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 comes from Courageously Fearful. “Hi, Jessica. Love you and your show. My question is about how I might be able to transmute the intense fear I live with on a daily basis. I feel like I can attribute this to my Sun square to Neptune in my birth chart, but I’m not quite sure. 

Basically, I have this nebulous fear that if I try to live the life of my dreams that something bad will happen, like my children and partner will be in a horrible accident and die. I hate that I live with this; it keeps me small and scared. And even though I consider myself to be someone with considerable courage, this aspect of my life that I can't quite even identify seems to be taking hold, especially as I age and see how far I am from the life I want to lead professionally. 

I love my home and family life, though my fear absolutely bleeds into this realm in unpleasant ways as well. What tools are in my birth chart to help me name and transmute this fear so that I can live a joyful life—not so much to rid myself of fear, but to be able to face it with clarity and courage? Thank you so much for all that you do; your words and general approach to life resonate deeply with me, and I am thankful that you are a part of our consciousness.” That’s sweet, thank you. “Please keep my birth info private.” 

Okay, so birth info private, check. Let’s get into this question because it’s really important. We all go through fear, and we all go through fear at least at some point in life that is just like fear for fears sake, so in other words, it’s fear that the worse will come, whether it’s something specific or not. I will unpack in this birth chart how that functions. 

Before I do, I just want to acknowledge that there are a lot of ways to be a person. There are a lot of ways to experience anxiety and fearfulness and hope and all that kind of good stuff, and so there are general truths that can resonate for large amounts of people, and then there’s also our specific and unique experience. That’s the case with all the questions I answer and all the topics of the world, but it is worth naming because at this time, there’s a lot to be fearful of in the world. 

There’s masses and masses of people—millions and millions of people who are scared of COVID or who are scared because of how the world is changing with climate change. There’s so many things that are universal that impact all of us across demographic line, and when we have masses of people feeling fearful or hopeful about the same thing, it creates this morphic field. And this morphic field has its own energy and its own velocity. 

And so, from my perspective, a lot of people who have predispositions towards fearfulness or hypervirulence or any other internal struggle like that, we are all feeling pretty activated at this time because it’s a long period of time where we’re all kind of looking at a similar thread, and that thread, of course, being an airborne virus that we don’t fully understand and most of the world is not vaccinated against. 

So I know that your question, my facing fear friend, is not about COVID at all, but I personally am of the mind that for anyone who is sensitive, which most certainly any person with a Sun/Neptune aspect in their birth chart is sensitive, then that’s part of the thing. And so, when we as empathetic or energetically sensitive people, when we feel anxiety or any other kind of like stressed out feeling, I think it's always wise to check in with whether or not we have healthy boundaries around the world—around how we are holding the world, how we are considering whatever’s happening in the world because we tend to be quite sensitive to the world. So that’s anyone with a Sun/Neptune natal aspect—honestly, a Moon/Neptune natal aspect, or planets in the twelfth house. So those are just considerations to peep in on. 

Another thing to add to that is that ignoring the world or being uninformed about the world are not boundaries. So sticking one’s head in sand does not equal boundary. The only way to have a boundary is to have clarity and acceptance of where you are at this moment, where things are at this moment. So part of what I would say is that it is important to be aware, to be somewhat educated on whatever topic it is that one is having anxiety about. 

So let’s start with the many places in your birth chart, my dear, that do articulate anxiety. So, yes, the first is you have a Sun square to Neptune. And this natal aspect can create a difficulty in knowing what’s real and what’s not. The reason why it does this is because it’s like it makes your auric field, your energy boundaries kind of like a loofah sponge: super absorbent. The downside of this, and there’s a lot of upsides—upsides around empathy and spiritual and creative capacity are huge. The downside is when you’re pulling in tons of data, and you’re pulling in data not in a linear way and not in an analytic way, it can be really hard to make sense of what you’re perceiving. And so, you can walk into a room, and everybody’s really stressed out, and they’re stressed out about things that have literally nothing to do with you, but if you experience the feeling of intense stress, then you will personalize it. And most people’s brains will say, well, I feel stressed. Why do I feel stressed? And you start searching for a supporting idea. So then you might not have been thinking about, let’s say, your career, but your brain will be like, well, I know I’m stressed about my career, so let’s attribute it to that. 

But it’s not always that, especially when you have a Neptune/Sun square. So what is the remedy? The remedy is to think about boundaries, to do research into boundaries. What are spiritual boundaries? What are emotional boundaries? What are psychological boundaries? Do some investigation into this and cultivate boundaries. I know it sounds like it’s not related to this thing you’re naming in your question about your career, and it’s not specifically and directly responding to the concern that you have that if you try to make something wonderful happen for yourself, the very worst will happen and the people you love will be hurt. But what it does is it impowers you to cultivate skills for understanding what’s your energy and what’s not your energy, what you’re holding onto that may be collective fear or environmental fear and what is actually just you being freaked out and fearful, right. And no value judgement on any of this—it’s just about really seeking as many truths as you can, and having boundaries empowers you to be intentional about what you let in and what you keep out. 

