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, the place for astrology advice and, hopefully, grounded perspective to live by.  This week's question comes from Astrology for the Wrong Reasons, and she says: "I'm a practicing astrologer, and know better than to use astrology to create anxiety of the future for myself. However, I'm looking forward to my transits next year, which include the opening Saturn square to Saturn post Saturn return. I've already been through a difficult time, losing my mother to cancer in June of this year and in process of a divorce at the same time. And I'm having a hard time looking forward to 2022 and the Saturn transit. Saturn square Saturn at previous times of my life has been associated with severe depressive episodes, and all I can feel is fear looking to 2022. What's your advice on how I might approach this difficult time from a more constructive perspective?" And Astrology for the Wrong Reasons was born July 12th, 1985, at 10:49 p.m. in Raleigh, North Carolina.

So, first of all, I am so sorry for your loss, the loss of your mother. There are never the right words for surviving someone who you love to cancer. But my heart is with you on that. And congratulations on your divorce. I don't know where you're landing around that, but congratulations. And then let's get to your question.

So, just in case you're listening to this question and you don't understand what the opening Saturn square to Saturn is, basically, we go through a Saturn square to Saturn twice in a Saturn cycle. The first one is the opening, and the second is the closing. And in your 30s, the one that happens, the opening Saturn square to Saturn, is the first Saturn square post Saturn return.

If you have a history of having depressive episodes during Saturn squares, I can understand why you'd be scared. But I will say, generally speaking—and, of course, this is not true for everybody. But generally speaking, this Saturn square to Saturn that happens in the mid-30s, it's actually kind of a nice life-affirming transit, or it has the capacity to be. So let's talk about a couple of things.

The first one is why previous Saturn square to Saturns have been so hard on you emotionally and mentally. The reason why is written in your birth chart. You have a natal Saturn opposition to the moon. This natal placement can indicate that you suffer from depression, but it very commonly indicates that you are a depressive person, which is different than having clinical depression. It means that when things get hard, when you feel lonely or insecure, your kind of default emotion is depressive. And that's different than having clinical depression, although over the course of time, it can kind of add up. Right?

What Saturn square to Saturn does every time it happens is it creates a period of critical testing. It challenges us to look at and deal with the consequences of our internal structure and the ways in which we've set up our lives. Saturn is really concerned about structure. And in your birth chart, because Saturn is opposite the moon, you probably have a tendency to leave your feelings and your needs and your emotions kind of at the bottom of your list, even though you're a Cancer and you have a Pisces rising—very tender, emo placements.

But that Saturn opposition to the Moon can incline you to say, "Well, I should take care of other people instead of myself. I should do these things instead of care for myself. I don't need to relax. I don't need to rest. I need to take care of people," until you're so flat that you can't do it anymore. And what the Saturn square to Saturn is kind of meant to do is to stop you in your tracks and to show you what is or isn't working about how you set shit up.

And so this is part of why the Saturn square to Saturn that occurs post Saturn return in your mid-30s—and you'll be like 37 years old when this occurs. The reason why it's often not so bad of a transit for people—not always, of course, but often—is because you just went through your Saturn return. You have learned so much about who you are and what does and doesn't work for you. This is your first Saturn square as an adult, from an astrological viewpoint, because the Saturn return occurs at around 29 years old, and it is when we become fully an adult. It's when we embody our Saturn for ourselves. Or at least it's, from an astrological perspective, when we lived long enough to have separated from our childhood self, our parents, our community that we were raised in. We're no longer in a state of reacting to that all the time, but instead—yes, still reacting to that, but also having had enough lived experience to embody what we know of ourselves through lived experience. It's kind of cool.

So the Saturn square to Saturn may still bring up depressiveness for you, or straight-up depression. That's a risk. That's a possibility. But know this: if that occurs, it's because your system is begging you to nurture and care for it. That's hard. That's hard to do, and the reason why the Saturn square to Saturn occurs is to incite this kind of soul-searching that feels like an existential crisis.

The way I always think of Saturn squares is as a time of pruning. And if you've ever done any kind of gardening or farming, what we need to do is to recognize that in different seasons, at different times, certain things flourish and certain things don't. And if you're pruning something, you have to cut it all the way back. Sometimes you have to dig a thing up and move it. Sometimes you need to dig a thing up and get rid of it.

