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 April 13th through the 19th of 2025. Now, on the 19th, there's an important shift that's occurring. I mean, more technically speaking, the shift happens this week, but as of the 19th, we're going to be under the influence of transits that are pretty demanding and can be quite harrowing to navigate.

And so I want to encourage you to set intentions for yourself to really check in this week. And by that, I mean if you have been avoiding or evading, strive to maybe meet those impulses with breath. If you have been overworking yourself or doing something to distract yourself from what you know is important and real, this is a good time, really anytime this week, to try to get present because when you are present, even if there's a lot to fear or there's a lot of pain and a lot of struggle in the present moment, when you are present, you can be better defended; you're better able to take care of yourself, to tap into resources, and to show up with and for others. So presence has a lot of positives to it.

Now, we're going to talk about the astrology, of course, in just a minute. But you know I got some shit to say first. Apocalyptic, helpless, hopeless, just totally demoralized thinking—that is a win for fascism. That is a win for the people, organization, and forces that are gunning for our rights. We need hope, imagination, and a willingness to explore possibilities, approaches, new ways of collaborating with other people or with our circumstances, and an openness to navigating through hardship.

This is not the end of days. That concept—that's a Christian concept. And it is Christian extremists who have orchestrated and facilitated many of the crises that we are experiencing and on the verge of right now. That said, things are bad and pretty fucking scary for a lot of people, and they are on the verge of being so scary and dangerous that believing everything will work out, that everything is okay, that for whatever reason, based on your ideas, politics, identities, you'll be fine, is escapist at best and aiding and abetting cruelty towards others, especially the most vulnerable amongst us, at worst. And honestly, it's likely that most people will kind of vacillate between these things.

It is hard to confront the realities of what is happening in the United States and in many, many other places in the world. Touch grass. Tend to your garden. Yes, these things are important. They are essential. But I will say, if that's all you're doing, then you're not actively fighting fascism. And it will get harder day by day, week by week, month by month. It will get harder to fight fascism, and fascism is coming.

I think all the time, like every day, about how to hit the right note between ringing the alarm and banging the drum that things are really bad, that we need to really pay attention, that we need to find ways of actively participating, rising up and speaking out about the many—the many— atrocities that are happening and, at the same time, trying to communicate hope, resiliency, mutual care, and possibility, our ability to actively co-create the present and future we want to have in this world. And the truth of the matter is there's no way that I can do that. I can't do that adequately for everyone in all ways.

The chaos that we are all feeling, that struggle between, "Am I overreacting, or am I underreacting? Should I be more or should I be less?"—that struggle is, in part, the point because if you and I are in chaos, if you and I are fighting each other because I'm too negative or I'm not negative enough or whatever the fuck it is, those things keep us focused on the shit that is actually not the point. The point is that we all need to cultivate greater bravery and focus so that we can be educated and informed, so that we can confront the problems, the very real dangers in society, and actively seek to resist.

Within that, it is very important that I say as a person of conscience and a Jewish person that I cannot emphasize enough how the use of, quote unquote, "fighting anti-Semitism" by the current United States regime is such a bunch of bullshit. Any regime that platforms the Seig Heil is deeply anti-Semitic. I cannot believe that this needs to be said. But speaking out against the State of Israel is not anti-Semitic. The core of evangelical Christian belief, which is the ideology that fuels Project 2025 and the current American regime, is steeped in a fetishistic and dangerous form of anti-Semitism.

Now, of course, anti-Semitism is real. Believing that all Jews are one way or another, believing that all Jews are responsible for any in-particular thing that you don't like—that's anti-Semitic. And as we live in a Christian nationalist nation, anti-Semitism is absolutely something that we as individuals and as a society need to interrogate within ourselves and within our communities. But that has absolutely nothing—nothing—to do with the bullshit that the United States government is peddling.

The horrors that are happening every moment of every day to the Palestinian people are facilitated by the United States and perpetrated by the State of Israel, and there's nothing anti-Semitic in naming that and fighting it. We must continue to fight for the liberation, safety, and dignity of the Palestinian people and of all people around the world. And so I must say to you emphatically fuck the State of Israel and their policies and their actions, and free Palestine.

We should care about the people of Palestine because they are people living through hell. The erosion of the rights of those who are standing up for Palestine, the erosion of the rights for people who have immigrated to the United States and the rights of Trans and Nonbinary people, the erosion of these rights—they can occur without most of the United States population really noticing or caring that much.

But I will say that when legislation is passed policing people's free speech, people's opinions, people's gender, how they express their gender, how they live, when the government has the legal right to scoop people up and disappear them, you need to know that those changes in society, those changes legislatively, are changes that will impact each and every one of us.

