October 09, 2021
227: Adam JK + Horoscope
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Jessica: 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.
My loves, this week, you've got a real treat in front of you because I had the absolute pleasure of sitting down with Adam J. Kurtz, who's a queer writer and artist who you're going to absolutely adore and be charmed by. I first discovered his books in a hotel in a really stressful moment in my life, and it made such a difference. His work is really uplifting and fun and kind of everything you need. So I hope you enjoy this reading as much as I did.
Adam, this is your very first reading with me—your first astrology reading ever, correct?
Adam: Yes, this is a first.
Jessica: Exciting. Very exciting.
Adam: No pressure. No pressure.
Jessica: I just want to see—well, two things, actually. I'd love to confirm you were born October 19th, '88, 11:06 p.m. in Toronto, Ontario, correct?
Adam: Yes.
Jessica: So is there anything specific or general that you want to ask me, anything specific or general that's going on in your life?
Adam: You know, I am in a period of really great transition. I think a lot of us are, given everything. But I picked up my life in New York, and my husband and I moved to his hometown of Honolulu, Hawaii. So I'm like a Canadian now living in a tropical island and starting fresh, have to make friends as an adult, picked up my art practice and my author career and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I'm just surrounded by ocean. And I'm so out of my element. I would love any sort of insight into what's coming. What could I be doing to prepare myself for anything? What could I do to be more open to adapting? Because it feels like a rebirth. It feels like this is a new chapter in such a foundational way.
Jessica: Absolutely. And I have a question before we begin. Do you want human children/babies?
Adam: Ahh, how are you attacking me? We just started. We go back and forth. I think the answer is no, but we also—I would be a good parent. I hate to admit it, but I would be. Yeah, I can't—I don't want children, but if I was somehow required to raise a child, I would do it with my entire heart.
Jessica: Interesting answer. Does your husband want children?
Adam: I don't think so. I think our perspective is that we are so stupid and lazy that why would we ever do this? But, for example, if we were straight and we accidentally had a baby, we would keep it. We recently became godparents, and God forbid, if something happened to our friends, we would raise that child. I would do it in a heartbeat. But as far as the often heartbreaking process of adoption, I don't think I have the strength to go through that.
Jessica: Yeah. That's fair. That's fair. You know, there's so much to talk about with what's happening in your chart. I'll begin by saying this. For you, a huge part of your mission in life and your overall wellness is around creating a lifestyle, so a day-to-day life, an hour-by-hour life, that is sustainable for you materially, psychologically, and spiritually. This is theoretically true for everybody, but for you, it is salient. It's this very material thing for you. Especially at your age, you're probably very aware of that.
And you're lucky in that the way that your chart is written, it's kind of like your career and your conscious life objectives is in concert with that need. So that's why you've been able to create a career that brought you from Toronto to New York and from New York to Hawaii, right? Which is a really great place for you to be. Whether or not it's the place you'll be forever and ever is a separate conversation, but it's a great place for you to be to kind of locate yourself in a new way, which is really what it's about now.
The question of children is a really important one. Has this been active in your relationship recently?
Adam: It has not, but we became godparents last week.
Jessica: Oh shit. Okay.
Adam: So that is very new.
Jessica: Okay. So you do have a transit that is activating the issue of parenting right now, and it's a really big—you're going through a lot. You're going through a lot.
Adam: Yeah, no shit. Sorry. I'm sorry.
Jessica: No. No, no. You're good. You're going through a lot.
Adam: Oh yeah.
Jessica: And this period of your life—and I say this period of your life; I'm talking about the next couple/few years. So it's not just this moment. It's not just 2020 or 2021. This period of your life is—if I could kind of try to create a summary of it, it is about confronting what you need to let go of and positioning yourself both internally and behaviorally in new ways than you have in the past around change.
And, actually, this has a lot to do with the choice around kids because from an astrological standpoint, when I'm looking at parenting or having children, I look to the same place as I look for being an artist and creating art because it's all about procreativity. There are so many ways of embodying procreativity. And your chart right now is focusing a great deal of pressure around what are you willing to let go of to focus on creation, and what is it that is calling you to pour all of your love and your blood and your sweat and your tears into? And it doesn't have to be an either/or. But just in two minutes, I already am hearing from you great clarity that it is, yes, art, and it is not a no for children but it's not a yes for children.
Adam: Yeah. As you're speaking about this, I am really feeling the truth of it and the parallel of it in the context of my new book that's coming out soon because I had this moment where—I've made a few books before that are a little bit more friendly, a little fluffier, and I had this moment where I was working on a new book and it was going to be more of the same. And then I had a full-stop moment where I said, "That's not truthful, and I want to put my entire heart, soul, and being into a new book that could really help other people."
And I had this moment of identifying my core purpose and understanding this book as a conduit to really have a conversation with people who share a sort of hopeful but depressive inner monologue the way I do. And so I have been calling this book my baby, not just because it's physically small but because it is everything that I believe and feel and hope. It's those late-night life talks that I have with my close friends, and I am trying to find a way to put it into a thing and send it out into the world.
It feels like an extension of my heart in a way that none of my work before ever has. And so I know when people talk about their projects, everyone is like, "Oh yeah, I love this, and I worked so hard." This feels different than anything I've ever made, and the people who love me, who know me, have been echoing that back to me. So this might be my current baby.
Jessica: You know what? Let me back that up astrologically because in your birth chart, you've got both the Sun and Pluto in the fifth house. And, in fact, Pluto is intercept that fifth house. What this means is a lot of things, but in the context of what's going on for you right now, currently you have Saturn square to your natal Pluto. You've got Uranus opposite your natal Pluto, and you've got Pluto square to your Sun. And so this shakes down to mean a lot of things, but a major one is that you're dealing with matters of great meaning and depth and that everything that isn't related to that which has authentic and deep meaning for you feels like it just takes all your energy, and it's not fucking worth it, basically.
Adam: Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. Yeah.
Adam: I feel like part of this move has been letting go of that. And part of the creative stage that I'm in feels like, how do I set myself up for the next decade of just authentic creation, authentic existence as a person, separating myself from my brand and separating myself from the faux identity of New York City? Because I really applied this location as an identity to myself for a long time. And then COVID hit, and the distractions stripped away, and I was like, "Wait, do I even like myself? Let me figure out what I like about myself and then home in on that, celebrate that, and then almost sharpen those tools and wield them with intention."
So I'm just trying to show up as who I actually am; stop hiding. It's an embarrassing truth to be like, "You know what? I'm like a Jewish mom. I just care so much about everyone, whether they want me to or not," and just stand up and be like, "You know what? That's my fucking superpower. Too bad."
Jessica: You know what?
Adam: I just want to help people.
Jessica: I've got to say some things because—so important. Okay. So, first of all, it's really cool for me because I'm just hearing you articulate your birth chart. So whatever that means to you, it's—
Adam: That's so funny to me because I don't know anything. Okay. Sorry. I feel like you're affirming what's been swirling in my head for so long. It's so comforting but also foundation-shaking just to hear it affirmed from an external source rather than it just being this hypothesis about myself that I feel is true, but maybe have also quietly been doubting, because can I ever really know myself at all? I don't know.
Jessica: I am going to return to that, sir. But before I do, you said something both really funny and sneaky a second ago, and I'm going to just jump in on it, which is about having shame around being a Jewish mother and then also starting to come into acceptance of it.
