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 question, I think, is in many ways very universal, and it comes from a charming Aussie, who calls themselves Flesh Suit. Okay, it goes like this, “I’m wondering whether you could unpack the relationship between astrology and fat phobia. I am a transmasculine, non-binary person and recently have been really confronted by the reality of my internalized fear and hatred of gaining weight. Since 2020, I’ve gained a couple of kilograms, and I am just sickeningly fixated on this fact. I’m struggling to unpack this through mainstream cis body positivity, especially because the curves which accentuate my AFAB body cause so much dysphoria. I am looking for alternative ways to seek more genuine self-acceptance, particularly about weight fluctuation. What are your thoughts? Love always, Flesh Suit.”

And they were born July 28th, 1996, at 1:25 p.m. in Armadale, Australia. G’day mate. There’s so much to talk about here. Because we live in a fat phobic world, a fat phobic society, the topic of fat phobia and body image is very universal—it’s very common. But that said, the trans experience and the non-binary experience is not. And I want to acknowledge that I myself am a cis person. I am a high femme queer lady, and I’m not trans, and that’s not my experience. And so, I just want to kind of like name and acknowledge that before I unpack and get into the things. 

I really appreciate and respect that you’re able to name that there’s two major issues happening here. You’re dealing with internalized fat phobia, but also issues that are really specific to your experience as a non-binary, transmasculine person. These things, of course, intersect each other, but they’re also different—they’re separate from each other. So we’re going to talk about all the pieces. 

Let me start with your birth chart. In your birth chart, you’ve got the Moon in Capricorn in your first house. When we have the Moon in the first house, generally speaking, what this means is our bodies are a little soft. Yeah, that’s right, a little soft. That’s because the Moon itself is soft. The Moon has a tendency to give us a bit of a round belly or a softer belly and a softer body type. 

Now, Capricorn is actually the sign that would most likely kind of harden your edges, physically speaking, because when we look at the first house in the birth chart and certainly planets in the first house, those are the things that are on the surface, things that people can see, so it’s how you look, right. 

Having Moon in Capricorn will a little bit like harden those soft edges. You also have a Saturn square to your natal Moon which can do that as well. Saturn square to the Moon can also really, again, soften a person up because it gives you an intense sweet tooth. 

First and foremost, your body type is likely to be pretty soft. So having curves, that’s likely to be a thing that you have, first of all, and that as you age you have even more. To me, when I look at your birth chart, that’s just your body type, and it’s not the only thing that shows up in your birth chart, but it is an important one. And it is one that I have talked to a lot of people about over the course of many years because when people have Moon in the first house, not only is it that physical thing of your body being a bit curvy, but it’s vulnerable. The Moon in astrology governs our feelings and our vulnerability. And to have the Moon in the first house and in any point of the first house means that those vulnerabilities, that tenderness is on the surface, so other people can see it. And whether or not other people clock it that way, whether or not other people receive it that way, we receive it that way; we clock it that way. 

When we throw on top of it the fact that Saturn is square to your Moon, what that tends to mean for people when they have either Saturn square to the Moon or Saturn opposite the Moon is that any kind of jiggling of the meat or the flesh suit can feel really out of control, and it can feel really bad. And this is because Saturn brings about hyper-vigilance. Saturn indicates that we want to feel in control of what our body does in front of other people especially, and what it doesn’t do. And this is a control issue. When we talk about how your body moves and how it feels and how it looks to you, part of what we’re talking about is how in control you feel, right. 

Now, part of why this question is so universal right now is because so many of us through the pandemic have eaten really differently; we’ve been going through an inordinate amount of stress and moved very differently through our daily lives and how we interact with other people. So if movement’s different and food is different and stress, which relates to our metabolism, is different, then tons of us have had weight fluctuations. Most of us have gained weight—that fluctuation has been to gain weight. And so, a lot of people are really dealing with that. You are not alone. 

And it sounds like you know that objectively a few kilograms is not a lot of weight. And to feel feelings about gaining a couple of kilograms is whatever it is, right. It’s not the end of the world; it’s not the beginning of the world—it’s just what it is. But to be sickeningly fixated, this is where we start to understand that what you’re dealing with is what you’ve named—fat phobia. It’s placing an inordinate amount of value on a couple of kilograms. And that value being a very negative thing of course. 

