Episode 220: Lost In Love + Horoscope

220: Lost In Love + Horoscope

A listener from down under wrote in because she read that her birth chart indicates that relationships and intimacy may not come easily to her. She wants to know how she can satisfy her cravings for intimacy, physical affection, romance, and connection in a healthy way?

This week's horoscope includes a powerful Full Moon in Aquarius and some important oppositions that involve Neptune and Chiron. Use astrology to support your mental health and your decisions!

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

Welcome back to Ghost of a Podcast, where astrological advice gets super practical. At least that’s what we’re going for. This week’s question comes from Silly Sagittarius, and it goes like this. “As I’ve delved deeper into myself and astrology, I’ve found that romance, relationships, and intimacy may not come as easily to me as it does others. Astrology apps and natal chart interpretations tell me my happiest relationships will come later in life, quote unquote. I consider myself a romantic, and I crave intimacy and romance. I’ve become aware, also, of the ways I am inclined towards unconventional relationships such as non-monogamy and how, despite wanting to be free and sexually liberated, becoming intimate with someone will most likely require me to first build off a foundation of friendship. I’ve recently come to terms with my bisexuality only in the past two years, and I’ve never been in a relationship. I’ve only been intimate with one person. I’d really love to know, what does this ‘later in life’ business really mean for me now and for future me in terms of relationships? How can I best satisfy my cravings for intimacy, physical affection, romance, and connection in a way that is healthy and sustainable? This podcast has been so incredibly helpful to me in navigating the chaos of 2020 and 2021. Thank you for all you do. All my love, Silly Sagittarius.”

And she was born December 18th, 2001, at 10:26 a.m. in Clayton, Australia. Okay. So there’s something that I want to say that I’ve said a bunch of times in a bunch of ways, but it’s really important. There’s a lot of reasons why Sun sign horoscopes have for generations been the main thing that most people know about astrology. Some of those reasons are shitty reasons, but one reason is because astrology is incredibly complicated. There are so many layers, and there’s so much that happens in the synthesis of looking at a person’s birth chart. Astrology is nuanced, and because it’s interpretive, the values of the astrologer doing the interpreting, the worldview of the astrologer doing the interpreting, and the communication skills of that astrologer are all going to meaningfully shift what you hear from that astrologer.

And so, whenever you’re dealing with astrological content and it doesn’t cite who wrote it, who said it, I personally am instantly suspicious. Same thing with any kind of reporting in general. I want to know who wrote that, who said that. And any kind of resource that you’re using that doesn’t cite a source, that doesn’t credit the specific writer, you want to use a much bigger grain of salt with that source than you would with anything else, which I understand implicates a lot of the most common and accessible resources with astrology.

But here’s the thing. If we love astrology—and you know we love astrology—if we use it to understand ourselves and understand the world and make life choices, like really take it seriously in this way, then we’ve got to be critical about the resources that we use, and we’ve got to use common sense. Right? Right? And so this is where I notice that even the biggest astrology fans struggle because we want to believe that things are simple. And many astrologers are happy to make things simple for you, but that’s something that I think is problematic because it’s not nuanced. It’s not accurate. The human condition is complicated. The birth chart is complicated. Astrology is complicated.

So I say all of this to say that, certainly, there are some things in a person’s birth chart that can indicate that love comes later. But to your question, what the fuck does that mean, love comes later? Does that mean the experience of intimacy and L-O-V-E won’t happen until you’re in your 30s, your 60s? Or does it mean the kind of love that is healthy and sustainable, where you get into a committed, long-term relationship in a heterotypical way—that won’t happen until later? Well, that depends on who’s writing the astrology contents, right?

So, again, you just want to be a little bit critical because you, my dear Sagittarius, are not the only person who writes me questions being like, “I’ve read this thing, and it’s fucking with my sense of self. And I’m scared of it.” From my perspective as an astrologer and a human person, it is misunderstanding and misinterpretation and oversimplification of a thing. We are not our parts. We are the sum of our parts. That’s true in astrology. It’s true across the damn board. And so, when we are looking at something like love and intimacy and closeness, especially for somebody as young as you—right? Because you’re not even 20 yet. You've got nothing but space and time to get to know yourself as an adult or as a young adult, right? I think it’s really important, especially when you’re young or you’re a person who doesn’t have a really solid sense of self and you’re not really certain of who or what you are—it’s important to be very careful when reading astrology content. There are so many apps out there. There’s so much content out there.