You have, as I mentioned, all this stuff in the fifth house. You also have the Moon in Aquarius in the eighth. I will tell you what this means. It means that you struggle with shame.
Adam: Yeah.
Jessica: And you struggle with not just shame around things that other people said to you or messages you get from society—and there's, of course, lots of negative messaging that you would get around all of that. It's also inherited shame. Whenever we're dealing with Pluto, the eighth house, really any of the water houses in astrology, we can kind of see inherited or ancestral issues.
And a huge part of what you are currently, and will over the next couple/few years, be working on is not just how you position yourself in relationship to creativity, meaning, family—whether that's babies or not babies, husband or not husband—it's so much bigger than that. It's not just those things. It's also about releasing things that are not actually yours but that you have resonated with for so many years, and maybe your family has for generations. And releasing it because it's time and you're ready doesn't mean it's easy or graceful or that you're super confident about it all the time. This is deep, sticky shit.
I want to just acknowledge that, because you said lots of really important things, and in the middle of those important things, you also dropped in the Pluto trigger word, which is "shame." It's feeling bad about something that—I mean, who doesn't love a Jewish mother? Maybe there's a lot of answers to that, but also, who doesn't want to be taken care of by a loving Jewish mother with, by the way, a Cancer Rising? Literally nobody doesn't want that because that's attentive, service-based love.
Adam: Yeah.
Jessica: So, if you can apply that to your work and the people in your life and also to yourself, that's a good life. I want to also kind of pull back to acknowledge what you said about New York, being so identified with New York. And I think that happens to all of us when we're in a specific place, but New York is—it's New York, right? So I think it's, in particular, like that especially with career stuff. You have Mars conjunct your Midheaven. It's the highest planet in your birth chart. It's in the sign of Aries at zero degrees. And what this means is you are driven. You are driven to make things. You are driven to be seen as someone who makes things. You're driven to go fast and to go hard. You are driven to kind of show up and be like, "Hello. I've shown up. Do you see that I've shown up?"
The rest of your chart is not in concert with that. The rest of your chart is like, "I feel things. I'm not pushing you. I'm not pushing me. Everything ebbs and flows." The rest of your chart is less forceful. But that Mars, man—that Mars is just like, "Yeah, I fucking belong in New York, and I need to publish all the books, and I need to write all the things, and I need to do all the things, and I need to make sure that I do it in the world so that it's seen so that it can be validated."
A beautiful part about being—you are only 33?
Adam: I'll be 33 next month. On the same day the book comes out is my birthday.
Jessica: So there's two things I'll say, and this is something I've talked about on the podcast in different contexts a bunch of times. But the 33rd year is the Christ year. Have you heard of this? Yeah.
Adam: I have heard of it, but I have to be honest. As a Jewish person, I immediately recoil—
Jessica: Okay. I'm Jewish as well.
Adam: —when people tell me something like that.
Jessica: Okay. I'm Jewish as well, and I will tell—
Adam: I know, which is why I feel like I'm volunteering this. Otherwise, I'd be like, "Shh."
Jessica: Thank you. I appreciate it. Okay. Have you seen Jesus Christ Superstar, the musical from 1973?
Adam: I have not.
Jessica: Okay. This is—
Adam: Is that my homework? I'll take it.
Jessica: Yes.
Adam: Okay.
Jessica: It is 100 percent your homework. I will say I didn't know anything about Jesus until I watched that movie. I mean, of course, I know some things from pop culture. But I watched that movie, and then the Christ year clicked into place for me. And in the movie version, it's like, is he having a spiritual awakening? Is he maybe a little of a megalomaniac? Is he a little mentally ill? What's actually happening here? Did his friend betray him, or did his friend try to call him in? It was a little unclear in the movie, which—I really like that part of the Jesus story because the Jesus story, to me, is not a historical story; it's a myth. No offense to anyone who believes it's a historical story.
From my perspective as an astrologer, those three wise men were astrologers. And his whole arc, what everybody's so obsessed with, was during his Saturn return. It was the lead-up years of his Saturn return around 29, and then he was killed at that double trinity year of the Christ year. And the reason why it's really important to know about the Christ year is because when you're 33, that year is the pinnacle year of your Saturn return arc. It is when everything that you've worked so hard on since like 27, 28, and certainly 29, it kind of comes to a material presentation for you. You start to really feel what you haven't worked out and what you have.
And so it's generally a time of both things really coming together and really coming apart, depending on how you've done your homework. And so—
Adam: Terrifying.
Jessica: It is terrifying, but also—
Adam: My stomach is—I feel butterflies, and some of them are happy, and some of them are biting me from the inside right now.
Jessica: Okay. So the fact that you have work that gives you meaning and that you have physically relocated to be away from the New York eyeballs—right? Like the see and be seen thing—and that you're by the ocean with family and that you became a godfather—or godmother; I don't know how you identify. I respect all. This, to me, is a really good sign, and I can already tell that that is part of what the Saturn return was pushing you to.
Adam: Yes, 100 percent. Yeah.
Jessica: So the other question that I have looking at your birth chart about what your Saturn return may have been pushing you to is how you take care of grief and sadness and how you care for your physical body. Does that make sense to you about what was up for you in your late 20s?
Adam: Yes. Yes.
Jessica: Okay.
Adam: I think that this time in my life has been marked by an awareness of self, and really in particular an awareness of what I was not doing for myself, an awareness of the way that I hurt myself, an awareness of the way that I let certain things rule me while ignoring the basics—in particular, the way that grief and shame have not been let go of, and in particular the way that I have not been exploring or even paying attention to the brain and body connection.
And I really used the move as an opportunity to change some things in a big way, to really lean into the importance of my relationship and love above all, to change my meds, and to be feeling more like a person who can function with a little bit less effort. Yeah, it's just been so much of everything, and also, even learning to say that on a podcast. That's a big shame I had to let go of is even to say that out loud to a person.
So I am so everything right now. I'm so naïve, I didn't know that this was going to be therapy, but of course it is. I'm just like—
Jessica: Sorry.
Adam: —"Oh, wow. This is like round 1, and then I'm going to unpack with Dr. Gretchen on Friday."
Jessica: I'm glad you have a Dr. Gretchen on Friday, and also—
Adam: Yes. She's wonderful.
Jessica: I mean, therapy is really great for you. You're a person who uses therapy as it's meant to be used. And I'm really glad to hear you name this thing about getting into the neuroscience of learning about the brain because that Mars at the top of your chart—when you can understand the physicality of a thing, it helps you to orient and it helps you to release some of this thing that you have that is written in your birth chart and also probably in your DNA as a Jewish person around, "I have to be hypervigilant. I am responsible for everything. I have to be five steps ahead. I have to always be obsessing on the past."
Adam: Yeah.
Jessica: This is an inherited ancestral issue that your chart is written in such a way where you do a great job of just carrying the burden of it and just being like, "Are they rocks in the bag? Who cares? They're my rocks."
This 33rd year for you, from my take on it, will be a lot of you giving yourself the space to figure out how to be present with the feelings and your body through this stuff because, back to something I started to say at the very start, Pluto square your Sun and you've got Uranus and Saturn fucking with your natal Pluto, which means in English you are being confronted by grief. And some of your grief is the grief of letting go of a bad habit, like talking shitty to yourself. Some of the grief is outgrowing the person that you thought you wanted to be so that you can be the person you actually are and the person you want to be.
