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

Welcome back to Ghost. This week's question is about ego versus destiny, and it goes like this: "I am one of those wildly lucky few and far between young people with a clear and steady vision of what I want my life to look like, what I want to do with it, and what I want to put out into the world. I've been impacted by a lot of hardship and tragedy these past couple years, but nothing has shook my drive to attain my dream or my confidence in my divine guidance. As I'm on my path, though, I can't help but question my own unshakable faith. Is this thing I feel is my earthly destiny just a reflection of my inflated ego? How do I discern if it's my divine guidance leading my steps to execute a vision for my community or if it's just my ego pushing me away from the conventional and secure life choices my peers are making? How do I come to a full and assured trust that my vision and guidance are not symptoms of an inflated ego/main character syndrome to the point where I can release my attempts at grasping total control over my destiny, my uber-specific vision, and my anxiety over the idea of achieving nothing at all?" Ego Versus Destiny was born August 25th, 2000, at 11:09 a.m. in Cleveland, Ohio.

So there's a lot of pieces to this question, and there's actually a lot of questions within the question. But feeling really clear about your calling is a gift, and congratulations for having it. Being uber-specific about what it needs to look like or how it needs to go, yeah, that can get you into some trouble; I'm not going to lie. You know, I am a person who was really clear at a very young age about what I wanted to do with my life, and I've done it. And, also, there's no way, even as an astrologer and a psychic, I could have predicted exactly what it would look like and exactly how it would go, because technology, because world events, because a million different factors.

When we are too specific about our vision for our future, a future that is unknowable and truly happens in concert with the rest of the world, we can kind of lose track of the big-picture point. Now, to be fair, I know I'm saying this to a damn Virgo, and you like the details. And as a Capricorn, I hear you. We're going to get into your chart and the astrological specifics of this issue for you, but first I want to answer some specific questions here. You ask how can you come to full and assured trust that your vision and guidance is not symptoms of an inflated ego or main character syndrome. And the answer is you don't. You don't come to full and assured trust.

Listen. The ego, to be clear, is not inherently bad. In order to strike out on a path that is not conventional, yeah, you need some ego energy to do that. In order to be ambitious at all in any context, you need some ego energy. But your ego is the part of you that wants to be the main character in all the narratives. The ego is the part of all of us that says, "If I'm right, if I get accolades, then I'll do it. If I can be famous, if people are going to throw flowers at my feet, then yes, I'll do it."

Spirit, a spiritual calling, something that comes from our whole selves, says, "I'll do it if it's in alignment with my integrity. I'll do it because I feel called to do it, and I'll do it in whatever way I can in this moment." Spirit and faith, these things are beautiful things, but they are not things that are associated with control. When we are doing something that is our absolute truth and it is 100 percent the right thing for us to do, we may still lose control. Things may still not go according to plan. That's just life.

And when our ego is our primary driving force, then when things don't go to plan, we can collapse. We can feel terrible. When our spirituality is driving us, it still feels bad. Failing feels bad. Things going sideways feels bad. However, it's easier for us to pivot, to say, "Okay, so I had an idea of how things would go, and they're not going the way I thought. What can I learn here? What can I do here? How do I want to adjust or pivot? How can I check in with myself to find a different answer, a new answer, or maybe the same answer from a new place?"

Faith is gorgeous. I love faith. And if you can have faith in things in life, in the universe, whatever it is, yay. I don't believe that we are meant to have faith without ever questioning it or questioning ourselves. You can stand in the same place, right? You can stand in the same place for 24 hours, but because we are on a planet that is moving, you will find that the light changes. It will go from morning to afternoon to evening to night, and then the day will dawn again. Even if we stay in one place, the world is changing around us, and that directly impacts us.

And so, if you're fixated on achieving one really big goal or a bunch of really big goals and that fixation makes you feel like all the little goals that you would need to achieve in order to get to that big goal—those little goals aren't important, they're not valid, only the big goal is valid, that's maybe your ego fucking with you. If you are unwilling to be humble and flexible and present, then your ego is kind of fucking with you. We are meant to question the things we have faith in. We are meant to question ourselves. We all flounder and we all fail.

