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's astrology is just⁠—I mean, I feel like you know. It's a lot. We're going to dive into the Eclipse and all the other transits going on. I want to just take a moment to thank everybody who came last week to my live in-person talk at the Berkeley Library here in the Bay Area of California. It was such a tender event, and I really loved getting to do my first in-person live event since the pandemic started. And part of how I was able to do it with confidence was that the library was down to work with me on creating a COVID-safer event. So everybody masked, which⁠—again, thank you to everyone showing up wearing a mask and creating a safer place for people who are immune compromised or just don't want to get sick.

And I also had the chance of using germicidal UV light therapy, and we had two devices in the space. It really made me feel a lot safer. If you're interested in learning more about this technology, you can go ahead and check them out at bioabundances.com. And I have a discount code to share if you're interested in purchasing a device. It's Abundance222. And I'm going to put this in the description of this episode so that you have access to all of this stuff if this kind of technology is something that you're interested in. It certainly made me feel a lot safer, and it made me feel more confident about creating a safe space for other people to enter into. So that's kind of cool.

Now, all that said, let's just dive right in because nobody has time for anything but this damn Eclipse. So we're going to look at the astrology of April 7th through the 13th of 2024. And our horoscope starts off strong with a Solar Eclipse in Aries on Monday, April the 8th. So there's a lot to talk about here, but let me just start off by saying Mercury⁠—she's Retrograde. She's Retrograde in Aries. She's sitting at almost 25 degrees of Aries while the Solar Eclipse in Aries is happening at 19 degrees and 24 minutes.

We also have, of course, the North Node, Chiron, and Venus in Aries in addition to the Sun and Moon. This is a very Aries moment. And what that means, separate from everything else, is that the energies that are at play are passionate. They're driven. They're powerful. And they want to be experienced viscerally, in the body. That's Aries for you. And so this Solar Eclipse may have you in a fighting mood. You may be fighting yourself. You may be fighting your circumstances. You may be fighting for something you believe in. But it puts us all in a state of urgency, and that urgency can lead to advancement. And I love advancement. How about you?

A Solar Eclipse is an astrological event that will only occur during a New Moon⁠—so Sun and Moon, same degrees of Aries. Now, some astrologers, probably on social media, will tell you that an Eclipse is a portal. But that is not right from my perspective. I mean, I don't know how we are defining the word "portal." But as a very woo person that works with portals, I will say in a broad sense I guess anything can be a portal. And in a specific sense, that's not really what the astrology means.

Eclipses are an opportunity for us to come to a greater and deeper emotional presence and healing than we have at other times. We want to keep in mind that Eclipses are Lunar transits, and Moon transits are all about our emotions. So it's really important⁠—and this is the TL;DR for the Eclipse. It's really important that you're emotionally present, that you are present emotionally for whatever it is that you're feeling, that you're experiencing, and through the foundation of being present, you are willing and able to be curious about what you're feeling, so much so that you can explore your emotions, your motivations underneath your emotions, your beliefs, your assumptions, your triggers, your activation, because it is by being present with ourselves and what we're feeling that we can be most honest with ourselves and therefore with others.

And so there's not something that's going to magically happen to you. There's nothing that's going to magically heal you through an Eclipse. However, it's an opportunity for you to do that work with and on yourself. But again, that requires that you're present. Now, this particular Solar Eclipse has a North Node/Sun/Moon/Chiron/Mercury conjunction in Aries. And what this is going to be bringing up⁠—and I'm sure you've already been feeling it⁠—is a sense of urgency. Aries brings about urgency. It confronts us with emotions like frustration, agitation, impatience, ambition, passion, motivation. It accentuates and intensifies all of these feelings.

