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. This week’s question goes like this, “Hi, Jessica, I listened to your Instagram Live with Housing Works Youth Clubhouse, and the topic of casual sex and self- acceptance was very timely for me. Recently I’ve realized I attract unavailable partners because I fear intimacy—specifically, I fear asking for what I need to feel safe and secure to get sexual because I believe it’s too much to ask for or that I wasn’t worth having my needs met—thank you childhood. I need emotional availability, regular communication, and reassurance I will see you again. I wonder if I’m too much. I have trouble accepting that I need these things in order to be intimate with someone even if I don’t necessarily want a relationship with them. I resign to the notion that I am not made for casual intimacy and wonder how do I date? My question is: how can I accept this information about myself, validate my needs, and navigate the world of dating? Any insight is welcome and appreciated. Thank you for your help. Please keep my name private.”

Okay, so Can't Be Casual was born on October 6th, 1989, at 11:45 p.m. in Hartford, Connecticut. Let’s get into it. So first of all, lots of different people are going to have lots of different definitions of what is casual sex—like, what makes sex casual? And this is something we talked about on that Instagram Live, which you can, of course, find on Instagram. 

I personally think that the first step, before we even get into your chart, is to identify how you’re defining the concept of casual intimacy. To me, the concept of casual intimacy is a little bit of an oxymoron. How can you be casually intimate? Is not intimacy, by its very definition, intimate and not casual, my friends? People who want intimacy but have commitment issues or for whatever myriad of reasons doesn’t want or isn’t able to commit or be close, I can understand why you would want casual intimacy, but I am of the mind that intimacy is never casual. Intimacy is intimate. And that doesn’t mean you can’t have clear boundaries, and it doesn’t mean that you can’t live a life where you are unfettered by commitment or responsibility, but intimacy is intimate. Isn’t intimate the opposite of casual? Is it not? I don’t know. I kind of think it is. 

So what we’re really talking about is casual sex, right? Because sex and intimacy are not the same thing inherently, although for many people they are experienced as the same thing. Many people cannot separate sex from intimacy, and that is great. That is healthy and good if you can, and it’s healthy and good if you can’t. 

However, if you accept about yourself and you hear yourself saying, “Oh, I want to be intimate,” when you really mean I want to bone, well okay, well then maybe casual sex is not for you. If sex is emotionally intimate and you need a lot of support and closeness and trust built in order to have healthy or exciting and fun sex, then you probably don’t want to have casual sex with someone. 

Now you may want to have a relationship with someone that is really loose, that doesn’t have a lot of obligations, that isn’t focused on building towards something, but that’s still a relationship, and I know, I know, people love to avoid talking about relationships when they’re in them, right? We’ve all done it. We’ve all done it. But it is not necessarily an acceptance and reflection of what is. 

So this concern that you’ve had historically, maybe it sounds like you still have, of am I asking for too much? Is this too much? I want to separate something in that question because one part of that question is am I too much? Is there something too much in and of me? And the answer to that is no. But is what I am asking for disproportionate to what I am offering? That could be a yes. Is what I’m asking for confusing because I’m saying I want it to be casual, but I also want you to call me and check in on me and be close to me and talk to me and be intimate? Well then, yes, that’s confusing; that’s a mixed message. Which doesn’t mean it’s too much inherently because you might find another person who has the exact same fondness for such mixed messages, and then it would be just right. 

This is a real Goldilocks situation we’re talking about, not a moralistic, right and wrong situation. You’ve got to find the bed that’s just right. So we’re going to look at your birth chart keeping in mind that you would like to date, that you want things to be somewhat casual, but you also want emotional availability, regular communication, and reassurance— reassurance of what will happen next or the future, right? 

So we’re going to talk about dating, I promise. But what you’re really talking about is you’re seeking someone else, the person you’re dating or hooking up with, to provide some mental and emotional assurances for you so that you can take care of yourself. And some of that, in my mind, is actually you projecting out the need to manage your own feelings and fears. And some of that is your preference, and I have my theories about it, but ultimately this is something for you to figure out with yourself over the course of time in relationships. And connected to that inherently, emotional availability when you’re dating someone is what we tend to want when we want a relationship, not when we just want to hook up. So again, with the casual, not so much on the casual; we’re talking more about dating, and how does one date if one is not casual? That is hard. It’s really hard. 

And, of course, I look to your birth chart, and you’ve got this fancy Capricorn stellium, as many people born in the late eighties do, and you have Uranus sitting on top of your Moon and Saturn and Neptune. They’re all very close to each other, and it’s in the sixth house. And so, it gives you this kind of push/pull around freedom and obligation. That Saturnian part of your Moon conjunction wants security and monogamy and certainty, and the Uranian part of the Moon conjunction wants space, casual, let’s see what happens, I don’t need to owe you anything, you don’t need to owe me anything. And then there’s Neptune, and Neptune’s like but if it’s meant to be, then it should be perfect. 