Like what does it mean to have gained weight? What does it mean to be fat? Now, it doesn’t sound like you’re saying that you are actually fat, but what does it mean to be fat? Is that a bad thing? It’s really important in such a fat phobic world that we really are willing to be present with the assumptions, judgements, and beliefs that we hold around fatness, in particular, to be really honest about what we believe around these things. And I say believe because listen, we’re all feminists here, right? Mainly, mostly, all of us, right? We all know that fat phobia is bullshit. We all know that trying to control or contain people’s bodies so that they fit into a mold is bullshit, right? But that’s all blah, blah, blah. How you actually feel in your skin when you’ve put on those extra lb.’s or kilograms, that’s a different thing.

Our cognitive knowledge, our understanding of a thing is not the same as our feelings about ourselves. And the way we feel about ourselves, the way we feel in our skin, the emotions of it, that’s the Moon. And so, it’s really important that when dealing with our relationship to our bodies, our feelings about our bodies, that we check in with the Moon. 

And in your birth chart, my dear, you have got this Moon/Jupiter conjunction, and it is opposite to the planet Mars and square to the planet Saturn, so you’re really fucking hard on yourself. And it doesn’t look like that is exclusive to your trans experience. It is inclusive of your trans experience, but it is not exclusive to it. You have a tendency to be really hard on yourself and to be—you use the word fixated; I would astrologically choose the word hypervigilant. There’s like a meticulous hypervigilance that Saturn in your chart indicates, and it gets fixated on not just your body but what you feel others feel about your body. 

And so, it’s really important that I acknowledge that what is coming up for you is absolutely related to internalized fat phobic messaging, and it sounds like you’re really aware of that. Where we get into what is more unique to your experience is that some of what you’re dealing with, this feeling of gaining even a kilogram accentuates curves, and having your curves accentuated, that triggers dysphoria, and that dysphoria is around gender. 

We have all bought into this idea—we’ve all been sold this idea maybe more accurately—that men are hard, and women are soft. And, I mean, objectively, that is not a true thing. If it was, then there wouldn’t be such a big industry of trying to sell men on having hard bodies. But where this kind of gets really triggery for you is the ways in which gaining weight is related to internalized transphobia. 

Now, you’ve identified yourself as transmasculine and non-binary—that doesn’t suggest to me that you’re trying to move through the world and be perceived as a cis male. And there are many reasons why a trans person may want to move through the world and kind of like pass through the world and be clocked as cis—you know, some of them related to safety, some of them related to preference and identity, and it is all good. 

However, being able to identify the ways in which your body has softness to it and that softness is a part of your truth—it might be even that your curves feel feminine to you, which you may feel that curves are inherently feminine—I don’t know. I don’t personally have a fixed idea about that one. But being able to identify that the feminine parts of you are hard for you to accept and embrace, that has to do with internalized misogyny. 

And I think that all genders of all people have to deal with misogyny because any time we have—any of us, of any gender have something about us that feels feminine, that we have deemed as bad, that is a problem with internalized misogyny. 

So being able to really unpack these three separate pieces and to start being really present and mindful around what’s activated at what time and how you want to locate yourself in those things. Because your feelings are your feelings are your feelings, and if you try to change the way you feel, it’s not going to work—that doesn’t really work. What we first must do is accept how we feel, to be able to identify and be present with how we feel, and from there we can start to make choices around whether or not we need to make adjustments around our attitudes so that our feelings can kind of take a new shape. 

So if you think about the Moon in astrology, it is related to the zodiac sign of Cancer, a water sign. Water, it adopts the shape of whatever container it’s placed in. And so, if you kind of hold that for moment, what you can see is that our attitudes create a container for our feelings, and our feelings will adapt and adjust. The key is to start with acceptance, so that we’re bringing the Moon, we’re bringing our feelings into the conversation. And from that state of acceptance, then we move to a shifting of ideas and attitudes. And finally, after that, with time and repetition, what we can achieve is our feelings taking a new shape. 