So the question is not how can you trust yourself at all times, but instead, how are you able to be humble, to check in with yourself, to ask questions, and to be flexible when there's cause for it? In doing that, you don't have to be perfect. You don't have to have unshakable faith. What you can have is vision and will and passion. And you can enjoy your path or struggle on your path, whatever it is, but you don't need to prove yourself at all times, and you don't need to demand of the universe to constantly prove itself to you to show you that you're on the right path. So the key here is don't demand perfection—not of yourself, not of the universe, not of life, because that doesn't work.

Now, of course, when I look at your birth chart, my dear friend, I expected to see something big with Jupiter because your question really centers on what is divine guidance and what is egocentricity. Jupiter and Mars are the two planets I would expect to be involved in that query because Mars is technically the ego, and Jupiter and Mars are the two planets that I would associate with main character syndrome. So you have a T-square in your birth chart. You've got Jupiter opposite Pluto, and they both form a square to your Sun/Mercury conjunction in Virgo.

What this means is a lot of things, but a big thing is you have always had a sense of calling. You've had a sense of "I'm meant to do something big." That's that Jupiter/Pluto opposition for you. And because they both point towards your Sun/Mercury conjunction, you take it real personally. And your Sun/Mercury conjunction in Virgo happens to be in the eleventh house, the house that governs community. And so it does stand to reason that you want to make a big impact within a community, within a group of people.

The key is to not be so identified with your own individual success and so identified with your own individual needs that you put them ahead of whatever community-driven work you feel called to do. You didn't share that in your question, but you did say that you've got divine guidance leading you towards steps for a vision for your community. So, again, this all matches perfectly with your birth chart.

Here's the thing, though. When we are in service to others, whether it's individuals or community, and the most important thing to us or top of the list is proving that we're right or getting some sort of accolades, then we are not centering the needs of the community or the needs of the people we're serving. Instead, we're centering our own ego and our own needs, and that gets sticky and tricky real quick. Right? So you don't want to be a martyr, but also, we do want to check in with the ego when that's the case.

You also have a Mars/Uranus opposition in your birth chart, and this makes you inventive and super weird. And, in case you didn't know, weird is a compliment in my book. But it is a super weird natal aspect. It gives you this inventive nature that allows you to see potential and options where other people just see walls. So you've got this idea of something that you want to do that you believe can help others. Yeah, sure. That seems totally viable for you.

The key is—and I would say this to you at any age, but certainly because you're still very young—it is really important to listen to others, and listening to others when you're striving to do work that serves your community means understanding that different people are different from you. And your assessment of other people's needs, if it is not deeply informed by listening to those people, even if they're within your community—because no community is a monolith—if it's not deeply informed by listening, then you may end up behaving in ways that other people do not feel excited about, and that can absolutely feel bad for everyone involved.

This is particularly difficult because the Jupiter/Pluto aspects in your chart and the Mars/Uranus opposition do not make it easy for you to listen to other people, because people can be really slow, and you're really fast. And so it might feel really maddening to have to slow down and listen to others, but that's the work, especially if you're trying to be in service to others.

You are currently going through a bunch of things astrologically. Uranus is squaring your natal Mars, and Neptune is opposite your natal Venus. This means lots of things in lots of contexts, but in the context of your specific question, what I would say is you're on a journey. You're on a journey for not only divining your spiritual calling but considering what your material values are and what sacrifices you are and are not willing to make in order to achieve your dreams. What actions are you willing to pursue, and at what cost?

These are not just spiritual investigations. These are material, practical questions to be asking yourself. And in doing so, you will inevitably find both inspiration and things to be annoyed by. That's just life. And the process of going through these transits over the next year-plus is really going to teach you so much about the world and the ways in which you can locate yourself in it.

So, all that said, I want to come back to the centerpiece of your question, which is, is it destiny or is it ego? It doesn't have to be either/or. You want to use your ego as a way to propel you to commit to what you feel called to do in this life. And when you falter, when you fail, use your ego to help motivate you to pick yourself back up and learn from whatever happened. When we are on the right path, things are not perfect, but that doesn't mean we leave the path. When your ego is inflated in a way that is unhealthy, then you're unwilling to fail, and you're unwilling to learn from your failures. And you need things to be perfect in order for them to be okay.