So make that a practice, and there are a lot of resources out there for you to pursue. I’m running a bunch of content about boundaries over on my Patreon. But whatever—whether you go to my Patreon, you go to YouTube, you buy a book, you take a class, it’s just about investing in educating yourself about a lot of different ways of approaching the issue of boundaries. 

The next thing I’d look to in your birth chart is you have a Uranus/Mars conjunction. Now, this natal aspect is actually not per se a fear producing aspect. In fact, this natal aspect can produce a great amount of courage and spontaneity and vibrancy. But what it also creates is electricity that runs through your body. So while this natal aspect is a source of great strength and inspiration and bravery for you, because it has a really fast tempo—and it’s for sure the fastest tempo item of your birth chart—because it has a really fast tempo, what you may experience is when you start to drop into your body as a way to get grounded or resource yourself, you find that there’s a lot of busyness in there, a lot of activation in there. 

And what happens when you feel really activated is it can be hard for you to stay present. You might assume that the excitement that is actually your natural state, physically speaking, how you embody things, you can confuse it for anxiety. There’s an expression, and I’m so sorry I did not Google it. I don’t remember who said it, but somebody said that anxiety is just excitement without the breath. 

So because of this, and we want to add the data of your Sun/Neptune square, doing some form of breath work when you get activated around your anxieties or fears is going to be really impactful for you. And so, again, that is something for you to do some research. And if you have a therapist or some other kind of healer type that you work with, I would definitely encourage you to do some breath work in conjunction with, along side boundary work. 

And that brings us to the next natal aspect. You’ve got this beautiful Moon/Jupiter conjunction in Scorpio—it is a delight to behold. If you read most astrology books, they will describe this natal aspect as being happy and lucky and optimistic. And it certainly can mean that, but this is where I think a lot of times astrologers with good intentions mislead people around Jupiter. 

Jupiter is a planet that creates expansion: it makes things bigger. And so, when you have a Moon in Scorpio and a tendency to brood or obsess on feelings, and then you got Jupiter sitting on top of it making it bigger and bigger and bigger, that doesn’t always feel good, right. When we start to compile this data of now I’m on my third natal aspect, you can see how you have so much going on, you have so much going for you. 

I’m not surprised, looking at your birth chart, that you have kids and a partner that you feel happy about and that you have things in your life that you feel joyful about and that you want to feel more joy. Your capacity for joy is great. However, your capacity to brood, your capacity to chase your anxieties breathlessly in such a way that it produces more anxiety is also great. And so, I would encourage you to just add that little bit of data—you have the capacity to be joyful. You have the capacity to have great happiness and a lovely life. And also, it’s a capacity worth nurturing—not by doing anything specifically to or about it, but instead simply by reminding yourself of that when you can. 

Because really, when the negative part of this aspect gets activated, you may find yourself just in an obsessive frame of mind. And that obsessive frame of mind has you chasing your strongest emotions, not your wisest emotions—classic Scorpio/Pluto shit—and don’t worry I’m going to get to Pluto in just one second. And so, the work, the work is simply to when you catch yourself chasing negative emotions, chasing negative thoughts, being obsessive and compulsive in your negative stories, breathe, find your body, breathe, find your body—oh, yeah, I said it twice because it was doubly important. And then find a word or a sentence, some sort of mantra, some sort of like word you can say on repeat that is neutral to distract your compulsive attachment to a negative thought and to distract it to a neutral thought. From that place, you might just quit there, or you might then do something similar with a positive thought. But you want to go from negative obsessions to neutral obsessions, okay. That’s a really achievable goal for you. 

And that brings us to the final thing I will name. You, my dear, have Mercury conjunct Saturn and Saturn conjunct Pluto. It is a sandy between Pluto and Mercury as the bread to Saturn. Nobody wants to eat a sandwich filled with Saturn, I’m afraid. So this natal configuration articulates the real crux of your question, the part of you that believes that staying small is staying safe, the part of you that has kind of like a violent terror obsession about people that you love dying if you are thriving. 

And this configuration can often be found as related to inherited conditions. And this is reiterated by the fact that these planets all fall in the sign of Libra but in the eighth house. So it is likely that either your parents or grandparents experienced some sort of trauma that they survived and that their survival came at great sacrifice, or they survived and saw other people did not have as good luck or fortune as them, and they have guilt about it. 

