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.

As you know, India is going through a crisis around COVID-19, and they need our help. I have a list of orgs that you can support in show notes. And, in particular, I want to highlight mutualaidindia.com. They are organized by queer and disabled folks on the ground in India, and the Mutual Aid is constantly updated for accuracy. Priority is given to queer, trans, and disabled folks, and even small amounts of money can make a really big impact. If you practice yoga, teach yoga, or have ever profited from a spiritual or creative practice that comes out of India, this is your call to give back.

Hello and welcome back to Ghost of a Podcast. This week’s question comes from Seeking My Purpose. And she says, “Long time listener, long time lost. Your podcast is my therapy; I appreciate your words and wisdom on a weekly basis to calm me down and guide me.” That’s sweet; thank you. 

Okay, the question goes like this, “You touch on a lot of people’s Saturn Return’s and that specific journey. There have been one or two episodes that touch on a little older audience, but I am writing to represent us older cool cats and get some insight on what the stars say for us as we start to reach our primes in our meat suits. 

I’m turning 40 this year, and I believe you said that at this age we should be starting to see our path or purpose. I don’t have kids, a love life, own a car or a house, and don’t have a career that I would say I’ve worked my whole life towards, but I am very much thankful for where I have recently landed. I have a good family, but I would not say it’s my absolute foundation. As I approach 40, I realize that the friend group I had as chosen family keeps getting smaller and smaller. 

Maybe I’m looking at everything as half empty. I am a Libra and can look at both sides all day long, though I have always leaned more towards the emo and sad side. I have recently caught myself saying, ‘I’m just tired.’ I feel I have already worked so hard at a young age under my circumstances—having a single parent, putting myself through school, and battling my demons, one in particular being alcohol. I feel like I want a glimpse to the reward, if there is one. I don’t want to live a half full life. How do we know when we are learning our lessons and purpose and what does it feel like? P.S. I have a dog I love so, so much. Thanks for all you do.” 

And Purpose was born on September 25th, 1981, at 1:35 p.m. in San Francisco, California. So there’s so much to say about this question. But before I get into it, you know, it might seem like I choose younger people’s charts because that is my preference. It’s not. It’s that I don’t get very many questions from people who are 40 and older. I know you’re listening. I know you’re listening. So if you are 40 plus, and you have questions, send them to me at ghostofapodcast.com. Don’t be shy. I’m not going to say your name. We can keep it private. 

Anyways, that was a total aside. We’ve a lot to talk about here, and I’m going to unpack your question. And you’re right, I have touched on the Saturn Return journey, both for people who are going through their Saturn Return at around 30 and at around 60. And those are massive points of maturization, not just personally and internally, but they really have a lot to do with how we take our place in the world, right. It’s how others see us, how we kind of orient around the material, shared, fixed reality that is so Saturnian. 

Now, what you’re talking about going through is related to midlife crisis, and it happens, depending on the generation, anywhere from like very late thirties to early forties. And we’re going to unpack what’s going on for you in just a moment. But I want to just clarify, so within your question, you name that I had referenced starting to see our path or purpose at around 40. Kind of I did say that, and a little bit this is out of context. 

So in the context of talking about our Nodes, our North Node—which is not in your question; it’s not what we’re here to talk about—but in that context, we tend to see the embodiment of our nodal position, our North Node’s position, we see our embodiment of it starting at around 40 in a whole new, deeper way. That is definitely what you’re referring to. 

Now, another thing that you maybe referring to is that when I have done episodes about midlife crisis-oriented transits, so that could have been the Pluto square to Pluto, the Neptune square to Neptune, or the Uranus opposition, these are all associated with midlife crisis. What happens in these periods and differently in each of the transits—and we’ll talk about what you’re going through again in a moment—but what happens in each of these transits is we come to a place in ourselves where we recognize that we are not old, and we are also no longer young. 

And so, our orientation, our relationship to our own value and the value of life, it changes—it meaningfully changes. And these three transits are actually responsible for and descriptive of the nature of that change, what it means, and why we’re going through it. And so, this is a time where purpose becomes so much more important to us. 

Now, does that inherently mean that you become clear about your purpose? Hell, no, it doesn’t. If it meant that, then all people 40 plus would be totally in alignment with their purpose. And if we look around the world, we see clear evidence that that is not the case, right. 

