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, Darlings, to Ghost of a Podcast. This week’s question comes from A in Australia, and it goes like this: “I met with an astrologer recently to go over my ‘Soul purpose’ but left feeling more confused than ever. I’m feeling lost in my purpose of life and feel called to do something meaningful as a career, but I can’t quite figure it out. The astrology session covered so many broad areas that it left me feeling like I am destined to never have a solid calling. In recent years, I’ve been through divorce and lost my father to cancer, and now more than ever I’m asking myself, ‘Where do I fit in?’ I feel called to work in my community, but I have no idea how. I’m so afraid of making the wrong move that I’m not moving at all. Is there anything in my birth chart that shows why I lack clarity in this area? Do I even have a purpose? Thank you so much, A.” And A was born November 29th, 1989, at 6:04 p.m. in Perth, Australia

So, before we get into the details of your question, a couple things. For astrologers who are listening or astrology practitioners, it is tempting to want to give people everything and to want to kind of prove how much you know. And so, unfortunately, what can happen, especially in early years of practice, is that what astrologers do is we give a lot of information, too much information for a person to process. It’s not synthesized data, even though it may be accurate data. Unfortunately, what happens is a lot of people walk away from astrology sessions like this feeling like, “Well, a lot of things were right, but I don't know what to do with this.” And so people can end up feeling demoralized or confused by astrology consultations in this way.

And so that’s just a quick and little note for the practitioners listening, and I think that goes for Tarot readers and other people who do interpretive consulting work, right? You want to ask the client what they want and answer to the best of your ability. However, a lot of times, people come in with the wrong questions. I have said this 700 million times on the podcast and in life, and I will say it again. Most people, most of the time, ask the wrong question. for instance, you, my friend, A, you want to know your Soul purpose. And you are somehow conflating that to your career. Why would it be that one’s Soul purpose or your Soul purpose would be the same as the way you make a living in capitalism? Do we really believe that the Soul falls into industrialized capitalism? I mean, a lot of people do make that assumption, but I can assure you that’s not how Soul purpose works. That’s just not how it works.

And so, when you came in and you asked for a Soul-purpose reading, what you were likely to get is broad, generalized data because Soul work is internal work. And if what you got from the astrologer or asked for from the astrologer was “I want career and material direction; I want tools for figuring out what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and I want to know my Soul’s purpose,” you’re asking for really different things. And for some people, our career and our Soul purpose is lined up. I’m a good example of that. My work is aligned with my Soul’s purpose.

That said, there are a lot of parts and components to my Soul’s purpose that will never have anything to do with my work in the world or anything I do in public or around or with other people because Souls are big, huge things. And our meat suits, our bodies, they live inside our Souls. Our Souls are much bigger and broader than our bodies, which means our Souls are much bigger and broader than this human condition. And so, when we seek to understand the Soul’s work and we seek to understand our career, we are seeking radically different things.

So I’m not surprised that you got some kind of confusing information there that you didn’t quite know what to do with. So that’s the starting point, right? When a person wants a thing—any of us want anything—we want that thing because we believe we will be happier for getting it. So, whether you want money or a career or to achieve a goal, the wanting those things is because you believe that getting that power, that validation, that achievement, whatever the fuck it is, will make you happier. And by being happier, you'll be more whole. The anxieties will go away, the upsets will go away, that kind of thing.

Sometimes that’s true. A lot of times, it’s not true, which is why so many powerful and famous people are not happy, right? The pursuit of happiness requires us to locate ourselves and where we experience joy and to locate our needs and how we care for our needs, and locate how we relate to others, and to be able to be flexible and consistent in a way that’s appropriate for your personality, your situation, where you’re at in life, yadda, yadda. Right?

So all to say, your desire to know your Soul’s purpose and your desire to know your career—I want to separate them completely because, in my view, they are different things for everyone. And for some of us, there happens to be crossover. But that is not empirical evidence. That is just a lovely coincidence.

So the next thing that I want to speak to is you are almost 32 years old, so you’re really young still. And you’re divorced in recent years and have lost your father to cancer, which is both very painful things, but especially cancer and grieving and death—exceptionally difficult things to go through as a person. And the intensity of the pain you've been going through and the loss you've been going through inevitably is going to make you feel set adrift because you’re a person, and inevitably it’s going to deemphasize material concerns in favor of internal emotional and spiritual concerns.