And these kinds of inherited conditions are very difficult because first of all, it is very hard to untangle inherited conditions because they’re really woven into your foundations, and also because they kept a generation safe. And so, there is a way that when you start to untangle these issues, when you start to be more bold and take up more space, your survival mechanisms, the things that exist to keep you safe, will scream at you that it is the most dangerous thing you can do and that it is going to cost you the ultimate price. 

And then because Mercury is involved in this Pluto/Saturn conjunction, your mind is all too happy to oblige with terrible stories, maybe even with evidence of other people’s bad luck or bad fortune. And so, what’s a Virgo to do? I will tell you. This natal aspect wants hard work from you. This is a part of your nature, this Saturn/Pluto/Mercury part of your nature that can get determined and not out of a sense of optimism—your Moon Jupiter conjunction can do that. Actually, the Mars Uranus conjunction and the Sun Neptune conjunction can all be motivated through optimism, whether it’s founded in reality or not. But the Pluto/Saturn conjunction, not an optimistic bone in its bodies. Just none of it. It’s not motivated through optimism. It’s not motivated through hope. It’s motivated through clarity of purpose, through maturity, through long term goals, and through hard work. This is the part of your nature that requires you to get a little bit granular about what it is you want, and the steps in front of you to take it, and whether or not you’re willing to make whatever sacrifices those steps will require of you. 

So when it comes to something like being terrified of something that is so wildly out of your control, like somebody in your family dying as a result of something completely disconnected, in that kind of a situation all you can do is use the power of your emotions, the power of your hopes, and the power that you can actually yield—which is somewhat limited when it comes to things that are completely out of your control—to manage that power with integrity, some measure of discipline, and in a way that empowers creation, that empowers healthy relationships, that empowers you and those you come in contact with. 

That isn’t dominion or power over people or circumstances. Trying to get really controlling isn’t going to work, it’s just going to make it worse for you. But instead to be determined to do the best with what you’ve got, to manage what’s yours to manage and nothing more. This would be a difficult thing for anyone with this aspect in the birth chart because the Saturn/Pluto conjunction tends to want to control the environment as a way to maintain self-regulation. But that doesn’t work. Self-regulation occurs from self-regulation. Of course, there are certain things in our environments that we like to control, that are healthy for us to control, but the things you’ve named in your question are not so much it. 

So I hope this is a good jump start for you to manage this stuff. I want to just share that you are currently going through your Neptune square to Neptune, which is one of the transits associated with mid-life crisis, and you’ve got Pluto forming a square to Pluto, another one of the transits associated with mid-life. Both of these transits are very different; however, let me tell you what they have in common. They are kicking up childhood issues, and they are kicking them up while you’re still very much young enough to be dealing with them, you’re very much young enough to have a lot of life in front of you to live differently if that’s how you determine you need to live. 

This is a time where your control issues and your anxiety are likely to be deeply activated. The Pluto/Saturn/Mercury conjunction and the Neptune/Sun square in your birth chart are both probably the most anxiety producing aspects in your chart, and they are both getting slammed right now. 

So I want to just validate this is coming up because it’s meant to come up. And when we go through things, when things come up, when they get activated, it’s easy to feel like you’re being tortured by life or your own psychology, but the reality is it’s always an opportunity to heal—maybe a shitty opportunity; it may feel bad, but it’s an opportunity to heal. 

And that brings us to the final thing I want to say about your birth chart. In your birth chart you have an interception. You’ve got the sign of Cancer intercept your sixth house and Capricorn intercept your twelfth. You also have the North Node in Cancer in this sweet little interception. 

The indication here, and you’re in an age where you’re at the perfect time to be mobilizing and embodying this work. That North Node wants you to pursue actions and habits, so ritualistic behaviors, aka the sixth house, that are nurturing and caring to you, aka Cancer. And because it is an intercepted nodal placement, what we know is that what this looks like is going to be very different for you than it was from your family of origin. And this might be really hard for you to give yourself permission to be truly nurturing to yourself in your behavior, but that’s the call, and the call’s coming from inside the house if you and your body were the house. You’re not supposed to start off perfect. You don’t need to get it right.  You are not too old to continue to live and thrive and change courses multiple times. Embrace yourself, and part of that is about embracing the work. 

We are going through transformational times, and whenever you are engaged in your own evolution, inevitably, you need a little help. And that is why I’m really happy to share with you Better Help. They’re committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches, and it’s easy and free to change counselors if you don’t like the person you’re matched with. This service is available for people worldwide. 

It’s just really valuable to be able to talk to someone about whatever it is you’re going through, whether it’s queer issues or depression or just anxiety from all the shit going on in the world—Better Help is there for you. In fact, so many people have been using Better Help that they are recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states of the US. 

