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 are looking at the horoscope of June 9th through the 15th of 2024. And somehow, I didn't say it last week, but let me say it now: Happy Pride, you Gays. You Gays, you Queers, you Alphabet Mafia family, this is our month to celebrate our right to be whoever the fuck we are and to remember that Pride is not just about "love is love," an expression I absolutely hate.

Pride started out as a riot. This is a time for us to affirm our rights and fight for our rights. And if you're an ally, this is a great time to listen, to learn, to hang out, but not to the center yourself. This is not the time for centering your experience if you are an ally. Right? Right. Okay. Cool.

That all said, there's a lot to talk about this week. The transits that we experienced last week were primarily really supportive and good. And before I unpack the transits of this week, which are meaningfully more challenging, I just want to give you this kind of high-level reminder that week after week, you hear your horoscope. You read your horoscope, whatever it is. And it can be easy to get really fixated on each individual transit as a job you have to do, a task you have to maintain.

But what astrology is is simply a way of understanding the energetics of what's happening. And when things are easy or supportive, it's really important to bring awareness and attention to those energies to help support us for when things are more challenging. And this week, we are dealing with some challenging transits to Saturn and Pluto. And then Chiron is featured much more supportively.

And whenever we go through transits to Saturn, what we tend to experience is limitation, scarcity, and potentially rigidity and kind of our punishing impulses and attitudes or the punishing, scarcity-driven authoritarian drives in others or from others. And Pluto can be kind of similar to the description but different in the energetic experience. Pluto is experienced as power struggles. When we go through challenging transits involving Pluto, we tend to get triggered around our rumination, like the ways in which we can be negatively fixated on something. And that can be a behavior. It can be an attitude. It can be a relationship⁠—whatevs.

And so I wanted to just give you this kind of big-picture perspective, before we get into details, that these are the energies that are activated this week. And it can be a lot. It can be really hard to track your own emotional and psychological responses and needs because when we are dealing with such intense energies, we have a tendency to be reactive to whatever is happening in front of us. And that reactiveness is often influenced by our past trauma or our triggers or whatever the hell else.

So this is a great week to remember who you are. Remember that you have tools. I know you have a tool kit for self-care and managing yourself and not projecting your shit onto people and coping with adversity. I want you to remember who you are. I want you to remember that you have resources and to remember to tap into your resources when you need them. When things are difficult, it's easy to lose yourself in fear or to match the energy of the difficulty.

But the opportunity that exists when we are experiencing difficulty is the opportunity to get centered or grounded⁠, in other words, get present⁠⁠ to reflect on what patterns are getting triggered within you⁠—like what is your habitual way of reacting or responding, and does it actually work for you; is it actually a good move⁠—and to cultivate creative, tempered, and emotionally well-adjusted responses.

So your emotional/psychological reactions can be as chaotic or petty or whatever as they are. But the choices you make in response to your reactions⁠—that's where you need to be accountable. That's where you want to remember your tool kit. You want to use a tool kit to support yourself and others, even or especially when you are reactive.

So let's get into the details of this week's horoscope. The first exact transit of this week occurs on Sunday, June 9th, at 3:36 a.m. Pacific Time. And we have the Sun at 19 degrees and 5 minutes of Gemini forming an exact square to Saturn at the same degrees of Pisces. This transit is, unsurprisingly, quite challenging. When the Sun forms a square to Saturn, we feel tested. Saturn is your vitality. It's related to your psychology, but it's not your psychology. It's related to your virility, but it's not exactly your virility. It's your center. It's your will. It's your solar plexus, if you go woo in that particular direction.

When we experience a Sun square to Saturn, and especially if it hits your chart directly⁠, what tends to happen is it feels like you don't have enough. You don't have enough energy. You don't have enough resources. You don't have enough support⁠—what have you. A Sun square to Saturn is likely to kick up negative thinking, depressiveness, scarcity-based feelings and thoughts, and it may make you feel like you are overburdened by limitations, responsibilities, and obligations. You may be having to deal with somebody who has more power than you, who is telling you what to do and how to do it. And this is traditionally a parent, a boss, a landlord⁠—that kind of power relationship.

The value of this transit⁠—because there's always a value in the challenging transits, right? The value of this transit is it is a really good temperature check for where you're at. When shit gets hard⁠—and who are we kidding? Shit gets hard. So, when shit gets hard, how do you handle it? How do you resource yourself? How do you show up?