But what we must be able to do is to look at the growth in our metaphorical garden and to see what is and isn't flourishing, what needs more sun, what needs more water—what needs more attention is basically what I'm saying. We are on call to give it the attention it deserves. And because humans—we're just like, "Oh, I'm having a great time. I'm having an easy time. I'm gonna relax into this," we don't often motivate and take care of ourselves unless our ass is handed to us.

And so the Saturn square to Saturn emerges to hand your sweet hiney to you on a silver platter. And it's meant to motivate you, not punish you—motivate you to look at what isn't working in how you organize your relationship to yourself and, specifically for you, because you have a Saturn/Moon opposition, how you organize your relationship to your own emotions, to self-nurturance, to care for yourself and others.

So all to say, if we're talking about a constructive approach to this transit, knowing that it's forthcoming, the way to do it is by nurturing yourself. It's by caring for yourself. It's by looking at the ways in which you center authentic wellness, and not just the show of wellness, not just the management of your life, but how you nurture your heart.

And the cool thing about Saturn transits—and this is real talks 2021, okay? The cool thing about Saturn transits is we can prepare for them. It's really hard to prepare for a Uranus transit or a Neptune transit or a Pluto transit, especially Uranus and Neptune. But for Saturn, Saturn wants us to prepare for the transits. That's what Saturn wants. And the way we prepare is by—going back to that gardening metaphor, it's by being willing to look constructively at our lives internally and externally, and have a comprehensive sense of what is and isn't working for me on a material level, on a spiritual level, emotionally, mentally, interpersonally. Look at the damn levels.

You say in your question that you've had severe depressive episodes. And within that, you may know, okay, these transits have historically triggered severe depression. And if that's the case, get ye a wonderful psychiatrist, somebody who you can talk to and doesn't just write prescriptions, someone who can support you in coping with those emotions. But also, there's nothing wrong with if you know that this is a period of your life where depression gets triggered and it is more than what you can handle with talk therapy or movement-based therapies or whatever it is that resonates for you; there's medications that can help with that.

I don't encourage you, as an astrologer—of course, I'm not a therapist or not a doctor, but I don't encourage you to preemptively medicate because you actually might not need to. Being post Saturn return absolutely means that your Saturn square cycle has started anew, and therefore, it might not at all be like it was before. We change. We grow. And the ways in which we grow over the course of life mean that the same transits that happen cyclically, like Saturn square to Saturn, will present themselves in radically different ways from time to time. I have seen many people have really difficult Saturn square to Saturn transits, and those same exact people have other Saturn square to Saturn transits that aren't that bad or that are actually constructive and good. This transit can be a time where everything kind of solidifies and comes together, all the shit you've been working on from your Saturn return to now.

And here's one more hot tip: the Saturn square to Saturn is directly related to what was going on during your Saturn return. So, if you look at the themes that were activated during your Saturn return, you can locate, "Okay, where have I grown? Where have I dropped the ball? Where have I made meaningful progress? Where do I still need to work?" You can use that information and apply it to where you're at now because that allows you to prepare for the themes that are likely to emerge during the Saturn square to Saturn.

All that said, my sweet dear, I want to just acknowledge Pluto was opposite your Sun at 21 degrees of Cancer and then opposite your Mars at 22 degrees of Cancer. And those transits were so difficult—so difficult, so painful; they had so much to do with the losses in your life—that there's no way you're the same person that you were the last time you experienced a Saturn square to Saturn. There's no way.

And you have a Moon at 24 degrees of Taurus, which means that for the rest of 2021, Pluto is trining your Moon, and it has been for quite some time. What this means is that you have a lot of support, a lot of support astrologically, for nurturing your relationship to your own emotions, to prioritizing healing, and healing not as a, like, "I'm going to fix a problem"—more as a relationship to the self that is ongoing. It's kind of creating a new template for relating to your own emotions and how you locate them in your life and in yourself. It's not all bad; I'll tell you that right here and now. It's not all bad.

There's one more thing I think is important for me to name, and it's this: it is okay to be scared. It is healthy and normal to see something scary and experience fear as a direct result. Let's not demonize all unpleasant and difficult-to-bear emotions. It's okay to be scared. But what I want to encourage you to do when you encounter that fear is to check in with your body. Where are you experiencing that fear? How are you experiencing that fear? How do you know that you're scared? By checking in with your body, you start to be able to resource yourself. And through that action, you are happily not abandoning yourself by trying to fix yourself, by disassociating, or whatever else.