I want you to start living a happier life today. As a listener of Ghost of a Podcast, you will get 10 percent off of your first month by visiting betterhelp.com/ghost. Join over one million people taking charge of their mental health. Again, that’s betterhelp, H-E-L-P .com/ghost.

Darlings, darlings, darlings, there’s as per usual so much to talk about this week—this week in stars, if you will, that I think we should just do a good old fashioned giddy up and get going. We are looking at the week of July 25th through the 31st of 2021. 

The last transit I’m going to talk to you about this week really is going to be a great kind of articulation of the interconnectedness of astrology and the world, aka a good reflection of how each individual transit is part of a larger cycle and how these larger cycles are always happening within us and around us. And if you overthink it, it gets really overwhelming and annoying. But if you don’t overthink it and you simply stay present as a practice through your life, it could be quite valuable to use astrology as a way to kind of ground yourself into where you’re at in the cycle or where we as a collective are at in the cycle etc., etc. Let’s go. 

Okay. So on the 25th, the first transit I’m going to talk to you about this week, you will be feeling for a couple of days leading up to the 25th—so you’ll have been feeling it at the end of last week. And, of course, last week there was a Full Moon on the 23rd, which is emo and can be quite overwhelming, depending on how it lands in your birth chart. But we have a Mercury opposition to Pluto. So Mercury is in Cancer, and Pluto is in Capricorn still, and she’ll stay there for quite a minute, my friends. 

So Mercury is your mind. It’s your thinking. It’s your listening. It’s your attitudes. It’s what you say. It’s how you say it. It’s what you type. It’s when you send it. And Pluto is our flight or fight mechanisms. It is a planet that can be quite dramatic. And it can be dramatic because it deals with really deep content. Because of this, Pluto is associated with trauma and healing. It is creation and destruction. And when Mercury and Pluto meet up, we always run the risk of obsessive thinking—we always run the risk of fixating on what is the most painful thoughts and memories instead of the most true ones. 

When we have an opposition, we tend to see things projected out. In other words, it tends to be quite relational. Mercury doesn’t only govern our thinking and our listening and our communication; it also governs our friendships. That can include your neighbors, your coworkers, your friends, your cousins and siblings, but also essentially the plutonic part of any relationship that requires communication and connection. So there’s a real risk of upsets when it comes to a Mercury opposition to Pluto because you may be saying something that really hits on a fucking triggery button for someone else, or you may be saying it in a way that hits on a triggery button for someone else. 

This can be a transit that sparks explosive and uncomfortable conversations. It’s a terrible time to gossip. Don’t talk shit about people. Don’t do it. Not only because it’s shitty, but also because it can come back at you. It might not come back right away, but it is likely to come back at you. And that will feel awful. And if you find out that someone else said some shit that was unpleasant, unkind, then you may need to make calls around that. I don’t encourage you to make any calls during this transit if it can be avoided, unless something is that egregious. 

This transit intensifies the thinking. If you have a research project you need to be doing, this is actually a really great transit for it. Doing research, getting to the bottom of things is one of the good things about Mercury and Pluto opposing each other. 

Unfortunately, we have the tendency to try to get to the bottom of things that are actually not our business or are not healthy and helpful for us to investigate. So before you become a modern Sherlock Holmes, make sure that it’s your fucking place and that it’s a good use of your precious, precious energy. Because you’re actually not harming anyone but yourself when you obsess on people, situations, or things that hurt you, so don’t do the jerks work for them by torturing yourself. 

Remember that having healthy boundaries with your thinking requires you to manage where you allow your energy and thoughts to go. And so, this is a great time to practice all of your selfcare around negative obsessions or fixations and certainly negative habits. If you don’t know what to say, it’s okay to say I don’t know what to say. It’s far better to say I don’t know what to say than to say nothing and abandon yourself or abandon someone you care about. And it’s far better to say I don’t know what to say than to say something shitty that you can't take back. So these are just some hot tips for this Mercury opposition to Pluto. 

We may see some major drama within the news, aka in society, and it’s important to remember that Mercury opposition to Pluto either triggers people to act in ways that are reflective of their trauma and pain and fear, or reflect ways that people are trying to manipulate and dominate. Which I would actually say, on a very deep and true spiritual level, is about their trauma and fear, but that’s not always necessarily our individual business—somebody else’s pain motivating their bullshit, right. So this is where it’s important to the best of our ability to manage our shit, so that when we step into the world, whether it’s in our personal lives or your greater community or communities, it is important that we act in ways that actually reflect what we believe and act in ways that actually reflect who we want to be, instead of our strongest emotions. 