I’ve talked about this recently on an episode about grief, which—if you missed it, A, you might want to listen to it. It came out a couple weeks ago. Finding your place in the world when you’re still struggling to locate yourself, when you’re experiencing loss and bereavement, is exceptionally hard. And that doesn’t mean it’s impossible, doesn’t mean that some people can’t do it, but you’re asking a lot of yourself, my friend. You’re asking a huge amount of yourself, and I want to say slow down. What is demanding your energy and attention is what needs your energy and attention, and that’s your heart. It’s your feelings. And this brings us to your birth chart.

In your birth chart, you've got not one, not two, but four planets in the sign of Capricorn in the eighth house. Okay? That is a lot of fucking planets in Capricorn. So this idea that somehow you emerged from your reading with the other astrologer from, that you would never have a meaningful career, I don't know where that came from. I mean, I have theories about maybe what you heard or what that person said, but really, you got a lot of Capricorn in your chart. And this means that you are capable of identifying goals and achieving those goals. Now, might it take you tons of years and tons of effort and energy? Fuck yes. But you’re absolutely capable of identifying what you want to do and then taking the steps necessary to do it.

Capricorn is a sign that many people associate with patience, but I have no idea where that came from. When people have a lot of Capricorn or strong Saturn placements in their chart, they are capable of doing the work over the course of time. But—fun fact—they tend to be deeply impatient and pretty consistently obsessing on where they’re not and where other people are. So there can be a way that, yes, there is a lot of tenacity and patience associated with your nature, but you’re also pretty impatient.

Now, on top of it, you’re a Sagittarius. You got three planets in Sag. You've got a Moon/Mercury conjunction in Sagittarius. And so, for you, as soon as you can vision it, you want it done. And if you can’t vision it, it’s really confusing for you. This is all really difficult. But before I get too caught up in career stuff, let me speak to Soul’s purpose.

When we’re looking at the Soul’s purpose, there’s a couple ways of doing it. One is looking at the nodal axis. We looked at the North Node to see what a person’s Soul purpose is. And there’s a lot of value in doing that, in looking at the nodal axis. However, in practical terms—so there’s the study of astrology and the, kind of, what technically works, but then there’s the practice of astrology, what materially works for human people in bodies and in complicated, fucked-up lives.

As far as I am concerned, when you are living in integrity with yourself, when you’re embodying your nature to the best of your ability in the here and now and you continue to do that in each here and now as it presents itself, then you are inevitably living your Soul’s purpose. This idea that the Soul’s purpose is like a flag that is hidden at the top of a mountain, and all you have to do is climb that mountain and find that flag—that’s not it. That’s not how the spiritual development works. That’s not even how truth and emotional presence works. When you are living in integrity with yourself and in harmony with your environment, which may mean being in conflict with your environment because that might be the most harmonious you can be while being authentic and in integrity with yourself—when you’re doing that, you are living your Soul’s purpose, period. [indiscernible 00:10:55]. That’s it.

Now, let me add one more point of complexity. If you are conflating Soul’s purpose with career, we would look to the Midheaven because the Midheaven is a career point. It’s like your conscious objectives. Now, let’s break these points down. You have a Midheaven in Pisces, which means that for you, you need to feel like you’re doing something of value that is helpful to others or helpful to the environment. This Midheaven placement tends to be pretty service oriented. And so that service may be making music, or it might be that you are an administrative assistant or secretary. But you need to work in an environment where you feel at home, where you feel connected and like you can actually do what you’re meant to do and do it kindly and do it in a safe environment. That’s that Midheaven in Pisces. So that’s not a great source of answers for you, but it does give you kind of context and clues for how you need to feel wherever you land. Right?

Now, having a Midheaven in a mutable sign, as you do, can incline you to changing careers or changing your vision more than once in life. That’s not bad; it’s not good. It’s just your normal. So ease off on the pressure of doing everything right or not doing anything at all. What makes that worse for you is you have a Mars/Pluto conjunction in the sixth house, which gives you very hardworking, perfectionistic nature. So you tend to go all in and go hard on your goals and ambitions. For better or worse, that’s what you do.

And so the key for you is finding work that you believe in and that you can sustain. And you said you wanted to work in your community. I’m not really sure what your community is or what that looks like for you, but having a bunch of Capricorn and a bunch of Sagittarius in your chart certainly inclines you to wanting to coach or provide for others, in other words, to be able to do some sort of service where your consistency and capacity for organization is an asset and your ability to communicate your vision is an asset. So you can do that as a personal trainer. You could do that as a mindfulness coach. You could do that as a death doula. You could do that in marketing. There’s a million places this can be applied.