So those are things that you can look out for on your journey so that you can nurture yourself and your community through the good days and the rough ones.

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I think it's time for us to get astrological. There is a lot to talk about this week, like a lot. But first let's just slow it down and acknowledge this damn Eclipse that we've just come out of. We are no longer building up to Eclipses. The Eclipses have occurred, and we are in the unraveling of that. And, on a personal level, I've noticed tons of people were feeling really poorly on and around the Eclipse. A lot of people were feeling sick and really off in terms of their mental health, so either/or, or both.

And if you were feeling that way, I want you to know that that's part of the transit. That doesn't mean it's part of the transit, and oh well, life's hard, but more that your body or your mind was expressing itself in stressful ways so that you would slow down and care for yourself, manage your wellness, and consider whether or not you need to make adjustments around how you engage with your health and self-care. So be gentle. Be gentle with yourself, and be a little flexible with others because everyone's still in their feelings. It's a really intense moment still, regardless of this week's horoscope, which is another intense week of astrology. So get ready. Buckle up.

But sticking with the Solar Eclipse for a moment here and the consequences of the Solar Eclipse, when we look at it on the collective, there is so much happening, right? Here in the U.S., the Supreme Court heard arguments basically to get rid of Roe v. Wade. It is very possible that we will see that law be struck down. We won't know the consequences of the hearings that occurred during the week of the Eclipse for about six months, until June or July of 2022. On one level, there's really not a lot we can do about it; it's in the hands of the court. On the other hand, very interestingly, what we do know is that in some ways, the fate and validity of the court is being questioned because if nothing changed, why change the law, other than we have really conservative antiabortion justices on the court currently?

And so it is not just about Roe v. Wade or body autonomy or institutionalized misogyny, although it's about all of these things. It is also about the Pluto Return of the United States. I touched on the Pluto Return of the United States in Episode 233. It's about the Pluto Return of the United States in many ways, but largely because it is about power. It is about not just power over body autonomy for more than half the population, but it's about the power of the court, of the Supreme Court. And it could be the decision that they make usurps their own validity as a court.

So this is what happens during a Pluto Return. During any Pluto transit, we're dealing with power, power struggles. Whether it's abuses of powers or misuses of power or taking back power, we're dealing with power struggles. And the validity and power of the Supreme Court is on a bit of a shaky ground, and there is an opportunity in that for regular people and activists who want to see Roe v. Wade safe. Make some noise. This is not a time to be quiet. This is a time to be loud and get prepared to get louder about your opinion, because I do think public opinion will sway this argument because the court is made up of people. Stay loud. Stay engaged. Stay aware.

Now, this is not just true about the court. When we think about the Pluto Return and what we can expect of this period—and it's been active for years building up, but we're getting very close to the transit being exact—all institutions that are integral to the United States, to the fabric of the United States—all these institutions are going through power problems. It's Pluto. So when we think about police and policing in this country, when we think about politics in general in this country, when we look at big corporations, we can look at it on a lot of levels, but wage workers and many un-unionized wage workers are striking really in record numbers this year. And it's part of what we would expect from a Saturn in Aquarius transit, which we're very much in, but it's also about people understanding that they have rights that are being exploited and being sick of it, and recognizing that when we come together as a collective, we have power. We have power, and it is time to use our power to better conditions not just for ourselves as individuals but for ourselves as a collective.

This kind of thinking, this kind of activism, this kind of conversation will change this country, and it will change the world because these kinds of things are happening around the world in different ways. But it takes us all being engaged, and it's coming at a time where most people are pretty fucking burnt out because we are living through a terrible global pandemic, and it is incredibly stressful. Even for people who are acting like the pandemic's over and everything's back to normal, you are living in the world with the rest of us, who are aware that there is a damn pandemic happening. And there are new waves of this pandemic around the world and in this country that have been crashing in or just coming in to shore.

