Welcome to Ghost of a Podcast. I’m your host, Jessica Lanyadoo. I’m an astrologer, psychic medium, and animal communicator, and I’m going to give you your weekly horoscope and no bullshit, mystical advice for living your very best life.

Welcome back to Ghost of a Podcast, and every week, I start off the podcast by answering a listener question. This week’s question goes like this: “Dear Jessica, I want nothing more than to be a mother someday to my own biological children. Since I was a child myself, I have been obsessed but absolutely terrified of being pregnant and childbirth. This has kept me up at night more times than I can even count. Even from a young age, it has haunted my thoughts. I don’t go a day without this worry or fear of myself, really, that I am not enough. I question my strength, ability, and womanhood. I feel as though there is something stronger than me that I am fighting when I try to mentally assure myself that I can do it as so many strong, brave women have done before me. It’s easy for me to say that my phobia of needles is the cause of all my concern, but I still think it’s something else I’m fated to overcome. Is there anything in my birth chart that can help reassure me that I can do hard things like pregnancy and birth? I was born February 7th, 1989, 9:01 a.m., in Oakland, California.”

This question is so layered and important, and I want to speak to a lot of things in your question and not just the part that has a question mark associated with it. Because, listen, I am of the mind firmly, passionately—and anyone who’s had a private consultation with me and brought up the topic of children knows I am of the mind that the impulse and desire to procreate and the impulse and desire to parent are uniquely separate impulses. Many people really want to be a parent but don't want to procreate. Many people really want to procreate, get pregnant, have a baby, but they don't want to parent. You see, they are different things. And, of course, there are many people who want both, many people who are cis and straight, and it—just like poop—happens. I mean, maybe—technically it’s not a poop, but you get what I’m saying. It just happens for them, easy peasy. But let’s just hold space for the many different ways that people are.

And so, as an astrologer, I am always looking at two things when it comes to having children from the body. The first is whether or not that is a healthy and authentic desire. Does this person want to be pregnant? And then the second thing I’m looking at is the desire, the authentic desire and calling, to parent. You can read them very separately in astrology, which is super cool and validating.

Now, before I get into it, I have to say firmly, emphatically, and with love it is not only women who give birth and get pregnant. People of multiple genders do. Trans dudes do. Non-Binary people do. So there’s that. Also, very importantly, to be a woman does not mean to have the ability to give birth, the desire to give birth, or the experience to give birth. It is not truly—and I really passionately believe this—it is not a sign of one’s womanhood to be able to procreate or to procreate or to parent. Many women are women and cannot give birth or conceive. Many women are women and don't want to give birth or conceive, and that is a wonderful thing, and that is a beautiful thing. The idea that it is the epitome of womanhood to give birth, personally, I reject it. I reject it as somebody who’s never wanted to give birth personally, but I reject it also just because I don’t think that’s true. Now, it may be true for individual people. It may be your pinnacle and idea. But I encourage everyone to question that kind of thinking.

So whether or not you give birth or you parent is not any kind of a signal towards your womanhood in my view. And I think it’s important that I name that and I hold that. And, objectively, giving birth and being pregnant is athletic and demanding and painful and scary in tons of ways. And other people will tell you how beautiful and glorious and magical it is, and those things are true, slash, that’s not what I’m going to talk about here today. Yeah, I think it’s a sign of good common sense to be a little scared of it because it’s very medical. You know what I mean? It can be very medical, and it can be very painful and scary and all those kinds of things. So I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being frightened. But what you’re describing, my dear, is not a fear of childbirth and pregnancy. What you’re describing is a phobia. And the difference between a fear and a phobia is really important.

Phobias are more of, on a clinical level—which, of course, I’m not a shrink; don’t get your psychological advice from me. But it’s more of an anxiety disorder. So when you’re scared of something—like maybe you’re scared of getting hit by a car. Getting hit by a car is scary. But when you think about it actually happening—you know, you’re just sitting on your couch thinking about it happening—it might be scary, but it doesn’t throw you into a tizzy. But if you were, I don't know, crossing the street and a car almost hit you, you’d be totally freaked out and scared. Okay, cool. That’s a fear. That’s a healthy fear, healthy relationship to the fear.

