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 31st through April 6th, 2024, smack-dab in the middle of Eclipse Season. And now that we're in April, it is the end of a two-month stint of centering Black love questions on the podcast. And I don't know if you've been listening to the readings midweek, but if you have, you know there have been just such great readings, just so heartfelt and, I feel, really important. So, if you haven't been checking those out, lucky you because they're waiting for you. Make sure you're subscribed to Ghost of a Podcast so whenever an episode drops, you don't miss it.

Okay. Let's go straight into this week's horoscope. We start on Monday, April the 1st, when at 3:14 p.m. Pacific Time, Mercury goes Retrograde. And it goes Retrograde at 27 degrees and 13 minutes of Aries. Now, this Mercury Retrograde will stay in Aries. So it won't retrograde back into Pisces. So it's going to be a very Aries Mercury Retrograde. And to this, I say, my loves, know thyself. Let this Mercury Retrograde be a time where you apply the rule of re's, that rule that I talk about every Retrograde season. It's reflect. It's recalibrate. It's reassess. It's reconsider. You apply that to yourself, to knowing yourself.

Aries is all about me and I. The energies of Aries are about you and your motivations. They're about you being in your body. And so this Mercury Retrograde in Aries is an invitation to find yourself. And how do you find yourself? By being curious. By looking around. And of course, we're talking about looking around at your insides because Mercury is your mind. It's your attitudes. It's your beliefs. When I cast a chart for this Mercury Retrograde, we don't only have Mercury squaring Pluto⁠—so it's an out-of-sign square with Pluto at almost 2 degrees of Aquarius and Mercury at 27 degrees of Aries. And I should say this out-of-sign square between Mercury and Pluto is all about depth.

It is an aspect that pushes us to investigate deeply what we believe, to really seriously reassess whether or not our relationships⁠—because Mercury is our friendships, our neighbors, our colleagues, siblings, all those kind of platonic relationships⁠—our relationships are working in a deep way, whether or not they're honest, whether or not they're healthy. There's nothing kind of chill and there's nothing superficial about a Mercury square to Pluto. And because as the chart for this Mercury Retrograde is cast at the moment that it goes Retrograde and we have this square, this Mercury Retrograde is going to be deep, and not just because of that; it's also happening during freaking Eclipse Season.

So Mercury is your mind, and the Moon⁠—which is the key player of Eclipses⁠—and the Moon is your feelings. So now we have our mental and emotional health engaged, and engaged in a very intense way and in a very fiery way because we're dealing with Aries energies. These are energies that are pioneering, assertive, dynamic, and engaged. But they're also defensive and pushy and impatient and aggressive and can be a little egotistical. So this Mercury Retrograde will confront us with our own relationship to those things, whether it's in yourself or in how we respond to those energies in others.

Now, in this chart, we also have a Sun/North Node/Chiron conjunction in Aries. Yikes. That's a lot. It's a lot, okay? What it means is that the energetics of both Eclipse Season and also this Mercury Retrograde, which of course overlap, are pushing us. And when I say pushing us, I mean Aries energies come with them a sense of energy, a sense of "I have to do this now. I deserve to do this now." But these energies are pushing us to confront and engage with, either consciously or unconsciously⁠—and of course, when we do this unconsciously, it tends to go a lot worse⁠—but consciously or unconsciously with our core wounding, with our own relationship to embodiment.

And there are things that we believe about ourselves, that we want to believe about ourselves, but then, when push comes to shove, not so much. We don't really do what we think we would do in a situation. We act out. And we see this a lot in intimate relationships, but it comes out in other places as well, of course. And this kind of reveals the difference between cognitive or theoretical evolution and growth versus embodied evolution or growth. When you stay with the body, you can experience not just your physicality, but your emotions, because your emotions⁠—they reside in the meat suit. As they say, the body keeps the score.

The thing about your body is that it's been with you since the moment you landed on this earthly plane. It's been holding all of your experiences. And so, a lot of times, when we have emotions that we don't know how to process and we don't want to experience and so we're deflecting or pushing them down or explaining them away⁠—whatever it is⁠—the body holds those emotions. It holds our feelings. And so, when we are struggling with embodiment, what we're often struggling with is a backlog of emotion that has gone oppressed, repressed, denied, confuddled⁠—whatever it is. It's gone unexperienced. But it's waiting for you in your body, your sweet little meat suit.