Throughout time, in all places, it is important to remember that the abuse and stripping away of rights of the most vulnerable is just step one. It eventually comes for everybody. So, if you don't care about the most vulnerable, as much as that fucking sucks, maybe you should care about yourself. We all have a stake in this fight because it's a fight for humanity. It is the fight for maintaining your humanity so that you are confronting what is really happening in this world and the role that you are choosing to play. You can't control the world. You can't control circumstances that are not yours to control, and a lot of what I'm talking about is outside of our individual control. But we do have agency, and we do have a responsibility for how we are going to engage and to do so with integrity.

That, my friends, brings us to the first transit that I need to talk to you about this week. On Sunday, April 13th, the North Node will be at 26 degrees of Pisces and 2 minutes, sitting right on top of Saturn. Now, this is a transit that does not happen frequently, and it's a really fucking important one. When the North Node, which is an evolutionary point—it's not a planet, so you're not going to have a personality-based experience of the nodes. The nodes in astrology are not going to affect your mood. They're not going to affect your kind of mundane life. That's not what the nodes are about.

The nodes are evolutionary in nature. They refer to our spiritual evolution. This particular transit of the North Node conjunct Saturn—which will be exact, I should say, at 9:30 p.m. Pacific Time on the 13th—is really big. It's really big for humanity, for all of us everywhere, and it's also really big for you, you as an individual, whether it specifically hits your chart or not.

This transit is deeply—when I say deeply, I mean in the depths of your soul kind of deeply; that's the North Node for you—consequential. When these two forces meet up, there is a sense of inevitability, of consequence. This transit represents a time of karma, and I don't really use the word "karma" a lot because it is a concept that comes from both cultural and spiritual lineages that are not mine. And also, I know that a lot of people use the word "karma" in the West very casually without any kind of really solid, centralized understanding of what it is. But it's kind of the best word that I can find to describe what this transit is about.

On a very fucking profound level, this transit brings up consequences. And these consequences are the reaping of what you have sown, or if we're looking at this in the context of collective conditions, it is our reaping of what we have sown. And when it comes to a North Node conjunction to Saturn, this is inherently deeply ethical. So, whether we're looking at it from the nodes' perspective of the ethics from a spiritual standpoint and an evolutionary standpoint—so when we're talking about the evolution of a soul, it is not about all the details, but it is about the big picture as a whole, how we choose to be, how we show up, how we allow our circumstances to impact and shape us. And I use the word "allow" because it's Saturn in the mix, and so this is about taking responsibility for how you choose to be and who you choose to be and when you choose to show up or pull back or whatever.

When the North Node and Saturn meet up, this is a time for profound foundation-laying, again, spiritually and existentially. Saturn speaks to the material world and our shared 3D reality more than any other planet. It speaks to society as a whole, our communities, like the rules that our communities are based on. Even if you are an anarchist and you're living within an anarchist community, there are rules and ethics that guide that community, that are inherent to how people agree it is good or bad, right or wrong, to engage. That's fucking Saturn.

Know that you don't need to always get it right. That's not essential for your spiritual growth. That's not even essential for the world to improve. But in the context of this North Node conjunction to Saturn, this is time for you to take stock of and own what you're trying, how you're trying, why you're trying. This is a time to consider your relationship to discipline, responsibility, and follow-through and whether or not it is infused and inspired with meaning, because it's in Pisces.

Your humanity is precious. How and when you center kindness, compassion, and whether or not you act in ways that reflect what you believe to be humane—your humanity—is really fucking important. And there are so many competing ideas and narratives and obligations and hopes that, a lot of times, a lot of people lose track of their humanity, don't even realize it.

When the North Node and Saturn meet in Pisces, it's time to take stock, to make sure that the foundations that you have inside of you, the foundations you are creating in your life and in the world, reflect your integrity. And if they don't, awareness is the first step to changing it. If you pair your awareness with guilt and shame, then your energy turns inward and becomes self-harm.

Accountability and humility—core Saturnian concepts—require that you own where you're at, all the messiness of the feelings and the thoughts and the consequences of it, and if you find that you've misstepped or done wrong or lost track or whatever it is, that you remain humble about it instead of self-punishing. Policing the self—it doesn't work. Owning your shit and making a living amends, living in a way that reflects your intention and desire to create repair for past deeds or for a lack of past deeds—that's the best path forward. That's embodying the absolute best possibilities of what the Saturn/North Node conjunction wants for us and from us.