It sounds so good, but the experience of it is outgrowing yourself. And it's scary because even if it's a goal and it's an affirming thing, you don't really know what's on the other side. Whenever we have self-destructive or limiting behaviors, they serve us. That's why we have them.
Adam: For the listeners at home, I'm just quietly nodding and tearing up because I feel like I knew these things or I knew the beginning of these things, and to hear them said so plainly is shaking me to my core because this is it. I mean, this is really what it's been, and maybe I didn't have the exact language to describe it.
I'm someone who processes best through the tangibility. Right? My entire art practice is making feelings real so I can confront them and then let go of them, or try to. And, also, I am better at doing work on projects than I am at doing the work on myself. And so, as I became aware that this moment in my life was about processing, I made a book about processing so that I would be forced to think about it and address it.
And so much of what you're describing is kind of very succinctly what is in this book. And as you're telling me things, I'm sort of, in my mind's eye, reading my own words. And I'm like, "Oh. Oh, she's clocking all of it." When I created this artwork, that's what that was. And when I wrote this phrase, that's what I meant. It's kind of fucking me up because I thought that this was like a secret that I was doing this work and no one knew, and here you are just very correctly identifying it. And it's actually a relief to hear someone else say it, and it's such a relief to hear the voice coming from outside of the house, because it's been screaming inside for the better part of a year.
Jessica: So, first of all, I'm so glad it's validating, and I cannot wait to see your damn book. It's going to be delicious and—
Adam: Well, you don't need to read it, I don't think, because you seem to—you've got it already. Did you write it?
Jessica: No, you wrote it.
Adam: I wish you would have. It would've been out already.
Jessica: Well, you overestimate how quickly I write. That's for damn sure. Okay. But there's a lot that I want to say to this, and one thing is, were your grandparents in Canada or were they—are they survivors?
Adam: They were in Canada, but my great-grandmother, she escaped. Not the camps—she escaped Europe. She was—
[crosstalk]
Jessica: It was right before the camps.
Adam: Yes. Yes. Her entire family did not. It was just her.
Jessica: Okay. So I ask you this because you have a couple of the things that I look for when I am looking for survivor's guilt. And it's not like I actively look; they just jump out at me. But you have a couple of the things, and in particular, it does look like you're related to artists and creators.
Adam: Yeah.
Jessica: So you're not the only one in the family, eh?
Adam: No.
Jessica: And there's this shame around being an artist or being a creator when there's so much tragedy and pain in the world. That is not just your issue. I mean, I'm assuming it's your issue from reading your birth chart, but it's an inherited issue. It is an ancestral issue. And part of what you're doing by bringing your own pain and acknowledging the shame into the work is you're healing it, not just for yourself, but within the line.
And I want to just clarify we cannot heal our ancestors for them. We cannot heal our ancestors. But we can heal the part of our line, of our genes, of our energy field, that resonates with and holds that shame in this generation in the here and now. And that is what you are being confronted with. You have been for a while, but really in 2021. It started really intensely in March, and it'll follow you into—
[crosstalk]
Adam: What the—how do you know that?
Jessica: Well, girl, you know, it's not my first time.
Adam: Oh my God. I feel like I'm waiting for the camera to pop out, like I'm on a—like this is a—oh my God. Okay. Sorry.
Jessica: No, don't be sorry. Don't be sorry. What happened in March? Did something specific or was it internal?
Adam: I think there was an internal shift where I—so we moved here in October, and we were living with my husband's parents for a while. And I think March was the first month when it finally hit me like, "You're actually here," because we moved in October. It felt like, oh, we're visiting for Christmas or something. March was when I suddenly was like, "This is your life."
March is also when I sort of had a final moment with this book project where I was like, "No, no, no. I know it's done. We locked it, but I need to change something." And I made, sort of, my final change and then sent the files and said goodbye. You know what I mean?
Jessica: Yeah. Yeah.
Adam: And so it felt like both an acknowledgment of, okay, this project that has helped me process is done. And, also, that first big wave of processing has brought me to this moment I needed to be at. And so it felt sort of like—this is all a new chapter, but that felt like the first page of that chapter had been turned, or a page was turned. Something shifted.
Jessica: Yeah.
Adam: Yeah. I felt it.
Jessica: The thing that began for you then will be over late January 2022, and it is meant—
Adam: Okay. I'm going to mark my fucking calendar, dude.
Jessica: Yeah, you are, because it's difficult, because it's fucking hard. And it happens twice every 29-year cycle. So this is the—
Adam: Wow.
Jessica: Yeah. This is the first time you're going through it as an adult from an astrological standpoint, post-Saturn return, in other words. And what this transit does is it confronts you with your shame, and it confronts you with your control issues. And in your birth chart, that's this ancestral stuff we're talking about. That's the issue of children. And it's not, "Do I want children?" It's, "Am I supposed to have children? Should I?" because Pluto is obsessive and compulsive and motivates through shame and through healing. It's all of it.
Adam: Wow.
Jessica: And so that is what you're going through. And at the same time, the Pluto square to the Sun that you're going through, that one began at the end of February, so right around March. And that one's not over until December 19th, 2023. So it's a long transit.
Adam: Okay.
Jessica: Pluto square to the Sun is going to continue to infuse you with really intense creativity that's hard for you. So it's like you're doing it, and you're like, "Oh, I know this is the right thing, and this is really working," and, "Oh, why is this coming from my bowels? Why is this so hard?" This work isn't going away for you.
And I want to just reiterate that you placed yourself in such a restorative place of Hawaii is really a good sign for me as an astrologer because everything in your chart, or most things in your chart, articulate that when you are in a place where there's lots of views, like technically, literally views, and also large water masses, you're just better to yourself.
Adam: Wow.
Jessica: You have more space. Does that make sense in your experience?
Adam: Yes. Can I tell you that, from the toilet, I can see the ocean? And that is insane.
Jessica: That's amazing.
Adam: Yeah.
Jessica: Congratulations. It's kind of like—
Adam: I mean, it's over the top of many, many buildings, but I can see it touch the sky, and it is so grounding in a way that I've never felt before in my entire life.
Jessica: Yeah. So, so helpful for you.
Adam: It's weird to feel so untethered at this moment in my life and also, simultaneously, maybe the most grounded. It's interesting to feel both of those things at once.
Jessica: Okay. So let me tell you what that's about. That's because—
Adam: Oh my God. Do you know? I would love to know.
Jessica: Yes, I do. Oh, I do.
Adam: Okay.
Jessica: It's because you have historically associated being tethered to literally tying yourself to external people, conditions, identities.
Adam: Yes.
Jessica: And that is no longer the case. You are anchoring yourself inside of yourself and your lived experience. And so your brain is like, "I'm untethered. Why do I feel so grounded?" It's because you were tethering yourself to things that a young person does, a person in their 20s, a person in their teens does. It's external things. It's things that you can prove to yourself are happening.
But now you're not needing proof. And it's not like you're seven years deep into this, so it feels like, "I know it's true, but can I trust that I know it's true?" You're in that phase of development which is a really healthy, if not uncomfortable, phase.