And so, when we have an Eclipse Season like the one we're in and a Mercury Retrograde like this particular one, it is pushing us to experience emotions in our bodies in ways that are really uncomfortable, to be honest. This Mercury Retrograde is⁠—it's spicy, to say the least. Now, at the same time in this Mercury Retrograde chart, we've got a Moon in Capricorn square to the Sun and the North Node, again, making everything feel really personal. We don't need this aspect in order for most people to be a little defensive, a little activated and easily triggered this Mercury Retrograde. But we got a little extra emotions to fuck us up. Okay. That's fun.

We also have the Saturn/Mars conjunction, not exact yet, but Saturn and Mars are sitting within 7 degrees of each other in this chart in Pisces, which can kick up really passive-aggressive feelings, making you feel trapped, like, "I can't do what I want to do." Mars in Pisces so close to Saturn⁠—it's not comfortable in this chart. And of course, I'm looking at Mars because it is the ruling planet to Aries. And we have a lot of Aries going on in this Mercury Retrograde. So we have this feeling of "There's nothing I can do. I'm stuck."

And connected to that can be a feeling of "It's not my fault. It's not fair." And you know what? Life is very deeply unfair, news flash for us all. Life is inherently not fair. Sometimes fair things happen. Sometimes we can choose to be the agents of fairness. That's a lovely thing. But life is not inherently⁠—there's no promise for fairness. All you have to do is look around the world, currently but also historically, to know that life is just not fair. Even if life is not fair, or maybe even especially if life is not fair, how will you engage with your agency, with your free will? And Aries energies are related to agency, which is a major player in the utilization of free will. So how will we use our free will to show up, to participate? And this participation can be psychological because Mercury is your mind. It's your psychology. It can also be in conversations with others as you learn, as you share, as you connect.

Now, we also have the Uranus/Jupiter conjunction. It's not exact yet, but oh, it's getting hot in here. It's getting much more intense. And this intensifies our desire for freedom and for justice. So now I want to speak to the more collective or political implications of this Mercury Retrograde. The first is, when laws are signed, when decisions are made, when contracts are signed during a Mercury Retrograde, they're not reliable. So things aren't always as they seem with a Mercury Retrograde.

We know this, right? I mean, I think that most people who fuck with astrology know that Mercury Retrograde is a bad time to sign a contract. And if you gotta sign a contract, as I say every Mercury Retrograde, you gotta live your life. Do what you gotta do. Just read the fine print. Do your best. Understand that you may learn after this Mercury Retrograde, a.k.a. in May onwards, that things weren't exactly as you expected them to be or perhaps that you misunderstood something in the contract.

But okay. Back to social conditions and politics. Announcements made during this Mercury Retrograde, laws that are signed, treaties that are made⁠—they're not reliable. So they may stick; they may not. That doesn't mean throw in the towel; don't engage. But it does mean keep your eyes on the prize. Stay actively engaged and make sure you are listening and willing to learn or unlearn as needed.

Now, another thing is that all this Aries energy errs towards violence. And it's not the only thing that Aries is about, but as you've heard me say on the podcast many times, the ruling planet to Aries is Mars, which governs punch-punch, bang-bang kind of violence. And all of this Aries energy with the Mercury Retrograde, but also with the Solar Eclipse in Aries happening on the 8th, can spark further violence. This is fucking terrible. I'm sorry. It's terrible. But it can. And that can happen on a lot of levels. That can happen in terms of actual wars and battles that are being fought violently in the world, and they are happening domestically where you live for sure, no matter where you live, because fucking humans are violent. And also, violence is not always punch-punch, bang-bang. Violence is sometimes an energy. It's an approach.

What we want to be mindful of is how we are engaging with that. If you're coming for someone with a violent energy, is that appropriate? Is that intentional? Is that healthy? I'm not here to tell you that violence is always, 100 percent of the time, wrong, because it isn't. Very few things are 100 percent of the time wrong. But if you are acting in a way that is energetically violent, if you're acting in a way that is really aggressive, are you doing it out of intentionality? Are you doing it with a clarity of intent? Or are you doing it because you feel like shit and you're acting out? If it's the latter, that will bite you in your sweet little buns later. We don't want that. I don't want that for you.

So, again, deal with your feelings⁠—with not only your emotions, but deal with your thoughts. I'm talking about psychology. I'm talking about dealing with your mind. And within that, understand that our mental health and our emotional health are so intertwined. They're not the exact same thing, but they are very intertwined. Because this Mercury Retrograde in Aries is overlapping with the Solar Eclipse in Aries, this overlap is going to be a whole hell of a lot.