And it is really important—it's really important—that we hold space for how we feel around this stuff, we take care of ourselves around our mental health. I've been talking all year about how the Saturn/Uranus square is incredibly difficult to our mental health, and this transit will follow us through the bulk of next year. So much of the discourse I hear in the psychology and scientist world about how the pandemic is impacting our brains—because there's data out there now about how the pandemic is impacting our brains, even for those who've never gotten COVID. What I'm hearing is people describing the consequence of Saturn square Uranus.

It's really useful when all these different communities from our different standpoints and our different points of evaluation come to understand what's happening to the collective and offer potential ways of dealing with it. So one potential way of dealing with it is accepting that reality is stressful right now, and this is not what we expected to be normal. It's not normal, and also yet, it is our normal now. And our normal now is destabilizing, it's stressful, and it's unpredictable.

Another thing that happened last week, the week of the Eclipse, was that not only did the Omicron—this variant was not only in this phase leading up to the Eclipse discovered in South Africa, but there was this global response that is arguably a racist global response, and the variant itself spread. It spread all over the damn place. It was spreading before it was discovered is what it seems like. I mean, I'm obviously not a fucking expert on this, but it's certainly here in the U.S. now.

My concerns about COVID for the coming year are pretty great. And I don't really talk much on the podcast about vaccination for a variety of reasons. At this point, if you're not vaccinated, you have a reason. I don't know what your personal reason is, but you clearly have made a choice, and that choice is motivated by a strong conviction. And I am not going to be another person being like, "You should be vaccinated. This is why," because I'm sure you hear that from everyone all over the place all the damn time, because listen to the world.

I will say that I'm worried. I'm worried for you. Of course, I'm worried about the ethics of going outside into the world unvaccinated and the impact it might have on the community. But what I'm really worried about is you. I'm just worried about your health, and I want to encourage you to be exceptionally careful, just really, really careful. And the ways of doing that you already know. It's wear a mask—in fact, wear double masks if you're indoors with people. Wash your hands. Keep six feet apart. Do all the things, because we're back there.

This new variant is supposedly more contagious than Delta, and Delta's so contagious. It's just—it's really important that you take care of yourself. This is not about the strength of your immune system. This is about a pandemic the likes of which we've not seen before. And I just want to encourage you to take really good care of yourself because I'm worried. And whether you're vaccinated or not, if you're indoors in public, wear a mask. Even if you got vaccinated, you got your little booster last week, wear a fucking mask. Come on. Come on. I know it sucks. It sucks, but wear a fucking mask. That's where we're at, and that's where we're going to stay for a while.

Okay. So that's enough of that. Let's get detailed about the astrology of this week. So we're looking at the week of December 5th through the 11th of 2021, and we start off the week with the first exact transit on the 6th of December. On the 6th of December, we have a Mars sextile to Pluto. This transit is a lovely one. The positive potential of it is deep. It is a time where we can fortify our energies, where we can get things done. Mars and Pluto forming a sextile to each other can signify a moment where you're brave enough to go in and go deep and get it done. And this can be on a physical project, like something you have to do, and it can be with your mental health or your emotional well-being.

This transit intensifies our bravery, which I love to see, and it can strengthen our resolve. It can help us to get clear about the things that are motivating us and what we're willing to do about it. It's really lovely. I suppose if we're looking for a downside—which, you know, I'm a Capricorn; I'm all about looking for a downside. If we want to look for a downside, it can fortify your willingness to commit to a wrong course of action. That's possible. Sextiles are not usually when we figure things out unless we actively strive to figure them out. They're a time when we have kind of an easy spark of energy, and that easy spark of energy can propel us forward. So it's really important that we bring intention, clarity of intention, or willingness to cultivate clarity of intention, to our investigations, to our actions.

If you're in the dating pool or if you've got a partner or a couple partners out there, yeah, it can be really great for sex. Mars sextile to Pluto, it can give you the catharsis you need getting that itch scratched. But you know what? You don't need a partner for that. You can do that solo. Let's just acknowledge it's good for getting it done, as it were.

On the 7th, we have a lot going on. Unfortunately, there is a crossover between these transits, or fortunately. It depends on how it plays out. On the 7th, we have two exact transits. We've got a Mars square to Jupiter and a Mercury square to Neptune. And these transits I touched on with the Solar Eclipse chart because they were not yet exact, but they were active. So some of them might sound a bit familiar to you.