Adam: Wow. Trust just jumped out as a key word there because I do believe in myself, but then I struggle with, "Well, should I? Historically, my brain has tricked me before. Can I trust this? Can I trust the things that I know? Maybe I only think I know." I really have a lot of doubt around the good advice that my brain gives myself because I have had mental health issues in the past.
Jessica: Okay. I've got great things to say about this.
Adam: Okay.
Jessica: So we're going to talk about mental health. And as we talk about mental health, I will preface it by saying you have a therapist. Je suis not a therapist.
Adam: Yes. Always important.
Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. Grain of salt. And this is just like a companion to your preexisting self-care.
From my perspective as an astrologer, you have this concentration of planets in your sixth house. You've got Saturn and Uranus conjunct, real tight. And then you've got Neptune in there. And in your birth chart—there's a couple things that this means, and I'm going to add another layer in one moment. The Saturn/Uranus conjunction in the sixth, it articulates that the way your mental health works is very rooted in your physiological health.
Again, this is why when you talked about the brain, I was like, "Yes. That's the right path. Go there," because for you, if you skip a meal, you will feel anxious or depressed, or you can't focus. Your mental health instantly says something's wrong. But you, being a literalist—somehow, Libra literalist—you're like, "Well, if I'm anxious, then it's about anxiety." It's not like, "Oh, I need to check in with, have I had enough water today? Have I had grounding foods?" or whatever. But when you do that, your mental health is so much better. So that's one thing, and it's a really important thing.
I will add to that, because you have the Moon in Aquarius, in the eighth, food is a big deal for you, but you may forget that it's a big deal for you kind of frequently. And that Moon in Aquarius does best with lots of little meals throughout the day instead of three or two big meals. You don't really need stimulants, so coffee is what I'm talking about, because you're naturally pretty stimulated. Do you drink a lot of coffee?
Adam: I love coffee as a ritual, yes, but I switched to decaf for the first half of this year, and it definitely changed my life for better.
Jessica: Yeah.
Adam: But now I'm back on coffee, baby, and my anxiety is through the fucking roof.
Jessica: Sure. Sure it is. So I—
Adam: Delicious, delicious roof.
Jessica: Listen. I love coffee, and I could talk to you for an hour about coffee. So I respect. And also, your body doesn't like it. You have nothing but evidence. And so, if this is a choice—
Adam: Yeah. I just don't need it.
Jessica: Yeah. But if this is a choice you're making right now, it's not about beating yourself up. It's about recognizing, "Right now, this is the best I can do. Coffee is kind of an antidepressant. It's super delicious. It's a fun ritual. So I'm going to give myself space to have it for now, understanding what it costs me."
Making this kind of cost benefit choice is really healthy, even when it's an unhealthy choice, because then you can recognize, "Okay, I'm almost 33. I know what's healthy. And you know what? I'm going to make a good choice when I can, and right now, I'm working on some other things." You don't have to be perfect in your 30s or your 50s or your 70s. You know what I mean? It's about being in journey.
Now, the other thing is you have this Neptune square to Mercury. So you have Mercury in Libra, and it’s square Neptune in Capricorn. And this is the mental health ringer for you because this thing of not being able to trust your thoughts, that's the Neptune/Mercury square. It produces anxiety, and it's not the anxiety of where you're focused on a million things. It's anxiety like, "I have never seen a monster, but I have heard of them. And I believe there is one in the closet, and I must protect myself from it." It's like a fear of what hasn't yet happened and you have no evidence of, but you really feel it.
Adam: Yes.
Jessica: And the reason why this happens is because Neptune makes your mind—so Neptune is the energetics here, and Mercury governs the mind. Neptune makes the mind porous, energetically porous. So what you do is—just your natural state is you are pulling in more data that you can process cognitively—
Adam: (laughs)
Jessica: Make sense so far?
Adam: Oh my God. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My husband would agree.
Jessica: Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure your therapist would, too, is my guess.
Adam: Oh, she would.
Jessica: Yeah. So you're pulling in more data than you can cognitively process.
Adam: Wow.
Jessica: And then it creates this sense of overwhelm. So what do you do? You don't drink water. You don't breathe. You hold your breath without realizing it.
Adam: Yes.
Jessica: So then your heart rate goes up. Your anxieties go up. And then it only bolsters the idea that all the things are wrong instead of, again, coming back to the body, where it's as simple as have you done your inhale five times/exhales five times?
Adam: Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Oh my God.
Jessica: Yeah.
Adam: Yeah.
Jessica: So the cool thing is there's behavioral ways of managing this—through breath work, literally, really simple or really complex, however you want to get into it—breath work. But keeping it simple is a big part of self-care for you. When you make things too complicated, you set yourself up for performance shit, right?
Adam: Totally.
Jessica: And, again, that distracts you. So keeping it simple is really wise. But there's the other thing, which is woo. And that's where I come in, girl. So part of the issue here is you need energetic boundaries around what you take in online because Mercury is what we read, what we watch. It's our thoughts, our attitudes. It's how we listen. It's what we say. It's our tone of voice. It's all of that. And so having boundaries with yourself around how you engage with your mind and what you allow in is really important. And that's a behavioral issue.
Now, on the much more woo side, I would say doing energetic boundary work and protection work is really essential for you, and it will help your anxiety. And the reason why it'll help your anxiety is because on an energetics plane, what happens is because you resonate with shame or guilt or anxiety, you are kind of like—I don't know if this will resonate with you, this metaphor, but you're kind of like a black velvet blob walking through a room full of longhaired white cats, just—it's just attaching and attaching and attaching to you.
Adam: Yes.
Jessica: Yeah. So it's like it just sticks to you, and it stands out to you. So what will happen is when the world is, oh, I don't know, struggling through a climate crisis or six million other terrible things—pandemic and systemic racism and all the things, all the hate that's in the world—if you don't have clear energy boundaries and you're only managing your social media feed, then you will be overwhelmed with thoughts that have feelings and sensations associated with them that are so overwhelming that they easily spill into anxiety.
It's kind of like the second time you eat mushrooms. If you've ever had mushrooms, it's like your body's like, "Oh, I know what that smell is. Hell no. I'm not doing that again/also, give me the mushrooms."
Adam: Yes.
Jessica: So there's a way that it's like it makes you feel bad, but you know what it is, so you go for it. It's the devil you know. And now we have a kind of systemic, chronic issue with anxiety that is actually—some of it is behavioral. Some of it is actually energetic. And then some of it's your brain. But I think that having this kind of multipronged approach to self-care doesn't have to be complicated, but it will help you.
And I would imagine that when you're writing or drawing, you are not anxious.
Adam: I'm a lot less anxious. It's very flow state.
Jessica: Yeah. From an energetic standpoint, the reason why it's flow state is because you are energetically fixated on what you're doing.
Adam: Yes.
Jessica: You're not just behaviorally fixated, right? So the reason why I kind of bring up that specific moment that you know very intimately is because you already know how to do this. You know how to be energetically boundaried. You just don't think of it that way.
Adam: Yes. You're right. The language around it is different.
Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. It's about being all the way present with what you're doing, which doesn't mean you're not slightly obsessing on other things or that you're not stopping to do social media breaks or whatever it is. But it means that when you're there, you're there. Right?
Adam: Yeah.