So, if ever there was a time to open up your dear diary, it is in April 2024. If ever there was a time to get into therapy, whatever kind of a therapy is a yes for you, April 2024. If ever there was a time to reach out to the friends that you have that you can actually talk through your thoughts and feelings, again, it's April 2024. Okay? This is going to be a challenging time. And a lot of the time, when we are dealing with challenges to our psychology or to our emotional body, our physical bodies take the brunt because we sublimate and we submerge. And those are just human habits that we have.

And so, of course, if you have a physical health issue, go to a doctor. But if you're having stress tummy aches, stress headaches, you're really exhausted, you⁠—whatever, whatever is your normal physiological response to stress⁠—and you're like, "Ugh, it doesn't make sense. Why?" then what I would suggest is the reason why is because, on some meaningful level, you're sublimating your emotional health or mental health needs. And this is going to be the time to be brave enough⁠—Mercury in Aries⁠—to investigate, to return to yourself, so that you can sit with, reflect upon, review, reassess whatever it is that is happening within you. And from that position of renewed self-awareness, you can recalibrate. You can make new decisions.

Now, there's one more thing in this chart that bears mentioning, and it is that Venus and Neptune are very close to each other. And so we've got, if we're counting, Chiron and the North Node⁠—neither of which are actually planets, but let's count them for this moment. We've got four planets, then, in Aries, and then we've got four in Pisces. And this energy of four placements in Aries and four placements in Pisces can lead to passive aggression.

So here's the thing. You may be in a relationship with someone, and you may be going through something with them that it's just like⁠—it's not your fault; it's their fault. It's absolutely their fault. You know it's their fault. You are still on the hook for how you choose to engage. Again, I cannot emphasize this enough. Tapping into your own agency, your own free will, taking accord for how you think, how you communicate, how you listen, how you engage with others, your attitudes but also how you express your own attitudes⁠—those things are all things that you and you alone are responsible for, regardless of your circumstances. Mercury Retrograde is a kind of temperature check every time it happens for you to become more self-aware about how that is or isn't working, whether or not that is or isn't healthy. You capiche?

Now, one last thing I'll say about the Mercury Retrograde chart⁠—for the moment, anyways⁠—is that Mercury Retrogrades are always a time when technology goes sideways on us. So, in an increasingly technological world, this becomes an increasingly big problem. If you've got an electric car, charge that motherfucker before you go, okay? Don't leave the house without a charger in general. You may have problems with technology on a million different levels. I personally like to avoid doing any updates on my devices during a Mercury Retrograde, although they always push them.

We also don't want to jump the gun on explosive reporting, whether we're talking about the news or we're talking about gossip in your world, because Mercury Retrograde represents a time when communications are not completely reliable. And again, it happens so you turn within and you reflect and you don't just jump to conclusions. Miscommunications abound. So, when other people misunderstand you/don't follow instructions⁠—whatever the hell it is⁠—try not to take it personally. It's just astrology proving itself to work yet again.

And if you make mistakes, if you misunderstand⁠—Mercury Retrograde. You know what I mean? Learn what you can and keep on moving. I have a habit during Mercury Retrograde: if I'm making plans, I double-check them, like an hour before or whatever, because I know we're more likely to have miscommunications. That's just Mercury Retrograde for you. So, if you kind of know it's coming, then you can roll with the energy instead of trying to fight the energy or personalizing the energy, when it's really not exclusive to you or about you at all, ultimately. So we'll talk more about Mercury Retrograde as it progresses, but that's a good starting point for you.

Okay. So the next exact transit that we have occurs on Wednesday, April the 3rd, at 6:10 a.m. Pacific Time. And it is a Venus conjunction to Neptune. We've got Venus at 28 degrees and 0 minutes of Pisces, and so is Neptune. So Neptune is moving closer and closer to Aries, which I gotta say is a whole other topic, which we will talk about after Eclipse Season. But Neptune and Venus are sitting on top of each other. Let's talk about it.

This transit is⁠—I don't know. It's a little "scoodgy." Is that a word? I feel like I'm making the word up, but it's a little smooshy. How about that? Venus conjunction to Neptune, especially in Pisces, intensifies our drive towards romance. So that can be in sexy, loving romance, but it can also be idealism, like putting people or situations on a pedestal. And at this occurs because Venus is related to our values, and Neptune is related to our ideals. And so it becomes hard to parse out what is happening in kind of more of a material way versus an idealistic way.