So I want to really say to you there’s no reason why you can’t have a career, but it’s not the most important thing. The reason why you don't feel called to external achievement at this time is because that’s not what’s most important to you at this time. Do you need to make money to live? Yeah, probably. If you’re like most people, probably. But what’s the most important thing for you now is to be nurturing yourself through the losses that you've suffered and to identify what it is that’s important to you. What holds meaning to you? Not only what problems exist in the world that you could potentially bring some sort of healing to, not just what kind of work could you do, not just what purpose do you have, but also, what is healthy for you to do? What do you enjoy doing? What makes sense for you to do in terms of your time?

People are often thinking about, “What career do I want?” And what I often ask them is, “Okay, so you have a fantasy of this career. What lifestyle do you want?” Think about the lifestyle that you want because if you don't want the lifestyle of sitting at a desk all the time, that cuts out a lot of jobs. If you don't want the lifestyle of having to hustle and invoice people for money, that cuts out self-employment and being a freelancer. There’s a value in identifying what you want your lifestyle to be. Do you like working with people? Do you like only working with people when roles are clearly defined?

This kind of thinking can help you to narrow down your focus, and not necessarily in the world, but within yourself. Right? When we know ourselves and we accept ourselves, it becomes easier to navigate options. And you do have options. You’re very intelligent. You’re very capable. However, you are going through a lot right now. You’re just coming out of a Pluto conjunction to your Venus, and gratefully, this is just about over, but you’re still going through the aftermath of it. And it’s a lot. Feeling lost and even being lost is not a sign of staying lost. When you find yourself after a period of being lost, if you’re doing it right, you’re finding yourself in a new location than when you last knew how to locate yourself. You’re changing, and you’re growing. It is painful and scary. However, it’s what’s happening.

I’m going to say something that no one who has a Pluto/Mars conjunction, especially in the sixth house, or who has four planets in Capricorn, wants to hear. And it’s this: go forth and fail, my friend. Be willing to fail because when you are willing to fail, it doesn’t mean you’re choosing to fail. It doesn’t mean you’re prioritizing or seeking failure. But that means you’re willing to try. Every person who puts themselves out there, who does something of value, is risking failure. Every person who puts themselves out there and does something they fucking hate is risking failure. It’s the only way to have success. It’s the only way to learn something new. It’s to not allow our fears of failing to dominate our choices, because everybody fucks up. You will, for sure, fuck up. You will fail. You’ll fuck up. I will fail. I will fuck up. Nobody is perfect. No one has an easy life all the time. That’s just not a thing. The human condition is bonkers. It’s bananas.

So, my friend, the work is to make a move and to know that if you suffer a setback, that you can learn from that setback. Each individual setback is not a reflection of our value or our capacity in life. All of us struggle, and you are going through a really intense series of struggles right now. So finding the answer to the question, “Where do I fit in?”—start with that internally. “Do I accept myself? Do I know myself? Can I be where I’m at?” Because what I can see about you, my dear, is that you tend to dig in your heels and get real stubborn at times, and that kind of attachment that you have to your vision of how things should be or how you thought they would be—when you are too attached to that, then you do things that you know in your heart of hearts aren’t right for you. And then you feel bad because they don't work, but they shouldn’t have worked because you knew they weren’t right for you. And my guess is your marriage is a pretty good example of that.

It is okay to change your mind, to pivot, to not know who you are. And I hate to say it because I know you wanted an answer, but this is the answer. The answer is your Soul’s purpose will reveal itself to you as you develop greater self-acceptance and presence. Inevitably, for better or for worse, it just will. And your career is important. Your Soul’s purpose is important. But they are not the next steps. The next steps are smaller steps, and they’re more immediate steps. Nurture yourself. Care for yourself. Reach out to community. Explore not just what you want to do for work but what you want your life to feel like, what you want your life to look like, what works for you on a material level, and what you know absolutely doesn’t. It's even valuable to know what might work, things that you’re flexible about but you’re not sold on totally.

Now, one more thing. I know that there are many people in the world who are in their 20s or even their teens who know what they want to do for a career. They’re certain of it, and they do it, and they even achieve success in it. And yay to those people. That’s not most people. That is not in any way most people. Many people are in their 40s or 50s or 70s and don't know what they want to do for a career because careers are not inherent to human nature. You see? No, meaning is. Value is. A sense of direction is. These things are inherent to human nature.

A sense of purpose, if it’s overthought in a fancy Mercury in Sagittarius way, can become this fantastical thing where it’s like, “My sense of purpose is I have to change the world and be special in this one way.” And that might be your path. That’s certainly some people's paths. But for many people, a Soul’s purpose is exploring the very nature of truth and committing to learning throughout their lives. Spoiler alert, that’s yours. But it’s not that simple. And you might note that I didn’t focus on the North Node, and I’m not focusing on the Soul purpose thing because I think that’s a distraction from the present moment. And the way we access our Soul’s purpose is by being here in this moment with integrity. And when we can’t, or when we fail in our pursuit of being in integrity or living a good life, when shit befalls us through no fault of our own, responding to that with kindness and our best efforts, even when our best efforts are shit—that’s the work.