Jessica: So it's about bringing that kind of wisdom to other parts of your life. Artist you needs to teach the rest of you how to do a thing because artist you already knows how to do it, which means you already know how to do it.
Adam: Yes. And I love that we often have an answer, and we just forget to internalize it.
Jessica: Yep. It's easy to talk about the answers. It's easy to know the answers. I mean it's relatively easy to know the answers.
Adam: Yes.
Jessica: But embodying them takes emotional intelligence. And the reason why your work is fixated on the cultivation and journey of emotional intelligence is because that's your damn work.
Adam: Well, and it's my work because otherwise I wouldn't do the work. I have tooled a life around the things that I need to survive because otherwise, I would ignore them until I died. I cracked the code on my weirdo—I mean, it's not weird. It's not dumb. It's my specific brain.
I have a question for you.
Jessica: Yes. Hit me.
Adam: And I will do my best not to internalize the answer, depending on what it is. Pretty much my entire life, I have just assumed that I would die young. As a child, I told my mom that I would die by 35.
Jessica: That's amazing.
Adam: And she reminded me of that enough times that—I don't remember saying that, but then she would remind me that I said that. And what's been happening to me lately in life as I approach 35 is the realization that, "Actually, you might not." But I wonder if there's any insight there.
Jessica: Sure.
Adam: I mean, I don't think we can say this is true, but why do I think this?
Jessica: I actually do have an answer, and I'm not scared of giving it to you. So don't be scared of hearing it. There's a couple parts to the answer. The first one is I don't predict deaths. I don't have that ability. I don't want it. So I don't do it. The other thing is—
Adam: Can you please just kill me? Just come here and kill me.
Jessica: Well, you know, that is easier than predicting death, tbh. So okay. But the harder news is the reason why as a small child, when lots of children aren't thinking about death or dying or their 30s, you were—it's because you have this Pluto in Scorpio intercept the fifth house. And so you've always been highly attuned to things that are taboo and painful, and not just painful but excruciating.
Adam: Yeah.
Jessica: And as a small kid, your intuition was really strong. You were probably told you were a really creative child and that you were mature for your age—
Adam: Yes. Totally.
Jessica: —and all those fun things. But part of what that's about is having a mind that moves faster than your emotions can chase it. So you impress the adults around you, and you make the adults' lives a little bit easier. In the meantime, you're struggling with issues emotionally that you don't know how to really parse through because you're a child and not an adult, not a smart adult trapped in a child's body. You're just an actual child.
And so this is where we get to the other part of the answer. Part of you is right. You saw a profound ending where your life would become something that was not the life you had now by 35. You were right. You misunderstood it. You misinterpreted it, as many of us do with intuition. From what I'm seeing, around your 35th birthday, that 35th year, you will have gone through so much of this excavation and this spiritual awakening and this deepening of embodiment that you will not think of 33-year-old you the same way that you think of yourself now.
You will be a very different person, and it's interesting because 35—there's an astrological phenomenon that happens for people around 35. And personally, me—and everybody's different, but I felt that my life began at 35. And I've been doing the work I'm doing now since 1995. So it's not like I started a new career path at that time. It's that I hit embodiment of these ideas that I had worked with. I actually was able to be in them in a whole new way. And that's the beauty of being in your 30s and getting older. It's not just ideas. It's not just theories you're running. You become yourself more.
And so that's the death you've been scared of. Fair enough. Be scared. But I don't think it's like a mortal coil, meat suit thing. I think it's much more of a spiritual thing. And that, if I'm reading your chart right, lines up pretty neatly with child you because child you was deep and emo and spiritual in ways that you're starting to only embrace and get to know of yourself again now.
Adam: Yes.
Jessica: And so, again, 35-year-old you is not going to be in the ground. 35-year-old you is going to be unrecognizable in some profound and foundational ways. That's the death.
Adam: Wow. That is so encouraging. That is so exciting. I can't wait to meet that person. And you're right; it does line up with a lot of the work I feel myself doing now, even the work that I don't totally know why I'm doing it or I thought I was doing it to take care of others, which is a very me thing to think. Surprise, bitch. You're also doing it—you can be the others you're taking care of.
Jessica: Yeah.
Adam: Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. The spiritual thing is interesting for me because I grew up orthodox Jewish. And when I walked away from the—well, I didn't walk. It was a whole thing when I left that behind and sort of rejected spirituality, period, because it was triggering, because it was wrapped up in tradition that didn't feel rooted in truth, for me. That was proven to be inaccurate based on my identity or who I thought I was or how I thought it meshed with who I was.
And now I'm really sort of welcoming a lot of spirituality back, and even a number of culturally Jewish things or Jewish ideas around spirituality, separate from the organized religion aspect. And so I am also very curious to know who I'll be as a spiritual person three years from now because I feel that creeping back in, and it's come back to me through art. It's come back to me through making the intangible tangible. It's come back to me through the connections and people, and love is real. Love is the answer. That's starting to really click in a big way.
Jessica: I mean, I don't want to burst your bubble or make—
Adam: Oh, please.
Jessica: —you mad, but you're very spiritual, and you are highly likely to create a life as an adult—and, again, post-33 is really where it materializes and gels more—that is very much spiritual and netted in spirituality. So being raised in any kind of orthodoxy or any kind of strict religion, the thing that it strips from us is the, kind of, embracing of God or embracing of the universe. It becomes about rules. It becomes about limitations. But that's actually not what spirit is meant to be.
Spirit is in literally everything, and spirit is—you don't have to believe in it or do anything about it; it is. You were getting there in New York, but you can't avoid it in Hawaii. And it's as it should be. You've got these impediments that you're currently releasing, and it's—your religious self and your anti-religious self and your super-woo self, it's all you. That's the cool thing. It's all different articulations and choices.
And for you, remembering your free will is an important part of being able to step back into spirituality so you don't feel like you're losing it to religion or cultural doctrines or any of that kind of shit.
Adam: Yes.
Jessica: And that is something that is difficult for you, but it's in your nature to do. So it's not foreign to you. It's just hard work. But you're not adverse to hard work, so it's not a big deal. You're going to do this.
Adam: Yeah.
Jessica: When I look at your chart, in order for you to evade your calling, you would have to do some really dramatic things, like really dramatic things.
Adam: You mean like dye my hair blonde? The most dramatic thing a gay man can do. Yes.
Jessica: I was thinking orange, but okay. Fine. I actually meant drugs. Drugs.
Adam: Oh.
Jessica: Yeah. Drugs would be a great way for you to detract yourself from your calling. It would be probably the best and most efficient way.
Adam: Which drugs should I—no, no. Let's not.
Jessica: Do you do drugs? Do you do any drugs?
Adam: I smoke weed. I've dabbled with a few other things, like I enjoy a mushrooms moment like once a year. For me, it's social and it's contextual, and there's lots of bottles of water standing by.
Jessica: Great. Right. Okay. Good.
Adam: I'm like the safe drug mom.
Jessica: Great. I mean, that's what I would like to hear, and it makes sense because I pulled out the mushrooms metaphor earlier. But that's fine. I would advise you very passionately to stay away from opiates, and if you for some medical reason need opiates, to have a plan with a therapist about how you'll manage and—yeah, just how you'll manage and check in with yourself around the use of opiates and, again, stimulants.