A phobia would be obsessing on the thought of getting hit by a car. A phobia would incline you to avoid crossing the street or being around cars, right? So a phobia is a lot more extreme, and phobias are not rational or reasonable. They come from someplace else inside of us. If you are aware that you have a needle phobia—and what you’re describing really sounds to me like—and I might be pronouncing it wrong. It’s tokophobia, which is T-O-K-O phobia. That is literally the phobia of childbirth and pregnancy, and it’s actually not that uncommon. It’s not as common as needle phobias, which is, I think, one of the most common phobias, certainly in the US. But it’s not as uncommon as you might think. It’s just that there’s so little permission and space for people to talk about their phobias or terror of being pregnant or giving birth that we just don’t hear about it a lot.

So when a person experiences a phobia, it’s like the fear has a life of its own. And it is not necessarily tied to your lived experience. For instance, you haven’t been pregnant. You haven’t given birth. Right? So it’s not based on having a bad experience with giving birth. What it is instead is a fear that has run your life and taken a lot of your energy and wellness from you, it sounds like, if you’ve been obsessing on it every single day of your life. And you’re a grown-up, so that’s been a long time already.

So, before we get into your birth chart, I want to say a couple things. The first thing is phobias are real. And when people try to reason with your phobia, it’s kind of dismissive and shitty. So I’m not going to do that. You have a right to be scared of whatever you’re scared of, and if you have a phobia, your phobia is not going to be bullied or pressured into changing. That’s not how it works with phobias. 

There are many kinds of therapy for phobias, and if this is something you really want to work on, whether the needle phobia or this, what I’m calling phobia, conventionally there’s hypnotherapy, CBT, and ART therapy, which is an acronym. It’s not like art therapy, but it’s an acronym for accelerated resolution therapy. These are some common and, from what I’ve researched, impactful ways of coping with phobias.

So if, as you’re saying in your question, your life has been pretty consumed by this terror, I would encourage you to seek help and to seek help not just so that you can get pregnant and have a baby, but seek help because being consumed by fear sucks. And on top of that, you’re linking this idea that you are not enough with your fear. And the repetitive nature of it, it sounds like it can be downright destructive to your wellness, baby or no baby, childbirth or no childbirth. So I want to throw that at you, my friend. I want to encourage you to seek help from people who are experienced and passionate about these kinds of terrors, fears, and phobias.

So, all that said, let’s look at your birth chart. The second I read your question, I was like, “Okay. So we’re going to see some sort of hard Pluto aspect to Mars or something in the fifth house,” because, very commonly, I see that with people who either don't want to give birth or conceive or who are pretty fucking terrified of it. And, sure enough, when I pulled up your chart, you have a Pluto/Mars opposition. So, before we get any further, I want to say, listen, you say in your question you’ve always wanted your own biological children. I wonder why. Why do you want your own biological children? So specific. I mean, I know most people seem to want that. But why do you want that? You sound like you’re really clear that you want children, but it’s really tied to procreation and having biological children. Why is that?

When I look at your birth chart, I will tell you that you have this Midheaven/Uranus/Saturn/Neptune conjunction in the tenth house. You’ve got your Sun and Moon and North Node all in the twelfth house. These things, in different ways, speak to how permeable you are and how deeply impacted you are by your environment. And this would be especially true in your childhood, in your early developmental experiences.

And so, I would encourage you to really sit with and question, do you want biological children? Why? What does it mean to you? Not because I want to encourage you to change your mind. It’s not about that at all. It’s about understanding yourself and increasing your self-awareness, questioning what it is that you've attached to this drive, because it has been linked, it sounds like your whole life, to terror, obsessive terror at that.

And so, I want to say firmly, emphatically, if you really want to be a mom, you want to be a parent, you don't have to procreate. You don't have to get pregnant. And it doesn’t make you weak. It doesn’t make you less of a woman. It just makes you a human with a preference, and a lucky human at that, because there are so many options in 2021 that didn’t exist in 1921. Right? So you got born at the right time. If you are a person who wants to have children and raise children but not necessarily procreate, you have a right to have that preference. And if you took away the pathology and you took away societal expectations, might you find that you have a preference, maybe a phobia but also a preference, that you just don't want to give birth?

I want to hold space for you to question that and to discover maybe that’s the thing. Maybe that’s the damn thing that your childhood self didn’t know was possible. You can have kids that are your kids, and those kids don’t have to come from childbirth.