Mars square to Jupiter, this is a vibrant and kind of high-energy transit because Mars is the ego and willfulness and it is your body, and Jupiter is expansive and pretty optimistic. So when these two planets form a square to each other, that creative dynamic energy that a square brings is actually—it tends to work pretty nicely. This transit can make you feel really energetic and enthusiastic. It can increase your sense of resiliency and strength, and it absolutely can make you feel brave and courageous, which—who doesn't need a whole lot of that?

If you've been dealing with health issues—body health, mental health, whatevs—this transit can be really helpful for dealing with it, for being proactive in dealing with it or simply for finding something in yourself that is resilient, which is really exciting, which is good news. The downside of this transit is that the impulsiveness of Jupiter and the egocentrism of Mars can have people being arrogant and domineering and impulsive and restless in ways that are really just about you satiating your own ego or someone satiating their own ego instead of being expansive with their own energies and with what they want to do.

This is a lot of energy, and it needs to be expressed one way or another. Whenever Mars is involved, you gotta know that it wants visceral expression, which is to say expression through the body, one way or another. The issue here is that these energies do not incline us to being very compromising. It's like, "I can do whatever I want. I'm brave. I'm dynamic. I'm good in bed." That's Mars square Jupiter for you. The trouble is when we act selfishly. And in the context of COVID, this is another transit to watch out for because it can lead to feeling like, "Fuck it. I just don't want to be that careful today. I'm just going to do whatever I want." This is a sticky, tricky thing, and it's definitely an important one to pay attention to. We've got to be a little bit more conservative than the energy's going to want us to be.

This transit is a good one for getting things done, but if you're going to fight, pick your battles carefully. And you may need to fight. You may need to really get involved in some sort of conflict or some sort of issue. That might be unavoidable. But be mindful. Be intentional with what you do and how you do it, especially because on this same date, we have an exact Mercury square to Neptune. This transit is really difficult, I think.

It's really difficult because it triggers anxiety, mental anxiety, a sense of nervousness and uncertainty, like, "I don't know who I am. I don't know what I'm doing. Why did you look at me like that? I don't know what you are. I don't know what you're doing," that kind of thing. Mercury square to Neptune can intensify any kind of predisposition towards anxiety that you have or any situational anxiety you're experiencing. This transit is destabilizing, but it's destabilizing to your mental health and your spiritual health specifically, which is why most people feel like, "I don't know what's happening to me with this transit."

And this feeling of "I don't know what's happening to me" tends to spark a lot of fear. If we add that fear and anxiety of Mercury square to Neptune to the impulsiveness and kind of arrogance of the Mars square to Jupiter, we can see some really fucked-up behavior. A lot of the worst behaviors in the world come from fear plus an inability or unwillingness to be humble. And so, to the best of your ability, watch your ego energies this week in general. Thinking you're the worst and thinking you're the best, both of those things are misplaced or out-of-balance ego. Both of those things put you at the center too much. You're probably not the worst, and you're probably not the best, honestly. You may be amazing. You may be terrible. But the worst? The best? Probably not.

So if you feel anxious, if you feel shitty, there are so many tools that you have for coping with mental anxiety. If you're feeling defensive and like you're having a really hard time listening or you're having a really hard time engaging in a way that's constructive, you also have a lot of tools for coping with these things. This might be a week where you decide to listen to whatever self-help podcasts that you love. Relisten to episodes that really inspired you. Read books that really help you. Be really conscious of what you're consuming and what you're taking in because if it's not especially constructive, it may be particularly destructive this week.

The emotional energy of the Eclipses and the very anxiety-producing energy of Mercury square to Neptune, plus the emboldening energy of the Mars square to Jupiter, it can be really messy. It can be really messy. So, again, this is where, as we are looking at astrologies, we're looking at—whether it's the transits of the week, as I'm doing right now, or an individual's birth chart, we want to remember that it's not just each individual aspect or each individual transit. It's how they all work together in a typical human.