Whenever we're dealing with Saturn, we're dealing with consequences. Some of what you're likely to be experiencing is the consequences of how you have been using your energy and pacing yourself. Because of so much that is happening in the world, it can be exceptionally hard to pace yourself and to have a healthy balance between self-care and showing up for all the things you care about, all the things that are important to you.

And so a transit like Sun square to Saturn comes along, and it can kind of get you on the floor because it can have you feeling the consequences of not having enough energy to sustain the efforts that are required. Now, it's possible that you won't experience this at all, that that won't be your personal experience with this transit. But you're likely to be dealing with other people who are having this experience.

And so you may need to find a way to be generous and to recognize the humanity in others and in yourself. So, if you're not the one who's feeling kind of low energy in all these ways⁠—I'm talking about it is possible that you are the one who is showing up as the taskmaster/authority figure/Saturnian person for someone else. And if that's the case, strive to be mature, accountable, forthright, and not punishing, condescending, or controlling. Capisce?

This transit can be one where you get things done, where you tap into the energy of the Sun and Saturn and you organize tasks that need to be done⁠—and this can be on a psychological level, behavioral level⁠, on whatever level⁠—and you, with a pretty good sense of what you're capable of and what's appropriate and necessary for a situation, decide what needs to get done, how it needs to get done, and then you damn do it. That's absolutely possible with these energies.

Saturn is always going to feel a little heavy. But we can work with these energies. What you don't want to do is beat yourself up if you're feeling low energy, if you encounter some sort of rejection or failure or problem, because if you are encountering something like that, again, this is a pulse check. You need the information that something's wrong, if something's wrong. And this transit occurs so that you become more aware and choose to deal.

Saturn wants you to deal with reality. That's its whole thing, is reality. So, if you are confronted with an unpleasant or challenging reality, first of all, I'm sorry. And secondly, it's kind of a blessing. It's good to know what's not working because if you're not aware of what's not working, how are you going to fix it? How are you going to bring it to healing?

The trick here is engaging with Saturnian energies in a balanced, healthy way. And that's really hard for most of us, at least some of the time. Saturn can get very punishing. It can get very guilt-motivated, when what we're meant to do is have humility and accountability, integrity, responsibility. That's Saturn in its happiest, healthiest spot. So strive to embody the best qualities of Saturn, if you can, to whatever extent you can, on and around this transit.

And I'll remind you of what I said in last week's horoscope. On the 8th, Venus forms an exact square to Saturn, so we're still feeling that. It's still triggering, unfortunately, feelings of isolation or just difficulties in relationships, including your relationship to how you look or how you feel about how you think other people feel about how you look. And again, Saturn is consequential. But when the Sun forms a square to Saturn, as challenging of a transit as it can be, it's also an opportunity to really level up. So do with this as you will and as you can.

Now, overlapping with this transit, on Tuesday, June the 11th, we have a Mars square to Pluto. Mars is at 1 degree and 45 minutes of Taurus, and Pluto is at the same degrees of Aquarius. And this is exact at 6:21 a.m. So we've been feeling the effects of the Mars square to Pluto building for pretty much a week, and it will stay with us for several days. And if you have anything at around 2 degrees of a fixed sign⁠—so that's Taurus and Aquarius, Leo and Scorpio⁠—you're really going to feel this.

Mars square to Pluto is quite a challenging transit. These are the two planets associated with war, in different ways. Mars is bang-bang. It's military, policing, that kind of thing. And Pluto is more nuclear. It's the planet associated with major global oppression, terrorism, that kind of a thing. Mars and Pluto form challenging aspects to each other frequently. It doesn't mean that something explosive is necessarily going to occur on or around this date.

And also, there are lots of terrible things that are occurring around this time. And the Mars square to Pluto is not going to make them better. It's going to put more pressure on them because this is really a transit that kicks up violent tendencies, and it does so because Mars is related to the ego and competitiveness, and it is a planet that wants visceral, physical outlet. Mars is aggressive by nature, and Pluto is survival mechanisms. Pluto is your core drive to prove yourself, again, in a really deep way.