Adam: I think I maybe even know this innately. I've been prescribed pain medication and just not taken it—
Jessica: Smart.
Adam: —because I'm a little bit like, "Mmm, we don't know about this."
Jessica: Your physiology is addictive.
Adam: Yes. Oh my God, yes.
Jessica: And, luckily, you don't like to lose control completely.
Adam: No. I almost never drink. I really—I don't like to lose control.
Jessica: It's good. I mean, your blood sugar can't take it anyways.
Adam: Well, it's because my blood sugar is pumped full of sugar.
Jessica: Pure cane sugar. Right.
Adam: Yes. Yes.
Jessica: Yes. Well, and to that end, actually, you do have to be careful. I don't know if there's type 2 diabetes in your family, but it kind of looks like it.
Adam: Yes.
Jessica: Yeah. So you have to be careful about behavioral modifications—
Adam: How the fuck do you . . .
Jessica: Well, you know, I'm a medical astrologer. I know.
Adam: Yeah. No, no, no. I mean, I'm on a slippery path, and that is my core addiction is sugar.
Jessica: Sugar. Mm-hmm.
Adam: It's so tied to mental health, it's so obvious. It's so literal.
Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. In your birth chart, the addictiveness of sugar and deep-fried things, carbs—
Adam: Hmm. Yeah.
Jessica: —those three foods, they are—and I hate to be this lady, but watch me. They're a replacement for love.
Adam: No shit.
Jessica: I'm sorry. I apologize.
Adam: Don't—yeah. I'm aware. I know.
Jessica: It's not about knowledge equaling a change of action or knowledge equaling integration. It's about recognizing that knowledge is a stage of development. And we don't want to only have knowledge, because that's not enough.
Adam: Yes.
Jessica: And, also, we don't want to shit on knowledge without integration because we need to be in the state of knowledge before we can integrate that knowledge. And in your early 30s, no one expects you to have all the things lined up and integrated. You know what I mean? So give yourself some latitude.
And then another thing is, when you catch yourself knee deep in deep-fried sugar things with carbs on the side, you can be like, "Oh. I'm going to enjoy this, and then I'm going to write in my journal about something that's going on for me emotionally," or, "I'm going to schedule it for tomorrow when I have a free minute to do that," to just be like, "This is information that I can use, and it doesn't mean that I have to change all my behaviors at once," because that'll feel like restriction and limitation to you.
So it's about adding in behaviors, and then through the course of adding in those behaviors, you will organically remove the things that are self-destructive over time. That's how you're wired. If you go straight to restriction, that's the religious trigger, right?
Adam: Yes.
Jessica: That's the childhood trigger. And it feels like something you have to fight against, so you don't do it. And so this is where—the only other thing that I would warn you of is around eating, making sure that you're not starving yourself as a way to moderate anything, whether it's emotions, your body, whatever it is, making sure that you are developing a relationship with food that is based on sustenance and nurturance.
For you, the easiest way to do that might actually be becoming kind of like a food science nerd. And when you have, again, that knowledge over the course of time, you integrate it pretty organically. It's just not instantaneous, and you would like for it to be instantaneous.
Adam: Yes, please.
Jessica: Yeah, but no. But no.
Adam: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. You're really clocking a lot of things. I have not vocalized this to many people outside of, I think, my therapist, but I sort of recently—all right. Are we doing it? Are we doing it? Okay. I recently sort of embraced the fact that I do suffer from versions of disordered eating and that that is the label for it. I think I'm so label-adverse, I tell myself, "That can't be me. That couldn't be me, because I'm not that." And I'm really coming to terms with this in the last month, month and a half.
And so for you—we started with junk food, but for you to just talk about eating and restriction, and then also the context to religion and to Judaism, which has a lot of fast days built in—I don't know if that's a connection or not, but—
Jessica: For you, it is. For someone else, it might not be. But for you, it is, because it's tied into—we don't fast in Judaism; we fast to release sins. We don't stop eating; we stop eating because we've done something wrong, and we're trying to atone for it. And that narrative, the way it lands in your nature and in your physiology, it can become disordered eating or a disordered relationship to eating.
And so the cool thing about Judaism, though—and I was not raised religious, so you know more than I do. But the cool thing about it is there's also a lot of rejoicing around food, you know?
Adam: Yes. Yeah.
Jessica: And I think if you're going to do anything ritualistic around Judaism, it should for sure be Shabbat because it's about lighting candles honoring the dead. It can be a very political event where there's spirited discourse about the world—and food, like a shit-ton of delicious food and a spiritual relationship to that food.
So many people who were raised in religions that were harmful to them describe what you've described, this feeling of, "I just threw it all away because it hurt me." And for some people, that's just where you land, and that's where you should stay, and that's healthy and good. For other people, like you, that's a phase of development that's important, and it's essential.
Finding your way back to a relationship to more than the material, something spiritual, whatever that looks like for you, doesn't have to be a full rejection of the religion you've left. It's a rejection of the version of the religion you've left because I'm sure that you know there's a lot of different kinds of Judaism. Your family's experience of it and expression of it is specific to whatever congregation you're from but not to all of Judaism throughout time.
And there is a way that your brain works where when you get interested in something and you do your research and you start taking in more data, it just kind of organically starts to take shape. That flow we talked about with your creative process starts to take over. And so I do think a good piece of homework—not necessarily for 2021; it could be a 2022 thing—would be to do more research into Judaism. Not religious research. Cultural research, historical research. And you will inevitably encounter religious research in that, and let that all just kind of be what it is, and also have a nice therapist to process it with to see where there may be wounding that you can actually release because it's actually not your trauma anymore.
And, again, we're coming back to that little kid self thinking, "Oh, 35, I'm going to be dead." That's part of it. This idea of death is—from my perspective as a medium, it's kind of a misunderstanding. The body dies. This life ends. But the soul does not live inside the body. The body lives inside the soul. So when the body dies, the soul still lives. So it's not death, exactly. And that is why they call coming the little death. That's why we say that we can grieve an apartment, a relationship, a person, a period, because these are all little deaths.
It's about letting go and allowing that ending to change things irrevocably. And that's—I don't know. It's painful, and it's difficult, and it's scary, and it's also delicious and gorgeous and what makes life worth living and worth fighting for. It's all the goddamn things. The theme of death and dying and grief and releasing and starting over, this is intrinsic to your superpowers and your biggest insecurities. This is your shit.
Adam: Oh yeah.
Jessica: This is your shit. So this is stuff to be really excited about and interested in. And then, of course, there'll be those dips. But it's interesting because even though that shit is your shit—like if you have any kind of mental illness or mental health struggles, it's not around that, actually. So your mind might fixate on those ideas, but it doesn't actually come from those ideas.
And that's, to me, as an astrology technician, very interesting because it affirms that you're living in a way that is engaging consciously with those themes. And that's what you're meant to do. You're not meant to not care. You care. You care very fucking deeply, and that's what you're meant to do. And part of caring deeply means suffering. Not to be too Jewish about it, but it means suffering. So there's a gift in the suffering. There's a gift in all of it.
Now, we do have to wrap up anyways, but I want to say, is there any kind of final question? Is there anything that you want to ask or say before we wrap up?