Some people's Soul purpose is satiated by learning how to be kind or learning how to be a better listener, breaking a familial pattern of narcissism—some people's Souls’ purpose are satiated by inventing something or running a business. One is not better than the other. One is not more valuable than the other. In the realm of Soul’s purpose, there is no hierarchy, and there is no rushing that shit.

I hope this was helpful and somehow grounding for you, and I wish you the best of luck through your personal and professional journeys.

There’s a recall election in California September 14th, and Californians, you've got to get out there and vote. Vote no on the governor recall. It’s really important. Don’t lose steam now. I know there’s a lot going on. Make sure you vote. Cast your ballots, remember, by September 14th. You know what to do. Get out there and get it done.

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There’s no time like the present to get astrological, wouldn’t you say? This week, we’re looking at September 5th through the 11th of 2021, and this is episode 222.

Well, fuck. Okay. So listen. Hurricanes, fires, floods, abortion rights being gutted, voting rights being gutted, a pandemic of hate and a pandemic of loneliness, while new strains of the actual, material pandemic are also being discovered and spreading. We have a pandemic of disinformation and misinformation. It is a fucking lot. And, you know, the astrology of this moment, the astrology of what’s to come, it’s not great, obviously. It’s not great. So I thought today, before I start to unpack the horoscope, I would give you a couple prompts, a couple tools for coping with this period, because it is really, really demoralizing, disheartening, frightening. So my hope for you, my loves, is that you are staying informed but also that you’re taking care of yourself.

So I want to give you a couple questions to ask yourself, okay? The first one is, how are you taking care of yourself around the feelings that all of this terrible fucking news and tragedy that is happening in the world—around how it’s making you feel? Now, of course, if you were directly impacted by something, if you’re in survival mode, then you might not have a lot of space to ask yourself how to take care of yourself because you’re in survival mode. But if you have the space, I want to encourage you to ask yourself how you’re taking care of yourself around the feelings because fear and outrage and hurt—these things are catalyzing.

These things are a healthy response to so much of what’s happening in the world, but if we don't sit with those emotions, cope with those emotions, tend to those emotions, they’re emotions that can very easily get twisted up, and when they get twisted up, they become self-harm, self-sabotage, or acting out, right? And who’s got the energy for that? I mean, the answer is, actually, a huge amount of us have a lot of energy for those things, but let’s do our best to just check in with yourself, if you can, once a day—if you can’t, once a week. Do whatever works for you to check in with, “How am I caring for myself around the feelings of what’s happening in the world?”

The next thing I want to encourage you to do is ask yourself, “How am I taking care of others?” Whether that’s people in your life, in your immediate circles, people that are in need, or strangers far away that are in need, people that you don't know personally, how are you showing up for others? Because when self-care is exclusively fixated on the self, it’s not as satisfying as when it’s paired with concern and care for others.

If you’re in an extreme moment or situation, then you've got to focus on self-care, just you. That makes sense. But for so many of us, so much of the time, what we don't realize is that showing up to be a part of solutions, to simply offer kindness or support to others, not only does it make someone else’s day a little easier or somebody else’s situation a little easier, it also makes the load that you’re carrying a little lighter. The key is to not give of yourself so much that you have nothing left for you, or to hoard your energy as a way to insulate yourself from the realities around you.

It's about balance, and balance isn’t a one-size-fits-all. It’s not a one-and-done thing. It’s about asking yourself questions, checking in with the answers. None of us alone are going to fix any of these major problems. We can’t. It’s unrealistic. But doing nothing isn’t the answer either. Seeking the next step, even if it’s a small step—seeking the next step, the step right in front of you, instead of seeking the answer to the problem or the answer to your questions—sometimes that’s too big of an ask. So, if you’re feeling overwhelmed and you don't know what to do, try to shrink the ask that you’re presenting to yourself. It doesn’t have to be the best step. Just seek the next step. Do what you can.

Just don’t do nothing, because it’s bad for your spiritual health. It’s bad for the world. And also, all that said, sometimes we’ve got to do fucking nothing. You know? There’s a stage of development for everything. Just check in with yourself. If you’re in a hyperactive mode where you’re doing, doing, doing, or you’re in a really cocooned phase where you’re not taking care of anyone but yourself—maybe not even yourself—just keep on checking in once a day, “Is this still in alignment for me? Do I need to challenge myself here? Do I need to pull back? Do I need to step forward?” Asking ourselves questions, staying engaged and curious, can be really soothing to so much of the existential dread and pain that so many of us are experiencing right now and have been for quite some time, right? Am I right?