But how do you use discretion, right? How do you use critical thinking? If you’re feeling vulnerable and something claims to tell you who and what you are and how your life is going to be lived, well, it’s tempting to kind of give your power away to that, but it’s not very helpful. So, again, I just want to give you a word of caution. Use your damn common sense when consuming astrology content, and know that while something may ring true, it may be interpreted off for you. There may be mitigating factors in your birth chart that change this one aspect that you’re reading.

So, all of that said, my dear, let’s get into your chart. So, yes, you have got this beautiful Uranus conjunction to your Ascendant in Aquarius. So queer. Doesn’t mean gay. Doesn’t mean gay inherently, but it does mean queer. Just not heterotypical, right? And so it’s not uncommon for people to be queer identifying in whatever way, or to just want nonconventional relationships and to be nonconventional.

Another thing that placement tends to indicate is that you’re independent, and you’re autonomous, and you’re weird. And all of these things can lead to being single. They can also lead to having a rich, dynamic, adventurous love and like life. I said like. I said like because let’s not undervalue platonic love and friendship, and let’s not undervalue hooking up, romantic flings, that kind of stuff. That’s not necessarily love, but it’s certainly lovely and fun. And the Uranus placement that you have can incline yourself to that.

Now, that said, that would be the closest thing to an indication I would see about falling in love later in life. Generally, when we see something that is indicated to be a later-in-life love aspect, Saturn is involved because Saturn is the planet of maturity. And, generally speaking, that refers to post-Saturn Return, in other words, in your 30s and older. But there’s nothing in your chart that I would say suggests that you would have a—you know, wouldn’t fall in love at any age. There’s nothing that is age-specific around your love and intimacy issues that I see.

Now, that said, do we grow up and grow into ourselves and ideally have more perfect and self-appropriate loves as we go? Yeah. A lot of us do. So there is that, but that’s not exclusive or specific to you. The only difficult Saturn aspect you have in your birth chart is a Saturn square to Mars. Mars is in your first. And that is the aspect in your birth chart that indicates that you absolutely prefer a foundation of friendship or safety and that for you, closeness and safety come from friendship. They come from knowing someone. That may show up around your sexuality and your dating life. Honestly, it may not. And, most likely, it'll ebb and flow over the course of time and in response to whatever situations you find yourself in.

Now, you do have a Venus/Pluto conjunction in Sagittarius, and it’s real close to your Sun. So this is the aspect in your chart that I’m assuming you read about, and it said that things are hard for you or harder for you than others. And I kind of tend to reject X is harder for me than anyone else kind of thinking because there are countless, so many, people who have hard Pluto aspects. And we don't need to be perfect. We don't need to be easy. We just need to be whole and to do our best to, as we grow and evolve, to be authentic to who and what we are, and empathetic and resilient and all the other things that all people need to be, right?

If you’re going to find love and happiness in relationships, you don't need to be perfect. You just need to find somebody who’s a good match for you, who’s a healthy match for you, in other words, somebody who likes intensity, because you’re intense. Pluto conjunction to Venus is an intense natal aspect. It can bring up control issues. It can make it hard for you to trust people. It can make you a little paranoid. It can also give you really compulsive and obsessive crushes. This isn’t a bad thing, right? It’s not a bad thing. What it is is your nature, and your intensity is something for you to accept and work with in a healthy way.

So, to your kind of main question of how can you satisfy your cravings for intimacy and physical affection—you don't specifically say sex, but I’m guessing you’re kind of getting at that—in a way that’s healthy and sustainable, it’s through remembering to have fun. It’s remembering to be yourself. You don't need to convince other people to like you. You don't have to be easygoing. You just want to show up and be yourself and be receptive to other people, and if you get to know someone and it feels exciting, to pursue it, and if it doesn’t feel safe, to stop, and if it does feel safe, to keep going. A little bit of danger, just a little bit of danger, can be very exciting. It can be very exciting sexually, romantically, all of that.

So we don't want to get la bored in our love lives, right? So overprioritizing safety can sometimes become a way to keep ourselves stuck or hide ourselves away from our intimacy issues. It’s about a balance. You have a Moon/Neptune conjunction in the twelfth house. This strengthens the need for boundaries. This particular aspect, from my perspective, is the one to focus on in terms of cultivating a healthy love life. And when I say a healthy love life, I mean loving yourself and also allowing others to love you and understanding what love is and loving others. It’s all the pieces. It’s not just the one.