Adam: I think that you've given me a lot to process. You've really affirmed a lot of things that I have thought of but also helped me parse through or assuage certain fears. And certain doors that were opening, I feel like you have made me feel like it's okay to push them open a little bit further, like I don't need to be afraid of what's on the other side, especially around the slow return to embracing spirituality. Thank you.
Jessica: You're welcome.
Adam: This has been—I do not know what I expected coming into this. I feel like you've given me tools that I will take with me. Wow.
Jessica: It is so my pleasure, and you know I have so much love for you and for your work. And I just feel like everything you put into the world is really helpful, and it is helpful in the specific thing that I'm passionate about, which is the cultivation of emotional intelligence. It is my damn jam. And so I love what you do, and I'm so grateful I got to do this with you.
And I'm really, really excited for this process, which I don't think will be completely easy for you the next couple/few years but is worth it. So it doesn't matter if it's easy. Take your time. There is no rush. The cool thing about something taking a few years astrologically is it means you're not supposed to be there now. You're supposed to be on the path. You're not supposed to be at the top of the damn mountain yet. You're just supposed to be on the land mass, and you're very much there. So look at you.
Adam: Yeah. Wow, wow, wow. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Jessica: It is so my pleasure. It's so my pleasure.
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I mean, I don't know where to begin this week because of what happened last week. I mentioned on the podcast that we could expect that last week with the Sun opposition to Chiron on the 3rd and the New Moon on the 6th and all the other things going on—I had named that we would see a lot of drama and, in particular, abuses of power. And what came up last week was so intense—now, I don't know what was going on for you personally, but if it was hard or painful, may it have been in some way healing or helpful for you in a meaningful way?
But let me start here, my friends, with just a couple things. And, again, there's too many things to name of what happened, what got revealed last week. But the news came out about how AT&T helped to build and fund, I believe, 90 percent of One America News. And One America News is an extreme right-wing news organization, way, way more right wing than Fox News. And to see that AT&T is behind it is really stunning.
We also had the Facebook whistleblower speak before Congress, and we learned so much—things that we probably already knew, but now we actually know there are papers and they are damning about how Facebook reportedly facilitated drug and human trafficking, promoted eating disorders and conspiracy theories and misinformation that they knew were dangerous, that they knew would spark all the division it has sparked. It's been done very much to promote company over country—in the words of Zuckerberg, company over country.
So we actually have a whistleblower who came with every single one of the receipts and is telling the world. We also had, on the 3rd of October, the Pandora Papers, which—if you don't know about these things, please do not rest with my brief naming of them on an astrology podcast. Do your due diligence, and if you have the bandwidth, read a couple different news sources about each of these things. And if you don't have the bandwidth for doing quite that, maybe get a news buddy, and you each look at different news sources and then talk about it, because what we don't want to do is be like, "Oh, well, world is corrupt. What am I going to do about it?" and keep on moving.
It's important that we are informed and that we care. And if you've got money, if you've got power, if you've got skills, use them. Use them in whatever way you can. What way is that? In this regard, I don't fucking know. I don't know. It's very overwhelming. It all just happened. But it's important that we're thinking about these things, that we're talking about these things, and that we're having these conversations in public and that we're putting pressure on elected officials, and that we remember that we live in capitalism, which means that where we put our money is an active investment in that thing and a consent do what they're doing.
So, if you are able to leave AT&T and its products, yeah, fucking do that because this is some bullshit. Anyways, Pandora Papers. I don't know if you've heard about this. Unfortunately, it is not getting the coverage that it deserves. The Pandora Papers leak 11.9 million confidential documents, including naming names—naming names of billionaires and celebrities and politicians, heads of state, and exposing them for using offshore companies and basically hiding their assets and trusts.
This is bombshell reporting, and it is years in the making by so many journalists. It is the largest investigation in journalism in history, and it exposes a shadow financial system that benefits the world's most rich and powerful. That's according to the website of the ICIJ, and that's the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. It's a big fucking deal. It's a big deal. In fact, if you would like to support the ICIJ, which I really encourage you to do—we need to support independent journalism and investigative journalism—you can do so by just going to their website—it's icij.org—and donate to support their work because this is a really big deal. But all of these things are being revealed, and it is so tempting to want to say, "Oh well. Life isn't fair. This is fucked up. Moving along."
But we can't do that, because if we do that as a society, if we don't participate, if we don't care, we're consenting to it on some level. And, of course, it's not that fucking simple. It's not my fault. It's not your fault. We all have our lives going on. I don't know where to begin. You probably don't know where to begin. If you do, please tell me where to begin. But it is important that we don't just kind of shrug and move on, and it is important that we take pains to try to understand what this stuff is about and to understand who benefits from it. Who benefits from all of these terrible things?
Realistically, can we just hop off of all toxic social media platforms? No, that's all social media. And the whole world exists around social media, especially during a pandemic. So I don't have any simple answers, but I want to just acknowledge that all this crazy shit came out last week. And we at Ghost of Podcast and friends were expecting some crazy shit to come out, and there it is.
When problems are revealed, whether in relationship to someone in your personal life, in your relationship to your body, or in society at-large, it takes time and it takes many people to unpack and understand what the hell is going on, and then to come to action. We don't need to have the answer right away, but it is important that we check our restlessness and our distractibility and make sure that we are investigating to the best of our ability and participating to the best of our ability.
When wild things are revealed in the ways that they have been, be informed. Look at multiple news sources. Vet your news sources. Donate to the ICIJ and other amazing organizations that do media protection and investigative journalism if you can. That's my preamble, if you will.
We're going to get into astrology. I mean, we were talking astrology. We were talking last week's astrology. But let's talk this week's astrology. Okay? We're looking at the horoscope for October 10th through the 16th of 2021. You don't need to buckle up, for once. I've got a pretty chill horoscope for you, nothing too frightening. Isn't that lovely? Because this past week has been a lot, and the effects of whatever it was that came up within you or in your life last week are still very much at play this week.
And so, happily, the transits are here to support you. But it's important that you use that support. It's not enough to have resources. We need to use our resources in an effective way. And so this takes intention, and it takes, sometimes, work.
So let's start off the week. We start it off with the first transit, which is exact on the 13th of October. It's a Venus sextile to Saturn. I'm a big fan, a big fan of this transit, because what it does is it kind of strengthens our capacity to create security in our lives. So Venus and Saturn are two planets very concerned with security in very different ways. They can both be pretty materialistic, and they can also both be really focused on getting others to like them as a way to feel safe in the world.
And so this is a great time to check in with that. Are you acting in ways that are accommodating to others at your own expense? Are there ways that you are managing your sense of safety at the expense of your relationships? This is a great time to ask these questions because it's not a crisis. And when we use the sextiles, the sextile between any two planets, it makes it easier to bear when the next square comes around. That's a damn hot tip.
This Venus sextile to Saturn, it's a great time to check in with essentially whether or not your actions reflect your fears or authenticity, whether or not your relationships reflect your fears, or what's authentic in the here and now. And, honestly, we all have relationships that reflect our fears. It's normal and human. But to the best of your ability, get real about it. Get honest with yourself about it because then you can decide what you need to do, if anything. And maybe the answer is nothing. But this is a great time for fortifying your clarity about how you're showing up in your relationships.