Okay. So, all said, my friends, we’re looking at the week of September the 5th through the 11th of 2021. And, as I told you last week, we start off this week with an exact Venus square to Pluto. So, on September 5th, Venus is square to Pluto, and this transit is hard. Venus is your values, and Pluto is transformational. Venus wants stability. It wants diplomacy. It wants everything to be chill. It wants to get along. And Pluto’s like, “Fuck chill. Fuck getting along. I want to break everything. I want to destroy everything so we can build something better”—or worse. Pluto doesn’t care. Pluto wants intensity.

So, when these two planets form a 90-degree angle, what happens is any number of things. One is people act out. People feel entitled to acting out because Pluto dredges up your resentments. It dredges up your sense of entitlement, but your defensive sense of entitlement. And Venus is relational. It’s about people. And so this transit can really dredge up a great deal of interpersonal resentments or conflict, and that can lead to straight-up fighting, fighting with people very directly about what you’re unhappy with or fighting very passive-aggressively about what you’re upset with because Venus is in Libra. And when Venus is in Libra, we don't expect it to feel comfortable to be really direct about what we are feeling or what we’re needing.

We tend to want to make it pleasant for other people. Sometimes that’s the best thing to do, and sometimes a bitch has got to burn a damn bridge. It is healthy, wise, and kind to consider the impact that you’re having on others. However, when you’re dealing with people who are not doing the same for you—they can’t or they won’t do the same for you—then it’s often just a form of self-harm.

This Venus square to Pluto tends to bring up kind of desperate, urgent feelings. That’s Pluto’s function for you. And so you want to watch out for any tendencies that you have to compulsively get attention, negative or positive, as a way to make yourself feel better on some level. You want to watch out for any tendencies that you may have around shopping or spending money as a way to get yourself some happy because this transit can kick that shit up.

Because of Pluto’s influence, we can see power struggles and control issues emerging in your relationships. Now, if you don't tend to have any control issues or power struggles in your relationships, it’s not going to create it out of the blue. But if they’ve been dormant, if they’ve been thinly veiled under the surface, you can expect some explosions. And the explosions here are not like Uranus, sudden and surprising. They’re deep and tumultuous. They come from the depths of your triggers and your trauma. Right? And so, a lot of times, this transit can find you being really manipulative or dealing with somebody else who’s being really manipulative. Pluto governs guilt and shame and possessiveness, jealousy, manipulation, all that kind of heavy shit. So it’s a lot.

However, on the positive, because you know we try to keep it constructive here at Triple Capricorn Industries’ Ghost of a Podcast—I’m a triple Capricorn. The positive is—and this is hard to achieve, but it is possible to achieve. The positive is that with this Venus square to Pluto, you can learn more about what is actually happening in your damn relationships. You can understand your own triggers and where you need more work. You can strive to align yourself with your values—Venus—and to make sure that, regardless of how you’re feeling, your behavior reflects your values.

So, if you’re feeling furious with someone and you value being empathetic and kind, that doesn’t mean you’re not furious. It means you’re empathetic and kind to yourself enough to validate your own fucking rage, and you find effective ways of communicating it, when you’re ready, to the person you’re fucking pissed at.

We want, in life, simple answers. Of course we do. But simple answers are Band-Aids on bullet wounds. They’re not the answer. When we have the capacity to be present for the nuance of what we’re thinking, what we’re feeling, the complexity, the paradoxes within our thoughts and our feelings, that’s where real healing occurs, and not just healing like, “Oh, I healed an issue.” It’s sustained healing. Healing is not a lightning bolt. It’s a choice. It’s a choice that we have to make over and over and over again.

And this transit, as difficult as it is, is an opportunity for authentic healing. And Venus governs authenticity, so giddy the fuck up—if you can, you know. If you can. And if somebody comes at you with bullshit, if somebody comes at you or if you come at someone else with the shit side of Pluto, just being abusive and aggressive and gaslighting and all that shit that Pluto can do, the key is don’t engage. If you don't think the fight can be done fairly, if you can’t stay in integrity with yourself as you’re fighting, it’s okay to say, “I am not ready to have this exchange. I will come back to you when I’m ready.” But then you better be good for your word, right? Values, okay? But if you don't like the game, it’s okay to not play. Some situations, it’s not an option, but where it is, it’s worth asking yourself that question.

Again, remain curious. Remain engaged, not just in the world around you but the world within you, my sweet fucking loves.