Now, all that said, my love, let me tell you this. You are really good at pushing yourself to get shit done. You've got this Pluto/Mars opposition, which really can make you quite a bully to yourself, to others depending on the situation, but it can make you really demanding of yourself. Also, you've got this T-square between Chiron, Uranus, and your Midheaven, which drives you to just suck it up and get it done. When something’s upsetting, when something’s hard, you are incredibly strong. You are very strong-willed. You've got Mercury in Capricorn. This placement inclines you to be very matter of fact in the way you’re thinking and very reasonable.

So all of these things incline you to want to just say, “Well, I understand what needs to be done. I’m going to just do it.” But that doesn’t work with your Pisces Moon intercepted in the twelfth house. If you’re going to do something that’s important to you, especially something like having a kid—because you don't want to pass on your issues to a kid, right? If you’re going to do something that’s important to you, it has to come from a place of fluidity and warmth and kindness like that Pisces Moon in the twelfth house really wants of you. And that means finding a spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically healthy way of doing things is one of the biggest challenges in this lifetime for you, and certainly on this topic.

And so, the question that you've asked me, this question of, “I feel like I’m fated to overcome my fears, but can my birth chart reassure me that this is possible?” this question is inherently flawed because you can overcome anything you want to overcome. I can assure you of that. Yes, you can, but not in any way you approach it. So, if what you’re trying to do is power through and force yourself to feel differently without doing the investigation into what’s motivating you, you’re going to have trouble, my friend. You’re going to have some trouble here.

So the key is to be parenting yourself through what you’re feeling. Because you've been feeling this way since you were a child yourself, this is a moment for you to parent your inner child—I’m sorry if that sounds cheesy, but it’s true and real—to parent your inner child through her terror and through her assumptions because the goals that we set for ourselves when we’re young, sometimes they’re the goals that we end up living our whole lives around and it really works, and sometimes they’re the goals of a child who doesn’t know what’s possible. And so, as we age and grow up and we cross that Saturn Return threshold, which you have done—once we have done that, we need to reconfigure our goals based on what our adult self knows and what is possible in the time, body, and resources we’re living in. And this is something I would encourage you to do.

Phobias can feel like something that need to be overcome, right? And, technically speaking, that’s true. But, unfortunately, they’re not really things that you can push to be overcome. You can’t climb over them. Unfortunately, you've kind of got to get into them. You've got to understand what feelings and beliefs and experiences are motivating this kind of terror. And to nurture and support that. If you do choose to procreate, if that is really important to you and something that you want for yourself, then think of this as the first stages of parenting your yet-to-be-conceived child. Because when we are kind to ourselves, when we nurture and support ourselves, when we have a healthy relationship to our least happy or well adjusted parts, it is foundational to being able to parent our children, whoever they become, whatever comes to pass, through thick and thin, high and low. You know what I’m saying?

And so, this work that I’m encouraging you to do, hopefully with a trained specialist who is a therapist, not just a psychic or an astrologer—this work is often a little bit slow but absolutely worth it. And it’s not a derailment from your progress on the path to being a parent at all. In fact, it’s the kindest, gentlest, and most sustainable way forward. I hope this helps, and good luck on your journey.

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Darlings, darlings, darlings, how are you? No, but really, how are you? This is a really intense moment in an intense year in an intense decade. I’ve been talking so much about the Saturn/Uranus square and my concerns about how it will impact us as individuals psychologically, and also how it will impact us as societies or communities, right? And I think that the astrology of this summer is absolutely bearing that. I know everyone was talking about hot girl summer, but I don't know. Is it really that hot? Maybe it is for you. If it is, congratulations. But from what I’m seeing, from what I’m hearing in the questions you’re sending to me, I’m not getting a lot of questions about, “I’m having too much fun. How do I choose?”

It's stressful. It’s a stressful time. And this week’s horoscope is going to bear a lot more of that, so I’m going to unpack it for you in detail in just one moment. But I do want to take a moment to say that everyone who’s been paying attention to the astrology, everyone who’s been listening to this podcast, has known that what we’re going through is you get used to reality being a particular way, and then something changes. It can be very tempting under this Saturn/Uranus stressful square—it can be very tempting to fixate on, “Things shouldn’t have changed. I don’t like the reason why they’ve changed. I’m mad that they’ve changed.” But, at a certain point, that becomes a waste of your energy. And your energy is fucking precious, right?