And this is where you want to be really spacious with yourself because it's too much. It's just too much—too much mental energy, too much physical energy, too much emotional energy all at once. And so a lot of people will experience the energies of this week as provoking exhaustion, just a real sense of shutting down. A lot of times, when human people are overstimulated with energies that they don't know what to do with, we kind of shut down. The system shuts down. So if you need a little extra sleep, cool. If you're going to disassociate, do what you gotta do. Just make sure whatever you're consuming is not destructive for you. Make sure it's neutral or positive. That's the goal. Do the best with what you got and where you're at.

One more thing about the Mercury square to Neptune. Mercury square to Neptune is a transit that can incline us to forget to do the really simple, basic things like drink enough water or eat when you're hungry or use the resources you've cultivated for coping with anxiety. Mars square to Jupiter can incline us to be really restless and impulsive, and the combination can therefore lead to us feeling really—just like we have no skills and we have no resources, and we just feel bad.

And so here you are, listening to this damn podcast. And now you've got a little heads-up. So you might want to put in your calendar, a reminder in your phone or something, to drink all the water of the world on and around the 7th, to do breathing exercises, or if you meditate or if there's any kind of music you listen to that's really soothing to you, cue that shit up. There are little things that you can do to prepare for the energy that is inevitably coming our way. And if that energy in the end doesn't really do much to you and you're like, "Eh, that transit wasn't rough for me," yay you, and worst-case scenario, you just did a bunch of things that were good for your mental health. If the transits are difficult for you and stress you out in similar ways or the exact ways I'm talking about, then yay you. You're prepared. That's cool. To quote the great Mary Poppins, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

We've got a few more transits for me to tell you about, one more stressful than the other, so that's fun. On the 11th, we have an exact Venus conjunction to Pluto. We also have an exact Sun square to Neptune and an exact Mercury sextile to Jupiter. So I'm going to break it all down, my friends. I'm going to break it all down.

The Mercury sextile to Jupiter is where I'm going to start because it's kind of the easiest of all the transits here. This is a really great transit for making mental connections. Again, Jupiter is related to resiliency and our willingness and ability to see the big picture. Mercury is details. It's cognition. It's communication. And so this is a great transit for making connections, and it can be a lovely bit of support to these other more difficult transits that we have all week long and certainly exact on this day.

Because this transit is sandwiched between some harder things, on its own, it's not going to do too much unless, again, you use the energies; you set the intention that you're going to investigate both the details and the big picture, that you're going to be curious. The best use of this energy is to be curious, to be somewhat investigative. Easier said than done because the Sun's square to Neptune. This transit, not unlike Mercury square to Neptune, provokes a lot of anxiety. The Sun represents your identity and your will. It's your kind of core energies. And Neptune sparks anxiety, especially when we have a square to or from Neptune.

This transit can be really destabilizing. It is spiritually destabilizing, like not knowing who you are, where you are, what the hell is happening, feeling a helplessness and hopelessness, a sense of not being capable, of not having the energy or the resources you need, the internal energy and the internal resources you need. This transit will kick up all of that. If you have a predisposition to anxiety, depression, disassociation, these transits to Neptune are a real boner, honestly.

So here's a few little pro tips. The first, if there are people in your life that you know make you feel shitty about yourself, don't talk to them these days. So, because the Sun square to Neptune is exact on the 11th, you would be avoiding them on the 10th, 11th, and 12th. If there are things that you need to do that require a great deal of ego energy, yeah, try not to do them around Neptune transits. That's definitely something to avoid. If you have the option to go out or to sleep a little extra and take a little better care of yourself, yeah, I vote for sleep.

When we're going through transits to Neptune, we get tired, and we get tired because the subconscious mind wants us to pay more attention to what's happening under the surface than on the surface. So we lose our physical energy and often our psychological energy in such a way that it forces us to be alone with ourselves. And that may sound really annoying to you. It may sound really wonderful to you. Regardless, this is what Neptune wants. It wants us to connect to our essential selves, and that often has to be done when we're alone, when we're not fixated on success or external circumstances.