This is why, if you develop a new crush on or around this day, you're probably putting them on a pedestal. You're probably not perceiving them accurately. Or if your self-esteem is really in the shitter or this aspect hits your chart in just the right way, you may put yourself beneath others. So the reverse concept of putting someone on a pedestal is putting yourself, in your own mind, beneath other people. In both of these situations, the antidote to whatever problems come up here is boundaries. It's identifying your own boundaries so that you can hold your shit together, so that you can still experience romance and idealism but without abandoning yourself or placing yourself under someone in a nonconsensual, non-healthy way.

And there's another thing that this transit can make us feel, which is fucking exhausted, like super drained and tired. If you are somebody who is experiencing ongoing empathy fatigue from just being present for so many painful things in the world, if you are somebody who's got ongoing chronic health stuff, this transit can just make you feel a little bit like falling apart, staying under the covers, that kind of shit. And if you can stay under the covers all day long in a healthy way and if your body needs that, if your mind needs that, I mean, do what you need to do to take care of you.

Ideally, the forms of self-care that you have in place do not require you to drop everything, including your empathy for others, in order to tend to yourself. And I think a lot of times, especially in American society and United States culture, we do that. We're like, "Okay, so self-care is me going off and getting a massage or doing this thing"⁠—traveling or whatever. It's like we have these things that are outside of our daily lives, which⁠—getting a massage and traveling, green light, green light, thumbs-up all across the board.

But if your self-care routines don't include simple things that you can do from anywhere at any time, then you're missing out. And when something like a Venus conjunction to Neptune occurs, it reminds us that we need to have clarity around our values so that when we identify, assert, and maintain our boundaries, we're doing it in a way that feels really good⁠—even if it's challenging to do, that it feels affirming because even when it's challenging, living in accord with your values is affirming. That's the beauty of it.

One last thing I'll say about this transit, which is I think it's a great time, if you've been just kind of on the fence about going back to masking and being more conscientious about making sure that your actions reflect investment in disability rights, an investment in creating safe spaces for all people, even people who are immune compromised, people who just cannot afford to get sick or have weak immune systems⁠—it is the least that we can do is to hold that boundary because Neptune is all about boundaries. And wearing a mask is a boundary. It's a boundary that says that "I'm going to take care of myself so I don't get sick, but also, I'm here to create a safe space for other people who just can't take the risk of getting sick."

I'd like to think that this Mercury Retrograde, Eclipse Season, and especially the Venus conjunction to Neptune is a really fertile turning point for more people to commit to not just thinking about disability rights but acting in ways that reflect your care and investment in other people's welfare.

So that brings us to Saturday, April 6th, at 10:46 a.m. Pacific Time, where we have a lovely Venus sextile to Pluto. Venus is at almost 2 degrees of Aries, and Pluto is almost 2 degrees of Aquarius. And this is a really lovely transit. It deepens our capacity for feeling love and care. It deepens our ability to connect to other people and to act in ways that reflect our values, which is really cool. If you have to spend a big chunk of money this Mercury Retrograde, Venus sextile to Pluto is actually not a bad time to do it.

This transit is just⁠—it gives you a little juj. It spices up any kind of romantic or sexual relationship. If you have an art practice, it, again, deepens it. So it's a great time to get back to whatever drawing board is relevant to your creative practice. And I want to be clear it's Mercury Retrograde. It's Eclipse Season. So, when making art, whatever that means⁠—because I think art is a really big umbrella. But when making art, don't do it from a capitalistic perspective where it's like, "Okay. I'm doing it for this thing or for these people or for this reason." Instead, do your best to go within and tap into your own inner workings so that whatever it is that you create is, in some meaningful way, a part of a practice of bringing your insides out.

Venus sextile to Pluto is just like⁠—it is a great transit. It's just really great. There's no negative aspects to it. If you don't really do much with it, if it doesn't really hit you in any kind of intense way, you might just feel good about your outfit. You might just be having a good hair day. If it is hitting your chart in a meaningful way or you are doing something to really kind of bring its energies really consciously into your life, it can help to facilitate greater meaning and purpose in your relationships and in your relationship to creativity and art, so not just as a creator, but also, you might listen to a mixed tape and be like, "Holy shit. I love each and every one of these songs. They're getting me in my guts." It could be something that small that is actually kind of big. It's important.

So that's the last exact transit of this week. But I do want to take a moment to talk to you about the Eclipse. Now, the Eclipse is happening on the 8th. Of course, I will go very in depth into it in next week's episode, and I will unpack the chart at that time. But I do want to bring your attention to your emotions and your agency because this Solar Eclipse will be in Aries. And it's very, very Aries. We got Venus, North Node, Sun, Moon, Chiron, Mercury⁠—that's a lot of planets in Aries. That's a lot of energy in Aries.