And that natal aspect of the Moon conjunct Neptune, it makes you hyper romantic, super tenderhearted, and devotional in the way you love. And so cultivating boundaries, that is really the thing that’s going to allow you to have intimacy in a way that feels good and that is sustainable. You might notice that none of what I’m saying is indicating that it has to take a long time. I mean, I don’t really see a time limit on this sort of thing. And I would say that, from a really traditional, heterotypical kind of standpoint, I can see how an astrologer or some AI, or whatever random astrology anonymous resource, might say, “Oh, you have a hard time in love.” I could see that in your birth chart, how someone would come to that.

But that is only if you want the most traditional of things in life, which I don't think you do. So, in other words, if you’re supposed to be the girl and you’re supposed to be with the guy and you’re supposed to be monogamous and you’re not supposed to be too loud or too big or too much, yeah, you'll have a hard time. Sure. Yes, but so will most people. But, for sure, your chart suggests a hard time.

If you can be a whole person with strong opinions, with a need for time alone, with a need for closeness and intimacy and for sex to sometimes be super important and other times to not be the most important thing, if you get to show up in your relationships and have healthy boundaries and have intensity and have closeness and to have things be flexible and fluid, then there’s no reason for you to have problems in your love life outside of the regular problems that literally everybody has. I mean, most humans have problems with their love lives, right?

You don't need to fit into a box. You don't need to fit into a box of what me or any other astrologer tells you, and you don't need to fall into a box that society has put out for you. I am a firm believer that especially in one’s 20s, the best way to cultivate a healthy love life is to figure out how to love yourself and what feels like love, whether or not you have the capacity to allow others to love you in a way that feels like love, and whether or not you have the capacity to show up for others in a way that they’re telling you does or doesn’t feel like love. Cultivating those skills in your 20s is really the way to have not perfect relationships, not easy relationships, but relationships that empower you to become the person that you were meant to be so that you can be in the kind of relationship that you can sustain over the course of the long haul if that’s what you choose to do.

I am absolutely of the mind that you can be non-monogamous or poly and still be in a relationship with somebody, a committed relationship where you grow old with somebody. There are so many ways of living. There are so many ways of doing it, of being yourself and of falling in love. All you need to do is figure out the ways that work for you and find like-minded people that you want to bone that have a complementary vision. We don't need to date ourselves. We don't need to date people who are just like us, but people who complement us and who essentially are down to have the same life experiences over the long haul, that’s the gold right there.

So I hope this was helpful. If you want to fall in love, go forth, get messy, have some fun, and know that when and if you break up with somebody, when and if things don’t go great with somebody, that’s not an indication of your future. It’s an indication of your present. When a relationship ends, it is not a failure. It is simply an ending. And in order to evolve and grow, we must outgrow things. So don’t be scared of the natural evolution of your love life and also of your own emotional capacity and your sexual capacities. Be patient and self-accepting, and go from there.

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Let’s get into your horoscope. This week, we’re going to look at the week of August, the 22nd through the 28th. It kind of blows my mind that it’s already so late in the year. I don't understand how that happened, but here we are. Before I get into the details of your horoscope, I just want to say, hey, Californians. I’m in California. You’re in California. Do we love it? I love it. But are you registered to vote? I feel like it’s super important for me to remind you that we have a recall of the governor on September the 14th. Make sure you’re registered to vote and that you vote.

2020, as hard as it was, everyone was so engaged and activated and coming together. And I fear that we have lost a lot of that in 2021, and it’s just really important to remember to participate in the system that you live in because, yeah, this recall, whether you like the current governor or not, is really problematic. And these are my opinions. You don't have to agree. And if you disagree, you don't have to tell me about it. These are just my opinions. I want to encourage you to vote and to vote no on the damn recall. Okay, thanks.

Also, if you have friends in California and you’re hearing this, you might want to be like, “Hey, I love you, nerd. Are you registered to vote?” Being a responsible citizen and being a spiritual person—to me, they’re deeply, deeply connected, like seriously deeply connected. And so I’m always going to encourage people who are consuming astrology content and spiritual content in general to be engaged in the world around you and to, to the best of your ability, participate. Show up. So here I am, once again, asking you to vote.