It’s important that we cultivate flexibility in the face of new evidence. So, when things change, if they are simply different, whether they’re better or worse—it doesn’t matter—then we, too, must change. Right? We must adjust our expectations. We must adjust our attitudes. We must adjust our behaviors, one or all of those things. And so, I want to invite you to reflect on how much flexibility you have had, whether or not you need to maybe be a little bit more firm, or whether or not you need to let go a little bit. Because when we’re not flexible, so either when we’re a pushover or when we’re rigid, what happens is we lose track of ourselves. When you lose track of yourself, it becomes really hard to make decisions that feel right, to make choices that feel right, to put yourself into the world or in a relationship, show up authentically. Right?

So the astrology of this moment is stressful, and it is ripe with change, and not necessarily change you would choose or change you could have predicted or would have predicted. And that’s as it should be. I mean, it’s not great, but it’s as it should be. So what do you want to learn from this? That’s the question to ask yourself. How can I grow from this? How can I show up for these feelings that are overwhelming or hard to bear? These are questions to ask yourself. You know what I’m saying? And in the meantime, we’ve got a climate crisis going on. We’ve got a pandemic. We’ve got systemic injustice across the board, across all the damn boards, that need our attention and care.

So before I get into the details of this week’s horoscope, which is directly connected to this year’s horoscope, I want to just remind you that the political is personal. You know this, but the political is personal. What we saw happen in the last four years, what there seemed to be a collective reckoning with and embracing of, is the knowledge of how quickly things can go sideways on us if we are not a part of the process. Getting involved in politics or activism is not for everyone, right? You may feel called to do that kind of work and you may not, depending on your nature and where you’re at in your life at this moment.

If you've been feeling really anxious about the world, whether it’s a form of social injustice or inequity, the climate crisis, healthcare—I mean, whatever it is. Whatever it is, if you've been feeling especially anxious about it, I want to remind and invite you to get activated, to get active because oftentimes action is the antidote for anxiety. You’re not going to heal, on your own, all the problems of the world. That’s unrealistic. But what you can do is find one thing to do, one thing that is furthering the movement towards healing and justice in whatever regards you are passionate about or you feel called to. No need to reinvent the wheel. There are a lot of organizations and leaders who are out there doing the work, and they’ve been doing the work. So I want to just kind of remind you that in this stressful time, doing something outside of yourself can be really impactful for the world and also for your mental health.

Now, for those of you who are interested in getting involved in politics, I’ve got a little something extra to share. I don't know if you've heard about Arena Academy, but they have a five-day training designed to help you take your skills to the next level and help you find a job in politics. There’s no degree that prepares you to work on campaigns, but there is Arena. If we’re going to save our democracy and bring about the change our country needs from within the system, we need democrats to win. But even the strongest candidates do not win on their own. They can’t win on their own, and they don’t. They need top-notch staffers behind the scenes who reflect the diversity of their communities and have talent and experience that is required to get them into office.

So, if you’re interested in getting involved but you haven’t known what to do, check out Arena Academy. They help you to find a job in politics. They have a five-day training coming up in September. The deadline for the application is on August 15th, and you can go to arena.run/academy to learn more and apply. There’s scholarships and all kinds of stuff. So check them out. I’ll be speaking at their next training. Super exciting. And I hope you’ll join me there.

Okay. Let’s get astrological. We are looking at the week of August 1st through the 7th of 2021. Yeah, it’s fucking August. Here we go. So this week is marked by a T-square. A T-square in astrology is a configuration of planets. It means that there’s at least two planets in opposition to each other and that both of the planets in the opposition form a square to yet a third planet. Now, there can be more than three planets involved if some of those planets at those points are conjoined each other. When we are dealing with an opposition, as I talk about on the podcast frequently, we’re often dealing with something relational, right? I am projecting this onto you. You’re projecting this onto me. We are experiencing it in relationship to each other.

When there’s a T-square, that relational projecting out that can happen with the opposition can get focused on that planet that is at the square point. It’s called the focal planet because it gets focused. When we have a focal planet to a T-square, whether it’s in a birth chart or it’s in transit or in a mundane chart as we’re talking about now, what we have is the potential for catharsis, for great healing or great chaos. I said great chaos. It can go any kind of way.

And before I get into the details, I just want to reiterate the upshot of this because this week’s T-square is happening between a Sun/Mercury conjunction in Leo, opposite to Saturn in Aquarius, square to Uranus in Taurus. So it’s all fixed energy, and it of course involves that pesky little Saturn square Uranus. So the upshot is that how you deal with upsets, frustrations, things not going your way, miscommunications, a need to change your mind, a need to pivot—how you deal with those things, how you cope with those things, requires some measure of emotional maturity and some mental resiliency, a lack of attachment and rigidity—again, fluidity, flexibility.