And when we can be good friends to ourselves through our fears, we are better empowered to not let them run our lives. There is nothing wrong with being scared. You just don't want to let that fear convince you that something is bad or is going to get bad, to convince you that there's even something wrong. Sometimes we're scared because of past experiences and how we project them onto the present or future, and those fears are really not about the future. They're about our unresolved relationship to the past. It's about, in your case, your insecurity that you can't cope with or you don't want to cope with another depressive episode.

That fear, as scary as it is, is actually really great information. It's meant to kind of inspire you and motivate you to care for yourself, to get support in place. You can't control the future, but when it comes to Saturn, you sure as hell can prepare for it.

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Hey, darlings. Let's get astrological. This week, we're looking at the astrology for September 18th through the 25th of 2021, and there's a lot to talk about. We're going to get right into it today because the week kicks off with a Full Moon, and I know how much you love a Full Moon. It's a Full Moon in Pisces, and it is exact at 4:55 p.m. Pacific Time. So, wherever you are in the world, adjust the time based on your time zone, and that might pop it into a different day.

So we have a Sun in Virgo opposite the Moon in Pisces, and these two planets are at 28 degrees. So the Sun is at 28 degrees of Virgo, and the Moon is at 28 degrees of Pisces. When a Full Moon occurs, it is a time for closure, for things coming together and getting kind of intense so that we must deal with them. And that dealing, that coping, is meant to challenge us and to challenge us to grow and change by letting go of what no longer serves us. So it's a closure of a cycle.

The cool thing about that is that it's a monthly reminder for our intentions, our willfulness, a.k.a. the Sun, to be in conversation with our emotions, our feelings, our needs, and to be in the present time, because we're talking now about the Moon. And the Moon can have a way of getting a little bit caught up in the past. So the Full Moon every month when it occurs is a great time for checking in with yourself.

Because the Sun is in Virgo, ritualistic and physically methodical sign that it is, this is a great time for doing some form of ritual work, and doing it alone, because Virgo is a sign that can be very introverted. But when we have a Full Moon in opposition in these two signs, we have the potential for doing meaningful introspection, not just about how you're feeling or whatever triggers it's associated from with your past, but what you're doing in the material world here and now ritualistically, which is to say day to day, hour to hour, what you're doing to support yourself or to support the world around you or your life in general.

And so the Full Moon in Pisces is a really beautiful time for healing, and not necessarily for massive catharsis where something powerful happens in the external world. Sometimes the most important healing that you can achieve is a subtle but deep willingness to be uncomfortable. It can be something as personal as changing the way you talk to yourself in your thoughts.

When we seek to have growth and healing, it's important that we don't apply capitalistic and aggressive approaches to our own internal world and our wellness because that often is kind of counter to our actual goals. Give yourself some space. This is a Full Moon in Pisces. If you can create some space in your life to simply be with yourself and listen to yourself and to receive—whether it's your guidance or the magic of your meat suit and its ability to sustain your damn life—whatever it is, to be present with and to receive the abundance of what is, and even the difficulties of what is, this can be really healing this Full Moon.

Now, this Full Moon is not just about the Sun and Moon opposition. I've pulled up a chart for it, and there's a lot going on, unsurprisingly. A lot of it, in my view, comes down to us all questioning what is real and what is not. And you are likely to feel an internal struggle between what you might think is real, or someone might have told you is real, and some past triggers, the shit that lives in our fight-or-flight mechanisms, the shit that lives in our deep memories and even in ourselves and our souls through inherited conditions in our ancestry.

These things inform how we react to different stimulation, whether it's loneliness or trauma or fear or excitement or passion. And so, before we get into too many details of this chart, I want to encourage you to remember to check in with yourself and to not be so highly analytic that you don't listen to yourself or listen to others. Listening is a state of receptivity. It's, quote unquote, a passive state. It's not going out and getting it. It's not making it happen. It is receiving.

And I think it's a misunderstanding of passivity to call it a laziness or a bad thing. It is not. Passivity is a skill that we all must cultivate in our natures, based on your chart, and what is right for you. But it is a thing we must all cultivate so that we can be good listeners, so that we can listen to ourselves and others, so we can listen to the flow of our lives and even to the ebb of our lives, so that we don't take each individual detail so personally. And when we're not fixating on details, what we can do is flow without attachment in the moment. We can be more interested in what's happening in the moment, and that gives us greater freedom. It gives us a broadened perspective.