I want to, again, bring your attention to your agency because as emotions are getting messier and bigger as we move towards this Eclipse⁠—and they are; they're getting messier and bigger⁠—we will see more violence in the world, unfortunately, because the way a lot of people react to their emotions is with defense in general. But with all this Aries energy, yeah, there's going to be a lot of defensiveness. And so, on the one hand, that raises a lot of alarms for me around what might happen in the world or what is going to continue to happen in the world and how it may progress.

And then you and me, each and every one of us, we are part of the world. We have a role to play. And so tapping into your emotions, even if it's messy, even if it feels like it's slowing you down, is honestly quite essential right now, feeling your feelings, and to be able to create space for you to experience your emotions as emotions but also where they're sitting in your body⁠—where are you feeling the feeling⁠—and from that place strive to be as intentional as possible about how you're leveraging your agency, what you're choosing to do, how you're choosing to show up or not, participate or not⁠—this is all really important.

And to be honest, because of this Eclipse and because we're moving towards this Eclipse and some other things happening astrologically, you and many people around you are likely to be experiencing a lot of overwhelm and burnout because we are living in a world where we are taking in so much. We are taking in so much data, so much information, so much pain, so much action, so many competing drives. We're taking in so much, and it is hard to process it all. And if you have been go-go-go-going like most of us have, then you may be experiencing a level of burnout, overwhelm, or collapse.

And this may be your system's way of calling you in to assess your own attachments, to assess the things that you're actively engaged in and your motivation for doing that so that you can find more sustainable ways of carrying your burdens as well as your successes, as well as all the other things that you've got to carry, because we're all carrying a lot right now, eh?

All to say it's really emo out there, and it's really emo inside of you right now. And part of feeling your feelings is feeling sad. It's feeling grief, grief and sadness. They are two different things, but they tend to hang out pretty close to each other. You may be feeling⁠—underneath that burnout, underneath that agitation, underneath the irritability, you may be feeling sadness or grief, helplessness, hopelessness. These are feelings that are really hard to stay with.

And so you may tell yourself that there's a million reasons to distract from them. And you know what? There are. But there are just a couple really good reasons to stay with them. And one of them is because in this astrological season that we are in, if we all take responsibility for ourselves⁠—kind, empathetic, nurturing, and authentic, honest responsibility for ourselves⁠—then the world cannot help but change, right?

And I'm not talking about toxic individuality, where you're like, "I'm just going to push away other people. I'm going to push away the news and the world, and I'm just going to focus on me." That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about understanding our interconnectedness, understanding how what you do and what you don't do is directly related to the welfare of others as much as it is related to your own welfare. Being able to hold this messy complexity emotionally⁠—that's the foundation to sustainability for anything. And when we don't have a sustainable foundation, when you don't have the ability to hold the complexity of our emotions, then when transits like this come, they knock us on our ass, and it gets really hard to get back up.

So, wherever you're at, whatever you're feeling, I want to encourage you, I want to invite you, to allow it to be a fucking mess. Allow space for yourself to not know what to do or how to do it, but instead to understand that this is a time⁠—and it's a finite time. It's not going to last forever. But this is a time for exploring it, for sitting with the mess of the emotions so that you can start to learn from it. You're not going to learn from it by sitting with it for 15 minutes. Sit with your defenses. Sit with your whatever. Sit with the mess. Sit with the mess. Feel your feelings. Make it a practice.

Now, again, we're going to talk about the Eclipse way more next week. But I'm hoping that this is a helpful little primer and acknowledgment of what is happening now. This is happening now even though the Eclipse is not until the 8th.

Now, on the 1st of every month, I drop a bonus episode of Ghost of a Podcast exclusively for my patrons on the kittens level. If you would like to hear this month's month-ahead horoscope, you can join me over there. And in general, if you want to learn more astrology with me, more woo with me, if you want to have access to pick my brains around any kind of astro/woo stuff, again, join me over on Patreon. If you are a Patreon supporter, I want to thank you very, very much because I love all the conversations we have over there, and I do appreciate your support.

If you would like to learn more with me and Patreon is not your thing, go to the Shop page of my very cute website. And on that page, you will find all kinds of classes, from my class on the twelfth house, my class on the Moon, or last week's class, Navigating Midlife Transits. They're all available there for purchase. And of course, go ahead and send me your questions for the midweek episode through the contact form of my website over at lovelanyadoo.com.

This is an intense moment. I hope that you are tending to yourself and others with grace, patience, and kindness. And I will talk to you in just a couple of days. Buh-bye.