You want to watch out for any kind of martyred behavior. This is a bad time for it. It won't do well. Anyone who's willing to take more than their share is likely to feel really entitled on and around this date because of the Sun square to Neptune, but not just because of the Sun square to Neptune—also because of the Venus conjunction to Pluto. And this transit is the grand darling of December, of the whole month.

This transit, in fact, will be exact twice this month because Venus goes Retrograde on the 19th of December, and on the 25th of December, we've got another exact Venus conjunction to Pluto. So whatever it is that comes up on and around this date, it's not going to be a one-and-done scenario. We're going to have to deal with this throughout the month. And I know that December 25th is a big date for a lot of people, and chances are high that a lot of people will be around family or will be dealing with loneliness feelings. It's no surprise that Venus conjunction to Pluto—what it does is it kicks up big emotions. Pluto governs resentment, loneliness, terror, all kinds of taboos. It is power struggles. And when we're looking at Venus, the planet that governs relationships and intimacy and sensual connection, is sitting on top of Pluto, we got some real struggles going on.

This transit intensifies our desire or our need for human connection, for love and intimacy and closeness. Now, unfortunately, because of Pluto's presence, we can find ourselves acting out, or we can find other people acting out, on a flight-or-fight level. When we feel really lonely, when we feel really bad, we want attention. And there's a part of our brains, depending on your history with trauma, yada, yada—there's a part of our brain that doesn't care if it's positive attention or negative attention. It just wants attention. And this Venus conjunction to Pluto can absolutely find us in a situation where we're either dealing with somebody or we ourselves are just acting out because we don't like how we feel.

This is a really intense transit, and it's an intense transit to be active throughout a whole entire month. But here we are, my friends. You might find that your relationship issues, whatever power struggles, resentments that you have in your relationships—especially your close, intimate relationships, and if you're in a romantic relationship, certainly that one or those ones—that your feelings of resentment or frustration or whatever it is—love, loneliness, passion, disgust—they're intensified. And the reason why they're intensified is so that you deal with them. You're supposed to deal with whatever it is that comes up.

The key is to not deal with the top layer of emotions. The top layer of your emotional responses is usually not really what the thing is about. It's your habits. It's your coping mechanisms. So, if you're willing to sit with what's actually happening for you and why and how you have participated in a dynamic with someone and how that participation is part of your own patterns and your own relationship life—if you can do that form of investigation, then you're putting yourself in the exact position that I would hope for you to be in because it's not just a transit that's affecting this week, although for sure it is; it's affecting the whole month. We have space and time to really do some healing here. The problem is nobody wants to heal these issues, because they're stressful, because they feel shitty.

When Venus and Pluto meet, there can be manipulations, and those manipulations can be really conscious and intentional or unconscious and unintentional. But the impact tends to be the same regardless of motivation in relationship dynamics. You may find that one person is totally fucking off, and this transit can kick up abandonment issues, a feeling of being left behind or, conversely, being the only person who's doing anything and you're being overworked and kind of used in a situation. Again, the people or persons that you're dealing with may or may not feel that that's what's happening or know that that's how you're feeling, but that shit is common of what comes up under this transit.

Another thing that can come up is jealousy, possessiveness, a sense of ownership over people, like, "You shouldn't hang out with those friends. You should only hang out with me because I don't like those friends," like that kind of shit. And, again, you want to check in with what's really going on here, and what is the healthiest way of coping with your feelings? If you're feeling jealous or possessive or punishing—which, again, all Pluto stuff—you want to check in with yourself to make sure you don't act in ways that are outside of what is acceptable and kind and empathetic and healthy.

This is a terrible time for cyberstalking. Don't do it. Don't obsess on your exes or your friends or your frenemies or that new person you're dating. It's just—social media makes it really easy to spy on people, and it's not just not fair to them; it's really unhealthy for you. All it does is it empowers you to create a fantasy life where you're basically torturing yourself, and it doesn't do anything for your intimate life. It doesn't do anything for your relationship life. It is really self-destructive behavior. And I know almost everybody does it, so I'm not trying to shit on it—also, it's really unhealthy.