So okay. Back to the damn chart. Neptune is conjunct to the Moon in this chart, and we've also got Neptune opposite the Sun. And this just makes everything confusing. This makes everything destabilized and uncomfortable. That's not great, but you know all about the Sun opposition to Neptune because I talked about it in last week's horoscope. It was the transit that was exact on the 14th of September. It was just in Episode 223 if you want to relisten to it, or just look at what happened last week in your life, and you'll be like, "Oh shit." Yeah. This energy, I would like to be rid of it. Probably most of us would like to be rid of it. It's kind of demoralizing and exhausting energy. And to have it be a part of this Full Moon really emphasizes or puts pressure on that Piscean vibe, in other words.

This is meant to be a time for a spiritual wellness check. Are you breathing? Are you drinking the water? I know you have tools for self-care, like spiritual tools for checking in and self-care. Are you using them? Or are you doing that Virgo vibe thing where you're being a data collector and you're collecting tons of ideas and theories, but you're not resourcing them within yourself; you're not creating space and time within yourself to receive them and let them settle how they settle and change you how they're meant to change you, as subtly or slowly as they're meant to?

This is a really strong theme of our Full Moon in Pisces. To add a little fun and complexity to the mix, Mars is conjunct the Sun, out of sign, and opposite the Moon. And this absolutely speeds up the energy. Here's the risk. The risk is, in the world, religious extremism or spiritual extremism, people acting really aggressively and defensively based on their ideologies, based on their fantasies or their strongly held convictions. So we may see people really acting out defensively this Full Moon. But guess what? You're people. So you might be defensive this Full Moon. You may simply feel so overwhelmed with emotion and sensation—not just feelings like emotion feelings but also feelings like how your body holds what you're feeling—that you act defensively with yourself or others. You jump to conclusions or have some sort of a knee-jerk reaction to something.

If you do that, it can get you in some trouble, right? It can pull you in the very wrong direction. So it's something to watch out for. And this something to watch out for, this Mars influence, it's your damn ego. If your ego is too big or too small, it'll get you in trouble. What we want is a healthy, happy ego. And a healthy, happy ego for you might look different than it does for me. It is not meant to stay the same. No part of ourselves is meant to stay the same for our whole lives and development.

Having a healthy relationship to entitlement is essential. This is going to be very important this Full Moon. You may have really great evidence of how your ego is not in balance, how your defensiveness functions, maybe your passive aggressiveness functions. And if you get that information, instead of dissolving into demoralized insecurities, which Neptune can kind of incline us to do, your best move is to be humble and to be interested and to try to stay present with whatever feelings crash in around you, as our feelings so often do during Full Moons.

And be strong enough—you know, use your ego energies—to just take in the information, and allow it to permeate through you so that you can decide what you want to make of it when you feel less activated. When we feel really activated, whether it's with emotions or thoughts or sensations, it's not when we're the most clear. So carve a little space for being in your feelings this Full Moon, also this week, also in your life as a human ongoing.

Okay. That's not all that's happening. We've got a beautiful Grand Trine, and it's happening between Saturn, Mars, and North Node. And I am really happy to report that, because it stabilizes some of that Martian energy, and it fortifies our ability to make use of our ego in a healthy way. So, if you have been feeling really entitled and you've been treating people like shit or you've been taking more than your share or ignoring your responsibilities and the needs of others, this can help you get in balance. This can help you get a little bit of perspective and be more humble. You don't have to take an apology tour. The best apology is changing your damn behavior, right?

And on the flip side, if your ego has not been strong enough, if you've not been managing your wellness, asking for what you need, if you've been struggling to take up space, this Full Moon can be a time where you get really present with and clear about what isn't working in that. Because of this Grand Trine, you may be able to see a path forward to make changes. And again, they don't need to be massive. They don't need to be meteoric. A subtle change is a change. A tiny step of progress is still progress. So embrace yourself, bunnies. It's a nice thing to do.

Now, we've got two more transits that are worth naming here in this chart. One, we have an exact transit from Mercury to Jupiter. It's a Mercury trine to Jupiter. It's exact at 3:53 p.m. on the 20th as well. Again, another indicator of flow, of the potential for us to figure out, to analyze, and to see clearly big-picture stuff, and to be willing to see the perspective of others. And this particular transit is really helpful for all the stuff we're talking about because Jupiter supports Mercury and being open-minded and seeing other people's perspective and being generous. This also makes it easier to explore ideas without attachment to them, right? And so we want to tap into all of these energies because they can be incredibly supportive.