Now, as I've said before, Solar Eclipses⁠—they both obscure and reveal. And while this is kind of magical sounding, it makes sense that when we are experiencing such powerful emotions, we both become more clear about things and also less clear about things. Now, this particular Eclipse is exact at 11:21 a.m. Pacific Time. But again, the energy has been building for a couple of weeks, and it will be integrating for about six months. And so what it is that rises to the surface within you, both the things that are really clear and salient to you but also the things that are just huge mysteries and uncertainties inside of you or in your life⁠—these things will take six months to play out. And they're an invitation. They're an invitation for your presence.

Because this Eclipse is occurring in Aries, your presence is not just about your emotions. It's about being present for your meat suit, being present in your body. Aries energies really want to be experienced viscerally. Now, the ruling planet to Aries is Mars. And Mars is sitting really close to Saturn in Pisces right now. What this means is we are likely to be feeling frustrated, like there are things that we want to be doing that aren't working, places in our lives or in our ambitions where circumstances are thwarting our ability to move forward or to move forward in the way or at the pace that we want.

There is no part of this Solar Eclipse chart that speaks to patience, nary a single part. This is a deeply motivating and catalyzing Eclipse. So you are likely to be feeling pretty impatient, again, with your circumstances, with yourself, with a person⁠—it doesn't matter. And that impatience is worth investigating. Is that feeling that you're feeling telling you, "Okay. I gotta giddyap and move," or is that feeling of impatience really about your own inner restlessness and your own difficulties in staying present with emotions, or something else?

Again, there is no magic bullet for coping with emotions. Our emotions require presence. That's it. There are so many other complicated things that are true and that I could say and that other astrologers have said, but I really want you to remember that what the Eclipse wants, what any Moon transit wants from you, is to get out of your head and get present with your emotions, even if that means sitting with your restlessness, sitting with what you don't know, with your uncertainty, feeling foolish or confused or exhausted or agitated⁠. Whatever it is that you're feeling, it's what you're feeling. And it deserves your presence. Don't abandon yourself. Don't repress or oppress yourself because it's uncomfortable to stay present. And it is. It's really uncomfortable to be present with what you feel, unfortunately. But that is the assignment.

Now, Eclipses in general are unpredictable. They bring about unpredictable energy. So it's not a great time to start something new. We're also in a Mercury Retrograde, so in general, it's also not a great time to start new projects or anything new at this time. And it's not because it's ill-fated, per se, but it is because the Eclipse itself is unpredictable. So the energy of whatever it is you begin is likely to be unpredictable, too. And so, again, I want to invite you to be present and to explore what's possible.

Similarly, this is not a great time for doing rituals. The energy of the Eclipse is a ritual in and of itself. And so whatever you can do to keep it simple and stay present with what is, to explore what it's bringing up within you and how you want to use your agency to best greet this moment, that is the whole point of the Eclipse. And because, again, it's in Aries and we also have this Mercury Retrograde in Aries as part of the Eclipse mash-up, it is an invitation to be curious about and to find yourself. Who are you now? Are you in contact with yourself now? Have you been listening to yourself?

You may find, if you do this inner work that I keep pointing towards, that all you have is questions, that you don't have any certainty or clarity, and that's okay. Being emotionally present for that uncertainty, for that lack of clarity, is how you eventually come to a place of greater self-awareness and clarity. I can't stress enough how important it is to clarify your question.

Now, if you listen to my midweek episodes where I give readings to people, you'll probably notice that a big part of what I do in my readings is I help people to clarify their questions, to get clearer about their assumptions, and to be able to be present with parts of themselves that they have habits about pushing down or they have narratives about them. And we all have that, all of us, right?

This Eclipse in Aries is a powerful time for clarifying questions. And depending on where you're at, that may look like you getting really emotionally present with how bad it feels to not know what you don't know, to be uncertain, or just feel stuck. And a lot of people are going to be feeling stuck this Eclipse. If that's how you're feeling, you are not alone.

Now, let me speak a bit to collective conditions because, of course, this Eclipse is not just happening to us as individuals and personally; it's impacting our collective conditions. This Eclipse in Aries has been building us up to greater violence, to confronting issues related to greater violence in the world. In particular, in the United States, where I live and where I know many of you live, we are still in the phase of a Pluto Return of the United States. We are still in a phase of determining who we are and what we stand for.