Some people are great at that. I don't know who’s amazing at it all the time, right? It’s hard. It’s hard. And because of this, we can expect this to be a pretty stressful week. Now, stress—I want to be really clear—is not inherently bad. We need stress and friction to make a piece of art that is inspired. We need stress and friction to have life-altering sex. We need stress and friction for creation to occur, to take a project off the ground. It takes stress and friction to approach someone and be like, “Hey, want to be my friend?” or like, “Hey, you want to make out?”

Stress isn’t inherently bad. I mean, it might be bad. It might suck terribly. But it’s not inherently bad. But if we recoil from our feelings that are tense or stressful or stressy, if we don’t add—as I was talking about last week in response to the listener’s question, if we don’t add some breath to our excitement, it just becomes kind of locked into anxiety. And when that occurs, it’s hard for us to make use of our resources, our internal resources or our access to resources in the world around us. So don’t forget that you have resources and tools. Cultivate flexibility—I’m just getting ahead of it all. That’ll help. It’ll help.

Okay. Now let’s get detailed. On the first week, the Sun conjunction to Mercury, lovely transit, right? Typically speaking, I don’t go too bananas over this transit. It’s one where, on the positive, it aligns us with the capacity to really figure something out, to speak our truth, to articulate something about our identities or about who and what we are and what our will truly is. It can help us to articulate those things, and that can be really healing. You may have a conversation with someone or come across something that you read or someone else has said that just clicks something for you. It’s really great for formulating ideas and ideas that are authentic and reflect something of a wholeness to you. It's a lovely transit. It’s not the most aggressive of all the transits in the world, but it’s a really lovely transit. 

Now, this version, this particular Sun conjunction to Mercury, is especially meaningful because on the same day, August 1st, both the Sun and Mercury are forming exact oppositions to the planet Saturn. Damn. That’s not what you want to hear. Just—spoiler alert—that’s not what you want to hear because whenever we have planets, especially these personal planets of Mercury and the Sun—whenever we have planets opposite Saturn, we tend to be plagued by this feeling of scarcity, like, “I am alone. I don’t have enough money now, and I’ll never have enough money. That person doesn’t like me. My boss doesn’t value any of my ideas or doesn’t listen to me.” It creates this feeling of, “There’s not enough for me now. I’m not enough now, and I won’t be enough later. There won’t be enough later.” So both of those ideas because we’re dealing with Mercury and the Sun. Feeling like you’re not being validated, feeling like people don’t see you, hear you, get you, classic of these transits. 

It can also be that you either encounter someone or you are the someone who is just being a damn dick, somebody who’s playing the role of Saturn where it’s like, “This is how it’s got to be. You’ve got to suck it up. You’ve got to handle these restrictions. Here’s extra work for you; handle it.” Again, Saturn can show up as restrictive parental limiting forces that are telling you how to be and what to be.

Now, in the context of the collective, we can expect that governments, corporations, bosses, landlords, parents, people who have some sort of managerial role over others—and, again, you may be that person, or you may be dealing with those people. And it’s not just people. It can be people. It can also be—like, for instance, government is like it’s this massive umbrella, right? It’s a personified thing. It is much bigger than one person or even one branch of government, usually.

But in the context of Saturn and this opposition or these oppositions, unfortunately, what we can expect to see is governments or people with kind of a patriarchal style of authority imposing restrictions. And it may be restrictions for your own good. It literally may be that way, and it may not be. It may be that they are imposing restrictions for their own safety because they’re going through their own feelings of scarcity. Right? It is what it is. I mean, I don’t make the rules. I’m just reporting on them. But we can expect to see real tension in the world, I imagine, in particular around COVID restrictions but not exclusively that. Because when we’re dealing with any form of austerity or any kind of scarcity or need to cut back, we’re generally looking at Saturn. You know what I’m saying? It’s Saturn time.

So, in public, we can expect some serious upsets. My best advice to you is if you can be a part of the solution, that is great. Do what you can. And if you do not feel that you are informed enough, if you do not feel that you understand, take pains to educate yourself because, on the positive, these transits—and, straight up, they’re hard. I mean, this is difficult stuff. But these transits can provoke the crisis you need to figure shit out. It can provoke the crisis you need to finally talk to somebody about something that has just been stressful and difficult.