And I can't emphasize this enough because Mercury opposition to Pluto intensifies your emotions. It intensifies your thinking, and it creates a lot of defensiveness—a lot of defensiveness. So here’s a saying that is old, and I didn’t make up, but I think is very true: you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar. You may be mad at somebody, you may be hurt by somebody, and you can come at them, and you can tell them, you can really let them know. That can be a very healthy and important thing to do; however, when we shit on people, when we attack people, when we aggress at people, they don’t listen. That is just like a thing—it’s a thing. So saying to somebody, “You’re doing this wrong. You’re ruining my life—fuck you,” or whatever version of it, whether it’s in public or on social or whatever, you are saying that because you want to say it, because you feel that it needs to be said. But you might want to ask yourself, if I want them to hear me, and I want them to listen to me, am I saying it in a way that is hearable, that is digestible? Because it is not enough to speak our truth; we must speak our truth in a way that others can hear it. And that doesn’t mean to manipulate others, and it doesn’t mean to tamper with the truthfulness of our statements. 

There’s a lot of ways of saying, “You spilled a glass of milk, and that was my last glass of milk, and now I’m super bummed, and also I have to clean up your damn mess.” You can say, “What the fuck is wrong with you? You spilled a glass of milk; you dumb ass.” You can say that. It would be true. You could also say, “I’m super disappointed and frustrated that you did this and what it’s going to cost me now. Because now I can’t drink milk, and also I have to clean up after you. But, you know, I get it. It wasn’t on purpose, but can you at least acknowledge that you did this thing and the impact it’s having on me?” 

Both are hard conversations, but one, somebody’s actually going to be able to listen, maybe. The point is shame and blame don’t bring about healing and transformation, and they don’t encourage others to listen. And if you’re on the receiving end of that, and you feel that it’s important to actually listen to what someone else is saying but they’re saying it in such a shitty way, it may be valuable for you to take the time to ask questions and to say, “Okay, you’re mad, but can you explain to me what is actually happening for you because the way you said it, I don’t understand—like it feels too overwhelming. All I can hear is you’re mad.” 

It’s hard to be a person. It’s hard to be a friend and a community member and a colleague and a neighbor and all the things. In transits like this between Mercury and Pluto are a time where we get confronted by some of the difficulties with how we’re different and how we approach things differently. That’s complicated, and it’s messy, and it can be a great gateway for healing. Even if this, quote, gateway to healing is a shit show, that doesn’t mean you can't derive value, and it can't be a part of your evolution. So do with this what you will, my loves. 

On the 28th, we have Jupiter Retrograding back into Aquarius. Now, this is really important astrological news. You may remember that when Jupiter first entered into Aquarius was when we had the great conjunction, when Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto all entered into Aquarius together—it was in December of 2020—and Jupiter remained in the sign of Aquarius from December 19th through May 13th. And then it was in Pisces, and now it comes back into Aquarius. It will stay here until December 28th of 2021, so for the better part of 2021. 

So there’s a lot to say about Jupiter’s move into Aquarius. One thing is to remember that Aquarius is an air sign, and Jupiter is expansive, so in the context of, I don’t know, the internet, which is very much Aquarian—it’s about electricity, and very much related to net neutrality and our rights and protections online. And so, we can expect to see big tech either doing things that really mess with our rights or promote our rights—it depends on their values and their ethics. We’ve had an airborne virus, and Jupiter’s moving back into an air sign, so we have the risk of seeing some sort of new variants or some sort of change to the communicability of the disease—TBD; we shall see. 

When Jupiter is in Aquarius there’s so many wonderful things that can happen, like breakthroughs or major advances in, again, technology, humanitarian efforts and issues, environmental innovations. There’s so much positive potential in Jupiter in Aquarius, but it does require that we don’t just see the potential, that we don’t just vision what can be, but we activate and actualize based on our perception of what is possible. We’ve kind of got to do the thing. We’ve got to do the damn thing. 

In 2020, when Jupiter was in Capricorn, it was all about, as they call it, boots on the ground action. But Aquarius can be very heady, and so what we want to do is make sure that we translate our innovations, our thoughts, our vision into a thing that can be done. Now, the downside of the Jupiter transit through Aquarius, it can increase the tempo of our energy. So it's kind of got a manic feel to it, Jupiter in Aquarius—things move fast. Ideas come quick. And when things move really fast, it can be hard to maintain a healthy pace and approach to life. 

So whether we’re talking about society or whether we’re talking about you as an individual, it’s important to stay checked in with your body throughout this transit, aka throughout the rest of the year, to make sure that you’re not just doing what you think is a great thing to do but that it is a healthy thing to do, that is a sustainable thing to do. Two concerns, sustainability and pacing, that Jupiter and Aquarius almost never have. 