It’s not that these transits bring you clarity about your path or your purpose. It’s not that you start embodying these things. It's that if you aren’t clear about your path and purpose, if you aren’t in alignment with your path and purpose, it starts to feel like a crisis. And that, my friend, is why we call it a midlife crisis, and what you are describing feels pretty textbook of a midlife crisis. 

We’re going to get into it, but before we do, I got one more thing to say. You said something really important in your question, and that is that you feel like you want a glimpse of the reward, if there is one. And you’re referring to the reward of having done so much hard work throughout the course of your adult life so far, and maybe you’re including your teen years and your youth in that as well. 

Here’s the thing, from my perspective as a triple Capricorn astrologer, yeah, there’s no reward. I don’t think there’s a reward. I mean, the only reward of being a human is eventually you’ll die. Is that a negative thing to say? I don’t know. I don’t actually think of it as positive or negative. 

But when we look at the world, when we look at the human condition, when we look at people, we see that nobody is guaranteed health and wealth and a unicorn and a lollipop that doesn’t make their teeth ache eventually. You know what I mean? Life is not an action and reward system. That’s really not how it works. Life is not symmetrical like that. 

So from a material standpoint, you can be top of your class, get all the best grades, you can show up to the job interview, be the technically best candidate for the job, and that doesn’t mean it isn’t going to go to someone else, right? I am not of the mind that good deeds get you to heaven and bad deeds get you to hell, at all. I am of the mind that the highest rewards we can seek for ourselves start within ourselves. 

So if your primary ambition is to make a certain amount of money or to be at the GRAMMYs one day or to discover a cure for something, if your ambition is service or inner peace or power or creativity or anything, anything, anything, the reason why you want those things is not just for the external accolades; it’s for the meaning and value that you attach to those things—it’s what you believe you will feel when you have those things. And you may or may not feel whatever it is you think you’re going to feel when you have those things, when you achieve those things. 

But ultimately, at the end of the day, our material world, our material safety, our material wellness, our material abundance, these things are vastly, hugely important. And also, what we’re really talking about is how we feel, how we take them in, how we orient around those things, how we feel in our own skin and in our own spirit. 

So here we go. Let me look at your chart specifically. And I’ll just repeat because I said it so long ago, you were born September 25th, 1981, in San Francisco, California at 1:35 p.m. My dear, yes, you are a Libra. But to say that you’re a Libra is such an understatement. You have a Sun/Saturn conjunction which is also conjunct to the Midheaven all in Libra. And you also have Jupiter conjunct your Saturn/Midheaven conjunction. You also have a Pluto/Mercury conjunction all in Libra. That, my friend, is a shit ton of Libra—so much Libra. So much Libra. And you also have a Sagittarius Rising with a Neptune conjunction. 

So let me break it down. When you refer to yourself as being a little bit on the sad side or being emo, yeah, for sure. I mean, having a Sun/Saturn conjunction will always, regardless of sign, will always incline you to being scarcity oriented, being a bit hard on yourself and having a really kind of self-protective relationship to vulnerability. And that self-protective relationship means that you can hide your vulnerability from others, which is a way of, unfortunately, further isolating yourself when you feel isolated, which compounds those feelings. 

So learning how to build self-appropriate and healthy relationships that have healthy boundaries is hugely important, vastly important in your birth chart. And you don’t need a million friends. You might just need three, but three good ones. This idea that everyone should have a squad or a team or whatever, it’s ridiculous. It’s Goddamn ridiculous. Hey, maybe that’s what you need. That’s what some people like, but that is not necessarily the key to happiness or success in life. We don’t need a certain number of intimate relationships in order to be well with ourselves. We need the right kinds of relationships. And in different periods of our life that might mean many people, or it might mean very few people. 

But for you, because you’re private, because you’re self-protective, because you’re very careful with other people, and you’re very intense, it’s hard for you to be vulnerable with others, and it’s hard for you to open up, especially because that Neptune conjunction to the Ascendant indicates, that you, my dear, have a really hard time with boundaries. 

It’s hard for you to know where you begin and where you end. And therefore, it can be hard for you to assert to others and with others what your needs and limits are. And by the time you do, it can sometimes come out really intense because Mercury conjunction to Pluto, unfortunately, can be a bit withholding. It can make it so you don’t really say your truth until you can't help but say it. And when you can't help but say it, it can come off as aggressive or defensive. 