So this stellium conjunction is a lot for you to manage because your heart speaks volumes in every millisecond, and that is not too much; it is just who and what you are, and that is a beautiful thing, slash, also, it is you; it is your thing. And expecting and needing someone to accept and support you in ways that you’re not accepting and supporting yourself, it’s tricky business; it’s a little bit of a risky business, especially in the first three dates or the first three months or in a casual dating or casual sex scenario, you capiche?

Now, on top of it, you have this beautiful Jupiter conjunction to Chiron which is conjunct to your Ascendant in Cancer. You like adventure. You would love to be cas [sp]. That sounds fun to you—I mean, I don’t think it really does, but it does. So you may have theories and visions of how you could be or how you should be, and you may even try to present yourself that way to people when you first start dating them, but at the end of the day, you’ve got a Capricorn Moon, you’re a little self-serious, and you’re very sensitive. Would I say hypersensitive? Yes, I would. Would I be right? Yes, I would. 

So all of these planets, all of these planets form a T-square to another conjunction. You’ve got a Sun/Mars conjunction which can be really sexual. It can be like, I’ve got some itches I would like help scratching, you know? It can make you really want to be adventurous and playful and sexual and also a little impatient with your own process. There’s actually—every single thing in this T-square describes your impatience with your own emotions, but the Sun/Mars conjunction is just the cherry on top. 

It is hard for you to sit with how you feel and to sit with a dynamic or to sit with a person to see where it takes you. It’s really hard because you’re restless and you want the answers now, and when you don’t have the answers now, there’s a tendency to try to figure out what comes next. And that, in my mind, is part of why you want reassurance of when you’ll see a person next. Because the tension and the stress of sitting with, huh, we had a date; did I like it? Did I like who I was on that date? Was I myself? Was there chemistry? Did I like them? Do I want to see them again? Why do I want to see them again? Being able to sit with your own experience so you can determine your own feelings and your own needs and then figure out what you want afterwards is really uncomfortable, and it’s difficult. And so, when you are reassured of when you will see the other person next, it’s something you can fixate on, which is soothing, but it is not healing. 

And I want to hold this very separate from you have decided to date someone, there’s an agreement between the two of you based on chemistry and intimacy and getting along well and liking each other, all those things, and then you decide, okay well I’m dating somebody, of course I should know when I’m going to see them next, or it makes sense for me to of course communicate our intentions about what happens next. That’s good when you’re dating someone, but in the first three months, in the first three dates, it is really difficult to expect anything of someone because when we have expectations of other people, we’re projecting onto them. And that is different, expecting things from other people is really different from having boundaries. I know what I like, I know what I need, and if I don’t get those things, then I know I can bounce. 

So a lot of what I am talking about is cultivating the self-awareness and the self-acceptance—because it sounds like you have the self-awareness maybe more than the self-acceptance—needed to be able to say to a person or yourself, “Huh, this isn’t satiating my needs. I can bring it up once, but if this person doesn’t satiate my needs, it’s because we’re not a good match.” And that’s it. And that’s it. 

So this comes back to this idea of how do you validate your needs? How do you validate your needs? It is hard because needs and wants and fears kind of bleed into each other on this topic for a lot of people, not just you. And if you are attracted to unavailable people, I will say, the nice thing about unavailable people is they tend to be pretty obvious, pretty quickly—you know what you’re dealing with. And there’s a part of you that likes to know what you’re dealing with, so it’s quite soothing—even though you’re knowing that you’re dealing with something you don’t want, it is soothing to a part of you in the very short term. 

Now, this is where things get really complex, my dear, because you have an interception in your birth chart. You have the zodiac sign of Scorpio intercept your fifth house, and you have Pluto and Venus in there. So this is why you’re scared that you’re too much. You’re scared of your intensity, and you have a fuck ton of intensity. And you want transformative, deep, and close relationships. And it does look like for you, your body can hit it and quit it. You’ve got the physical body of a human person who can get in here, get something done, and go home. But you’re not just a body, so the rest of you cannot. Which is annoying for you. I’m so sorry. I apologize. 

It’s annoying for you because your body might really want to get yourself involved in fun, queer dynamics where you get to just hook up and it’s not that serious, but that interception—we have Pluto and Venus in your fifth house, in the sign of Scorpio—articulates that you actually do crave intimate, close, transformative relationships and experiences with people, and that you are not casual. And that doesn’t mean you are quick to make commitments based on the intimacy you’re experiencing. It does not suggest that you trust the intimacy you’re experiencing, or that you trust in general quickly at all, but it does suggest that you have the desire to let go of yourself. And as you let go of yourself in a sexual or romantic dynamic, that’s going to look like releasing yourself and grabbing onto someone else. And that’s an error, right? Because when you grab onto someone else, you better fucking trust them with your heart and your parts. 