And so Mars square to Pluto is a transit where we want to be on the lookout for terrible things that humans do to each other. Mars is inside of each and every one of us. And if I'm being totally honest, looking at this Mars square to Pluto transit, I feel a little speechless. I've talked to you about this transit before on the podcast. I will talk about what it means on a personal level in just one second. But I do feel really overwhelmed by the violence that is happening in this world, the physical violence as well as the systemic violence. And I'm sure I am not alone.

And when we see a transit like this occurring, as astrologers, astrology nerds, astrology fans, it's activating. On a psychological and on a physical level, it's activating to get⁠, "Oh shit. More bad news. Oh shit. More scary transits." Right? And I want to just acknowledge that⁠—that when we get activated, it's important to not try to power through it all the time. I mean, sometimes you just gotta fucking power through.

But if you feel, as I do and I imagine many of you do, really activated by any one of the many really scary and terrible things that are happening in the world, then this transit is going to further activate you. And within that, you have the potential, the potential of this transit, to use your ego to strengthen your feelings of resiliency, strength, and courage. And this can be done in a shitty, selfish, toxically individualistic way, and this can be done in a healthy, balanced, and, to be honest, somewhat vulnerable way. And of course, there's options in between. But I want to just acknowledge that that's the assignment here.

Okay. Mars square Pluto⁠—let's talk about it on a more individual and personal level. This transit triggers your drive to prove yourself. This can make you feel really competitive, really driven to not just succeed but to have other people acknowledge that you're powerful. This is a passionate, defensive, activating transit. And that can be fun. That can lead to really fun, hot, consensual sex. That can lead to doing something sporty that is really just such a great outlet. It can have you finally do the thing that needs to be done so that you can advance your goals; you can start a project, finish a project, mobilize on something that is meaningful to you. That's the positive here.

And then the negative is that you can be driven from motivations that are more about your trauma responses, your ego, and your desire to exert power over others than is healthy, than is in alignment for you. So, in plain language, you may get involved in power struggles with people. You may be a total dick to someone and get into it for no actual reason other than you feel bad. Someone else might do that with you.

This is not a good time to be a dick. And I'm not saying don't stand up for yourself. I'm not saying all fights are negative or bad. Fighting is a healthy, important thing to be able to do when it's necessary. However, when a person is activated and triggered is when we tend to act out from our activation, a.k.a. our trauma, a.k.a. our triggers.

So this is an important time to stay present with what you're feeling, not just emotionally, not just psychologically, but in your body⁠—Mars. And that's really hard for most of us, right? We leave our bodies when we feel bad. This is an important time to practice resourcing yourself, coming back to the body. In doing so, you're more likely to act in ways that reflect your integrity instead of your flight-or-fight mechanisms.

When we're dealing with Pluto transits, Pluto tends to work like a boomerang. The shit that you throw out into the world will come back at you, and not necessarily directly. It's not like a one-for-one. But what you do now will have consequences. So, again, pick your battles wisely. And when you engage in any kind of battle, engage with integrity. That's what the transit's trying to get you to do.

Now, one last thing. You may not find yourself dealing with these energies, but other people are likely to be. So, if you feel unsafe in a place, don't go there, or don't go there alone. If somebody feels like, "Oh fuck, this person is just in traffic or whatever," and they're on the verge, don't stir the pot. You want to know that this is a very intense set of energies, and you may just need to use your best discernment around how to navigate other people's intensity and aggression and, quite honestly, unresolved anger issues.

Now, on Wednesday, June 12th, we have two more exact transits. We've got a Sun sextile to Chiron and a Mercury square to Saturn. The Mercury square to Saturn is at 19 degrees and 11 minutes, with Mercury in Gemini and Saturn in Pisces. This one is exact 3:47 a.m. Pacific Time. The Sun is at 22 degrees and 45 minutes of Gemini, and Chiron is at the same exact degrees of Aries. And that's exact at 11:24 p.m.

Now, these transits are overlapping with the Mars square to Pluto. This is important to keep in mind because that Mars square to Pluto is a very powerful transit that will shift the vibes. Now, I'm going to start off with the Sun sextile to Chiron even though it happens later in the day. This transit is really supportive. So I want to give you this information to consider it a bridge between the Mars square to Pluto and the Mercury square to Saturn, okay?

This transit is supportive for healing. It's supportive for tapping into your wounds and being able to bring your light and intentionality to them. This transit helps you to access your integrity in moments and situations where it would traditionally be pretty hard for you⁠—in other words, to be able to acknowledge your pain without unconsciously acting to make it worse, but instead working within your needs and within your nature.