Another thing that's really helpful in this transit is, if you have to deal with your finances, if you've got to organize your finances, if you've been trying to figure out what to do about something in your financial life, this transit's really helpful because it can help you to stay on target. And because it's a sextile and Venus is in Sagittarius and Saturn's in Aquarius, there's an inventiveness in it. There's a playfulness in it.
And so you might be able to see perspectives and approaches that you haven't been able to see before. It might be something really small, but a lot of times, small progress paves the way for meaningful and big growth. So don't knock the small stuff, okay? Okay.
Another great way to use this transit is to show up, and don't tell someone how you feel about them; show them. Just be there. Be there and have your actions clearly articulate your feelings and intentions. I know it sounds so simple, but we don't do that so much of the time, and it's really a great time to do that this week in general and because of this transit specifically.
Now, on the 15th, we have an overlap with the Venus sextile to Saturn, and the Sun forms a trine to Jupiter. So we may get more important news. Now, when the Sun forms a trine to Jupiter, it tends to be reliable news as opposed to propaganda. It tends to be something that is clarifying of the big picture. So it's some sort of truth. And that can happen, again, socially or personally.
The Sun trine to Jupiter is a time for fortifying your energy. It can be a time where you feel just like, "Oh God, I'm less stressed. I can kind of breathe. I've got more space inside of myself." Or you may just have a fun day. When the Sun forms a 120-degree angle to Jupiter, it's actually really great for adventures and playfulness. So if you can find some room for play, this is a good time to do it. And it can be done, of course, with others or alone. It's not about any one form of being playful or having adventures. For me, sometimes the greatest adventure is I found a great book and I read it in a day. It doesn't have to be going out, although of course it can be. Just do it safe. Wear a mask. We're in a pandemic.
So, Sun trine to Jupiter, lovely transit. It's also really great for learning new things. If you've got to have a big conversation, if you want to investigate something, again, great transit for it. It's not great for details, and that is further reiterated by the fact that we are still, of course, in Mercury Retrograde. It's almost over. It'll be over next week. But when Mercury is retrograde, we're less likely to track the details effectively.
The good news about this is this transit doesn't really want us to think about the details. It wants us to think big picture. But if you have to focus on details, if you're reading a contract or you're studying something for a rest, you definitely want to do whatever you can to get a bit grounded and make sure you're really focused because Sun trine Jupiter is not always great for fixated focus.
Okay. That brings us to the last day of exact transits, and there's two of them. The first one is an exact Venus sextile to Chiron, and we also have Mercury Retrograde forming a sextile to Venus. A sextile describes a 60-degree angle between planets. So it's astrology's math, and whenever you hear me saying sextile or trine or square or opposition, we're talking geometry. We're talking about the mathematical relationship between planets.
So when we have a 60-degree angle, it's an energetic creative spark. It's when the planets who are interacting with each other from 60 degrees apart are getting along. They're kind of like, "Hey, what should we do? Let's have fun. Let's make it happen." It's kind of an exciting dynamic between them. They are not fighting each other. They're not confused by each other. They're not oppressing each other or demanding change. They're like, "How can we grow? How can we interact? Will it be fun? Okay, let's have fun." So that's a wonderful thing to know about a sextile.
But when we're dealing with a planet like Chiron, kind of like when we're dealing with Pluto and sometimes Saturn, even when it's an easy transit, it tends to be a little spiky, like a little bit difficult. So this Venus sextile to Chiron, on the positive, can be a time where a difficult dynamic in your relationship—so relationship to yourself, to your body, to your finances, your relationship to an individual person, and generally with Venus it's a friend or a lover as opposed to a boss or a parent—but when we're looking at these kinds of relationships, they all have sticky points.
They all have, kind of, pain points, and they may or may not be very serious. They may or may not be very deep. But that doesn't mean that they're not ouchy, and it doesn't mean that they don't touch on other more sensitive points that have nothing to do with the relationship but everything to do with our own history of pain or suffering or trauma.
When we have a Venus sextile to Chiron, it's kind of like we're able to sit with those pain points without going all the way into the pain itself. So the potential for growth and for transformation is really strong. But with sextiles, just like with trines—and that's a 120-degree angle—nothing is forcing you to do shit, not anything at all. And so what that means is that nothing's going to prompt you to do any kind of healing work, but if you do it, you'll be able to get through some kind of difficult stuff without a lot of problems. And that's really cool.
I love talking about the benefic aspects in transits because they really do support us in making the most of our life, and not from a motivational structure of pain or suffering but instead of choosing to heal, choosing to grow, choosing to become more whole. Kind of exciting. Am I right?
Now, on the negative, if you've got an unhealthy dynamic in any of those relationships that I named just before, we have now a dynamic flow of energy. And so, if you don't interrupt an unhealthy dynamic in a relationship or an unhealthy dynamic in your relationship to yourself, it's just going to keep on trucking, and it'll keep on trucking. It'll just keep doing what it does, and it'll be working well.
So we know this. When we talk about the legal system and so many unfair laws which exist—they're unfair. They're not humane. They're not just. But they're functioning exactly as they're meant to, right? So that's a really great example of not everything that's functioning effectively is actually good for us. When something is set up and it's inherently flawed, when it's thriving, then those flaws become bigger and stronger and more entrenched. And this is true, of course, socially as well as very personally in our lives.
And so this is a good time for checking in with, if something's not working for you, how are you participating in it? In what ways are you consenting to engage with that dynamic? When we can find our own agency, nothing changes overnight. Doesn't even necessarily feel better. But we are better empowered to make choices, choices that ultimately make our lives better and easier, maybe not in the short term but for sure in the long term.
Okay. And that brings us to the last exact transit of the week. We've got this Mercury Retrograde sextiling Venus. This transit is just social. It's just a nice little texty, hang out with friends, enjoy a great TV show kind of vibes. Nothing too spectacular, but really lovely for social connection. Mercury is communication, and Venus is socializing.
Mercury is kind of the platonic side of connection. It's talking and listening, joking around, all that kind of stuff. And Venus is more sensual. It's more about how you feel in your own skin around other people. This sextile is really just lovely for connecting with people in a way that feels good or enjoying or connecting with art or creativity in a way that feels good. It's lovely but not too spectacular.
I'm going to run through these transits because here we are at the end of the week. We've looked at the week of October 10th through the 16th. And on the 13th, there was an exact Venus sextile to Saturn. On the 15th, there was an exact Sun trine to Jupiter. And on the 16th, Venus was exactly sextile to Chiron, and Mercury—still retrograde—was exactly sextile to Venus.
Those are the transits. And, as always, if you're interested in tracking the transits and not getting taken by storm, and especially of course if you are a student of astrology, please do subscribe to Astrology For Days, the tool that I wish I had when I first started studying astrology in the early 1990s, because I'm old. And you know that I could have used it every single stage of my study and private practice of astrology. It's a tool I personally use every day, many times a day.
While I'm inviting you to do shit, also please do subscribe to the podcast. It does make a big difference. I don't want to put any pressure on you, but Panda Elizabeth Henry, my cat, has been talking to me about it, and he's just been really thinking a lot about whether or not people actually subscribe to the podcast that love the podcast, whether or not they write five-star reviews. He was feeling emo about it. You know, it's been an intense couple weeks. It was a New Moon. Whatever. He can be emo. So don't do it for me. Just do it for Panda Elizabeth Henry.
Okay. I'll talk to you next week. Bye.