When there’s an agreement that it’s casual, or you don’t really know them, or they haven’t earned your trust yet, then letting go of yourself to hold onto someone else is an act of self-abandonment, which is an act of self-harm that every once in a while, turns out well. 

So the work here for you is to embrace your intensity and to give yourself the homework of be willing and able to sit with your restless emotions and impulses that tell you you need to know what’s going on in the first date, and you need to know by the fourth date whether or not you could actually be with that person, otherwise fill in the blank, otherwise you can’t have sex with them, otherwise you’re not safe, otherwise whatever. 

You want those things, but those things aren’t super realistic. Trust needs to be earned. That’s it. Repeat after me, in fact: trust needs to be earned. So we don’t want to walk around the world being like I don’t trust you: I distrust you. But there are different levels and layers of trust, and when we give somebody inner circle, closeness layer of trust before they’ve earned it, it’s almost inevitable that they’ll disappoint you because you’ve made assumptions about them that are really just that, they’re assumptions. 

This might end up meaning that you need to move a little slower than you wish you had to with people so that you don’t get too attached. This might mean that you need to navigate the difficult landscape of emotional uncertainty, even though you really don’t want to, but you need to navigate that landscape because it’s in your best interest and not with them as a collaborator in determining what’s healthy and right for you. 

It's not consistently realistic to expect someone who you don’t know at all, who you’re just starting to date, to navigate a lot of your needs, especially trauma from childhood, with you at the very beginning. That’s more your job to do for you. And that will make casual dating harder, but it doesn’t make it impossible. It simply means you can’t abandon yourself while you’re dating people. When you’re dating people, it’s very tempting for most of us to consider, do they like me, what do they want, what’s going to happen next? And all of these things are very passive ways of thinking about dating. 

A wise approach is, what am I thinking? How do I feel about this person? Did I like them? Did I like myself around them? Don’t abandon yourself in your efforts to get your needs met by someone else. Your dating can be just like making new friends. It’s slow and steady, slow and steady. It’s about making sure that you get to know the person that you’re going out with so that you can determine whether or not you want to get sexual with them. And if you determine I have amazing chemistry with this person, and I definitely want to hook up with them, and I don’t want to date them, then you need to figure out for yourself what the boundaries are around that. Can you do that, first of all? Because a lot of people can’t do that in a healthy way. But if you can do that in a healthy way, I would imagine, looking at your birth chart, it would be a one and done kind of situation, or maybe a close friendship where you’re just sexual here and there, although I imagine that would be really hard on you as well. 

And, you know, one really key thing for me to acknowledge here is that in your question you said, “How can I accept this information about myself?” And this question: how can I accept myself? this is a question I get week after week in countless different contexts. The only way to accept yourself is to accept yourself. And it’s hard, and it takes a lot of practice, and it doesn’t mean you are not questioning yourself, it doesn’t mean you aren’t striving to grow, it doesn’t mean you aren’t adjusting when necessary. It simply means that you are accepting this is how I feel right now, and I’m not a casual person, and I do want to date, and when I go on dates, I tend to attribute a lot of intimacy and a lot of closeness really quickly, and it’s hard for me. 

If you accept that, simply work to accept that, then the next steps of navigating your needs and navigating dynamics with others become a little bit more obvious, they emerge more clearly and more quickly. And the final thing I want to say to you here, my dear, is this. Next year Pluto is going to hit 27 degrees, 28 degrees, and when it does it is going to form for two years, it is going to form a delicious Pluto sextile to Venus which often coincides with falling in love and having great sex, and all kinds of other wonderful romantic and intimate dynamics. It’s exciting. And so, you’re perfectly on time. 

Spend your energy working on these things, not necessarily in dynamic with other people, but in dynamic with yourself because next year is the year where things are likely to progress, maybe even very quickly. And luckily, because you have Mercury in your birth chart at 26 degrees of Virgo, Pluto’s already forming a beautiful Trine to it. And so, your capacity to be honest with yourself, to do the investigation you need to do to find the answers, and then to adjust your attitudes, your communication, maybe even how you listen, that’s been intensified for all of this year and next year. So you’re right on time. You’re right where you’re meant to be. I know it can be frustrating but keep with the work. 

Compassion In Oakland was formed in response to the surge of anti-Asian attacks in California’s Bay Area. It started with a simple social media post offering to chaperone anyone within Oakland’s China Town neighborhood to help them feel safer. Since then, over 400 volunteers of all different backgrounds have come forward from across the Bay Area to stand against AAPI hate, thus was born the movement for the community to come together to support and protect our Asian elders. Compassion In Oakland is now looking for volunteers to serve in several different roles. Check out their website to donate, learn more about volunteering, or start a compassion project in your own area. Go to compassioninoakland.org. Link in show notes.

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.