So what is the point of me saying all this? I shall tell you. The point of me expressing all of this to you is to identify the things within yourself that are in need of greater TLC and self-acceptance.  Because if you give yourself permission to be who you are, then you can start to accept all the things that you have created for yourself. 

I’m not surprised you told me that you have a dog that you love because having that Neptune conjunction to the Ascendant predisposes you to loving animals—just loving animals and to receiving the love of animals very easily. Whereas allowing humans to take care of you and show up for you is a lot harder for you, in particular, because you have experienced conditions and conditions that didn’t work for you. 

And so, this brings us all to what you have going on right now and that, my dear, is a Neptune square to Neptune. Now, Neptune is not only squaring your natal Neptune; it’s also squaring your Ascendant. So Neptune is sitting in your third house, which is the house of communication. It’s also the house of friendships, and it’s forming a square to the Ascendant and itself. And when Neptune squares itself, first of all, you’re in your late thirties or your early forties, that’s first of all, and this transit is associated with many things that are, again, associated with le midlife crisis. 

This transit finds a person questioning everything that is ripe with meaning. So when we go through the Neptune square to Neptune, we start to question how much we have lived up to our ideals. Neptune is not per se concerned with goals. It’s concerned with ideals. And so, if you’ve had ideals about who you should be or what life should be or aspirations of what you want to be or what you want your life to look like—and, of course, we all have those—then the Neptune square to Neptune is the spiritual crisis that brings these concerns to such a state that we cannot put them in a corner. We can't hide them on a shelf. We have to deal with them now. 

This is often a very upsetting transit for people because what we experience is the spiritual pain, which is a very unique form of pain. It’s not emotional pain per se. It’s not psychological pain per se. It’s spiritual. It can trickle down into our psyche, our emotions, or even into our bodies, but it is a spiritual form of pain—that pain of not having a sense of purpose or belonging, not having a spiritual connection either to God or the Universe or whatever it is that works for you, but I think more tactily it’s about having a sense of spiritual connection to our lives as they are right now. 

Under this influence it becomes really hard to know what’s real and what’s not real about who you are, about the quality of your life, the value of your life, and your choices. And on top of that, because Neptune is associated with anxiety and because that 40 benchmark is really meaningful for most people, it can be associated with a worry of running out of time, then there is a way that a lot of people start to fall apart, or you feel like you’re falling apart. More specifically, Neptune is associated with disintegration—this feeling of like, oh, man, I can’t keep it together. 

And I will say that this transit, for you, is happening before your Uranus opposition. Now the Uranus opposition won't hit until 2024, so you got a minute on that one. And that transit is when major changes are often made, which is why people in their early and mid-forties often go through major spiritual but also material changes. That Neptune square to Neptune, it’s the time where we do the inner work, the spiritual work, so that when and if we make major changes in that Uranus opposition, they are netted in what will bring us peace and bring us closer to wholeness. 

So here’s the remediation, my dear. And I will pull back to say regardless—unless you are meaningfully past or like you’re 44, 45, or older—you’re all going to go through this. Everyone goes through these transits sooner or later. So because Neptune is square to your Neptune and your Ascendant, it’s like redoubling this issue for you; it’s bringing in major identity crises because the Ascendent is associated with your identity, right. It’s the energies you throw into a room, so it’s really hard to separate that from your intimate relationships because it is kind of a meaningful point within your intimate relationships. 

Okay. So what this transit is trying to get you to do is to cultivate self-acceptance. Now, I’m not saying that you have to like everything about your life or everything about yourself. I am saying that Neptune square to Neptune is a spiritual transit. And in order to mobilize spiritually we must start with acceptance. And that acceptance is in what where we are, and that can even be in how we got there. 

What is that expression? Forgiveness is letting go of hope of ever having a different past. Our past is our past. Our origin story is forever our origin story, and we are allowed to have whatever feelings we have around that. But fair or not fair, easy or hard, it is what it is, and there is a way in which, on a spiritual level, this transit is trying to get us to accept who we are and how we got here. Because the next step of this transit is empathy. 