Okay. Now to le horoscope. This week, again, we’re looking at August 22nd through the 28th, and this week’s horoscope kicks off with a Full Moon. It’s a Blue Moon. And you know why they call it a Blue Moon? Because once in a Blue Moon, we get a Full Moon in the same sign twice a month. Kind of cool. Anyways, this is a Full Moon in Aquarius. It is exact at 5:02 a.m. Pacific Time, and it’s kind of a big deal. This Full Moon is happening at the exact same degree as the Mars opposition to Jupiter, which was on July 29th. Now, you may remember I talked about this on Episode 216. So, if you want a little refresher, you can go read the transcript on my website or relisten to that part of the episode because it’s kind of a big transit, and the fact that this Full Moon is hitting those same points in the same signs is likely to be meaningful.

Before we get into the emo delightful details of this Full Moon, it is really important to mask up, indoors especially. Mask up whether you’re vaccinated or not. There are many people who have compromised immune systems. There are many people who are unvaccinated globally, not just domestically. And there are many children who cannot get vaccinated. And if all you’re thinking about is yourself and your besties and you’re not thinking about everyone else, that is a spiritual crisis. I’ve said it before. I’m going to say it again. It’s a spiritual crisis. It’s really important that we just take care of ourselves and take care of others and understand how these two things are interconnected. Vaccinated or not, wear a goddamn mask. Okay? Okay. Love you. Thanks.

Okay. So this Full Moon, lots to talk about. It is another Full Moon in Aquarius, which means the Sun and Moon are opposite each other. The Sun is in Leo. It’s the final moments of Leo season, and we’re going to move into Virgo season right after this Full Moon. So it’s a big-bang closeout of Leo season, which is kind of fitting, right, for Leo season? So this chart has a lot going on in it. Per usual, we have the Saturn/Uranus square that is active in this chart, really testing our sense of reality, testing our mental health, and testing the systems that we live by, our sense of reality, how we engage with what’s real and what’s important to us.

Now, that’s true on a personal level. It’s also true on a systemic level. So we are seeing issues around infrastructure and government and technology and the global community and all of these things.  There’s obviously a great deal going on in the world right now, and seeking to solve problems in the same old way with the same approach is just not well starred, my friends. It is not well starred. And that’s not just with this Full Moon. It is absolutely what is true and real at this time and will stay true and real for a good fucking long time.

Now, this particular Full Moon is an opportunity to cultivate clarity. Mars and Mercury are still conjunct. It’s a much wider conjunction than when I talked about it in last week’s episode, but it is still conjunct, being irritating, being agitating, creating a sense of urgency about what you think and about your friendships and about what you want to say and how you want to be heard. We also have in this Full Moon chart a Jupiter conjunction to the Moon in Aquarius, and that, on the positive, absolutely creates a sense of openness and gregariousness and the potential for things to be lucky or expansive. On the negative, it can really incline us to want quick and easy answers, to make snap judgments that are just that—they’re judgments—and to want to skip over the nitty-gritty details in favor of the big picture, which may lead us to making some pretty big mistakes.

Now, the Jupiter placement is important, especially in the context of that Mars/Mercury conjunction, because if this Full Moon’s potential is for us to clarify our beliefs and to clarify what may be limiting us, it will take some measure of intention. I want to really ground and center you this Full Moon into your own motivations, your own intentions. This is a powerful time for looking at your own limiting beliefs. Whether it’s a limiting belief because you just haven’t fully integrated or updated your belief systems based on what you've learned, or whether it’s because of your ego, because of course we are dealing with a Sun in Leo—if your pride or your ego is getting in the way of your own capacity for innovation and expansion and progress, that’s such a shame. But this Full Moon, this energy that we’re feeling on the 22nd and throughout the week, honestly, it’s really helpful for you getting out of your own way.

Because of the Chiron/Venus opposition that we see in this chart and will be exact later in the week, you are likely to feel, kind of, pressure from either the inside or the outside to identify or honor your values in a way that might be kind of painful, in a way that might actually bring up trauma or require you to move past your trauma responses. That’s hard. I mean, it’s super hard. But luckily, again, we’ve got this Jupiter/Moon conjunction, which means Jupiter opposite the Sun. And that really supports us in making leaps, creative leaps, joyous leaps, bright and life-affirming leaps. It just won’t happen from pie in the sky intentions. It will happen from some sort of focus of your intention. Be clear about your motives. Be clear about where you’re starting from. Luckily, Aquarius energy is actually quite supportive of that. This is a Full Moon that can help you to identifying and removing blocks to your progress.