And that said, we live in a transphobic world. We live in a misogynistic and fat phobic world, and so the ambition is not to feel super easy and chill and wonderful all the damn time. I mean, maybe that’s your ambition—that’s never my ambition, but I’m a Capricorn. The ambition is to be able to be like, oh, here are these feelings coming up, and I’m going to deal with these feelings, instead of fixating and perpetrating self-harm and in consciously reiterating messages that you objectively know that you don’t agree with. 

Now, there’s something else worth mentioning here, which is that you are currently going through a transit called Neptune square to Venus. Now, the transit Neptune square to Venus is a once in a lifetime event, and it doesn’t happen to everybody, and it just began recently. It just started in like mid to late March of 2021, and you’ll be going through it until spring of 2023, so it’s kind of a long period. 

So Venus is one of the two planets that are traditionally associated with gender. We have Venus and Mars as those two planets. And Venus is the woman symbol, and so what is likely to be happening for you in this period of your life is you are likely to be confronted by your feelings about your gender. And this is kind of a spiritual struggle, but it can also simply feel like an anxiety struggle with the feminine aspects of your nature. 

And I want to be really clear. I want to be really, really clear. Every gender has feminine aspects to it. I don’t mean female aspects to your gender; I mean feminine aspects to your gender. And you may or may not identify with femaleness—that’s not relevant to what I’m trying to clarify here. What I am trying to say is that the feminine parts of ourselves are beautiful parts, and they deserve to be acknowledged, embraced, and integrated. 

And what Neptune, sitting in your fourth house, squaring your Venus in the seventh house, is likely to be doing is having you question yourself. And this may be a period in which you make meaningful and major strides around your own relationship to your gender identity. Neptune is a planet that governs non-binaryness. It is the least binary, least linear of all the planets in the zodiac, and so this may be a time where you really are called to embody your and alsos around your gender, around your body, and that will require really practicing being with yourself and being with the complexities of your identities. Because it’s true that for a trans or non-binary person, the mainstream, cis body positivity kind of world, it’s not going to address certain things that are unique to your lived experience. 

And for people who are assigned female at birth or AFAB people, most of us were nurtured, if not all of us, were nurtured on it is our responsibility to shape our bodies to be pleasing to others, and we were all nurtured with this idea that our body exists for other people’s consumption and pleasure. That is unfortunately a thing that most people who are assigned female at birth were raised with—either very consciously or unconsciously. And so, that doesn’t just get magically unlearned when you transition or when you embrace your gender identity, whatever that gender identity is. And so, your issues, your struggles, and your triumphs are going to be different than for cis people, and that is a fucking beautiful thing, slash, also, sometimes very hard. 

To kind of bring it back to your kind of central question, which is what are alternative ways to seek more genuine self-acceptance around weight fluctuation? I just want to reiterate that there is no simple answer. There’s no easy answer because most all of us do struggle with these feelings and thoughts at least sometimes in our lives. 

Being able to identify when you’re dealing with internalized fat phobia, when you’re dealing with internalized transphobia, and when you’re dealing with internalized misogyny is really valuable because then you can treat these things in different ways, and it is a practice. 

Sometimes what the practice is is simply when you find yourself mentally fixated on self-harming thoughts, thoughts that come out of these kind of phobic ideologies that are shaping your identity and your feelings about your body and yourself, to just do a woo woo version of plugging up your ears and saying, la la la la la. In other words, creating some sort of a mantra or some sort of a word or statement that is neutral or positive that you repeat over and over and over again in that same fixated way until the wave of fixation and negative thoughts passes. 

Sometimes we can't reason with ourselves. Sometimes we can't decide we’re going to feel a certain kind of way—that’s okay; that’s called being a human, but what you can attempt to do is not invest in the negative feelings and thoughts that you know are causing you harm. 

Now, there’s one last piece of advice I want to give you around this, which is if you’re on social media, if you spend any time on—I don’t know if you’ve heard of it—the internet, then make sure you are following people with all kinds of bodies. Make sure that you’re following trans and non-binary people who are all manner of body types and not just skinny people. Make sure you’re following AFAB people and transmasculine people who have curves, who are hot, who are cute, who are not—all of it. All of it. 