And this particular Eclipse in Aries is triggering very Aries themes, like themes around body autonomy and violence, whether we're talking about gun violence, a culture of violence, militarization and policing, and that is not limited to domestic concerns. It's how we militarize other countries. It's how we send weapons to other nations and why, because again, with Aries energies, it's not just about what you do. It's what's motivating you to do it.

And as Eclipses reveal as well as obscure, we are seeing the United States being called to task. And we as individuals can come together to use our agency to move the needle forward on things that are important to us. Within that, hopefully what's important to us is the protection and liberation of all peoples.

Now, in terms of how this Eclipse is going to affect us on a collective level, there is a risk of an uptick in violence. And this is for many reasons, but of course, a big one is all this Aries energy. And the other one is Chiron's placement. We have Chiron conjunct the Sun and Moon. In fact, seven minutes after the Eclipse is exact, we have a Sun/Chiron conjunction in exactitude. So the Eclipse is at 11:21 a.m., and the Sun/Chiron conjunction is in exactitude at 11:28 a.m.

The presence of Chiron in this Eclipse is so powerful. It points our energy, emotions, and awareness towards our core wounding. So things that have happened in the past that have been repressed in the body get activated by this Eclipse and in particular by Chiron's presence in the Eclipse and presence in today's horoscope.

This Eclipse is an invitation to confront whatever fears or triggers or trauma you have around being here, being an individual, being you. Uranus in Aquarius is all about individuality, technically speaking. But Aries is a zodiac sign that is all about me, my energies, who I am. These energies are meant to be experienced and expressed through our bodies.

From my perspective as a woo-woo astrologer, our bodies are the things in our human experience that identify the separation between me and you, that identify the separation between us, because our energy⁠—my feelings, your feelings, my grief, your grief, my joy, your joy⁠—these things have an energy that permeates. But our bodies are lines of separation, or at least they can be. There is a way that this very Chironic Solar Eclipse is meant to be a confrontation with your body, your individual experience as a person with an identity and goals and ambitions and dreams and all of that, which is why it's a particularly hard Eclipse.

There's a great sense of urgency and excitement that exists within this Eclipse, and that can very easily be turned into anxiety and self-destructive thinking, self-destructive feelings or behaviors. If you find yourself in the throes of that, I want to invite you to, first of all, just notice it. Be aware of it. And then check in with yourself. What is motivating you to be a dick to yourself? How can you talk to yourself or support yourself in better ways? And how can you show up for others and in the world in a way that reflects the healthiest and most balanced embodiment and expression of your ego? Because of course, we're talking about ego energies when we're talking about Aries energies.

This Solar Eclipse is meant to throw you off balance. All Eclipses do. They're chaotic. But a great way of finding a better, more authentic and perfect balance is by sometimes getting off balance. So be willing to challenge your own notions of who you are, to interrupt whatever beliefs you have about yourself enough to get present, to really check in with who you are and, again, your motivations for being that way.

The Chiron element of this Eclipse is likely to confront you with feelings of inadequacy, with feelings of insecurity, identity crises. And if you spin your wheels trying to evade and avoid those bad feelings, you miss the opportunity. If there's a portal, if there's a doorway, you miss that because the way that we heal is by staying present with our pain. That's the move. And so resist the urge to shut down. Resist the urge to fight your circumstances without first greeting yourself.

And if you're going to fight⁠—because you know what? This Solar Eclipse, you may need to fight⁠. Make sure that you know what you're fighting for, not just what you're fighting against. In life, when we center the thing that we hate, when we center the thing that we are rejecting, then we're centering that thing. And it's really important to be able to center the thing that you love, the thing that you want, the thing that you choose.