So I’m going to give you a little woo ritual bit of advice, and it’s really simple. I personally am a fan with any kind of ritual work, with any kind of Full Moon or New Moon work, to spend some time alone, to slow down, to turn off devices, to get present, and to do whatever intention-setting or clearing work that feels right. And, as a reminder, you want to clear with the Full Moon and set intentions with the New Moon.

This particular Full Moon, may I recommend considering the role of pride in your values, the role of pride in your choices, your actions, and your motivations, and to question whether or not that’s getting in the way of your wellness, your progress, your authenticity? Because if so, you can work with that. This is a time for clarifying blocks or impediments on your path. If you’re willing to get a little piece of paper and a pen or a pencil and write down all of the things that you see as self-imposed blocks, external blocks, whatever it is, things that you know are blocking your progress, just write them down.

If you find everything on your list is not your fault, everything on your list is completely out of your control, see if you can dig a little deeper to see your own actions, your own agency, what you’re choosing, how you’re engaging, because ideally speaking we can see both the things that are out of our control and the things that we are choosing, consciously or not, right?  You want a balance, ideally. Every situation’s different, but generally and broadly speaking.

So write all that shit down on a piece of paper. Get yourself some sort of plastic bag, but don’t buy new plastic. I’m not encouraging that for woo work. Basically, wrap a thing up. So get your piece of paper. Once you've written all the things that you are aware exist inside of you, blockages—you would like to remove them—and wrap it up in some sort of plastic, throw that shit in the freezer. Put it on ice. Put it on ice. And that can help you to get a little bit of distance on that. And who amongst us could claim that an Aquarius Moon isn’t a little distant and icy from time to time? I mean, really.

So this exercise is one for acknowledging and externalizing your blocks and putting them on ice so that you can get a little bit of space from them and start to work with them with a little less urgency and a lot more intention and clarity of purpose.

Now, the Sun’s in Leo, so we can’t stop there. The next thing I want to encourage you to do once that is all done is write down a gratitude list. What are all the things that you are grateful for? What are all the joy points in your life, the pleasure points in your life? What can you acknowledge is abundant, thriving, lovely, fun in your life or in yourself? Write that shit down, and then give yourself a treat, some sort of celebration, some sort of birthday cake for you. I mean, you know, not literally a birthday cake, but something that feels like a life-affirming gift that you are giving yourself because you can and because you deserve it.

Another thing worth mentioning here is that Neptune is opposite Mercury in this chart. Now, it’s wide. It’s not exact. It’ll be exact later in the week. So Neptune is high spirituality, but it’s also the planet that governs disassociation and anxiety. So what we want to do is have healthy enough, grounded enough boundaries that we can be in the sweet spot between being hyper-realistic and abandoning our shared reality and linear time altogether because we’re in this body on this planet for a reason, and on this planet and in this body is linear time. This is the time of this condition, this goddamn human condition.

So we’ve got to work with that because that’s part of the human lesson is working with linear time. And Neptune opposite Mercury, not super great for that. In fact, this transit absolutely has the impact of triggering anxiety as we are struggling with things we don't totally understand or we don't want to accept. And so it’s really wise for you to look at where you are or are not in acceptance of your current reality, your starting point. In clarifying this, again, you’re doing the work of the Full Moon.

Now, everything I’m naming here is going to continue to be a big deal throughout the week. So if you hear this the day after the Full Moon and you’re like, “Damn, I missed it,” no, you didn’t. It’s the most potent to do this with the Full Moon, but you can do it whenever you can do it. And whenever you show up is good. Just show up. That’s the move.

Now, on the 23rd, we have another transit. Venus forms an exact trine to Saturn. Now, I love this transit. It has a lot of positive benefits and potential. One thing is it’s a really good time to organize your finances. It’s a great time to check in with your finances, organize your finances, and if you've been like, “I need to make a meaningful purchase,” whether that means it’s expensive or it’s something that’ll be a big investment in your life and wellness, bada-bing, bada-boom, Venus trine Saturn. Very good. Now, I’m going to say something that kind of is mitigating to that for the 24th. But for the 23rd, if you’re pretty clear about what you’re spending your money on, good on you. Venus trine Saturn.