The other risk I’ll just name with Jupiter in Aquarius is that we seek solutions to kind of like come out of thin air. So we’re seeking things to happen too quickly. Like you’re fixated on if I can't have a meteoritic rise to fame, then I will never achieve success in the way I want. If I can't figure this out quickly, then I’ll never figure it out. If it doesn’t happen for me now, it will never happen. So this impatience that Jupiter in Aquarius can inspire can really get in the way of progress. 

Unfortunately, even the most exciting and innovative ideas require a lot of mundane attention, a lot of repetitive, ritualistic attention. And so, we want to keep that in mind during this transit because we’ve got Saturn in Aquarius; we’ve got now Jupiter in Aquarius; we have Neptune in Pisces, and we have Pluto still in Capricorn. All this air and then Neptune in its water sign, and then Pluto still really just demanding that we deal with infrastructure, it’s a big deal. 

My greatest hope is that we focus our energies, attention, and innovative ideas on ways that we can create progressive change in our lives, in our relationship to ourselves, and in the world around us. And the potential’s there. But, again, Jupiter in Aquarius, even Saturn in Aquarius, not exactly known for patience, so it’s important to remember the need for patience whenever you’re feeling impatient and to develop tools and resources for remembering to check in with how you’re pacing yourself, you see. 

Now, I guess this is a good moment to share that on the 27th, I will be doing an Instagram Live over at Sunrise Movement. If you’re in the market for learning about or getting involved in fighting the climate crisis, and you like a little astrology, come join me there, just come join me there—5:30 p.m., Pacific Time, on July 27th. 

That brings us, my loves, to the next important transit that I’m going to talk about, and it’s a bit of a doozy, so get comfortable. It’s also the last transit of the week. Okay, here we go. On the 29th of July, we have a Mars opposition to Jupiter. There’s a lot to say about this transit on its own, and I will say it. But the fun fact about oppositions is that they’re a closure of a cycle. And I talk about this every Full Moon and New Moon, but this goes for all the planets. 

Whenever we’re dealing with an opposition between two planets, it is the closure of a cycle, and we can look to the last time those two planets were conjoined, even if it was in different zodiac signs, to understand what this cycle has been about. And because of the timing of Mars opposite Jupiter, I just got a little bee in my bonnet—I got a bee in my bonnet to look at when did Mars and Jupiter last conjoin. And the last time they conjoined—so the cycle that’s getting closed out this week started March 20th of 2020. Yeah, March 20th of 2020, Jupiter and Mars were at 22 degrees of Capricorn. And that ended up being a very important degree in 2020. If you’re curious about why, go back and listen to old episodes; I don’t want to overwhelm you here. 

But March 20th was a really big time. This was a time when internationally, and certainly here domestically in the US, COVID 19 exploded. Quarantines and travel restrictions were imposed in lots of countries, and death tolls became alarmingly high. We were experiencing at that time a sense of global unity—and global maybe a little bit strong of a word, but okay—some measure of global unity, as we were all in this really terrifying situation together. It was just catching like wildfire, and it was still very new. 

A lot of things happened in the week of March 20th when these two planets met. And that was the start of a cycle that is closing this week. And there were also many things happening in the US specifically around social unrest, and a large part of the population rejecting the white supremacist foundations that this country has been built upon. And that also continued throughout 2020 and is a meaningful part of what was happening throughout this cycle. 

But it's not just the conjunction and the opposition; we also want to look to the squares between these two planets. So in this cycle, on August 4th of 2020 and October 18th of 2020, Mars was square to Jupiter in Capricorn. And in this time infrastructure in cities, countries, and societies were majorly taxed, and a huge part of that was COVID. 

One of the not so surprising consequences of a global pandemic is it exacerbated and revealed whether or not governments were set up to take care of their people and whether or not individuals were set up to have resources where we could fall back on in case of emergency, so both personally and politically. So divisions based on inequity and the frustrations that come from that and the pain that comes from that really came to a boiling point at these two times. 

In both of these periods we see this really intense increase of propaganda and problems with the news or/and at the news, and then because Mars was Retrograding in 2020, so there was a six-month Retrograde period where Mars was in Aries and Retrograding, we had a third square. But this one was not in Capricorn. This one was in Aquarius. 

So on January 23rd, Mars formed a square to Jupiter in Aquarius, and this is when a new, deadlier strain of COVID came out of the UK, and Biden took office in the US, so there was a major changing of a global superpower—whatever you think of that change, it happened. And I’m not trying to get into too many details about any of this stuff. These dates exist; if you want to do your own research, giddy up and go—have fun with it. 