Neptune requires empathy. The Neptune square to Neptune requires, and square to the Ascendant, requires that we have empathy for ourselves. This is a significant turning point in your life. There’s no way around it. And the upsets that you’re experiencing, spiritually speaking, and the kind of like cascade of unintended consequences that may emerge from that, that’s normal for better or worse. It’s normal. 

And as much as it might sound scary or upsetting, the truth of the matter is you are still young enough to make change—spiritually first, behaviorally second—if you want to, if you deem that to be necessary or appropriate. And this transit comes to remind you of that, to motivate you. 

And I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: the truth is we are not motivated by things being chill. We are not so smart. We reject the matrix when it’s too good. Haven’t you seen the movies? Anyways, this is the time to sit with the contradictions and confusions in your life. Neptune brings us fog. It brings us anxiety. It brings us uncertainty or murkiness. It's okay to feel that way. 

You mention that you’ve dealt with addiction in the past. Unfortunately, Neptune is one of the planets associated with addiction, so it’s certainly wise if you’re in some sort of program or have a sponsor or whatever, make sure you’re connected to people or things that help support you in having a healthy relationship to substances. 

But this is the time to be in what you don’t know. This is the time to cultivate acceptance for where you are, in particular, spiritually and to not over fixate on the external circumstances and situations. And that’s hard. It’s really, really hard to do, but it’s the work. And what this work is meant to bring you to is determining for yourself what has spiritual value, where you are most likely to achieve peace within yourself based on who you are and where you are and to strive towards that.

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I guess we’re going to talk about some astrology, eh? We’re going to look at the week of May 9th through the 15th of 2021. And there’s a couple things that I want to just kind of highlight before we get into the details of this week’s horoscope. 

The first one is Mars is now in the sign of Cancer, and it’s out of bounds. And that’s something that I talked about in episode 203 of the podcast, where I was joined by Tony Howard, and we learned about out of bounds planets and, in particular, Mars out of bounds. 

This is a divisive time. This is a scary time. We’re still in a pandemic. There’s a lot going on in the world. There are many regions of the world that are erupting in violence. And on the one hand, that’s always the fucking case. It doesn’t make it less upsetting and traumatic, and it doesn’t make it more okay. We are in a tumultuous time. 

It is important that within that you find your role to play. And that might shake down as looking at your relationship to anger or embodiment or entitlement, and, again, these are themes that I have talked about and unpacked in recent episodes of the podcast. I want to encourage you to really cultivate awareness of how anger and frustration and resentment and defensiveness run through your system—how you experience them, how you express them, how you repress them, how you project them. 

These are just great things to cultivate more and more awareness of because awareness is foundational to being able to make new choices, to make meaningful adjustments or subtle adjustments, if those things are necessary, right. So there is that to say, my loves. 

There is also to say, do, do, do, do, do, dooo, we’re at the start of Eclipse season. Really? you ask. Yes, I say. As of the 11th, we have a New Moon, which, of course, I’m going to talk all about—just give me a minute. But it kicks of Eclipse season. This is not an Eclipse, but we will be having the first Eclipse of 2021 on the 26th of May, you see. It’s soon. It’s a Lunar Eclipse in Sagittarius. So giddy up, as they say, and, of course, I’ll unpack and get into greater depth very soon about the forth coming Eclipse. 

But for now, what you need to know—because there’s no point in jumping ahead—for now what you need to know is that emotions are running high. The energies that Eclipses bring are just kind of—it’s kind of like being in a lightning storm. It’s like you don’t know exactly what’s going to hit next. There’s this like pregnant feeling in the air. There’s this intensity in the air, and it’s a lot. It’s a lot to be in, especially while we are going through the chronic and ongoing Saturn/Uranus square on the heels of all that Saturn/Pluto mishigas of 2020. 

And so, if you are feeling like your mental health is being tested, it’s probably because it is, and you’re for sure not alone. This is a trying and stressful time. And what that means is you and me and everyone we know is likely to fall back upon our kind of more base coping mechanisms, unless we bring a great deal of intention and presence to whatever it is we’re going through. 

There’s a lot going on. There’s a lot going on. And it’s really valuable to remember that these are not normal times. Things are not back to normal—whatever the fuck that means. And it’s okay if your life is in a state of flux. It’s actually appropriate to be looking at your reality and questioning it and reorienting with it. This is a time of change and instability. It is inherently an unstable time. 