Another thing about this transit is it’s stabilizing for relationships. Venus trine to Saturn is a time where you can let people know how much you appreciate them. The gratitude list is embraced by Venus trine Saturn. Saturn loves a list, and Venus loves gratitude. So you see where I’m going here. Venus trine to Saturn is also a good time for dealing with your image, the way you look, and coming to greater acceptance around it, working with who you are right now and how you look right now.

I know I’ve talked about this in various episodes before, but if you’re struggling with self-esteem around the way you look, your gender expression or presentation, your bodyweight, your hair, whatever the fuck it is, diversify your feed. If you are on social media, if you are exposing yourself to many images of other humans, make sure you’re following many humans who look like you and many humans who have a positive, constructive, life-affirming, health-promoting version of what you aspire to be, what you are.

And then, of course, make sure it’s diverse outside of that so that your worldview doesn’t get so small that you run into the unintended consequences of all kinds of bullshit that happens when we only see people who look like ourselves. But specifically with the Venus trine to Saturn, you want to make sure that what you are visually consuming, what you’re aesthetically consuming, isn’t adding to negative self-talk or negative self-view. And that has a really easy fix, my friends. It’s just changing up who you follow. And I don't want to blow your mind, but there’s a mute button on most social media platforms. If you can’t unfollow someone for some sort of sociopolitical reason, you can always mute them, and it’s a glorious, glorious thing.

Okay. So that brings us to the 24th. The 24th is when we have a Mercury opposition to Neptune. This transit’s so uncomfortable. I’m not going to lie. Now, like I said during the Full Moon chart, Mercury opposition to Neptune is active all week long, and it’s exact on the 24th. This transit is anxiety producing. Most people feel a sense of anxiousness or anxiety with this transit because Mercury is how you listen. It’s what you think. It’s how you connect with your friends. Neptune is uncertainty, and it’s so big that it’s hard to keep track of yourself when Neptune comes around.

When we go through this transit, a common thing that occurs is you are confronted with the ways in which you do not have boundaries or you need boundaries. But the mental anxiety that the transit stimulates is a distraction. So, essentially, what I’m saying is you experience anxiety in part because you don't have boundaries, or you don't have certain boundaries that you require or need or would benefit from. And so, instead of being like, “Oh, I’m really clear that I don't have great boundaries with this friend or with my relationship to the news,” or whatever it is, we focus on the anxiety itself because anxiety is like that. It kind of compels us to really be in it, often to the exclusion of other things.

And so I want to just kind of put this little bee in your bonnet.  Whenever we have oppositions to Neptune—or squares, but especially oppositions—our boundaries or boundarylessness is being reflected back to us. If you can keep your mind kind of trained on that, like, “Okay, where do I need greater boundaries? Are they energy boundaries? Are they behavioral boundaries? Are they verbal boundaries? Am I clarifying my boundaries for other people but not managing them for myself inside of myself?”—and I’ve talked about boundaries a bunch. I’ve dropped podcast episodes about them a bunch. And also, in recent months, I’ve dropped a lot of content about boundaries on my Patreon over on my Kittens level, so you can always join me there.  Wherever you get your boundary fruits and vegetables, your healthy diet, it’s not a one-and-done thing. You want to keep on working on it. You want to keep on checking in with it. What are your boundaries? How are you managing them? Where do they need tweaking?

Now, Mercury opposition to Neptune is not Mercury Retrograde, but what I’m about to say sounds a little bit similar. Not a great time for major purchases or signing contracts because it’s a transit that makes us likely to miss out on details, not advocate for ourselves really clearly, that kind of shit. So, if you have to do any kind of negotiation or contract signing, just triple-check what you’re signing on for. Ask someone you trust to—you know, who’s really grounded—to help you out if you can. You don't need to freak out. You just want to use this information to make the most of life and to be prepared. If it’s going to rain, just bring an umbrella. Don’t freak out. Bring an umbrella.