What we visually consume shapes our feelings about ourselves and the world around us. And so, it’s really kind of incumbent upon us to diversify what we expose ourselves to. And in this very internety moment in the world, we actually can curate what we consume, what we see, more than in other times because you can decide what you’re scrolling through. You do not need to follow exclusively one body type of people. It’s really important that you choose not to. So that is another thing that you can do that will not instantly make a difference, but over the course of time, absolutely, I can say with confidence, it will make a difference in how you feel about your own body and other people’s bodies. 

Now, my love, I hope this was helpful in supporting you in embracing your meat suit or your flesh suit, as you will. Your body is the vehicle that you’ve got. This is your carriage for this lifetime, and the more you can do to embrace it, as it is, the better poised you’ll be to be able to thrive in this life.

This Juneteenth, Bay Area sculptor, Dana King, will install 350 ancestral figures representing the first Africans stolen from their homeland and sold into chattel slavery. They will encircle the vacant plinth of the salve holder, Francis Scott Key, which was partially toppled by protesters last Juneteenth in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Come commune with the ancestors and bring your children to be a part of the reckoning of a true telling of America’s history this Juneteenth in Golden Gate Park. Visit monumentalreckoning.org to learn more about the project and to donate. And follow monumental_reckoning on Instagram. 

The Trans Asylum Seeker Support Network is a revolutionary border abolitionist mutual aid and direct-action collective that works in solidarity with transgender asylum seekers fleeing transphobic state, gang, cartel, colonial, and imperial violence as well as climate change. They organize alongside their compañeres and support them in building a solid material, communal, and liberatory infrastructure to their lives. They’re building non-hierarchical, decentralized community based and international support networks that organize independently from and provide an alternative to the state. Please consider becoming a monthly donor so that they may continue paying rent, legal fees, remittances, medical fees, gender affirmation surgery fees, travel fees, and more. You can give through this link at givebutter.com/tassn. Link in show notes.

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My loves, my loves, let’s get astrological. This week, per usual, there’s a lot to talk about and unpack. Before I get into any kind of specific details about the horoscope, I want to remind you that it is a Mercury Retrograde. I unpacked the chart of the Mercury Retrograde in episode 207, last week’s episode. If you missed it, you may want to check that out. 

This Mercury Retrograde there’s a lot to say about it, which I’ll get to a little bit more in a minute, but we just had an Eclipse and emotions are still churning and running really high. You may have had a super chill Eclipse. You may have had events or emotions emerge that you’re really clear about, and you’re like, well, this makes sense—this is a thing. And you might also just be unclear what exactly happened or where exactly you land in response to whatever’s come up for you or come up around you, and that’s okay. 

We’re not meant, when it comes to Lunar things, Moon things, to have our first response and our first level of understanding be cognitive. When we talk about cognition, we’re talking about Mercury, which, of course, is Retrograde. When we talk about feelings and digestion and presence and reflection, we’re talking about the Moon. And so, I want to invite you this week and in the coming weeks and months to continue to make space, to check in with yourself, to check in with your Spirit, and to check in with your heart. 

Truly, I do believe that the bridge between our heads and our Spirit is our emotion. Cultivating the ability, the willingness, the capacity to stay present with emotions—not only the positive ones, not only the terrible ones, all the emotions—that is a skill really worth cultivating. As you grow and mature, that changes—what that looks like for you changes, how that lands inside of you changes, and how it impacts your life meaningfully changes over the course of time. And so, when we go through these big Lunar events, like the Eclipse, it is truly inevitable that we’re going to feel a little all over the place. Make room for that—that’s just part of being a person in a time. Okay. 

So this week we are going to look at May 30th through June 5th of 2021. The first transit that I’m going to touch on this week happens on the 30th, and it is an exact trine from Mars to Neptune. Now, this is really interesting to me because Mars and Neptune are the two most different planets from each other in the le zodiac. Yes, I said that in French. Yes, I mean it. Maybe you don’t agree. It’s okay, we can disagree. 

Mars is the ego, and Neptune is the higher self. It’s the sense of us all being one and interconnected. Whereas Mars is my way, my terms, my things, don’t touch them. That’s Mars for you. I mean, that’s not the only things that are true of those two planets, but they’re very different in their primary drives. 