My dears and darlings, so here we are in the last month of Jupiter’s transit through Pisces. It’s been in the sign of Pisces for a little hot minute, a couple of months, and it’ll go back into Aquarius by the end of July and stay there for the better part of 2021. So that’s interesting, but let me tell you why I bring it up. 

Because it is risky under Jupiter in Pisces for us to be delusional, drop into conspirituality, which is something that I’ve talked about on the podcast a fair amount, and the kind of dreamy idealism, the hope for great futures and great presents is a really beautiful thing when it’s grounded, and when it isn’t it can get problematic pretty quickly. And so, I want to remind you of something that I have noticed most people seem to really want to ignore, which is we are still in a deadly pandemic. 

Yes, we’re in a deadly pandemic, and people are still dying, people are still getting sick, and there are new strains. And we hope that our vaccines will do well. I mean, I’m not going to try to educate you on what’s happening with vaccines or anything like that because that is not my expertise. However, whether you are vaccinated or not, it’s not just about you; there’s public health to consider. And if you’re not checking in with the current news and data about what’s happening in the context of this global pandemic that we’re still in, then you’re not being as good of a community member, both locally and globally, as you can be. 

The head of the World Health Organization just said two days ago, quote, “We are in a very dangerous period of this pandemic. No country on earth is out of the woods yet.” Unquote. So darlings, I know you want to have hot girl summer. I know you want to have fun. I know you’re sick of all the things, and I respect that. But let’s not be idealistic in such a way that we actually end up creating the very thing we’re burnt out on dealing with, which is more pandemic. 

And as I’ve talked about, this Saturn/Uranus square that is present every day of every month of this whole year, it is inevitably, 2021 and this transit, about making compromises that you’re just fucking sick of making and wishing that you could just live your life and do your thing. It’s frustrating. But it’s not just you, and it’s not just you to be concerned about, and also be concerned about you. We’re in a really deadly global pandemic, and if you’re not acting like that, if you’re not being considerate, then I invite you to reconsider what the fuck you’re doing, especially if you’re not checking in with reliable news sources pretty consistently, like once a week. 

Okay, that is my little Capra daddy [sp] talk over, and now we get into your horoscope. So this week we are looking at July 4th through the 10th of 2021. Some bullshit maybe happening on July 4th—I wouldn’t know anything about it. I don’t know anything about what was happening on July 1st. I don’t fuck with nationalistic holidays myself. If you do, hey, that’s cool, do you. Okay.

So on the 4th, the first transit I’m going to name is a Sun square to Chiron. Now, please keep in mind that we are still very much under the influence of Mars square to Uranus and Mars opposite to Saturn. So the kind of buildup—and, of course, the Mars trine to Uranus as well, which I’m not sure if I talked about on the weekly horoscope last week, but I did go into in the July month ahead horoscope that I published on my Patreon, so you can check that out there. But when we go through all of these heavy Mars transits, they kind of crank up the energy, and they can crank up your ambition, your passions, your anger, your defensiveness, your outrage, your irritability—it can go in all kinds of directions. 

And the energy of those transits really wants a visceral expression, like it tends to be expressed in some way through the body. So that could look any number of ways, including just feeling restless, just feeling like you want to jump out of your skin a little. And then in waltzes the Sun square to Chiron, which kind of compounds that energy. Because wherever Chiron, especially a difficult transit to Chiron, exists what we tend to experience is a healing crisis, and a healing crisis can be realizing that you love something that you thought you hated. A healing crisis can be making the decision that you don’t need to make a decision. It doesn’t have to be major drama, though it can be. 

So what we can expect around or on the 4th of July is some movement or struggle around how we orient in response to some wounding or some trauma. We all have it. Maybe you have a perfect life and nothing bad ever happened to you—good on you. You still happen to live in a world with a kind of struggling climate and many, many, many, many other things, so we all have wounding. We all have trauma; it is part of the human experience, IMO, and this transit will kind of poke a stick at it—just a little stick, not a burning stick, but a stick at your trauma. 

And so, if you have cultivated tools and resources for confronting things that are hard, for being present, for not instantly jumping into blame and punishment but instead staying with the discomfort of whatever it is that is coming up, if you have those tools and skills, this is the time to remember to use them. I say that because it’s so easy to cultivate skills when you don’t need them, but then when you do need them, we tend to fall back on our survival mechanisms, right. And when we fall back on our survival mechanisms, we don’t tend to act from our wisest, sagest, most intentional, and informed self; we act from our most primal need to feel safe and okay and to not be the one who fucked up. So remember to use your resources—that is the gift of Chiron. It’s learning how to use the gifts you have, especially around the things you struggle with, whether it’s internal or external. 