While Mercury opposite Saturn can coincide with the end of a friendship or a really difficult conversation, it’s unlikely to be about something that’s not true. Saturn forces us to confront reality. So if things aren’t working for you in a relationship, whatever kind of relationship it is, that is what it is. And pretending it isn’t doesn’t actually help you. I mean, it might in the very short term but not in the long term because here’s the boner: reality is reality is reality, and it’s going to wait for you. It’s not going to get better just because you want to pretend that it’s not what it is. And that sucks, slash, also, there’s something freeing in that, realizing, “Okay. If it’s reality, if I’ve accepted that it’s reality, then I can start to deal with it.” And the dealing with it is what Saturn wants. Saturn wants us to cultivate maturity by choosing actions, personally but also in public, in community, that align with what we believe to be right.

That’s what Saturn wants of us. And Mercury is your mind, your attitudes, what you say, how you listen. And the Sun is your identity, how you want to be seen in the world and how you really show up. It’s your will. So it’s not your ego. It’s your will, and that is a bright light within you. These transits may coincide with depressive thinking or feelings, especially if you are inclined to depression or depressiveness—two different things, right, depressiveness and depression? But it can incline you to feel pretty depressive, honestly.

Here's the good news: it’ll pass. Here’s also the good news: if you are depressive—and I’m not talking about depression, the mental illness. I’m talking about just feeling fucking down, feeling exhausted, feeling burnt out. If you’re feeling that kind of a way, it’s your system saying, “Hey, I need attention.” So, if you can be responsible—which, honestly, the astrology of this day and this week, but especially on and around this day before Uranus gets involved, it does incline us to actually be responsible to ourselves. So, if you can simply listen to yourself and be like, “Okay. I need a break. I’m seeking the answer. I’m not finding the answer because I feel like crap. How can I take care of myself right now so that I can feel a little better and then have greater perspective and return to the problem from that place of greater perspective and resiliency?” That’s the ideal right there.

Now, on the 2nd of August, Venus forms an exact trine to Uranus, and Mercury forms an exact trine to Chiron. These transits are really lovely and, in particular, very lovely to be having in this bit of a shit show sort of T-square moment we’re in. 

So trines are 120-degree angles. They are a benefic flow of energy. That’s astrology speak for saying they promote chill. And so, Venus trine to Uranus is really supportive to us having perspective and being willing and able to align with your values. Right? So that’s a really wonderful thing, and it’s something to seize onto because of the stressfulness of this transit or these transits this week.

Venus trine to Uranus can be really great for connecting with people, which is just going to be a little bit of wind in your wings for the other stuff we’re going through because it is quite stressful for relationships. Mercury trine to Chiron increases our capacity and willingness to stay present for the kind of difficult, stressy, painful stuff that we’re being confronted with. It's also a time where we can more easily forgive or have perspective simply because we’re willing to give others the same grace that we give ourselves. So that really sucks for you if you’re not good at giving yourself grace, right? You’re more likely to be judgmental with other people if you are really judgmental with yourself. And that’s not a rule. Maybe that’s not true for you, but very broadly speaking.

Now, when I see these two transits in the context of this week’s astrology, I’m not going to give you too much more information because, really, they’re not going to be spectacular on their own. Instead, what they’re going to do is create the support that we need, if we so choose it, to have our attitudes and the way that we engage with ourselves and others have greater flow and abundance to them, greater buoyancy to them. If these transits were occurring on an easier week astrologically, I’d have a lot more words, but this is where we want to really go for context and not just each individual detailed transit.

And that brings us to the 3rd of August. August is not starting off easy. I apologize. So, on the 3rd of August, we have an exact Mercury square to Uranus. On the 6th, we will have an exact Sun square to Uranus. So Uranus has all week long been the focal planet of our T-square. Now, on the 3rd and the 6th, these transits are exact. We may see a little something extra. So whenever we see squares, we are turning a corner, right? And that can be conflictual. It can be chaotic. It can be either way, right? It can be really upsetting, or it can provoke great progress. And, often, people find that when you've done something really amazing and something really wonderful, it involves a risk. It involves some sort of strength or challenge, right? That’s a square for you.