When they form a benefic aspect—which is what sextiles and trines are called by astrology nerds—when it forms a benefic aspect, we have the potential with opportunity to have our egos more infused with Spirit and idealism and empathy. Isn’t that fucking gorgeous? I think it is. I think it’s really exciting. So that’s one thing that can happen. 

Now, another thing that can happen is it can bolster us to have healthier boundaries, to take spiritual risks, and to essentially have courage in the face of anxieties. There’s kind of no downside of this transit. Mars trine to Neptune is fortifying, but not of your material concerns. It’s fortifying of what really matters. 

So if you’ve been dealing with body issues, if you’ve been dealing with a sense of just malaise and ennui, this is a great time to assertively connect with what actually matters to you and to what matters to you spiritually. It’s a beautiful thing. If you do any kind of tithing work, any kind of service work where you try to actively show up for others, this is a good time to commit or recommit to those actions. 

And I think, as I’ve talked about on the podcast before, that it’s really healthy and wise to kind of treat service in waves, so that you can sustain service over the course of your life. Because if we go too hard, too quick, then we tend to burn out. So if you’ve been kind of taking a seat and licking some wounds, this is a good time to test the waters of putting yourself out there and performing service that reflects your true spiritual ideals. And that comes from something special within you, you know. 

Neptune and Mars coming together—chocolate and peanut butter? Yes. Yes, I think it’s a lot like that. I don’t know, maybe it’s nothing like that. Maybe it’s more like peanut butter and pickles—you wouldn’t think it’s good, but it is, according to me. 

Now, on the 2nd, we have a little ingress. Venus moves into Cancer. A planet moving into a zodiac sign, so changing signs, deep astrology nerds call it an ingress—that’s the technical term. So Venus is ingressing into the sign of Cancer. It’s a tender moment. This transit can really incline us to feeling a little bit more aware of our needs for inter-personal connection. If you’ve been feeling lonely, this is not going to do you any favors. 

This transit, really, it inclines us to want to be intimately connected, and not necessarily sexually connected, but intimately connected—feeling held and cared for and seen. And it may also find you wanting to be doing that for others, having that back and forth. 

You may notice this transit—it might—you know, depending on how it hits your chart, you may love it; you may hate it, but regardless of your value judgement or your ideas about Venus transiting through the sign of Cancer, this is a good transit to pay attention to so that you can learn based on your lived experience how you feel about the transit. It’s just a great way to learn astrology—to pay attention and to learn. Okay, that’s all I’m going to fucking say about it. 

That brings us to the 3rd, where we talk about Venus a little bit more. We’ve got two trines that are exact on June 3rd. Venus is forming a trine to Jupiter, and the Sun is forming a trine to Saturn. Beautiful transits. Are they being impacted by two much less chill and easy transits? Yes. Yes, they are, but I will speak on those in just a moment. 

Venus trine to Jupiter is great for reaching out to people, for connecting with people, for flirting and hooking up and shopping and cutifying things. Venus trine to Jupiter can be a time where you just feel inspired to travel and to explore different ways of connecting with people. It’s a really positive transit. There’s not anything negative I’m going to say about it. It’s great for socializing in general. 

And because on the same day, the Sun is forming an exact trine to Saturn, it puts us in a position, see, and that position is to act in ways that align with what we can sustain. That’s cool. So this is a great day, on and around this day, to be really intentional about how you interpersonally connect with others. Whether it’s a colleague or a lover or a family member, they all have the potential to be some form of a love relationship. 

How we show up, how we care for people, take care of people, receive care from others, take in care from others, how we manage feeling like we’re not liked or feeling like we don’t exactly fit in, these things all reflect on us. It’s you. This is the part that’s you. And the cool part about these two trines is that they represent a period in which you can kind of become a little bit more self-aware of the role you’re playing and make adjustments that are needed, that are necessary and make adjustments that you can actually sustain. So it’s really cool. It’s a great set of transits. 

And what you might find if relationships aren’t the main focus of your life or this transit in general for you is that you’re able to organize your closet. If you’re an artist, you may find that you’re finally able to kind of like organize your plan for what you want to do, like create a system for your, I don’t know, your drawing table or whatever. You get the point, right? It’s bringing some measure of organization—parenthesis Saturn—to things that you are engaging in that reflect your creativity and your identity—creativity being Venus and identity being the Sun. 