Now, on the 5th, we have another transit from the Sun. The Sun is forming an exact sextile to Uranus. This is a great transit, and it’s, in particular, great in the context of this week. So let me explain. Sun sextile to Uranus is kind of inspiring. It allows us to see what’s possible with a lot more ease. So because the Sun square to Chiron wants us to confront something or kind of is going to make you aware of something that’s uncomfortable or difficult, the Sun sextile to Uranus is going to make it easier than it would otherwise be to tap on those resources, to use them, to remember you have them, to see options. And I am a big believer in options because we want freedom, especially when it comes to Uranus and the Sun—freedom to be authentic, freedom to show up. 

We might feel in some way, because of the Sun square to Chiron and the Mars transits of last week, which if you missed last week’s episode, episode 212 of the podcast, you might want to go back and listen to the astrology part because the stuff that has been really kicked up can make us feel somehow trapped or curtailed or limited. Even if there’s only the teeniest, tiniest little spark of potential—I can change this way. I have progressed that way. I can choose this thing—it is worth putting your energy and attention towards. It’s really easy when progress is not what you want it to be or it’s slow to say to yourself, “I’ll never change. Progress will never be had. This progress isn’t valuable. I’m not going to put any energy on it. I’m not going to validate it at all.” And that does you a great disservice. It doesn’t make your life better, and it’s not true. 

So that brings us to the 6th. Now, this is where the horoscope of the week gets a little more intense. We have a series of transits I’m going to tell you about on the 6th, 8th, and 9th that are going to kick up a whole lot of feels, you see. On the 6th of July, Mercury is forming an exact square to Neptune. And because we’re in the Mercury Retroshade through the 7th, here’s a little pro tip for you: we’ve already gone through this transit when Mercury was Retrograde. The last time we went through this was on June 5th. 

Mercury’s square to Neptune was the kind of big news of the Mercury Retrograde that we just have come out of, and that is why that transit was kind of soupy. It may have provoked a lot of anxiety for you or just hard to keep track of the truth, hard to keep track of emails or DMs or correspondences in general. This transit really confuses thinking. It confuses analysis. So it’s a bit difficult, especially because this transit tends to kick up anxiety. And so, when we have anxiety, and it kind of isn’t specifically in response to one thing, it’s just like generalized anxiety, it can be really demoralizing. And when we feel demoralized, all kinds of other things can happen in our psyches. 

So this is where, before I unpack the transit, I want to remind you that just because something has a spiritual root does not mean that we don’t cope with it on a physical level and a psychological level as well as spiritually, right. And this is one of those transits that does require that we tend to ourselves on all the damn levels. So Mercury square to Neptune has been a friend to false starts and anxieties, and now we have the transit to be exact again. And this is, in part, of why it has felt like this Mercury Retroshade period has been super shady because we’ve been gearing up to this transit again. 

So you can expect under this transit to feel kind of all over the place. Now, the transit on its own, I’ve just explained how it tends to be experienced, but when we are looking at a horoscope, we’re not just looking at each individual transit, we’re looking at how it all comes together. We want to synthesize the data to the best of our ability. 

When we look at the transits we have on the 8th and 9th, which are Venus square to Uranus and a New Moon in Cancer, the other exact transit we have on the 6th, the Venus opposition to Saturn, the fact that we’re going through still the Mars transits, and we’re just on the tail end of the Sun square to Chiron, we can see that there’s a lot of pressure. And that pressure, whether it’s coming from inside of you, from some health issues, some psychological issues, some emotion, or it’s coming from outside of you—a relationship, a situation, like a financial pressure, something with your parents, whatever it is—wherever it’s coming from, because of Mercury square to Neptune, there is a risk that we will kind of dissolve into I can't handle it—helplessness and hopelessness. 

And that is not necessarily on its own inherently what this transit provokes, but in context of all of these really intense, pressury [sp] transits, Neptune really doesn’t like pressure. Neptune would rather just like duck head in sand. So I want to really encourage you to be gentle with your psychology, be gentle with your thoughts, be gentle with any part of you that is compulsively and intuitively jumping into what is either most anxiety producing or most disconnected from whatever’s happening to you right now or for you right now. 

This is not a great time for processing. It’s not a great time for getting to the truth. It makes it hard to listen to other people, really objectively listen to other people. It can make conversations and communications really fuzzy, honestly. It can make them sticky and hard to track. And so, if you have to make major business decisions or major purchases, if you’ve got to make just big life altering decisions, if you have people you really trust, I would encourage you to ask perspective. But this transit is honestly impacting everybody, so if you can put things like that off, it’s absolutely a great idea to do so. 

This transit, like I said, is related to conspirituality. When Mercury forms a square to Neptune, the risk is that we want simple answers. The kind of simple answers that a lot of time like cults or other kinds of conspiracy theories or religions will offer—you are good if you do just this one thing. You’re absolved of everything if you do just this one thing. It’s not your fault. There’s not really a pandemic. It’s all a conspiracy. I mean, whatever the fuck. Whatever it is, generally, we want to be really suspicious of excessively simple answers that kind of take us off the hook because this transit, and Neptune in general, is related to cultish stuff, and we want to stay away from that. We want to maintain our autonomy and our common sense. 