Okay. So that’s September 5th, and we’ll feel that transit throughout the week. On the 6th, there’s a lot going on. There is a New Moon in Virgo. That means the Sun and Moon are the exact same degree of the same sign, and in this case, they’re at 14 degrees of Virgo—38 minutes if you’re counting—and that is exact at 5:52 p.m. Pacific Time. I’m always casting for Pacific Time. All you've got to do is convert it to where you are. So just do the maths.

And if you haven’t already gotten Astrology for Days, my transit-tracking tool, you can do that, and it has time zones for all over the damn world, like literally all over the world. And if you get it and for some reason your time zone is not represented, just fucking email me and I will make sure it is added. Tout suit.

Okay. To the New Moon in Virgo. There’s a lot going on with this chart. So, on the same day, not only do we have this New Moon, which is a Sun/Moon conjunction, but we also have three other exact transits. Mars is trine to Pluto, Venus is trine to Jupiter, and the Sun is trine to Uranus. This is great fucking news because three exact transits on a New Moon—it’s the energy we have been waiting for. The last bunch of lunations have been, honestly, pretty rough. And this is one where we can actually see flow. We see the potential for connections being made, resources being used, growth being achieved. Thank you very much. Deep exhale.

Virgo is a sign that is preoccupied with the physical side of managing your life and the world around you. This is a really good time to return to your body. It’s a really good time to return to your home and to connect with what those things mean to you and how you have or have not been caring for and managing those things. And so many of us are really struggling with either or both of those things in the context of so many crises happening in the world. This is a good time to greet your meat suit and say, “Hey, buddy. What’s up? How you doing? What do you need?” If your body says, “I need you to slow down. I need you to just hang out. I need you to do nothing,” please do that. If your body needs something more, investigate.

Now, here’s a monkey wrench for me to throw in the mix here. Remember that Mars opposition to Neptune that I told you about last week, you know, little religious extremists? Thank you, Texas—that whole thing? Okay. But on the personal level, that transit is exhausting and demoralizing and really can have you spinning out. It is a transit that kind of weakens the auric field so that you’re energetically more sensitive and porous. No fun for the empaths out there. Am I right?

Well, this transit is still active. It’s not exact anymore. That’s a wonderful thing. But it is still very much active. And so, while the New Moon in Virgo is a great time for checking in with the body, what you may find in your body is a lot of anxiety because we’re still under the influence of this transit, and not enough time has passed for most people to have fully processed whatever it was that came up last week. And if you are energetically sensitive, you probably pulled in collective energies or the energies of the people around you or the people close to you. That’s a little bit of a shit show. That’s difficult.

So, if you check in with yourself and you find anxiety or unrest, exhaustion, let’s label that not surprised, makes sense, and also, astrology is real—and then take a break. Tend to yourself. Do you need a bath? I don't know. Do you need a walk? Do you need a cry? Tend to yourself. It’s okay. And, in fact, it’s more than okay because this beautiful Mars trine to Pluto is so fortifying for the body that if you have the courage to check in with yourself, to be with your body, not just as a witness but as a BFF—that’s best friends forever—if you can really do that work, it will move something meaningful along. Okay?

Mars trine to Pluto is excellent for fortifying the physiological health and the vitality. So, if you have been feeling drained of vitality, this New Moon is for you. The Venus trine to Jupiter is also really good for reaffirming your values. It’s good for socializing, and it’s good for flirting and love.

Now, of course, this coincides with the Venus square to Pluto, which is not exact, but it’s absolutely active in this chart. And so we have struggle, right? We have the struggles that maybe came up for you the day before or days leading up to this transit. They might still be coming up for you on the New Moon. And so much of what this chart is saying is if you check in with yourself in a material way, in a ritualistic way, and if you remember to resource your skills, your spiritual tools, your self-help tools, your relationships, whatever it is, your bathtub—if you remember to resource yourself, to use the tools you have at your disposal, you will make progress.

That is further reiterated by the fact that the sun is exactly trine to Uranus. This is an aspect for innovation. It’s an aspect for healthy individuation, for feeling free, and it is a vitality-enhancing transit. So nice to see that. And, of course, at the same time, the Moon is trine to Uranus. So double whammy, that. This New Moon is really strong for making progress. The difficult thing is you are likely to need to make progress around something that is painful or scary.

And a lot of people, what we do is we feel pain, we feel fear or any other host of difficult-to-experience emotions, and we say, “That feeling is bad.” And then we fucking bounce out. We disassociate. We grab our phone and we scroll. We distract ourselves. We medicate ourselves. We do a thing. I’m not talking about medication that is medically needed. I’m talking about all manner of things that we do to self-medicate. Some of them are substances we ingest. A lot of them are not. A lot of them are other forms of distraction or disassociation.