And when we look at the smoosh of these two transits, honestly, you may or may not feel this in in a major way—it may not be that dramatic. However, if you leverage with intention this energy, what you will find is that this is a really good time to lay foundations, to think in terms of planting seeds. Because things are going to be easier during a trine time than another time, right. 

Squares and oppositions, those difficult aspects and transits, they’re very motivating, but they’re not easy. Trines, those are easy. They’re not very motivating, but they’re easy, and so what you want to do is your damn fucking best—that’s it. Nothing more, nothing less. I mean, I don’t know, you can do less. It’s cool. It’s cool. You can do more too. But the point is is that if you do something positive, creative, generative, soothing, whatever it is, if you do something, it will have a lasting impact on your life, and that’s really cool. 

It’s especially cool if you choose to focus on actions and attitudes that actually reflect who you want to be in the world and how you want to live. And so much of the time, so many of us are not doing that. And it’s really never too late—like it’s literally never too late. So I invite you to dance with your own will, to act in ways that reflect what you truly value. 

And that brings us to the mishigas of June 5th. So on June 5th, we’ve got two exact transits. Is one easier than the other? No, it’s not. Both of these transits are—again, they’re exact on the 5th, but they’ll both be very active through June 8th. And honestly, the Mercury transit you’re going to feel for the better part of this Mercury Retrograde period, which is over on June 22nd. 

So on the 5th of June, Mercury Retrograde forms an exact square to Neptune, and Mars forms an exact opposition to Pluto. Now, we talked about both of these transits in the context of the Eclipse chart last week, so some of what I’m going to say is going to feel familiar to you if you were paying close attentions. 

Mercury Retrograde square to Neptune—this transit is very confusing. It’s—I mean, it’s fuzzy and foggy and overwhelmed. The mistakes that you’re likely to make on and around this date, they’re not great mistakes. They’re not the worst, but getting the time wrong, getting the day wrong, really only listening to half of what the other person’s said and responding to the half that wasn’t the important part and having an awkward experience, that kind of classic Mercury Retrograde shit. 

Neptune is not a closer. Neptune is all about potential and what ifs and what could bes, for better and for worse. When these two planets form a square to each other, a ninety-degree angle, it’s challenging. The most common experience that people have of this transit is anxiety—just straight up anxiety. 

The reason why we experience anxiety is because we don’t know. We don’t know. We are focused on what we don’t know. We just don’t know. And the thoughts that tend to ensue is this sense of being out of control and scrambling in response to being out of control, which only makes everything worse, right. So I’m not giving you a psychological breakdown of anxiety, just FYI, if that wasn’t obvious. I’m just speaking about it from my astrological take on this specific transit, at this time. 

So Mercury square to Neptune may coincide with you really needing to say hey, I was planning on doing something, and I’m not going to do it, or I don’t understand, and I need to go back to the drawing board and consider it before I make a comment. There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with knowing yourself well enough to know what you can and cannot do in a healthy and aligned way. 

Here’s the trick. Isn’t there always a trick, though? Because Mars is opposite to Pluto, this is an explosive, combative, ego-centric transit. Because that is happening at the exact same time, everyone’s going to feel defensive and angry. And I want to remind you to not fight your allies; fight your enemy. 

There’s this thing going around TikTok where this man quoted another man. I’m going to butcher this but watch me go. He talked about how some person put red ants and black ants in a jar, and then shook up the jar. At first, the ants were fine; they were all in a jar, whatever. They were doing their thing; they were fucking ants. And then some person shook up the jar. The ants started attacking each other and fighting each other. And the upshot of what this person was saying was they shouldn’t have been fighting each other; they should have been fighting the person who shock the fucking jar. Now the guy didn’t say it with at much cussing as I did, but you get the upshot here. Don’t get so caught up in the little things that you forget what’s actually happening on a big picture level. 

Mars opposition to Pluto is likely to coincide with conflict, and that conflict maybe on a social, political, or global scale war or fighting. And that fighting may be gun violence, or it might be fighting on the street, and it might be more systemic conflicts between powers and governments and their people. Mars opposition to Pluto is likely to kick up systemic issues. And what we are likely to see on and around this date is not going to go away, and it’s not going to come out of nowhere. 