And that brings us to the last couple of transits of the week, and yes, it is a couple. On the 26th, we have an exact Venus opposition to Chiron and Mercury trine to Pluto. Venus opposite Chiron is a bit of an ouchie transit because Chiron always confronts us with some sort of crisis around our awareness, not just a behavioral crisis. It’s really a lot to do with our awareness and where we’re oriented inside of ourselves and then, by extension of that, with others.

Now, as you know, oppositions often get projected out, aka played out, in interpersonal relationships. And what planet is more interpersonal than Venus? None, I say. None. So Venus opposite Chiron is likely to confront you with some sort of pain point around your relationships. This may be around a theme that you have in your relationships. It may be an active issue that comes up with you and someone else or a couple other people. Or it could be something that’s from the past that just comes up and you feel funky about it.

Venus opposition to Chiron can also kind of have a similar impact on your relationship to how you look, your relationship to your gender expression, or your finances because those are all Venus’s bag of tricks.

So the thing to know about this is that, as difficult as it may feel and as upsetting as it could be, it’s also an opportunity to achieve some measure of healing. And this is liberating, right? Healing is an act of liberation. It’s also difficult and painful, and often the process of healing feels worse than the process of breaking. That’s a fucking bummer, but it is what it is. So, basically, when we’re in this transit of Venus opposition to Chiron, you may feel pretty shitty. You may feel pretty bad. And the way that you respond to your feelings is really important.

It's important to parent yourself kindly and firmly and to nurture yourself empathetically and firmly.  Yeah, I’m going to advocate for being a firm parent to your inner child or a firm parent to your inner wounding. I’m always going to encourage that. That’s just—I’m a Capricorn, so of course I am.

So the good news of this transit is it’s happening at the exact same time that we have an exact trine between Mercury and Pluto. And this transit is so beautiful for facilitating connections. Mercury, of course, is figuring things out. It’s your mind. It’s your thoughts. And Pluto is deep. And so, when we have a Mercury trine to Pluto, our capacity to achieve penetrating insights, to figure things out, to see things in a way that is both deeper and more meaningful than we were seeing them before—check, check, check. Win, win, win.

This is a great couple of transits to have because if we’re going to have to go through a Mercury opposition to Chiron, if we have to go through a Mercury opposition to Neptune—because, yes, we’ll still be feeling that—having Mercury also form a trine to Pluto is really good news because it is essentially like wind beneath our wings. It is a support for making connections. And if you set the intention and keep on returning to setting the intention to focus your thinking on positive, creative, and generative things or, if you can’t handle that, neutral things, then you can get a great deal of value from these transits.

I want to just kind of take a moment to synthesize the impact of this week’s transits. While the world is absolutely in a very vulnerable place, while there is so much happening, our capacity to come to greater clarity and to mobilize based on what we value is absolutely present, but it takes intention, and it takes aligning with your values in a grounded way. It also requires being willing to look at the role of pride or egoism and whether or not it’s getting in your way.

This week’s astrology is likely to kick up a fair amount of anxiety and negative self-talk or relationship struggles. And if this happens for you—any of these things happen for you—it’s an opportunity to get clear about your boundaries, where they need a little work and a little TLC and where they don't, what you can do and what you need to let go of, because sometimes, my loves, sometimes in a personal relationship, you have all the information you need and there isn’t anything more to do. That happens. It’s sad, but it happens. And whenever we hit Full Moons, it’s a time of closure, which can be a time of endings.

So all of this is active this week, and throughout it all, the worst thing you could do is abandon yourself. Don’t abandon yourself. Show up. Show up for yourself with empathy, with care, and also with responsibility to what you believe in, what you value.

Now, let me run through the transits one more time for you if you’re taking notes. On the 22nd, at 5:02 a.m. Pacific Time, we have a Full Moon in Aquarius at 29 degrees and 37 minutes if you’re counting. On the 23rd, we have an exact Venus trine to Saturn. On the 24th, Mercury forms an exact opposition to Neptune. And on the 26th, we have two exact transits, Venus opposite to Chiron and Mercury trine to Pluto. And that, my loves, is your goddamn horoscope.

As always, I thank you so much for joining me. I think this month we hit three years of Ghost of a Podcast. I really love making this show, and your subscriptions really help this podcast to thrive. So, if you haven’t already subscribed to Ghost of a Podcast and you are listening to it, please just hit that damn Subscribe button. Do it, my friends.

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Anyways, I hate saying goodbye to you, but for now, I say adieu. Bye-bye.

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