But when we consider all that we’ve been going through from March 20th of 2020 onwards, you want keep in mind that the specific transits that have occurred between these two planets—Mars, the planet that governs the body, the planet that governs urgency and anger and ambition and a sense of passion and purpose. Mars is the aggressor of the zodiac, and Jupiter, which is the spreader of the zodiac. Jupiter governs news and propaganda. It’s journalism and also fake news. Jupiter is education. It’s also spread; it is about expansion. When we see these two planets having met in March of 2020, it is hard to separate that from COVID, and it’s hard to separate that from this journey we’ve been on globally, domestically, personally—very personally. 

These two planets, when they meet, whether through the conjunction, the square, or the opposition can be explosive because my ego, my feelings, my needs, when it runs into Jupiter, it tends to encounter a great deal of entitlement. And so, on the 29th, we are coming to the closure of a cycle, which has not been a fantastic cycle. On the one hand, great—closure of a cycle, but we’re not out of the woods yet because we’re in the cycle; the opposition is a meaningful part of the cycle. 

We are likely to see and feel all manner of entitlement. You may be feeling mad at people who you feel are curtailing your freedoms, people who are stopping you from living the life you want to live or being able to do what you want to do. And this is where I want to remind you that nothing exists in a vacuum. You do not exist in a vacuum. The people you disagree with do not live in a vacuum. There is so much interconnected that brought us to this moment. So whether we’re looking at systems and societies, we’re looking at groups of people, or we’re looking at you and your bestie or your dad or whatever, whether we’re looking at your personal life or the world at large, we want to remember that a lot of things brought us here. 

It may be tempting to fall into blame and to attack other people. Other people may feel tempted to do that with you. And it’s not very valuable because the positive potential of a Mars opposition to Jupiter is to bring about healing to the ego or to the body or to your passions or to your sexuality. These are all Mars themes, right. It can bring about healing to these things by being able to see the bigger picture. 

The thing about Jupiter that’s really beautiful is that it is related to our capacity for empathy, and when it comes to Jupiter, differently than Neptune, Jupiter generally needs to understand why I should have empathy. And so, this is a great time to educate yourself between the Mercury opposition to Pluto, which is very good for researching and the Mars opposition to Jupiter this week. I really want to encourage you to, if there’s something that is really upsetting you, if there’s a way that you feel stuck or limited and you feel defensive and angry about it, pursue a little bit of education, learn about someone else’s perspective and how they got there, learn about the situation you’re in and how it came to be as it is. This isn’t going to magically fix anything—just to be clear, but it is going to be a good use of this energy because of the cycle that it’s associated with. 

One other thing I can say about the Mars opposition to Jupiter is that it can be really good for sex, just delightful sex—fun and athletic sex. So if you can get some, get in there, get it. Always be safe and always seek consent, but do your worst, my loves, do your fucking worst. 

Okay, this brings me, your loving astrologer, to a very awkward moment, okay. So join me, peek beneath the curtain with me for just a moment, if you don’t mind. So as an astrologer who sees the astrology and who lives in the world and sees the world with all of its mishigas, it is really important that I say I think getting medical advice, getting advice about the pandemic, getting advice about your health in general from an astrologer or a psychic is very fucking problematic, and it’s slightly pandemic, right now. 

I’ve talked about conspirituality and QAnon on the podcast before. If you haven’t heard those episodes, go back to earlier this year, and you’ll find them. There is a lot of misinformation out there, and it is very important that I, as an astrologer with a podcast and a following, acknowledge that. It is very problematic for astrologers and people in le woo to be telling people what to do around medical issues in a global pandemic. I think it’s very problematic. And also, of course, astrologers have access to information; we see cycles and trends. And there can be some valuable information that we have to share. 

But I want to encourage you, if you are not following immunologists and scientists and epidemiologists on social media, if you’re not listening to their podcasts, I invite you to take the time this week to listen to one because it’s really important to remember that whether you’re vaccinated or not, we are in a global pandemic, and the news that came out in this past week is cause for concern. And the news I’m referring to is around increased cases of COVID-19 and increased deaths from COVID-19, and the impact which is still being determined about the Delta variant. 

Now, if you can get vaccinated, get vaccinated. It’s a great fucking idea. It is a great idea. No vaccine is perfect. No medication is perfect. There are side effects to all vaccines, and vaccines are not 100%—nobody ever said there were, but there’s a lot more compelling scientific evidence to get the vaccine than not to. The risks of getting the vaccine are much smaller than the risks of getting COVID when you’re not vaccinated. 

