, inner balance. And so a transit like this Venus conjunction to Saturn—it generally feels pretty fucking bad. It feels bad, and it puts you in contact with what isn't working. It puts you in contact with what needs attention because it isn't working. And luckily, we have that Sun sextile to Pluto strengthening our ability to stay present with what hurts and the Mercury conjunction to Chiron empowering us to really think on what hurts and how we participate in what hurts, how we are a part of it or not.
And this all builds us towards the Libra Lunar Eclipse. And the ruling planet to Libra is, of course, Venus. So this transit and also the whole tapestry of what's happening astrologically this week is not chill. It's not super easy. But it is not bad. I get accused of being negative, and whatever. Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on your take on what is negative. But identifying challenging things for what they are, to me, is not negative. It's realistic.
And when we deal with what's real, we have more peace. Living in a way that allows you to have peace with yourself is a really great goal. But this is not just the time for self-care, although it is 100 percent a time for self-care. It is a time for understanding that when we center the self, it is not meant to be at the expense of being relationally comfortable. Again, they're connected.
When you use the tool of astrology, which of course we do here at Ghost of a Podcast Industries, we understand that things exist on polarities. Libra is always opposite to Aries. "Us" is always opposite to "me." "Me" is always opposite to "us." And this opposition—you can think of it as polarizing, sure. But I think of it as two manifestations of essentially the same energy.
And when our use and understanding of astrology is not only linear—although please learn the math and learn the tools and all the things. But when we start to understand it as energy and understanding how energy flows or not together, then we can understand ourselves better. As you learn to identify your own energy and to work with the energy that you have in your system but also in your relationships, with the world, etc., this is how we find balance. This is how we find peace. It's by understanding the interconnection of these energies.
Now, I got one last transit to tell you about this week, and that is occurring on March 22nd. This is the date that Mercury enters its Retroshade period. I laugh. I laugh because—I don't know. This week of astrology just feels like it's pointing us in a very clear direction. So Mercury does not go Retrograde until the 1st of April. And when it retrogrades, it will be Retrograde from the 1st through the 25th of April.
But we hit the Retroshade on the 22nd. So, if there are contracts to be written, if there are plans to be made, try to get it done in the Retroshade. Get your shit together in the Retroshade. We want to remember that, yes, Mercury Retrograde is a time when technology problems prevail and all kinds of communication stuff goes wonky. Yes. But it is also a time for reflection, reassessment, and review. And we need Mercury Retrograde.
Mercury Retrograde is a natural, normal part of Mercury's forward motion, its kind of typical motion. It includes the Retrograde so that we are consistently throughout each individual year reflecting back on what we thought, what we said, our relationships, etc. We need to reflect. Reflection is not a bad thing. I mean, I think it's hard to make space and time for it in our modern world, but it is a very valuable thing. So let's tap into this Mercury Retrograde and the invitation that it poses for self-reflection and being more mindful and present in our interactions with others.
Mercury Retrograde, and the Retroshade to a much lesser extent, is a time where we are not just being tested on what we say, how we say it. We are really being tested on how we listen. So get your listening cap on. Listen to what people are saying, and listen to the quiet part of what people are saying. Listen to yourself. Listen to your past.
And that brings us to March 23rd, where there is no exact transit but there is a class that I am very excited to teach, which is Navigating Midlife Transits With Astrology. I am very excited about this class. There is a series of transits that occur in midlife, which I'm defining as mid-30s to mid-40s—somewhere in that bucket. So there's a series of transits that occur at midlife that add up to what we in mainstream society called midlife crisis. And it is so valuable to know what you're going through as you're going through it or to see it coming.
And if you're like me, I like to use astrology to better understand my past. So, if you are past your midlife crisis but you're like, "Yeah, those years were bananas years for me," you may want to join the class. If you cannot make it live, that's sad because we have fun. I think it's fun, and I like to answer a lot of questions, as many questions as I can. But if you can't make it live, that's fine. You can get the class, and then you will get the video replay and maybe another goodie within 72 hours of the class. So the link to register is in the episode description. It's also on my website. I hope you join me there.
And if this class isn't exactly your cup of tea for whatever reasons, you may want to check out my website, where I have a bunch of other classes available that you can take. You can also join me over on Patreon, where I do a lot of teaching of astrology and woo in a less formal and structured sense.
As always, I hope you are taking good care of yourself and others and that you tune in to next week's reading because it is a really beautiful one, as was Episode 411. It was a gorgeous reading that if you missed out on, you can always read the transcript or listen to the audio over at my website or listen to it wherever podcasts are heard.
All right. I'll talk to you in just a couple of days, my dears. Buh-bye.