Unfortunately, we have a Mercury square to Pluto that's also active in this chart. And it is the last really important transit to the chart that I want to name for you. In the context of the Full Moon, this transit can, unfortunately, pretty easily empower you to obsess on things that are painful and to be passive aggressive in what you say to others and how you say it. There's what you say; there's how you say it. Watch both of those things this Full Moon, okay? There's a lot of indicators here for passive aggression, and unfortunately, because Mercury is in Libra—not the most direct communication sign—and square to Pluto, you may feel so entitled to just say everything that you're thinking or blame somebody for everything that's going on with you because that's how you feel. But it's not necessarily true. You really want to do investigation before you come to an assessment.

This transit is likely to incline you to obsess on painful feelings and painful thoughts and painful memories, even. This transit has a driving quality to it. And so, if you apply this energy to healing, to excavating old wounds or old habits, so that you can release them with the power and the energy of this beautiful Full Moon, then yay on you. I mean, for reals, this would be a chef's kiss use of this energy. However, if you're running around busy or you just are kind of going on autopilot, that will be very hard to do because this transit—like I said, it's pretty damn driving. So my advice to you is to really take a deep breath, to make serious considerations before you speak. If you want to cut a bitch, but you know that you kind of shouldn't, then watch your tone of voice because you may find that your feelings leak out.

And I know I said that that was the last transit of this Full Moon chart that I wanted to tell you about, but it's not. There's also a Venus opposition to Uranus, and again, it just further destabilizes relationships, and it further points to the potential of this Full Moon playing out really relationally. So what are you going to do? You're going to be in your feelings. You're going to honor your process. You're going to watch out for passive aggression or acting out against yourself or others. You're going to, to the best of your ability, stand your ground and take care of yourself if someone else comes to you with similar bullshit, right? Because you are entitled in a healthy way to care for yourself.

You're going to watch your thoughts. You're not going to chase unhealthy thoughts or self-destructive thoughts. You're also going to watch what you say to other people, and if you can't say something constructive, maybe don't say anything at all. You're also going to watch your tone of voice. You're going to be open to your relationships, including your relationship with yourself or with a habit or a thing. You're going to be open to your relationships being destabilized so that they can grow and expand and be more or be more authentic. But you're not going to expect your interpersonal relationships to be too stable because this is not exactly the moment for all that. And then, in the middle of all of that, you're going to wash your damn hands. You're going to wear a mask. You're going to be a good global citizen.

This is your Full Moon reading, and I know it's a lot. So, cool story, I drop transcriptions of the podcast every week. So, if you need to go through that again, the transcription is up within like 24 to 48 hours of the episode dropping. So you can giddy-up and go over to my website to get that, ghostofapodcast.com.

Okay. That brings us to the next transit of this week. Can you believe that was just one transit? Oh shit. Let's go. Okay. There's more. On the 22nd, that pesky Mercury/Pluto square is exact. That means we gotta talk about it. You're going to be feeling it on the 20th for sure. You're going to be feeling it probably before that, the 19th. It's exact on the 22nd. So this transit intensifies your thinking. It intensifies not only your thinking, but your interactions with other people. Now, that's online. That's your friends. That's your coworkers. It's all the people, because Mercury governs communication. It's what you say. It's how you say it. It's what you think. It's what you believe. It's how you listen. It's your tone of voice. It's what you type. It's what you read.

And we all know Mercury is in its shadow period. It is not yet Retrograde. That happens on the 27th, a.k.a. next week. But it is in its shadow period, so things are a little schmoogy, right? Like have you noticed they're not super linear right now with Mercury? And so this is extra sticky, this particular transit. You may find yourself compelled, as I was talking about in the context of the Full Moon—you may find yourself compelled to obsess on something that feels bad or something that provokes really strong emotions. Generally speaking, this can be pretty self-destructive, or it can lead you down a really negative path. This is, as I say, every time Mercury or Venus forms a square to Pluto. It's a bad time for cyberstalking. It's a bad time because you're going to want to. This is a bad time for gossiping. It's a bad time because you're going to want to. But it's not healthy. It's not good for you. It's not good for your friends. It's not good for the planet.