Now, listen. You’re listening to me—maybe you personally are feeling super stable. That’s wonderful, but that’s not necessarily what’s happening in the world. It is wise to enjoy and love and embrace and celebrate your life when it’s doing well and also spread that abundance around if you can. Remember that your success and your wellness is interwoven with the collective. So as much as possible share when you have something to share and seek help in the right places when you have need. 

Okay. Now one more thing before I unpack the transits of the week, and that thing is called Astrology For Days, my glorious and beautiful web based, subscription app. It's an astrology student and astrology professional tool. It’s still in beta, so if you want 15% off to get in on beta, join me over on Patreon at patreon.com/Jessicalanyadoo. Hats off to all of my patrons because my patrons are giving me such great feedback that is allowing me to dial in the app and create features that I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t gotten such great feedback. 

I think there’s so much data out there about astrology—my podcast, there’s apps, there’s videos, there’s blogs, there’s memes, there’s a million places where you’re going to get astrology data, and it’s important to streamline, organize, coalesce that data and to hold it up against your lived experience so that you can leverage that glorious common sense of yours, my loves. Astrology For Days is that tool—it’s just that damn tool. So I invite you to join me over on Patreon if you want to hop in on beta. And if you want to wait, waiting is cool. You know I’m into patience. I mean, I don’t have any, but I’m into it. So there’s that. 

Okay. So as I said, we’re looking at May 9th through the 15th of 2021, and this week kicks off with a little thing called New Moon in Taurus. On the 11th, at 12 noon exactly, Pacific Time, we have a New Moon in Taurus. And New Moons in Taurus, I don’t know, I kind of fucking love a New Moon in Taurus. Who doesn’t? ’tis spring. It’s fertile. It’s a time for planting seeds. 

And the thing about Taurus is that it is an earth sign—yes, it’s a fixed sign, but it’s ruled by Venus. It’s a sensual, pleasure seeking, security-oriented zodiac sign. So I’m not necessarily saying that about Sun in Taurus people. I’m saying that about the energy of the sign itself. 

So when we have the Sun and Moon meeting in Taurus as we do—and this is at 21 degrees of Taurus that it’s happening—what we have is this really fertile moment where what brings you joy, what brings you pleasure, your ability to kind of resource the material world is in a state of fertility. Who doesn’t fucking delight in that, I ask of you? This is a transit that can really support you in clarifying what it is you want to call into being. Delightful, right? 

Here is the fucking rub. Because is there a rub? There’s always a rub. There’s a rub. Okay, here is the rub: this particular transit is, of course, not the only transit happening on this day. In this New Moon chart, we also have a Mars/Chiron square, and it is exact on the same day. 

So the Mars square to Chiron is a really tense, stressy [sp] square, and, of course, this is Mars out of bounds, so it’s already like an intense, unpredictable kind of a Mars vibe. But the Mars/Chiron square is a bit of a challenge to how we act and react and whether or not our actions come from a deeply defensive place. 

Because of this Mars/Chiron square, we run the risk of dealing with violent energies. Now, let me be clear—this may refer to physical violence and it may not. You may have a way that you talk to yourself that is really violent. You may have a memory that you don’t know how to hold it without being mean to yourself or really cutting yourself down. You may do this to someone else—someone else may do this to you. It may be in the collective. It’s not something for you to be frightened of. I want to be really clear; it’s something for you to look out for. Again, looking at your relationship to anger, to entitlement, to urgency, all of these things, is so valuable—I mean, seriously, like so valuable. 

If this is helpful for you to do, I want to kind of invite you to circle back to episode 177 about anger and forgiveness—it might just be useful this particular week with the energies that are activated. 

The combination of these transits is likely to bring up identity crisis, and Taurus is associated with what we value, right. It’s the value we do or don’t find in ourselves, in the way things look, in the way things are. It’s our sense of security and stability. This Mars square to Chiron—and I should name that also this day, Mars is forming an exact sextile to Uranus—it’s likely to trigger something in your ego, and whether the call comes from inside the house, aka it’s like a thought or a feeling, or it comes from outside the house, it’s a situation or a person provoking you, kind of doesn’t matter. Of course, behaviorally it matters, but spiritually it kind of doesn’t matter. 