This Eclipse is not just stimulating ambition and anger and urgency in the individual. It's stimulating collective rage, a collective drive for greater agency, for things to change, and associated with that, maybe a collective push towards violence. And again, violence can happen on a lot of different levels. There's not just physical violence. And while you and I cannot control what happens on the collective, we can make sure that our tiny corner of the universe, our own energetic contribution, our own behavioral contribution, has as clean motivations as possible.

All you can do is your best. And this Eclipse is meant to challenge how you are embodied. And that⁠—that is intense. That is hard. And you're not supposed to get it right. I feel like that's worth repeating. You are not supposed to get it right. You're supposed to try. If you get it right, fucking fabulous. Mazel tov. Do it. But when we fail, when we misstep, when we don't get it right, when we come into direct contact with the ways in which we are utterly fucked up, that is clarifying. It's not a condemnation. It doesn't have to be if you can hold it in a way where you come to greater self-awareness so that you can accept where you're at and, from that place, make the best possible choices for your next steps⁠—not the final steps that you want to make, but your next steps. That right there⁠—that's where healing occurs, and it's where emotional maturity lives.

And every time we go through a Lunar transit, including but not limited to the Eclipses, we have the opportunity to become more emotionally embodied and mature. From a place of emotional maturity, you have greater access to leveraging your agency. And that makes life a lot easier. It doesn't make your circumstances different. It doesn't change late-stage capitalism or anything. But it does make it easier to navigate the choices that you do have, this precious life that you do have.

Do your best to stay open and to stay present. Whether things come at you out of left field, whether things come up within you that you didn't expect, none of it exactly matters. What matters is how you emotionally engage with and respond to your feelings. It's how you show up. These are the things that truly matter. So don't let yourself get too distracted by the details. Avoid any impulse towards perfectionism or even being too superstitious.

This Eclipse is going to require a great deal of agility from us because it is a really fast-and-furious-feeling Eclipse that is coming in in really tumultuous times. In order to be the change you want to see in the world, you've got to bring yourself along for the ride. You gotta involve self-care, self-preservation, self-love in the mix. So this is not about being perfect or always feeling good in your body or emotionally. But it is about remembering that psychological, emotional, spiritual evolution, maturity, growth⁠—these things are foundational to everything that's important to us, everything that we do.

And this Solar Eclipse in Aries, my greatest hope for you is that you find a way to accept yourself, to embrace herself, and to choose yourself, not at the expense of other things, but as a foundational part of your journey as a human in this body, in this life.

All right. And that brings us to Wednesday, April the 10th. And on April the 10th, we have the Mars/Saturn conjunction coming to full exactitude. I spoke on it very, very briefly already. But Mars and Saturn are meeting at 14 degrees and 41 minutes of Pisces. It's exact 1:36 p.m. Pacific Time. And this transit has been developing for quite some time. There's a couple ways that this transit can end up being felt, but we want to keep in mind that it is related to all this Aries energy because Mars is the ruling planet of Aries. We've got all this Aries energy happening. We've got this Aries Eclipse happening as well as the Aries Mercury Retrograde.

So Mars is related to our ambitions, our motivations. It's embodiment. It's the urge to fight⁠—to fight back, to fight for, whatever. It's related to sex and our sex drive, to chemistry, and it's about our ego. Saturn is consequences. It's reality. It's maturity. And it's also kind of our collective circumstances. It's like reality is, in part, about collective circumstances.

So, when Mars and Saturn sit on top of each other in Pisces, it can be a time were either you feel stuck, like your circumstances are blocking you from mobilizing and catalyzing and getting shit done⁠—it can make you feel really blocked and, related to that, frustrated and irritated. And some people experience those feelings and get really angry and agitated. Other people feel physical exhaustion.

So, when you have a really hard time experiencing anger and passion, what can often happen is that you get exhausted. You just feel completely depleted and demoralized. So, if that's what's going on for you, it's wise to sit with those feelings⁠—tend to your body; if your body is telling you it needs rest, rest⁠—but also to be curious about what's underneath it. Is it demoralization? What is it that you're feeling demoralized about? To strive to understand not just your circumstances and not even just your emotions, but how your emotions show up in the body so that you have greater self-awareness.