This transit isn't like a magic bullet or anything, but it is present to bring us so much support for coping with the insecurity that the Mercury/Saturn transit triggers and the defensiveness that the Mars square to Pluto triggers. And if you have anything at around 22 degrees of a fire sign⁠—so that's Aries, Leo, Sadge⁠—or an air sign⁠—Gemini, Libra, and Aquarius⁠—then this is going to be especially supportive to you.

Let's now talk about the Mercury square to Saturn. Mercury is your mind. It's your thoughts, your attitudes. It's the tone of voice with which you speak to yourself and others. Mercury is how you communicate what you say. Saturn is scarcity and depressiveness and responsibility and hard work. And because of this, a lot of people experience depressive thinking, depressive attitudes, and a general depressive psychological state during a Mercury square to Saturn.

So you may be feeling those ways, and if you are, I can tell you a couple important things. One is that this transit actually favors hard work. So it favors you trying hard to resource your tool kit so that you can handle whatever's coming up in the best possible way. If you have to do⁠—I don't know⁠—some sort of really difficult or tedious mental task, this is a good transit. It's actually not a bad transit for sewing, something that you have to pay attention and do something repetitive. Saturn's influence on Mercury is⁠—it's trying to get Mercury to focus, to do some hard work and focus.

The other thing is that if you feel bad, it is okay to say to yourself, "I am not in a resilient state. I'm not in a great place to make decisions or assess what's possible. I'm going to shrink my scope of focus and choose to focus on the things that I can be constructive around today because I can't really be that constructive around a lot of things." That's okay. Work with the energy that is flowing in your life, even if that flow is a teeny, tiny little eke of movement.

This is not a great time for important conversations. Honestly, sometimes they're unavoidable during this transit. And if you have to have a heart-to-heart with someone or have an important conversation, be forthright. Be honest, but watch your tone because just because you're being honest doesn't mean you're being kind. And it's really important that you recognize that it's not just what you say; it's how you say it.

And if you're going to have a difficult conversation and you're going to be really honest with someone but you have no intention of listening to them, then you're actually not being kind. It is not kind⁠—ever, really⁠—to have a conversation with someone where you're not listening to them but you're expecting them to listen to you. And Mercury square Saturn often comes around to teach us that very lesson by either not being heard or listened to by someone or us doing that to someone else.

As always with Saturn, if you make a mistake, if you fail, if you falter, you can learn from it. It's not the end of the world. These transits happen in cycles. So it's about recognizing where you're at, being honest with yourself⁠—and others, if it's necessary⁠—about where you're at. And you can continue to work on the lessons of Mercury and Saturn for as long as you like, so don't put too much pressure on yourself.

That said, if you have to make an important decision, if you can put it off a little bit, it would be great. In general, the energy of this week is not great for major decisions. In particular, this transit can have you thinking small, wanting to control things. And so you may miss out on possibility because you're too locked in on probability.

Mercury square to Saturn⁠—it's not like a sunshiny transit, but the value of it is that you can, as I said, do hard work. But also, this transit really helps us to have a better assessment of what's actually happening in our relationships, in our thoughts, in our attitudes. This is a really good time to leverage your self-awareness so that you can do better and be better. It's not a time where you're likely to have results in that regard, but you can shift your awareness so that you can see which way the path is going from here and make the decision to get up on that path.

Now, on the 13th, we have another exact transit involving Mercury. And in fact, you'll find that this second half of the week is very Mercurial. On the 13th, we have a Mercury sextile to Chiron. And much like the Sun sextile to Chiron, this transit serves as a great deal of support, and potentially a bridge, because it supports you in being able to work through past wounding, negative beliefs, self-destructive ways of thinking about things, communicating about things, not really listening to other people, and to work through those patterns and those habits in a way that better reflects what you're capable of instead of your least healthy habits.

This transit is really helpful for healing. It's really helpful for opening your mind and being open to others, to communicating in ways that are authentic, deep, and real. And so this transit just couldn't be better timed, with the Mercury/Saturn square and the Mars/Pluto square. It's really, really supportive.