On an individual level, it’s important for me to acknowledge that how we experience anger and fear and defensiveness, how we experience our own reactions to injustice or terror or cruelty—those things are really difficult to experience and to process and to speak on. They are for most all of us. It is really hard for us to acknowledge when we are not capable of coping with those things and to just let ourselves be in that lack of ability. And because of the Mercury Retrograde square to Neptune, it is very likely that you or someone close to you or someone near you, that you or many, many other people are not going to feel capable of processing certain feelings or coping with certain situations. That’s okay. It’s not awesome, but it’s okay. 

The key is to not follow your strongest, most defensive feelings and act on them when they’re only masking your most vulnerable confused or frightened feelings. It is an act of kindness and integrity to be able to say, first to yourself and then, if needed, to others, I need to tap out. I can't right now. What you get involved in, how you act, what you do at this time will have meaningful consequences and will come back to you, that is the nature of a Mars opposition to Pluto. 

Oppositions, different than squares—and if you’re interested in aspects and transits, I’ve done an astrology Hot Take on them, maybe like six months ago or something, so just scroll back through past episodes to learn more about aspects and transits. But oppositions are kind of relational. They’re like me against you, us against them. Squares are challenges. It’s like you’re turning a corner. There is some sort of conflict that is pivotal, right. Whereas oppositions tend to get played out interpersonally or, again, group against group or individual against individual. 

And because we’ve got all of that going on at once, the sky’s the limit with the drama—you know, sky’s the limit. And so, the potential here is that your anxiety response fueled by your ego response can get you into some shit that you’re not aligned with. It can inspire you to act in ways that you actually regret, that are not quite right. 

So there’s a couple things. First thing, if you can, practice on and around this date—so when I say on and around this date, I’m going to say all week this week, all week next week, okay—practice when you have a strong emotion, when you have a strong reaction, whether it’s anger, defensiveness, anything Marsy—anger, defensiveness, passion, urgency, that’s the Mars stuff, or Mercurial—any kind of anxiety or very epic message you want to send or any major thing you want to say, try to sit and really be present with those feelings, with those impulses for a couple of beats before you act on them. That’s it. 

You know, as I talked about actually just last week is there’s a great value in the 72 hours. Certain things can wait 72 hours, right. You can have an impulse, you can have an ambition and wait on it for a couple of days and see if you still feel the same. And then some things yeah, you’re going to respond today, you’re going to respond right now. Okay. Cool. Can you sit with your thoughts and your feelings and your impulses for a beat? For sixty seconds? One minute? If you can’t, that is a good indicator that these are not feelings and thoughts that you want to act on and put into the world, honestly. 

Because we know that our strongest emotions are not reliably our wisest emotions. Our strongest emotions are not reliably a response to what is happening now exclusively. Whether we’re talking about things happening in the world, or we’re talking about things happening in your personal life, the assumptions that you make about yourself, about other people, they’re likely to be pretty defensive. And this has been going on—I’ve been talking about defensiveness now for a couple of weeks. 

So, okay, okay. So if you want to work with this energy, just simply be on the lookout for these feelings, for these impulses in yourself, and to the best of your ability, take responsibility for how they come up and what you do with them. Also, notice how it is or isn’t happening in the world from others to or around you and note it. 

You have choices around how you respond to other people. Some people, it’s not worthwhile to process with. Some people, it’s not worthwhile to fight with or to get into things with. Some people, it’s not even appropriate, like at all. And then with others, it is absolutely appropriate. Maybe it’s not the time. Maybe it’s not the place. And it’s really on you to determine in each individual situation where it lands. 

But being able to unpack these pieces, hold these pieces and discern between them, that shit is valuable, my loves. That is very fucking valuable. And having a Mercury Retrograde square to Neptune and a Mars opposition to Pluto both on the same day being exact and overlapping the same dates afterwards, I mean, my God—you know, it’s a lot. It’s a lot. 