Now, the part about communication, the part about not processing is going to be particularly tricky because, as I mentioned, Venus is forming an exact opposition to Saturn on the 6th as well. Venus opposite Saturn is a total boner killer, like literally murdering the boners—all the boners. Saturn and Venus are both planets that are quite concerned with security—in very different ways, they’re very concerned with security. 

Now, Venus is, of course, related to our relationships, and that can be romantic or plutonic. It’s also related to our finances. So when Venus forms an opposition to Saturn a couple of things tend to happen. One is we don’t tend to feel very pretty. It can really kick up low self-esteem around how you look or how you feel other people feel about how you look. 

Now, the other thing is Venus opposition to Saturn can confront you with a financial reality that you don’t know how to deal with or that you have to deal with, and you’re just really overwhelmed and feel really limited by it. Saturn governs scarcity and obligation and responsibility. So if you have, let’s say, spent money you didn’t have, you may be confronted by some consequence of that around this date, and you’re unlikely to be able to find the solution because of fucking Mercury square to Neptune. So you want to sit with the data, collect the data, be interested, but I wouldn’t over focus on finances if you can avoid it, and I also wouldn’t spend any kind of major money because Venus opposite Saturn can incline us to want to buy some happy, and it’s just not worth it. It’s not a good use of the energy—if you can avoid it, don’t do it. 

Another thing, probably the most pressing thing here of the Venus opposition to Saturn is it confronts us with relationship problems. So you may feel lonely, and you may feel lonely because you are actually alone, or you may feel lonely because you’re around people that you can't be yourself with or you don’t feel connected to. I don’t know which one’s worse, honestly. I don’t know which one’s worse. But we’re all likely to be feeling some measure of this around this date. 

Venus opposition to Saturn confronts you with what isn’t working. So if your relationship to yourself isn’t working, then you’re going to feel funky. If you are having conflicts in a friendship or a love relationship or any other kind of close, personal relationship, this transit is likely to make things feel really kind of hard and immovable. Because Saturn tends to align us with the glass being half empty. You’re not necessarily seeing things clearly. You’re seeing things negatively, and, again, Mercury/Neptune inclines us to being pretty anxious, so that can incline you to also seeing things negatively. 

And because we’re still under the influence of all that Mars, there’s a restlessness and impatience to figure shit out, to move things along. But I don’t urge you to act on that at all. Sit in your discomfort. I don’t like to be uncomfortable. I don’t like emotions. Do you? They’re awful. Nobody wants to be uncomfortable. So when I tell you to allow yourself to be uncomfortable, what I want to acknowledge is what would happen for me is I’d be like, “Okay, I’m uncomfortable. Now what? Now what do I do? What am I supposed to do? Where do we go from here now that we’re like uncomfortable, now that we’re feeling the feelings, now that we’re seeing things that we’re not sure if they’re exactly being seen clearly or not?” And the answer is just stay with it. Just stay with it. Super annoying answer, don’t you think? But that’s the answer. 

Venus opposite Saturn is confronting. It’s upsetting. If there are problems in your relationships, you deserve to deal with them. You deserve to understand what they are, to acknowledge what they are, and to work on them, so do the people you’re in relationship to. But you also deserve to sit with the problem long enough to understand the problem, so you don’t go in guns blazing trying to fix a problem that you don’t yet understand. Most of the time, most of us are asking the wrong question, and when we ask the wrong question, we inevitably do not get answers that satisfy us. 

So what’s really important here is to sit with the questions, to sit with the information you’re being shown instead of jumping on it. This is going to be hard. It’s going to be hard especially because on the 8th, we have an exact square from Venus to Uranus. 

Now, you saw that coming, right, because Saturn and Uranus are forming a square to each other. That means whenever there’s transits to one of them, very shortly thereafter, we can expect a transit to the other this year—just this year, but that’s what’s happening, see. 

So Venus square to Uranus is upsetting. So while Venus opposition to Saturn, it will make you feel depressed, it will make you feel lonely, Venus square Uranus is like I got to get out of here. Venus square to Uranus, it creates upsets. It—often there is some sort of a reveal. Venus square to Uranus is a transit that is upsetting to your relationships. 

So, again, Venus is related to security. It’s a planet that is co-ruled by the sign Taurus—very, very grounded, very sensual, very don’t come at me with changes sign. So Venus likes security, and Uranus likes freedom and sudden changes, so when they form a square to each other, it can be really testing. So unfortunately, what’s going to be needed here is for you to be as honest with yourself as you can about do you need to respond? Do you need to say the thing? Do you need to do the thing, or do you need to just gather some damn data? 