And, unfortunately, wherever Pluto is concerned, things are either healthy or destructive because Pluto doesn't do anything in between. In the context of the world, people are going to be intense. This transit can absolutely lead to misinformation and, unfortunately, destructive misinformation. And so, whether we're talking about news that is unreliable or conspirituality or other conspiracy theories, you want to be on the lookout. Be a critical thinker. Use discernment. It's really important to think critically about the news you consume, the ideas you align yourself with, especially when they're really provocative.

If somebody else comes to you with some really intense ideas, fighting people on ideas, wait until you're less activated, until you're less defensive, so that you can have a substantive conversation or come up with what might be a much better approach to communicating with someone that you really strongly disagree with or that you think has dangerous thoughts or ideas.

We may see some real bullshit out in the world. When it comes to Pluto, especially difficult transits to Pluto, we can expect abuses and misuses of power. So don't be the one to fuck up your use of power, and if you are, do your best to be humble and to rectify it. If you're dealing with other people misusing their power, keep your eyes on the prize. You only have so much room for outrage in your system. You only have so much room for fighting in your life. Pick your enemies wisely. Pick your battles wisely. Do it for your nervous system. Do it for your peace of mind.

Now, this transit, very constructively, can challenge your thinking. It can have you confronting and being willing to dismantle a problem that really needs your attention. The effects of Pluto on Mercury can spur investigation and research. It can embolden you to have the difficult conversations that need to happen. This is a really good thing. This can be a time where you achieve some sort of healing in therapy or in a relationship, where you have a conversation that lights something up that was hidden from you. And even if it's very difficult, which often it is with Pluto, it is meaningful, and it can be really liberating. But while we're in the dregs of the transit or the struggle with difficult or painful ideas or relationships, it doesn't feel liberating. It just feels hard.

What I want to encourage you to do with this transit and throughout the week is to ask yourself, if you're feeling pain or if you're in some sort of struggle or pain, "Is this pain helping me to heal? Is it confronting me with things I need to deal with in myself and in the world? Or is this me walking into walls for someone? Is this me, quote unquote, learning a lesson that I already know, that I've already learned?" Not all pain is bad. There is healing pain, and then there's the pain that destroys you. If you've got to choose pain, let it be the pain of healing because that pain frees you. It brings you somewhere new.

So this is a really powerful transit even though it's not an easy one, and it will kind of do some work of dragging out that Full Moon feeling from a little bit earlier in the week. So emotions running wild. Thoughts running really wild. Life just dragging along, doing what it does.

One last thing I'll say about this transit before we go on to the next. This particular transit is one that will come back at you. It has a boomerang effect. So, if you talk shit about people, if you come for someone, if you start shit, it will not go away with this transit. It will have a life of its own. So, again, choose your battles wisely.

And that brings us to the next transit of the week. On the 23rd, we have a Venus opposition to Uranus. So, of course, there is an overlap with these two transits, and it can be a little bit hard to parse them apart, but I am happy to do that for you because the big picture, the synthesis of the transits of this week, end up being really relational. They're very much about relationships, and I include your relationship to yourself or to an addiction or a habit or a job or a career, whatever. It could be anything. But it's specifically quite relational, this energy.

Venus opposite Uranus is a destabilizing transit, and it is meant to be destabilizing. That's its very function. It is not a good time for creating security and stability in your relationships. It is a great time for questioning things, for starting something new, or letting go of something that is in the way of you being authentic and you showing up as yourself. This transit increases our desire for excitement and something new. It can make you feel pretty frisky and can kind of spark excitement between you and someone else. And in particular, it can spark excitement between you and somebody you have chemistry with.

If you are dating, this can be a really fun time. It can be a transit that marks a time where you encounter someone that's really different than who you would typically hook up with or flirt with. Generally, when relationships start under Venus/Uranus transits, we expect them to be in quick/out quick. You know what I mean? They bring you some sort of relational experience that is meant to teach us something about ourselves or other people, and then it's just like, easy come, easy go.

So don't get into future-tripping. That's the trick with Uranus. You don't want to be fixated on the future. You want to be here in the present and to explore in the present. Step into adventure if you can. But this transit is not so much for creating stability and certainty. But, honestly, it's fun. Now, the downside of this transit in relationships is you might flirt with somebody it's not your business to flirt with. You might overlook someone who's actually a really great person for you to be connected to. This can be a time where you feel trapped if you're in a relationship with someone and just feeling like, "I don't want to have to give them my time or my energy."