What it is is an opportunity to really know yourself and embody that knowing. So the identity crisis may be an opportunity, or it may feel just like a fight or a struggle because fucking Mars. So here’s the key: strive to consider whether or not what you value, what you care about—not your ideals; that’s Neptune—what you value in the material world and your material life, whether or not your actions reflect your values. Check in with whether or not they line up. Because, at the end of the day, what Mars wants us to do is to embody, and what New Moons want us to do is imbibe. It’s to manifest. It’s to plant a damn seed. 

The struggle here, because there is a struggle, the struggle here is around whether or not these things are happening in a vacuum of each other, in which case you’re going to find yourself confused and not really liking what happens in your life. Or whether or not they are having some sort of conversation. 

What this New Moon can do is it can provoke an identity crisis, a crisis in consciousness, a crisis in opportunity that provokes the kind of growth that we need to come into greater embodiment, so that our lives are more fixed on what it is that we value. Or you can just find yourself fighting, if that’s important to you. 

You will find that what you do around this date, it really does reveal something meaningful of who and what you are, for better or worse. And we can judge. We know how to judge, do we not? But to what end? I say. How does that help you? How does judging you or others truly help? I am a big fan of discernment, of discerning what is and what isn’t, what works and what doesn’t. But judging? It’s just a way to keep yourself locked in place. It’s not super fucking helpful. 

And so, I want to just encourage you to not waste your energy. Once you’ve discerned what’s true and what’s not true, what’s real and what’s not real, don’t blame yourself or blame others. It’s a waste of your fucking energy. Instead, see what is happening in your body. How are you oriented in your body, and what actions do you want to take next? And I want to acknowledge that rest is an action. Repose is an action. Inaction is a valid choice—it is an action. Just make sure it’s coming from a place of self-awareness. It’s coming from a place of intention, then it’s satiates Mars. And we don’t want to treat this New Moon as having nothing to do with Mars. It’s super damn Marsy [sp]. Like it or hate it, it’s super Marsy. 

So just a couple more things I’ll say about this. Which are Mercury, which is hugging the North Node, is forming a trine to Saturn. It's not exact today, but it is happening. We have a Jupiter square to Venus—again, not exact today, and it’s out of sign. But the kind of indication of these things or the upshot of these things is that if you apply your mind, if you decide that you want to concentrate and evaluate, thanks to that Saturn/Mercury trine in an air sign, that energy is there for you to do that and to do that effectively, which is really cool. 

So you might need to sweat it out. Make sure you get into your body, use your body—ideally getting a sweat going is a great way of doing it—it’s not the only way of doing it, but it’s a very Marsy way of doing it—and then strive to, quote, figure things out or analyze things. 

And the Venus/Jupiter aspect is just another iteration of this theme of really questioning what it is that you value. But it does—because it’s a square, out of sign or not—but it does indicate that there’s a risk that you will center and prioritize what brings you pleasure and ease over what actually reflects your values. So, again, watch out for that. Just pay a little attention—bring a little self-awareness to the mix. I was going to say it never hurt anyone, but sure it did. Sure it did—self-awareness, it’s a lot of things. 

Okay. And, of course, as I just mentioned a bit earlier, because this New Moon is the first lunation of the month but the second one is an Eclipse, we’re absolutely going to start feeling Eclipsey [sp] vibes. So if things are very extra in the heart, in your personal life, in the vibes of the world, yeah, don’t be surprised. Be like I knew that because I’m an astrology nerd, and astrology nerds know so many things, including why the energy is all over the fucking place. 

Okay, so that brings us to the 12th. And on the 12th, we have an exact Sun sextile to Neptune and an exact Mercury trine to Saturn. So Mercury trine to Saturn, as I was saying just a moment ago, is very good for concentration. It’s very good for figuring things out, making sense of things. So if you need to study or organize or delineate or determine things, Mercury trine Saturn—delightful. It’s a really helpful transit. 

Now, on a more social tip, Mercury trine to Saturn is actually a really great time to reach out to old friends or to kind of fortify or feed your older friendships. This doesn’t have to be a big deal. You know, if your life is really busy, you can just text someone a heart emoji, and they will know that you have a positive and caring feeling about them. You don’t have to give more than you can give, but giving has this really beautiful blowback, especially when you’re giving to people who know how to receive and know how to give back. So, I don’t know, foster a little extra attention to the people that have been in your life for a long time and you rely on and you care for. 