Now, the other thing that can occur⁠—this transit can give you a sense of stability and stamina. It can give you the capacity to work really hard for a long period of time on something that needs doing. Mars can be a bit of a sprinter. It depends on a lot of things, but it can be a bit of a sprinter. But Saturn is always about the distance. So this transit can make you feel like you're capable of doing the thing and sticking with the thing. But what it doesn't do is it doesn't give us a glorious burst of energy, because Saturn and Mars together⁠—it tends to be a little bit of a grind. So it can be frustrating and just kind of hard.

The best way to deal with these energies is to do something with them. For some people, some of the time, the hardest thing to do is to stop trying so hard and to just be and to tend to your body. For other people, at other times, that's going to mean putting yourself out there, creating a plan, mobilizing, finally doing the thing that you know needs doing. And because it's in Pisces, a lot of this is likely to be turned inwards on our spiritual, emotional, and psychological values or turned in a humanitarian direction where you are concerned about the welfare of people, and in particular, people are being marginalized in some meaningful way. And Lord knows there's plenty of people and plenty of circumstances that need a lot of help in the world right now.

So you may find that you're finally like, "Fuck it. It's costing way too much energy to not get involved⁠—than my fear of what will happen if I do get involved." And fear is worth mentioning because Saturn governments fear. And Mars is ambition. Pisces is anxiety. So you may be feeling like you really want to do something, but you're scared. Don't let your fear stop you. Also, sometimes fear is there for a reason. Fear is not always wrong or bad. Fear keeps us safe.

So, again, the answer is to be present with your feelings, including fear, so that you can garner wisdom from it and make informed choices, take informed actions. You can't be perfect. You can't know everything. But you can use your agency to direct yourself in a way that feels best informed as best you can. Because of Saturn's presence, this is not a time for major risk-taking. But it is Eclipse season, and that may be unavoidable. So, when in doubt, do what is in alignment with your integrity. That's the move.

Now, again, I should say this transit can be associated with violence. And that can be violence in an area that you're in or in a bar you go to or something, but it can be violence from the state⁠—Saturn. So we want to pay attention to what's happening in the world and to continue to stay engaged with being a part of the world in a way that helps us to co-create or navigate our evolution in the best, most humane possible direction.

Now, I guess one more thing I can say about this Mars/Saturn transit is that Saturn tends to be a bit of a boner killer, but Mars is all about sex. And so, depending on what kind of sex you enjoy, this can be not such a great transit for hooking up, or it can be a spectacular one. But in either and all cases, consent is key. I mean, consent is key no matter what transit we're talking about, but with a Mars conjunction to Saturn in a very Aries time, consent is really important. So, whether you're hooking up with somebody and we're talking about literal consent or you're reflecting on how you leverage your agency, the choices you make and what you consent to in your life, your relationship to your own body's autonomy and consent in general⁠—these are good places for your energy and attention to go, again, whether you're actively in a sexual relationship with people or not. Another useful application of this transit's energies.

Now, on Thursday the 11th, we have a Sun conjunction to Mercury Retrograde happening at 4:03 p.m. Pacific Time. This transit is happening at 22 degrees of Aries and 32 minutes. So, in general, a Sun conjunction to Mercury⁠—it's a fun, lovely transit, not too much to write home about. It tends to increase the tempo of your daily life. Mercury is related to your neighborhood and just the busyness of the things you do day to day. It's also our friendships. It's the people we talk to, communicate with. And the Sun is your identity. It is your central self.

And so, typically speaking, this transit is associated with having a busy couple of days, communicating with people, maybe hanging out with people a little bit more, learning something new⁠—all that kind of fun stuff. But because Mercury is Retrograde, it shifts the meaning just a little bit. Because Mercury is Retrograde, this is a time for meaningful reflection. And so this may be a moment where you can reflect on the Eclipse. I don't know if you're really far enough away from it to do so, but there is that.