Uranus is not the most compromising of planets, so it can kind of make you self-interested and inflexible or rigid in a way that, yeah, it'll get in the way of your happiness long term. If you need some space, if you need time alone, communicate it clearly. That's really important. Don't just act in your own self-interest, because in the context of this whole week of astrology, that will for sure backfire. This transit can feel really destabilizing to your relationship to the idea of love and relationships. It can feel upsetting to your relationship to how you look and to your finances. So, as much as possible, whatever it is that comes up this week and especially on and around the 23rd, be willing to explore new perspectives on these themes. Locate yourself and where you are in relation to these Venusian themes so that you can let go of what's standing in your way.

Sometimes the thing we really need in order to come to healing on any topic is destabilization. we need upsets to interrupt the status quo and our current approach to things so we can see things differently and then approach them differently. So, if upsets or destabilizing things occur, be interested. Be interested in them.

Happily—thank goodness—the last transit I'm going to tell you about of this week will support you in doing that. On the 25th, we have an exact Mars trine to Saturn. So I mentioned the Mars trine to Saturn in the context of the Full Moon chart, but here we have it exact. These two planets are really stabilizing when they come together because Mars is the hunter of the zodiac. Mars is how we move forward in the world, how we engage with projects. It's our sex drive and it's how we fornicate. It's also how we navigate our bodies through the world, how we navigate our ambitions and our egos in the world.

When Mars and Saturn meet, these two planets can stabilize your approach to how you do things, whether it's flirting, whether it's boning—I mean, this transit is really good for stamina if you're in the market for getting frisky. Saturn creates the stability and sustainability to Mars, which is the planet that just gets shit done. So this transit, in the context of all the other shit that's going on this week, will really support us in staying in the body, in having a healthy ego, in orienting our actions in a direction that is sustainable and healthy and helpful, even. And we really need this because Venus opposite Uranus is so destabilizing that it can have you feeling scattered.

Mercury square to Pluto, kind of ditto. It can have you feeling way too focused on the wrong things, or it can have you feeling scattered. Happily, the Mars trine to Saturn and the Mercury trine to Jupiter, those kind of sandwiching this week, these transits support us all in making use of the best possible potential of the rest of the transits. But you want to keep in mind that because of the Full Moon in Pisces on the 20th, regardless of everything else, it's going to be an emo week. You're going to feel the feelings. And those feelings may be emotions, and they may be perceptions. If you're really sensitive, your psychic shit may be really overwhelming and really strong.

And so, as I always say with a lot of Pisces stuff or Neptunian stuff, be mindful of your boundaries: your energy boundaries, your emotional boundaries, your interpersonal boundaries, your behavioral boundaries, all the damn boundaries, because this is a lot. And how we navigate difficulty, how we navigate feeling activated or threatened, this says so much about who we really are. And if you find that you don't really like what it's saying, great. Okay, cool. That's motivation for you to make a change. Maybe not an instant change, but a change.

So, my loves, I know this was a lot of data. I'm going to run through the transits of the week again. On the 20th, we have a Mercury trine to Jupiter and a Full Moon in Pisces. On the 22nd, we have an exact Mercury square to Pluto. On the 23rd, Venus is exactly opposite Uranus. And on the 25th, Mars is exactly trine to Saturn.

Now, if you're thinking to yourself, "I wish I'd known that this shit was going to be so overwhelming sooner," I'll say to you this: join me over on Patreon, my loves, because on the first of every month, I drop a bonus episode of Ghost of a Podcast that is a full month-ahead horoscope. I break down all the damn major transits in advance so you have a giddy-up, so you're ready to go.

Also, if you're an astrology student or a pro astrologer, make sure to subscribe to my gloriously adorable and very helpful web-based app called Astrology For Days. It's a tool for tracking transits from wherever you are in the world and taking notes so that you can establish your own relationship to the planets. You can figure out what Venus/Uranus opposition means to you because that shit happens kind of routinely, you know?

Okay. I want to thank you for joining me this week and every week for Ghost of a Podcast. If you haven't already subscribed, please do subscribe. If you get value from the show, do drop your five stars. Write a review. It does make such a huge difference.

Okay, but that's not all. One last thing. If you're still here, if you're still here with me, I want to thank you, and I want to say this: on November 6th, I am teaching a class over at Astrology University on the twelfth house. You know you want to learn about the twelfth house with me because, I mean—I don't mean to brag—it's kind of my specialty. So, yeah, join me there. The sign-up link will be in show notes.

Talk to you soon. Okay. Byyyye.