This is really consequential. And we may see massive shifts in the world, not in any one specific country per se, in the world, because everyone is feeling the weight of this transit. For some people, it's going to be really salient; it's going to be really material. And for other people, it's just going to be a nagging feeling that they push away; it's going to be really subtle. We don't all have the same lived experience. We don't all have the same nature any more than we all have the same perspective or access and resources, etc. We don't all have to be the same around this.

Find what is true for you and center it. There is a great weightiness, heaviness, to this transit. And even though it is exact on this date, know that we have been feeling it for a long while, and we will continue to feel it for a long while. Sometimes, when transits are exact, shit really comes to the surface, and other times, not so much. Either way, the greater intention and attention that you bring to the concepts and themes of this transit, the better it is for not just you and your soul but for all that you touch and all that you care about. And if we all strive to embrace our humanity and center it in our evolution, then the world gets appreciably better. And we could use that. We could use the world being better, right?

Okay. Now, that brings us to the next exact transits of this week. On Wednesday, April 16th, at exactly 9:11 p.m. Pacific Time, Mercury will be at zero degrees of Aries and 38 minutes, and so will Neptune. So we have a conjunction between Mercury and Neptune. Now, before I get into the details of this transit, I want to name that this week, Mercury moves into Aries—so it moved into Aries on Tuesday, the 15th. Mars will move into Leo on Thursday, the 17th. And then, on Saturday, the 19th, the Sun moves into Taurus; we enter into Taurus Season.

When we have a week with three ingressions—and an ingress is simply when a planet moves into a new sign. When we have a week with three ingressions, what we have is a major shift in energy. Mercury and Mars are both moving into fire signs, and the Sun is moving into an earth sign. Things are likely to start moving quickly, very quickly. And I don't know how much the Sun in Taurus loves that. So that could be kind of a conflict, or we could think about it as things moving quickly but also having the benefit of a values-based, earthy sign like Taurus that has the capacity to please itself. Just worth noting, right?

As I said, Mercury is conjoined Neptune. This transit, to be the first Mercury transit after Mercury Retrograde is over, is kind of annoying because when Mercury sits on top of Neptune, it gives Mercury Retrograde vibes a little bit. Mercury is your mind. It's your thinking. It's how you process information. It's how you listen. It's what you say and how you say it. That can be text, email, DM, video chats, phone calls, talking to people, nonverbal communication—right? There's lots of ways that we communicate. So that's Mercury.

Now, Neptune is fog. It's confusion. It's anxiety. It's uncertainty. It's discombobulated. It's also high spirituality. It is humanity. Neptune is the ruling planet to Pisces. Neptune is the planet that governs the concept that we are all siblings; we are all connected to each other. When Mercury sits on top of Neptune, what tends to happen is that you get confused or tired or anxious or uncertain. Now, for some people, this is a very spiritual transit when your thinking can kind of become more focused on spiritual topics or on your humanity, which, given the North Node conjunction to Saturn in Pisces, is very well timed.

But the problem is this transit can make you quite permeable and quite gullible, which creates vulnerabilities. So don't jump to conclusions if you learn information or if you come across a post that seems unreal. If it seems unreal, it's probably unreal, like literally. This transit is good for releasing attachments to your ideas and narratives. It's good for being open to exploring ideas. It's not so good for jumping to conclusions, communicating things in a clear and linear way, and for paying attention to details.

You may feel a sense of greater connection, of greater possibility, and only may or may not be rooted in reality. So noticing the difference between fantasy and energy work, imagination and actual intimacy and connection, caring about and for people and acting in ways where other people actually feel that care—the space between these things can get a little sticky during this transit. So here's some simple advice to make the most of it.

The first is, if you have to sign a contract or do some sort of work that requires real focus and concentration, triple-check it. This is where it gives Mercury Retrograde vibes. You want to triple-check that work. If you have someone that you can ask to help you to better understand what you're looking at, then definitely do that. If you have a job or a lifestyle where you're constantly talking to other people and working with other people, know that people are going to be weird today—maybe not everyone—also, maybe everyone.

So people are going to be weird because this transit kicks up paranoia and anxiety and exhaustion. And some people get really defensive when they feel that way. Some people get really needy. Some people get really chaotic. Other people get overly people-pleasey. I mean, there's a lot of ways for a person to be. All to say expect people to be weird, and try not to take it personally.

Another thing is that this transit is fucking excellent for you getting to experience your boundaries—how porous your boundaries are, how embodied you are with your boundaries, your ability to identify and hold your boundaries, and other people's willingness and ability to uphold and respect your boundaries, even perceive your boundaries. This is a great transit for cultivating more awareness on that topic.

It's a terrible transit for messing with drugs—I'm talking about recreational or consciousness-raising drugs—because the transit makes you too porous. If you're interested in doing spiritual work, I would encourage you to just explore from your natural state if you can.