I mean, Uranus transits often are quite upsetting. And that doesn’t mean they’re bad. You may learn something upsetting that sets you free. You may share something upsetting with someone else that sets both of you free. You want to make sure that you’re not compromising your humanity and your empathy and your kindness just because you’re overwhelmed. Because you’re not alone; we’re all overwhelmed, honey. We’re all overwhelmed. And this is not going to be a chill week. 

So what I hope and wish for you and me and everyone around us is to prioritize centering a little bit of peace. And remember, peace isn’t repression. Peace isn’t denial or evasion. It’s acceptance without attachment. So if you can accept how you feel or where you’re at or that you don’t know how you feel or you don’t know where you’re at and not attach to that, this will be a lot easier. And that doesn’t mean it will be easy, but it will be a lot easier. 

When we think about relationships, we have a tendency to think like, okay, I want this relationship to last forever, or I expect my friendships to never have any conflict. These kinds of things are basically an unconscious way of saying I hope to never change and for the people I’m close to to never change. Which is unrealistic, right? We all have shitty days. We all have weird moods. We all grow and change. Or we don’t grow and change, and then the people and situations around us grow and change, which changes us. 

So we must pivot. We must show up. We must be willing to have conflict and communication and resolution, whether that resolution is what we’d prefer or not. This is going to be a week much like last week, although very differently, where we are being called to get present with what is and isn’t working, with what is and isn’t working within our relationship to ourselves, in how we relate to others, and within those relationships themselves. It’s a very relational week. And it’s uncomfortable. It’s uncomfortable. 

You might emerge from this period being like, “Well, that needed to happen. Hello, thank you very much; that is delightful.” And you may emerge with a very different, much more stressful story. But all of it is transient, and all you can do is your best—that’s it. You can't control things you’re not meant to. You can't make things perfect. You’re not meant to be perfect. All you can do is show up. And this week the snow globe is really being shook—shook up, if you will. 

The more flexible you are in response to whatever that kicks up for you, the better, you know, the better. And you don’t have to be flexible forever. Try to be flexible this week. I know some people are really great at being flexible. If you’re really great at being flexible and your problem is that you tend to be too flexible, you may have to take a stand. You know how it works. The universe, she’s got a sense of humor. Quite a sense of humor. Kind of like a Larry David style of humor, I think—very, very sardonic. That’s my take anyways. But, of course, it would be; I’m a Capricorn. 

Okay, that brings us to the last transit I’m going to tell you about this week. And I will also remind you, as always, if you’re an astrology student or an astrology pro, and you want to be looking ahead and being able to reference back in a smooth and fluid way, go and subscribe to Astrology for Days over at astrologyfordays.com, and it will be cute, and it will be useful, and it will make you smarter if you use it that way. 

Okay. Now, New Moon in Cancer. Everybody loves a New Moon, right? Everybody loves a New Moon, and Cancer is the sign that is ruled by the Moon. So a New Moon in Cancer is going to happen but once a year, and this is our time in 2021, and it is a glorious thing. All the Cancers of the world rejoice. 

So this particular New Moon in Cancer is at 18 degrees of Cancer, so the Sun and Moon are both at 18 degrees of Cancer, and the New Moon is exact at 6:17 p.m., and again, if you’re following along on Astrology for Days, all you have to do is adjust the time zone. We have all the world’s time zones loaded up for you, my astrology nerds. 

Okay, so New Moons in general happen once a month. They are a great time for aligning your intentions and your feelings, so your identity and your feelings with each other. So therefore, it’s a great time for starting something new or for planting seeds, for some sort of refresh. New Moons in general are kind of a lovely time for manifestation. This New Moon not so much. 

And I know some people are really committed to doing New Moon rituals and ceremonies, and I would just be really careful around this particular one and would encourage you to think in terms of can you ask for just guidance and not be too attached to being too specific about getting outcomes. Because this is a really kind of bumpy, squarey [sp] situation because the New Moon chart, of course, involves the Mercury square to Neptune, the Venus opposition to Saturn, the Venus square to Uranus. In other words, there’s a whole lot of relational drama in this chart. 

So while we are likely to be feeling really emo, and while that strong emotionality is neither good nor bad—you know, there’s no value judgement we need to place upon it—it’s just really strong, what it tends to do is make us refer back to our early experiences. So it inclines us to have a response to things that is quite reflective. And when I say reflective, I mean reflective of your own past and your own assumptions and your own feelings. 

This is a time where we’re likely to be really tender. And if you’re a super empathetic person or an emotionally sensitive person, just buckle up, butter cup, because you’re going to be feeling this. It’s very emo and tender. If you have a practice with boundary work, this is a really good time to pick it back up again or really commit yourself to it, and if you’ve never really thought about what it would mean to have boundaries, what a great time to explore it. 