So we can, in those ways—in any of those ways, we can make ourselves feel better, but we don't ever deal with what’s actually happening. Right? And so what I’m recommending is not the quickest way to feel better, but to deal with whatever it is that was wrong and to come to a sense of healing, to make a shift.

I was talking to a healer that I work with, Nikki Sacchi, the other day. And she said most people end up living probability and not possibility. That really stuck with me because what she was referring to was how hard it is to heal, to break our inherited patterns, to break away from what others expect of us, and to live what is possible, what is healthy and appropriate—and appropriate for our own selves, not for other people's ideas of who we are or how life should be.

In order to live in accordance with what is possible for you, not to think about what’s possible, not to dream about what’s possible, but to embody and live what is possible for you, it takes courage. It takes bravery. And it takes learning how to be in your uncomfortable feelings, how to listen to them, how to respond to them, how to cope with them. And this New Moon is fucking glorious for doing just that. It’s not easy. It may not be fun. But it is glorious for doing just that, for recognizing the ways that you may be self-sabotaging or getting in the way of your own progress, and not judging, not getting perfectionistic in that Virgonian way, but instead being willing to say, “Oh, wow. Okay. This is something I’m doing. It’s a habit,” or, “Shit. It’s what my mom always did,” or, “Huh. I didn’t even know I was doing this thing,” or, “I don't know how to stop doing this thing.”

And instead of then looking for an answer or what you’re supposed to do fix—same with the feelings. Just stay with the feelings because if you stay with the feelings and you don't go straight into your mind—so if you stay with the Moon and don’t go into Mercury, in other words—things change. They change on a substantive level. And the transits, the accompanying transits to this New Moon chart, suggest that doing this will be good for your heart and can lead to long-term gains. So maybe a little bit of short-term discomfort or pain for a lot of long-term gain. Now, I know I’m a Capricorn, and that sounds very good to me. It might not sound as good to some of you, and I respect that. But it’s a New Moon and an Earth sign. What’s a girl to do, I beseech you?

Now, one more thing for me to tell you about what’s happening on September the 6th is Mercury Retroshade begins. So those who’ve been listening to the podcast for a long time know that Mercury Retroshade is the shadow period of a Mercury Retrograde. So we have the shadow period before and after each Retrograde. This particular one is September 6th to the 27th because on the 27th, Mercury goes Retrograde. It stays Retrograde until October 23rd; then it Retroshades until November 2nd. So welcome to your autumn of Mercury madness.

And I will remind you that Mercury Retrograde is not the end of the world. It’s not depressing. It’s not a tragedy. It is a normal and natural function of Mercury. And we’ll get all into the details of Mercury Retrograde, of course, closer to the date, and I’ve dropped tons of content about it in the past. But let me just say this Retroshade period is when you want to really pay attention to things. We don't go full Retrograde-ness yet. However, there may be some technical issues that you’re experiencing, miscommunications.

You may find yourself doing a lot of reflecting. People and particular friends or colleagues may kind of start to pop up, people from your past. And I actually think it’s a good thing to have the Retroshade begin with this New Moon in Virgo because it further iterates the need for and the wisdom of looking within, because Retrogrades follow the rule of re’s, according to me. It’s about reflecting, reviewing, and reassessing.

That brings us, my friends, to the 7th of September, where we have another exact transit. It’s Mercury opposite Chiron. Now, this transit is going to concern you and me and everyone else with matters that are upsetting and controversial, potentially. This whole week, I imagine, is going to be a bit of a shit show in the public, which means politically and socially. And I want to encourage you to take in as much as you can in a healthy way, and make sure you’re processing your own thoughts and your own feelings.

We want to remember how to be critical thinkers. Check the dates that things are written. Check the author that is writing a thing. Always check your sources is what I’m trying to say. Be a responsible consumer of news and stories if you can. And also take care of your online presence. Your cybersecurity is hugely important. Protect it. Yeah, I’m going to say trust me on that one.

Mercury opposite Chiron may find you really fixated on things that are out of your control but deeply and directly impact you. This is an opportunity for you to really check in with how you process information, your thinking, the language and tone you use when you talk to yourself and when you talk to others. It can be a time that, honestly, brings up a lot of conflict, interpersonal conflict or internal conflict. I imagine that there’s going to be some shit said that should never have been uttered. We may see a spike in hate speech.