But you want to remember that this Mercury Retrograde is an invitation to find yourself, and to find yourself in particular in the part of your birth chart where Aries falls. So this Sun conjunction to Mercury Retrograde, paired, of course, with the Mars/Saturn conjunction, can be a time where you really get in there and cultivate greater self-awareness. It may be that that increased tempo of learning and connection that this transit provokes means that you talk to the people you need to talk to. You hear the news you need to hear. You share some truth that someone needed to actually receive.

This Sun conjunction to Mercury Retrograde, I think, is a very handy transit, even though on its own it's not really going to shake things up too much. If you keep a diary or a journal or if you've been meaning to do that, this is always a great transit, when the Sun and Mercury meet, to get back into journaling in some way or another. And in particular, because Mercury is Retrograde, it's a really great time for that. So put that in your metaphorical pipe and smoke it.

Now, that's it for the exact transits of this week. However, on the 20th of April, we are going to be having an exact conjunction between Jupiter and Uranus. I spoke about in the year-ahead forecast. I have been kind of touching on it in the weekly horoscope. And I want to acknowledge it now because this transit⁠—it happens once every 14 years. And because Uranus takes about 84 years to return to a zodiac sign, the last time we had a Jupiter/Uranus conjunction in the zodiac sign of Taurus was quite some time ago.

So this transit is a very big deal. And we are absolutely feeling these energies getting stronger and stronger. It is absolutely stirring the pot so that we have the potential for things to really change. And that is true for us as individuals in our lives. That's true for the economy because it's happening in Taurus. It's true for events that are occurring on a global stage. Jupiter and Uranus are two planets associated with liberation and justice and freedom. These planets, when they're sitting on top of each other, can spark revolutionary change. This can affect us both very personally and very collectively.

And so I want to acknowledge these energies so that we can bring them to the forefront of our thinking and be intentional with how we engage with them. This energy is a bit frenetic. And paired with the Eclipse energy, which is very urgent and passionate, it's a lot. And it's a lot for our tender, little human nervous systems. These are energies that egg things on. They egg us on, and that's not good or bad. It's energy. Energy can be used in ways that are healthy and helpful or not.

So, as I'm kind of touching on this important astrological and energetic shift, I want you to know that you can tap into these energies and use them to create meaningful change, material change. But not all change is equal. There is change that is motivated by getting away from pain or problems, and then there's change that is intentional and that is motivated by moving towards improvements, betterment, freedom. And it's hard to know the difference if you're not first sitting with your impulses, sitting with your reality. So just a little bit more for you to think about this week.

We are living through quite exceptional times. This month, April 2024, it was always supposed to be a lot. So be gentle with yourself, and be gentle with other people as you evolve. And honestly, as shitty as it can feel to be confronted with problems that you have with yourself, with your life, with your past, it's a blessing. It's a blessing to be able to consciously engage with what troubles us in the world, in ourselves, whatever⁠, so that we can make different choices, better choices, so that we can engage and be a part of making this world, this life, better, even in tiny ways. There's not one way to do it. Be gentle with yourself, but stay engaged. This isn't the week for checking out.

Now, my dears, I want to thank you once again for joining me here at Ghost of a Podcast, where I get to do the thing I love most, which is talk about astrology. If you'd like to learn more with me, I would love that, too. You can try me over on Patreon, were in the past week we've been talking a lot about birth chart aspects and transits. You can also purchase classes online with me. I've got them for sale on my very cute website.

And I don't know if you have heard the latest reading that I dropped on my podcast. It's called "Healing Poop Problems," which is like⁠—it's a niche joke. If you get it, you get it. You know what I mean? Wink, wink. Healing poop problems. Anyways, it's a really good reading, and I invite you to check that out if you haven't already.

I am wishing you an Eclipse time that helps you to evolve into the person you most want to be. Whether that's hard or easy, take good care of yourself and others. And I will talk to you in just a couple of days.