One more thing I want to speak to with this transit is how it can coincide with feeling exhausted. Now, that exhaustion can be because you're actually tired and you're feeling your exhaustion, so in that case, rest. It can also be an escapist impulse, and you have to know yourself. If that's a pattern for you, then that pattern is likely to be activated this week during this transit. And whether or not that is maybe like a "eh," a "meh" thing, versus a self-destructive thing or a harmful thing is worth investigating. It's worth coming to greater self-awareness around.

But you are likely to be exhausted or tired or just a little bit off. And if you have healthy boundaries with yourself and other people around that, it's not that big a deal. I mean, it's maybe a pain in the ass, but it's not a big deal. Also, this is a really powerful week in general, and this transit is—a meaningful point towards this is protecting the most vulnerable amongst us. This Mercury conjunction to Neptune is a powerful time for taking care of other people, and in particular people who might be medically vulnerable.

So that brings us to the last transit of this week, and it's another one that involves Neptune. So, as I said, Mercury ingresses this week. Mars ingresses this week. And the second they do, they both fuck with Neptune. So that's what's happening. Separate from the details of these transits, it reinforces this larger call to humanity. It reinforces this larger theme of acting in ways that reflect your spiritual convictions, mobilizing on what holds the greatest meaning to you.

Now, Mars trine to Neptune is exact at 3:53 p.m. Pacific Time with Mars at zero degrees and 44 minutes of Leo and Neptune at the same degrees of Aries. For those keeping track, at 12:56 p.m. Pacific Time, the Sun moves into Taurus. So 'tis Taurus Season. Happy birthday, Taurus baby.

Now, Mars trine to Neptune is a lovely transit. While it's not, per se, a transit that's going to give you a whole lot of energy—and that would have been nice because of the Mercury/Neptune transit—it does give you the right kind of energy. It does this because Mars is your ego, and Neptune is related to selflessness. And when these two planets are having a lovely conversation, like they do with a trine, which is a 120-degree aspect, what happens is you become more motivated to collaborate with other people, to show up with and for other people, and it doesn't feel like it's happening at your expense.

This transit can empower you to be more creative because you're not so focused on doing it right or doing it quickly. This transit can inspire you to connect, like truly connect, with your body, with other people, with something that you're passionate about. Mars trine to Neptune is good for actions that are inspired with meaning. Mars trine to Neptune is a transit that can help motivate you to fight for what matters, to mobilize on your spiritual ideals. This is a great time for showing up with and for others, for working with other people, and for basically any kind of humanitarian or spiritual aims—so pretty well timed in that regard, right? It works well with the Saturn/North Node conjunction.

This transit—it can deepen your feelings of compassion for yourself and others and motivate you to act in ways that are not centered on personal gain or personal advancement but instead on collective welfare, which is fucking lovely. If you're an artist, if you work in the spiritual realms, again, this transit is really great for both of those kinds of work, as it gives inspiration and a greater kind of adeptness and mobility.

If you are someone who has a hard time with slowing down and resting, this transit can be really supportive for being willing to do just that, to slow down, to rest and digest. Sometimes the most expedient action for you to take is no action, and this transit can help you to do that if that's what's called for. Certainly, between the Mercury conjunction to Neptune and the Mars trine to Neptune, you may be finding that you're exhausted, that you're tired. And if that's the case, take care of yourself. But again, strive to be mindful that it's not an escapist impulse, and if it is an escapist impulse, investigate it. Interrogate it. Check in because, this week, you are meant to act in ways that reflect your integrity and not your coping mechanisms, to the best of your ability.

So, as a quick recap, this week, Mercury moves into Aries, Mars moves into Leo, and the Sun moves into Taurus. On the 13th, the North Node and Saturn meet in Pisces. On the 16th, Mercury and Neptune meet in Aries. And then, on the 19th, Mars in Leo forms a trine to Neptune in Aries. And that, my friends, is your horoscope for this week.

If you want to learn more with me, come on over to my Patreon and become a member either at the paid or free levels. I drop a lot of content there frequently. And lately, what we've really been focusing on is both political astrology and energy work—you know, how to do it, questions that folks have about it, that kind of good stuff. If you have questions for me about astrology, Tarot, psychic stuff, mediumship, animal communication—any of the stuff that I do—you can join me there and explore the heaps and heaps of content that I have on all of those topics, and be a part of the community where we keep on growing and learning together. That's over at patreon.com/jessicalanyadoo.

I want to thank you so much for joining me this week and every week here at Ghost of a Podcast, and I will talk to you in just a couple of days. Buh-bye.