The thing that we don’t talk about enough is that Cancer is governed by the crab. So tender on the inside but really hard on the outside. Crabs are great at boundaries. I mean, they can come at things sideways—that’s the downside, but good at boundaries—nice, hard shell. So this is not a great time for coming at things sideways; it’s not going to take you anywhere, but it is a good time to have a nice protective outer shell because there’s so much going on in your tender, tender insides, you see. 

And if somebody else tells you this is my boundary, this is what I need right now, even if it’s contradicting what you need, it’s important to consider do I need to respect this person’s boundary? I don’t think there’s a one size fit all answer for that sort thing in all situations and for all people, but it’s an important question to be asking yourself: am I respecting other people’s boundaries? Am I listening to other people’s boundaries? Not just what are my boundaries and how am I asserting and communicating and maintaining those boundaries? 

That all said, Saturn is opposite Venus and Mars here. They are all forming a T-square to Uranus, so we can expect some relationships to blow up. We can expect some serious conflicts. It may be that people bug the shit out of you or that you’re super annoying to other people. It might mean that something much more serious and kind of substantial is happening in a relationship. But because Uranus is the focal planet to this T-square, we can expect the unexpected, and we can expect it to happen kind of abruptly. So you may say some shit or do some shit that you were not planning on doing, and you can't take it back. So get grounded as best you can. And if you can't get grounded because there’s not a lot of earth going on in the world of the stars right now—it’s really just Pluto—then get intentional. 

There’s a lot of work to be done in your life, in the world, in your relationships, in your relationship to yourself. Sure, it’s a lot of work, but if you don’t approach the work in a sustainable way, then you will act out against yourself, your relationships, others, whatever the fuck it is, right? So you want to make sure that you’re being a responsible and intentional steward of your own damn energy and actions. It’s hard. I don’t mean to suggest that it isn’t because it absolutely is. But it’s what’s up. It’s what’s happening right now. 

In many ways this New Moon may be a bit of a kind of culmination of the past couple of weeks of whatever’s been coming up and going on for you, and that is not bad, and it’s not good. It’s just information for you to have so that you make sure leading up to the Full Moon on the 9th of July that if there’s going to be a culmination, that it’s a culmination of something that you want. 

So it’s not too late. If you have been acting out, if you have not been respecting other people’s shit, or if you’ve been just not behaving in a way that is consistent with how you want to be, you can always reach out to a person and say, “Hey, I’ve not been behaving in a way that I want to be. I’m sorry. It’s coming from something I’m struggling with, and I’m not ready to talk about it yet. But I’m sorry if I’ve been shitty in any way.” You don’t have to have it all worked out in order to acknowledge when things are off. 

Now, if you’re dealing with a situation that is a lot less personal, like something at work or something with people that you don’t really trust, that is not appropriate to be that processy [sp] with, you can always just find ways of giving positive validation to the things that you authentically appreciate about them as a way to kind of counter balance whatever negative energy or attention you’ve been giving them. 

Now, the key with that is to not be fake because even if people don’t mentally or cognitively know that you’re being fake, it has a ripple effect—at least according to this energy nerd, it has a ripple effect. So if you’re going to give a compliment, make sure that it’s authentic. Don’t assume people don’t know what you’re doing, you see. Maybe you’re that clever. Maybe you’re a great liar—congratulations, slash, also find something you can actually appreciate about them and validate that. 

Because Saturn and Uranus are both messing with Venus, everyone’s self esteem is a little shaky. So do your best to not take it too personally, to not match too many narratives of like oh, you know, I’m 35 years old; this has been happening to me for 35 years. Don’t go into that kind of drama place if you can avoid it. Instead stay really present—this is how I feel right now. What is happening right now. 

The foundation to your future is today. There’s actually no time but today, and today is informed by and fed by yesterday and all the yesterdays behind you. But today—today is your job. How are you going to hold the past today? How are you going to be in the present today, and how can you today behave so that tomorrow is just that much easier, that much better? It’s hard work. You’re not always going to get it. That’s just being a person, but that is—that’s the work, my loves, that is the Goddamned work. 

Now, you may need to compromise this New Moon. You might find yourself acting in really surprising ways or that others are doing that. The most important thing here is to remember that if New Moons are a fresh start, they are an opening, and what is happening during this New Moon is that the presentation and presence of discord or disruptions are what’s showing up for you, if upsets in any way are showing up for you, how can you be open to that? Not so that you can consent to it, not so that you have no say in it, but so that you can really get present and make choices around what you want to do next, you know? You know. 

Okay, my loves, that was a long horoscope. But Some weeks are like that, and this is one of those damn weeks. 

As always, I want to thank you for joining me here and invite you to subscribe to Ghost of a Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts because it really does make a difference for a little, independent podcasts like this one. And also, send me your questions if you’ve got questions that you want me to answer on the show, send it over to me—just go to ghostofapodcast.com. 

Follow World Health Organization’s guidance around this pandemic, and generally strive to be a kind and empathetic person to yourself and the people around you, even the people you don’t like. Bye.