And then the last exact transit that we have this week is happening on Friday, June 14th. This is a Sun conjunction to Mercury, so hello, Mercury. Hello, Sun, again. This will be exact at 9:32 a.m. Pacific Time. Some people love this transit. I have mixed feelings about this transit. The Sun conjunction to Mercury does what any student of astrology would probably expect. It puts emphasis and energy on our thoughts, communication, friendships, that kind of thing.

This can be a really great transit for opening your mind, changing your mind, having a meaningful conversation, reading or learning something new, unlearning something important⁠. Basically, processing information, exchanging energy through information and data⁠—all of that is classic of a Sun conjunction to Mercury.

Generally speaking, when this transit occurs, there's kind of a heightened tempo to our days⁠—in other words, tons of emails, tons of texts, tons of⁠—you've got to run around and do a bunch of shit. It's a busy day and, in particular, a busy day with communication and activity in your immediate sphere because Mercury governs our neighborhood, our immediate sphere. And I feel like⁠—I don't know⁠—with the internet, Mercury is not just about our physical neighborhood but also the places we tend to traverse online. This is a developing theory I have, but there it is.

It's a great time for meeting new people. It's a great time for having fun conversations. It is a much lighter transit than some of the others that we've had this week. But here's the thing that can be tricky about this transit. The Sun is your identity, and Mercury is your ideas. And when the Sun and Mercury meet, we can overidentify with our ideas. And we live in a very identity-driven time, and whether that's good or bad I don't know. It doesn't matter.

But what can happen is our ideas about who we are can replace our lived experience. And when that occurs, a transit like Sun conjunction to Mercury can find people acting out because they want validation for their ideas about themselves instead of their own actions, their own lived experience. The Sun conjunction to Mercury can be a time where you feel the need for other people to perceive what you perceive, believe what you believe, think what you think, because again, there is an overidentification with one's ideas.

This is a meaningful time to make space for other people to have different ideas, to have different takes, to have different experiences, and to not center your own so much that you are no longer truly listening to what other people are saying. And when I say listening, I'm not talking about an auditory experience. I'm talking about actually listening to what people tell you, which is just as much about receptivity as it is acceptance, as it is being present and interested and open.

Sun conjunction to Mercury is a powerful time for listening. But because of how subjective and how me-oriented the Sun can be, when it meets up with Mercury, people will often be more focused on communicating or telling people who they are than really listening to how it's being received or who and what other people are. So, this Sun conjunction to Mercury, I encourage you to check in with your active listening skills and see if they need a little tweaking.

Now, that's the last exact transit of this week. But I'm going to give you a little heads-up, which is that on Sunday, the 16th, there will be an exact square between Venus and Neptune. And we will have been feeling it this week. This transit does a lot of things, and one of the things it does is it increases anxiety, can be testing to relationships and testing of your values. I'm going to talk about it in depth at the start of next week's episode; don't you worry.

But I want to just kind of give you this heads-up about next week's horoscope. There's a lot of challenging aspects to Neptune, which means a lot of anxiety. So don't overdo it this week. I said it slowly because it's super important: don't overdo it this week. No matter how tempted you are to stir the pot, to start shit, to do something self-destructive, don't do it, my friends, because Neptune is going to come around, and Neptune tends to kind of drain energy.

So I'm going to talk about it a ton next week; don't you worry. But I wanted to give you that heads-up because, as you may have noticed already, from week to week in June, we're having these sharp turns of energy. And if you weren't already feeling kind of burned out or overwhelmed, this could trigger that. So, again, I want to just kind of give you a heads-up of the weather report as I see it coming.

And of course, if you would like to learn more, you can join me over on Patreon, where on the kittens level, on the 1st of every month, I drop a bonus episode of Ghost where I delineate the whole month ahead. So, if you listen to that episode, you'll have a better sense of what's coming. And if you're interested in all manner of self-care, spiritual development, astrology, tarot, energy work⁠—all kinds of shit—then you can join me over on Patreon, where I talk about it all.

Now, one more thing I want to say is very important, which is, hey, you Gays. Gays, write me a question for the podcast. Go ahead. Send in a question for the podcast to potentially get a reading with me on the show. Also, my beloved queerdo forever-fiancé, who co-produces and edits this very podcast with so much love, is having a birthday. So, if you appreciate this podcast, if you get value from this podcast and you want to give it a little bit of love, write a review letting him know how much you appreciate him. I certainly do.

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