So when we are going through Pluto transits, and here we're looking at this very intense Venus conjunction to Pluto in Capricorn, what you do and what you don't do, whether anyone else knows about it or you're keeping it as a dirty little secret—what you do has meaningful consequences, and it's going to either be very healthy or very destructive. Pluto does not fuck with neutrality. Pluto brings us a lot of whatever it is. And so it is important, really important, that you're honest with yourself about what you are and aren't doing and what energy and attention you're bringing to your relationships.

Now, another thing that can come up with this transit is you can spend money like it's burning a hole in your damn pocket. So avoid the impulse to buy yourself some happy. Now, I'm not saying don't spend money, but if you have compulsions or unhealthy behaviors around spending or hoarding, this transit can kick that up. And, again, it's going to influence us for a month, so that's a big deal.

And speaking of Venus and money and love and relationships, I will for sure talk more about the Venus Retrograde. Don't you worry. But if you do want to get a jump on it, of course, you can join me over on Patreon on the Kittens level, where I do a month-ahead horoscope and I broke down a lot of this stuff in detail and I talk about the month ahead. If you're in the market for more astrology and woo, join me. Just join me over there.

And if you don't want the astrology and woo but you want to know about the transits and the astrology before it hits, please do subscribe to Astrology For Days, my astrologers' pro tool for tracking transits and taking notes. It's the pro tool you need for cultivating your own knowledge as an astrology student at whatever level you're at. It's also just a great pro tool for your workflow if you are an astrologer.

So the other thing about this Venus/Pluto conjunction—in addition to money and relationship stuff, there's two other things I want to name. One is drugs. Be careful. You know what I mean? With all this Neptune energy and the Pluto/Venus conjunction, this is not a great time for doing hard drugs. It is a great time for having addiction issues really kicked up. So if you know that you struggle with addiction, whether it's substance abuse or any other kind of addictive tendencies or addictive behaviors, this week might be particularly triggering for you. Again, it's an opportunity for healing the core issues that are motivating the addictive behaviors. But that doesn't mean it can't be really hard to avoid doing the thing that you know you are compulsive in an unhealthy way around. So reach out for help if you need help. You don't need to do this alone. You don't need to do this all by the seat of your pants. Put resources in front of you to support you with that stuff.

Now, connected and similar but not exactly the same, body image issues. If you have disordered eating or any kind of issues with your body that feel really unhealthy and that aren't in a great place, Neptune and especially the Pluto/Venus may trigger that stuff. So talk to people. Don't isolate yourself. Ask for help when you need it, and know it's coming so that you can prepare for it because the good news about this Pluto/Venus conjunction and the fact that it's lasting for so long is that we can achieve real, sustained healing around whatever issues come up with the Venus/Pluto conjunction. It just won't happen without effort, without intention. But, absolutely, this can be a time where you heal or change something really meaningful in any of the levels or layers that Venus brings about. It just means showing up, showing up and doing the damn work.

Now, my loves, that's a lot. There will be more on the Venus/Pluto conjunction. There will be more on Venus in general as we approach its retrograde in just over a week. But this is enough. For now, this is enough. I'm going to run through the transits one more time because that was a lot to track.

On December 6th, we have an exact Mars sextile to Pluto. On the 7th of December, Mercury is forming an exact square to Neptune, and Mars is forming an exact square to Jupiter. On the 11th of December, we have three exact transits: Venus conjunction to Pluto, Sun square to Neptune, and Mercury sextile to Jupiter.

If you're interested in learning more with me, you can always go to my website at lovelanyadoo.com. It's always linked in show notes. And I've got a bunch of classes for sale, including my most recent class, which was on the twelfth house, and it's a goodie. I really like it.

As always, I want to thank you for joining me here at Ghost of a Podcast, where we elevate kindness, empathy, and community-mindedness in a spiritual way. Fuck yeah, we do. Be gentle with yourself. Be kind with yourself. Be kind and gentle with others if you can be. And you know what? You heard the horoscope. You probably can't be all the time. It's probably not reasonable all the time. In those difficult moments that happen in life, do your best to be your best. That's all. It's really about the effort. It's really about the effort. Try your best, and then be gentle with yourself and others.

Okay. I'll talk to you next week. Buh-bye.