But whether you’re vaccinated or not, whether you are or not, and I am not going to shame anybody for not being vaccinated, wear a fucking mask, and if you’re not vaccinated, wear two masks. Wear a mask. Wear a mask, even if you’re vaccinated, certainly if you’re not. We are in a really important point in the pandemic, and I say that as your astrologer, and I also say that as a person who lives in the world and reads the fucking news. This is a good time to be really conservative and careful. 

When Mars opposes Jupiter, we want to be really careful about your health and about public health. You know, in one of the Jupiter/Mars squares, the one that happened in October, the mental health implications and pandemic fatigue were headlines all over the news in many countries because it’s really hard to compromise your kind of basic freedom of just like walking around without a mask on, doing your regular business, living your life—it is very hard to make the compromises that this pandemic has demanded of us. But this pandemic has demanded it of us. 

And whether or not groups of people are more to blame or not, it kind of doesn’t matter. I mean, sure, sure, of course it matters, and also it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you take care of your own body and that you take care of your community, whether that means your immune compromised friend, whether that means somebody who can't or won't get vaccinated, whatever that means, this is a time to think like a community member. It’s Aquarius energy, guys. It’s Aquarius energy. 

To be willing to take one for the team is a really important theme of this Mars/Jupiter cycle and to understand that yeah, you’re on a fucking team; it’s a team of humans. You might not like humans. I might not like humans. I actually do, but you might not like humans, and that’s fine—that’s cool, you’re still in a fucking team with them, so be a good teammate. And the person standing next to you might be an asshole. That’s not green light for you to be an asshole just because some asshole next to you is being an asshole—mask up. Mask up. Mask up. 

Okay. Now, on a more personal level, if we move away from the whole cycles component to this transit, Mars opposition to Jupiter is a time where you’re more likely to want to take risks; you’re more likely to want to jump into the pool before you check to see if there’s water, that kind of thing. This is a transit that increases impatience intensely. That’s further communicated by the fact that these two planets are now in fixed signs—Leo and Aquarius. 

So one of the things that is likely to happen on and around this date is that you will feel a sense of somebody trying to make you or something trying to make you do something differently than you think it should be done or than you want to do it. And I can't tell you what the right answer is; it all depends on your situation, depends on your values. But if you’re not listening, if you don’t take the time to sift through your reactions to determine the healthiest and most appropriate response, you’re more likely to act out of turn. And the Mars opposition to Jupiter can really find people acting out in pretty dramatic ways. 

Jupiter does not per se govern drama, but Mars is so aggressive and egotistical and me, me, me oriented that when these two planets collide, as they are now, it can really end up being quite dramatic. So don’t start shit if you don’t want shit. If you don’t like the game, don’t play. Yeah, I’m throwing a lot of platitudes at you, but they’re good ones, and I think they fit, so suck on that, platitude haters. 

Yeah, Mars opposition to Pluto, it’s a whole damn thing. And it may find you feeling quite out of sorts, quite out of sorts. Because, again, it’s fire and air. It’s not a grounded or grounding energy. So this may be an important week for you to realign with the actions, activities, habits, resources that you have accessible to you or in place to ground yourself, to remember who you are, and to manage and take care of your physical wellness. 

Again, this transit on its own is not per se about that, although Mars opposition to Jupiter, if it hits your birth chart directly, can absolutely trigger some sort of positive healing crisis, some sort of accelerated development in your healing—physically or psychologically. But it’s such fast and furious energy that a little bit of grounding will do you good. So if you can, prioritize it, and if you can't, do your best—that’s all we can do. 

So I’m going to wrap up the astrology by running through the transits of this week. On the 25th, we have a Mercury opposition to Pluto. On the 28th, Jupiter enters into Aquarius, and on the 29th, Mars forms an opposition to Jupiter. And that’s it. That’s your damn horoscope. That’s what’s happening this week. 

As always, if you want to follow along with the daily transits and see what’s coming and be able to track what happened last week, last month, last year, subscribe to my gloriously adorable tool for astrology students and pros: Astrology for Days. Just go to astrologyfordays.com, and all the information you need is right there; it’s at your fingertips. Does it work on Android? you ask. Yes, yes, it does. It is a web-based app, which means it can be used on any device and is accessible to you wherever you’re at in the world and also with device ownership. That’s kind of cool. 

Also, per usual, if you like the podcast, nee, if you love it, subscribe to it on whatever platform you listen to it because it does make a difference—so does giving it stars and positive reviews. So if you’re in the market for scratching an astrologers back, that’s one way you can do it this week. 

And finally, as always, I encourage you to join me over on Patreon. On the first of the month, I always drop the horoscope for the month ahead on the kitten’s level because, yes, when you join me on Patreon, you can be a puppy or a kitten—it’s that cute over there. 

Alright, my nerds, take good care of yourself, take good care of the people around you, and I will talk to you next week.