Now, when Mercury forms a square to Uranus, it is not a transit known internationally for listening well. It’s likely that you’re going to have a hard time listening to what people are saying, or others may have a hard time listening to you. This is not like a Mercury Retrograde thing where there’s misunderstandings that are just kind of organic and nobody meant it. Mercury and Uranus are both planets that govern the mind in different ways, and when Mercury and Uranus meet, especially by square, what we have is a hard time listening because we’re so busy thinking about our next point or we’re referencing it back to a thing we read five minutes ago, and, therefore, it’s hard to stay present. There’s too much anxiety and excitement. There’s too many ideas floating around. It’s hard to kind of get grounded under this influence.

Now let’s add to the mix that it’s all fixed energy. We’re dealing with Mercury in Leo and Uranus in Taurus. And so, there can be some stubbornness that you may encounter in yourself or others, or it could even be a total feast of frustrations where you’re being stubborn and the other person is being stubborn, and you’re really agreeing with each other but you’re saying it differently, so you fight. Or you cannot accept that you see things differently.

So here’s my warnings for this transit, keeping in mind that Saturn is opposite Mercury and square to Uranus, right? Let’s keep this shit in mind. Saturn is the taskmaster and just being like, “Is this sustainable? Is this authentic? Can you stand by your actions?” So Mercury square to Saturn inclines us to say shit without thinking it through. You may be feeling really defensive. You may be feeling really protective. You may be feeling really restless. Be careful what you say. Once you say a thing, it’s hard to take it back.

Have you heard of the Wayback Machine? Google it if you haven’t. Or, if you’re like me, DuckDuckGo it if you haven’t. Once you put a thing on the internet, it cannot be taken off. You may delete it. It’s not gone. So, before you press Send or Publish, before you open your sweet, sweet mouth, make sure you want to say what you’re saying and you want to say it the way you’re saying it. And if you find that you’ve said something that isn’t authentic to you, that was presented poorly—you didn’t say it in the way you meant to say it—or that you were misinformed, hey, Saturn’s involved in this whole thing, so a little bit of humility will take you a very long way.

We are all allowed to make mistakes. You are. You are allowed to make mistakes. You are allowed to have a learning curve. We’re all entitled to that. But in order for that to really be what’s going on, we need authentic humility, and that requires us to be able to hold space for, “I fucked up. I fucked up in this way. I fucked up maybe for this reason, but I fucked up. And I want to learn from this. I want to learn from how it feels to have fucked up. I want to learn emotionally about myself and how I hold responsibility, and I want to learn about whatever it is that I didn’t do in a way that was quite right.”

Mercury square to Uranus can be very disruptive. It can be a really disruptive transit, in particular to your friendships, and it can even be a time where secrets are revealed. Okay? So it could be that secrets are revealed. It could be that just—things are clarified. Something comes out in some way or another. That can, again, be upsetting. So I want to, again, return you to getting grounded. If a thing is real, it deserves and requires being dealt with. And if it’s not real, hey, it can wait.

So getting grounded, getting centered if you can, managing your mental health, managing your emotional health, emotional wellness, and mental wellness—these things will really support you if shit comes your way that feels overwhelming or in any way shocking. So, basically, what you want to know is there may be mishaps, miscommunications. Things are not likely to go to plan on and around this date, slash, also this week. It’s a test of your flexibility more than it’s a sign that things are terrible and bad and that they’ll never work out. And how you cope with the mental tension that comes up on and around this date is really important, and you’re important. By centering your own mental health and your mental wellness, you set a foundation for being able to engage with others in a healthy way.

I don't know. I love the idea of mental wellness and spiritual wellness and emotional wellness as not only an investment in self but an investment in the community at-large as a way to assure yourself and others that you can take responsibility for yourself and you can engage in ways that are sustainable and with integrity. I don't know. I’m just a fan of it.

Okay. Now, there’s another transit. It’s the Sun square to Uranus. This transit, again, very stressful, very upsetting. You can expect things to go a little bit sideways when this transit occurs. When the Sun forms a square to Uranus, we have to be flexible. We have to be open-minded. And the reason why we have to be those things is because, generally speaking, what happens under this influence is something that requires it. So you may be feeling uneasy or restless. You may be feeling just frustrated with limitations or obligations that you have or that emerge this week or have emerged very recently. And there’s a risk of being somehow really reactive. So that might look like some sort of outburst from you or from someone else that is any kind of emotion, but it’s an outburst. 

So it’s the kind of thing you ideally want to bring to a therapist or to someone who you really trust instead of doing it in a situation or with people that can’t or won’t hold a safe container for you. We want to hopefully bring our intense and raw emotions to safe places. When the energy gets too intense or things get too intense, it becomes really hard to do that, and so this is where outbursts occur.