And you may have a healing crisis. You may have an amazing experience of this, but that would be because you do well in this kind of drama, you know. And if you’re not somebody who does well with a whole lot of energy, you, again, might need to just slow things down a little bit so your reactions and your responses come from a healthy, wise place. 

This isn’t easy. It isn’t easy stuff, but the potential, again, has to do with boundaries. So, again, we have these themes from the Lunar Eclipse chart because these transits were active in the Lunar Eclipse chart. This set of transits really has a lot to do with boundaries. It’s the boundaries you have with yourself, with your ability to stay present, your ability to sort through your trauma responses and your entitlement responses and your hopes and your fears and everything else. 

This is a test of your boundaries with your relationship to anxiety. And I’m not talking about clinical anxiety; I’m talking about situational, transit responsive anxiety. When we deal with anxiety, it can really kick up a lot of entitlement, like I’m entitled to not dealing with anything because I feel so anxious and shitty. And sometimes that’s healthy and wise, and sometimes that’s just entitlement. This is a great point of enquiry. 

The Mars opposition to Pluto is confrontational, like it’s very confrontational. It’s very intense. And what we can expect it to do is make us feel really passionate about whatever it is we’re feeling. And so, if we turn our passions and our urgency and our intensity against ourselves or others that don’t deserve it, it can be really destructive, honestly. If we turn that same power of the Mars opposition to Pluto—because Pluto is investigative, and Mercury Retrograde wants us to reflect on the past—so if, if we can turn our powers of investigation and courage into self-reflection that is not judgmental or cruel, this can be really beautiful for a healing crisis. But don’t beat yourself up if that’s not what happens for you. It may simply be you’re fucking annoyed all day and shit doesn’t work out, right. 

On a more social, political, global stage, I mean, we can expect conflict, unfortunately. You know Mars is the little man symbol—not that I per se associate Mars with men; I don’t, but it is the architype of males and maleness in society, and, I mean, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s a fair amount of males in the world stirring the damn pot. And we may see some real aggressive pot stirring around this date. 

As we know as astrologers, nothing exists in a vacuum. Everything is interconnected. These transits that we are going through are an opportunity for us all to create a life that we want to live, to create a world that we want to be in. How we do this is on us, and there’s not a right and a wrong way to do it. I mean, I’m sure there’s lots of shitty things you can do—don’t do the shitty things, sure—but in general, the way you’re going to do it is going to look different than the way I’m going to do it because we’re different people; we have different birth charts. And embracing the ways in which we approach things differently, we learn differently. 

The ways that we are different, can be really healing because then you can stop worrying so much about what other people are and aren’t doing and really focus on what you feel called to do, what you need to stop doing. That can be really helpful. 

And you know what? If you want to know more about the month of June and what’s coming up astrologically, go ahead and join me over on Patreon where I drop the month ahead horoscope exclusively there at the Kitten’s Level. And I’m doing it now by using Astrology For Days—which is still available in beta at astrologyfordays.com, and you get 15% off if you join me over on Patreon at any level—but I do it now using Astrology For Days, as a way to kind of like walk you through the app, the transits, and how I damn do it, if you know what I’m saying. So patreon.com/jessicalanyadoo, also astrologyfordays.com. 

If you’re looking to track transits, take notes, learn astrology, do some shit, I don’t know, it’s pretty exciting. I think it’s exciting. It’s also very cute. It’s also Mercury Retrograde, so, you know, technical problems are on the rise, and I’m just going to role with it. 

Okay. My loves, I’m going to run through the transits of the week for you, okay. We just talked about May 30th through June 5th of 2021. Mercury is Retrograde all damn week long and through June 22nd. On the 30th, we have an exact Mars trine to Neptune. On the 2nd, Venus ingresses into Cancer. On the 3rd, Venus forms a trine to Jupiter, and on the 3rd, the Sun forms a trine to Saturn. On the 5th, Mercury Retrograde forms an exact square to Neptune, and Mars forms an exact opposition to Pluto. And that is enough. 

As always, if you get value from Ghost of a Podcast, please subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and write me a five-star review over on Apple Podcasts. Read my horoscope, download my free app for IOS called Tiny Spark—it’s adorable. I think that’s enough for now. Okay, yeah, it is. Okay, I’ll talk to you again next week. Bye.