The Sun sextile to Neptune is going to make that easier to want to do because Sun sextile to Neptune is a transit that fosters empathy and care and humanitarian concerns. It can also just have you kind of staring off into space and listening to music and feeling transported by it. If you can get your body into nature, amazing—so life affirming, and if you can't, watch an art film, listen to music, draw, paint, do whatever the fuck it is that entices your imagination. 

Sun sextile to Neptune could just as easily be wasting a million hours on a video game or scrolling through social media mindlessly and just kind of like losing time. It’s a bit dissociative. So with a little bit of effort and a little bit of direction, you can get more value out of it than that. But you know what? Do whatever it is that works for you. And if you waste a little energy, waste a little time, I guess it’s not the worst thing that ever happened. But if you need a break, if you need a little inspiration, this is a great day to center and prioritize it by curating with intention what it is that you care about. 

And fun fact: on this date, on the 12th, I’m going to be doing an Instagram Live at 10 a.m., Pacific, 7 p.m., Italian time—which I don’t know what the time zone is, so forgive me. I’m going to be doing an Instagram Live over at Vogue Italia. So if you want to join me there, it’s going to be fun. It's going to be astrological, and it’s going to be shmancy [sp]. So May 12th, 10 a.m., Pacific, join me on Instagram at Vogue Italia, and we will do a little Instagram Live. 

Okay, that brings me to the final transit that I’m going to name of the week which is not exactly even a transit. It’s the Retroshade. So Mercury goes Retrograde on the 29th of May, and it goes Retrograde in Gemini, and it’s a pretty quick one, so don’t freak out. Don’t freak out. It’s less than a month, okay. But there’s the shadow period before Mercury goes Retrograde and the shadow period after Mercury goes Retrograde. And I think the term Retroshade was coined by Lisa Stardust, but I could be wrong about that, but I’m pretty sure it was. 

Anyways, the Retroshade begins on the 14th of May, and that means let the wonkiness begin. We might start to have miscommunications, little misunderstandings, technical difficulties—mic check, mic check—you know, that kind of stuff. You’re an old pro with Mercury Retrograde. We go through them all the damn time—all the damn time. 

So this Mercury Retroshade period is nothing to freak out about. I got to say, every time Mercury goes Retrograde—which, again, it is not until May 29th—every time Mercury goes Retrograde people freak out—they’re like, “Oh my God. I can't believe this is happening, and it’s going to hit my chart, and it’s going to be all these things.” 

And I got to say it’s absolutely not necessary to freak out. It is not a tragedy. It can be annoying. It can be inconvenient. It is not going to do anything to harm you. It only brings up things of your past. So outside of like technical difficulties and misunderstandings, which is par for the course if you’re a human person living a human life, what it does is it if it hits something in your birth chart is it simply requires that you re-visit it. 

I always talk about the rule of re’s. I’m going to talk about it again when Mercury actually goes Retrograde and I unpack this further, but it has us reviewing, reflecting, re-assessing. We are revisiting things during a Retrograde. There is nothing that’s going to harm you in a Mercury Retrograde. And that doesn’t mean you won't be annoyed or put out or inconvenienced or uncomfortable—you maybe all of those things, plus, plus, plus, but it’s not a tragedy. It’s not a curse upon your home. It is none of these things. So there are many things in life and in astrology that are very upsetting and that I want to encourage you to be terrified of. This is not on the list—it’s just not on the list. Okay. 

So that is your horoscope for the week of May 9th through the 15th of 2021. I’m going to repeat the transits. At 12 noon exactly, Pacific Time, on May 11th, we have a beautiful New Moon in Taurus. On that same day, Mars is forming a sextile to Uranus and an exact square to Chiron. This is the start of Eclipse season, which means emotions are running high. On the 12th, we have two transits: a Mercury trine to Saturn and a Sun sextile to Neptune. And then, finally, on the 14th of May, Retroshade begins. 

As always, if you get value from this podcast, please subscribe to it wherever you listen to it and write a kind review. I appreciate it. I like it. Thank you so much. Also, pick up my book, Astrology For Real Relationships, if you’re in the market for understanding your relationships and yourself. And, you know, like I said early in the episode, send me questions over at ghostofapodcast.com, follow me on social, and generally do your best even when you’re feeling your worst. Talk to you next week. Bye.