This transit’s hard. And, of course, it’s coinciding with the New Moon. It’s coinciding with the Venus/Pluto. I mean, Neptune and Mars are still doing their week opposition now. It’s a lot. This could be a demoralizing moment. If you’re feeling tender, vulnerable, yeah, get off social media. Think before you speak. And if you find yourself obsessing on self-destructive thinking, distract yourself with something neutral or something positive. Focusing on something neutral when you cannot achieve positive thinking is a fucking win.

The one thing you don't want to do is abandon yourself to self-harm. You don't want to abandon yourself by pretending you don't feel what you feel. Take care of yourself. Be a good friend to yourself. Speaking of friends, Mercury governs siblings and friends. This Chiron opposition can bring up conflicts with your friends, especially if they’ve been brewing for some time. Shit is likely to come out, or you might see something in someone else that you’re just fucking not about. And you have decisions to make, but this transit is not the time to make decisions. The signs involved in this opposition—Chiron is in Aries, and Mercury is in Libra. So it’s relational. It’s like, what works for me? What works for us? That kind of thinking.

So with this, my friends, again, do your best. And if you've done a passable job of tending to your emotions and checking in with yourself in the earlier part of the week, this will be easier to cope with. If you haven’t been able to achieve that, something might just come out, and you’ll deal with it or not. That’s life. I mean, I don't know. Maybe that wasn’t super uplifting. But week after week, I unpack these transits for you, and it’s important to remember that we can always try again. You do your best in the moment, and if your best is shit, you can try again tomorrow. It’s okay.

I just always want to remind you these transits are life. They’re an astrological take by this astrologer on the present, how we are resourcing our past in the present, and how we can prepare for the future. There are so many different tools for doing that. There’s lots of different ways of doing that. It’s important to not get so fixated on any one tool, including astrology, that you lose track of your common sense, that you stop resourcing yourself. You want to always check in with yourself. You want to make sure that it’s not just your thinking and it’s not just your feelings and it’s not just your body and it’s not just your spirit. You want to bring all of you, as much as possible, whenever you can—all of you to the table, all of you to the dynamic.

And so all this detailed information I’m giving you, you want to take what you can work with, and don’t worry about the rest because if it’s causing worry, then it’s a distraction from the present moment. And the present moment, that’s your only job.

Okay. So, my nerds, that is the last exact transit of this week. And then, in fact, we won’t have another exact transit until the 13th. And I want to just say a word about that because when we don't have exact transits—I mean, we’ll still have Lunar transits because the Moon moves so fast that we have Moon transits all the damn time. And sometimes they’re a really big deal, like the New Moon. We cast a chart for the New Moon, it’s such a big deal. And other times, it’s a big deal, but it’s essentially a mood because it’s the Moon. It’s your feels. It's the feels that we’re all going through.

The Moon aside, moods and the ebb and flow that is an inevitable part of the human condition aside, when we don't have exact transits, what I have come to find is that it’s a time where all the stuff that you've been kind of too busy to fully process and sort through has a chance to emerge. So some people, when there’s no transits, they’re just chill. Everything's chill. “I’m the chillest of the chill.” Wonderful. But then, for a lot of people, in these periods, it’s like your system is like, “Okay, now I can fully off-gas all the shit I’ve been holding on to and holding in.”

And so, if you find that in this couple/few days you are feeling extra, I want to say it’s because you’re feeling extra. Nothing new happened. It’s okay to take time to process your emotions. It’s okay for things to kind of reveal themselves to you in layers. So just hold space for yourself. You deserve it.

Now, my loves, that is your horoscope. I’m going to run through the transits. On the 5th of September, we have an exact Venus square to Pluto. On the 6th of September, we’ve got an exact Moon/Sun conjunction in the sign of Virgo, aka a New Moon, that will be happening at 5:52 p.m. Pacific Time. We also, on that same day, have a Mars trine to Pluto, a Venus trine to Jupiter, and a Sun trine to Uranus—we love to see all those trines—and the Mercury Retroshade begins. On the 7th, we have an exact Mercury opposition to Chiron. Es ca c’est tout. Okay.

So, my loves, thank you for joining me for another week of Ghost. If you haven’t already, join me over on Patreon. I want to invite you to do that there, especially if you’re into mediumship, animal communication, because I’m answering patrons’ questions, each and every one of them, over on the Kittens level at Patreon. So join me there if you’re in the market. And, of course, we do astrology and Tarot as well. But we’re getting into some deep woo over there.

Also, if you haven’t already subscribed to Ghost of a Podcast wherever you get your podcasts, I invite you, please do. If you love this podcast, if you get value from the show, please do give me five stars and write a nice review because these are things that actually really help independent podcasters like myself.

These are some pretty heavy times. Make sure to take care of yourself and others. And I will speak with you soon. Bye-bye.