So here’s the best way to deal with this energy. It’s to think about ways that you can adjust your perspective. I’m not saying to invalidate your current perspective. It’s not about that. It’s about expanding your current perspective. Seeing things from a broadened viewpoint can really help to have greater compassion and empathy if that’s what’s needed, or to simply have more data so that your assessments are more informed.

Uranus governs the unexpected. Uranus governs that which is hard to predict because it comes out of left field. It’s crystals and the internet. It is humanitarian efforts. And when planets like Mercury—and now we’re talking about the Sun—form a square to Uranus, there can be great progress or great setbacks. And sometimes progress looks like a setback. Sometimes we need to get so set back that we come together and get mobilized to create progress. I mean, I wish it wasn’t like that, but you've all seen The Matrix.

So here’s the thing. The Sun square to Uranus happening at the end of the week, so it being exact at the end of the week but active throughout the week, it’s just a really stressful cherry on top if we’re being honest. And it’s a stressful cherry on top because things are likely to feel really important and kind of loaded, and they’re likely to be important and loaded, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to have clarity about what to do or what’s happening. There’s likely to be a lack of clarity, a lack of reliable clarity. And sometimes that’s just how life is.

We don’t necessarily have enough data all the time to make informed and balanced choices or to be especially clear about a thing, right? And it is okay to not know yet. I cannot stress this enough. It is okay to not know yet. Because this T-square is just another extension of the Saturn/Uranus square, it is requiring that we not undermine or undervalue the mental health, the psychological impact, of this transit. And it is important to not underestimate the importance of your own attitudes, your own thinking, like the words you use and the tone you use when you think and talk to yourself, how you speak to others, and how you listen.

And I know these things are all very mercurial. They all sound very mercurial. But because of Saturn and Uranus’s square, I think a huge part of how this is shaking down in the human experience is it’s testing our sense of reality and our sense of responsibility to the collective, to others, and our sense of responsibility to ourselves and how we manage the frustrations that exist within all of that.

It's been a long couple of years, wouldn’t you say? And if you’re feeling especially tense or stressed or burnt out, that’s okay. Here we are. It’s life. What are you going to do? But the answer to that hopefully is take a little bit better care of yourself. Slow down where you can, how you can, when you can. That’s the move when and if possible, right?

Now, one more thing I’ll say about this horoscope is next week’s horoscope begins on the 8th of August, and we have a New Moon. And so, for all of you New Moon nerds—and I love a New Moon nerd—who like doing some sort of ritual work or manifestation work with the New Moon, this week is a good one to get clear about what you need help with and what you need to call in. So, again, this is a great time to clarify what isn’t working, what you don't yet understand, and where you need support or greater resources, whether they be internal or external.

And then at the New Moon, which we will talk about, of course, in depth with next week’s horoscope—with the New Moon, it will be a good time to bring that clarity—even if it’s a little bit chaotic, even if it’s a little bit messy—to the mix. You know? You know. You know. Okay.

So, as always, if you want to track the transits with me, subscribe to my pro tool for astrology students and professional/intermediate astrologers called Astrology for Days. It is a transit-tracking app, and it is de-fucking-lightful. So, if you’re in the market for such things, let me wet your whistle with this delightful pro tool.

Also, I’m going to run through the transits one more time. On the 1st of August, we are looking at a Sun conjunction to Mercury in Leo, and both of those planets are opposite to Saturn in Aquarius. And on the 2nd, we have a Venus in Virgo trine to Uranus in Taurus, and an exact Mercury in Leo trine to Chiron in Aries. On the 3rd of August, we have a Mercury square to Uranus. On the 6th, the Sun is square to Uranus. And this whole Sun/Mercury/Saturn/Uranus mishigas is a T-square. It is a T-square between the Sun/Mercury conjunction opposite to Saturn and all of those three planets square to Uranus. Giddy-up, my loves. Giddy the fuck up.

Okay. As always, if you haven’t already subscribed to Ghost of a Podcast, please do wherever you listen to podcasts because it really does help a DIY podcast like this one. It truly does. Also, if you haven’t downloaded my free app for iOS called Tiny Spark, you’re missing out. It’s cute. It’s effective. It’s a tool for resourcing your intuition. What’s not to love? Center self-care and stay connected to the impact you’re having on the people in your life and the world around you. Bye.