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. This week, we're going to be looking at the astrology of October 19th through the 25th of 2025. Now, last week, I talked about Neptune conjunction to Saturn. And I want to kind of continue this conversation in a slightly different context. That Neptune/Saturn conjunction does a lot of things, but one of the things it does is it activates anxiety. Anxiety is something that most humans experience. We experience it in varied ways, some of us much more than others and at some times more than others.

You have likely been feeling a lot of anxiety and a lot of activation. And the week of astrology that I'm going to unpack with you here today is activating. And because of this larger umbrella transit of Neptune conjunction to Saturn, we're already a little frayed. We're already likely to be experiencing greater anxiety or struggling a little bit more with parsing through reality, like, "How much is enough? How much is too much? What kind of attention is needed? Who do I trust? Can I trust myself?"—those kinds of really big questions.

This week's astrology kind of has it all. We got a New Moon. We got some really activating transits. We have some supportive transits. But within all of this, before we get into the details of it, it's important to note that when you feel activation—and when I'm talking about activation, it's like your anger, your defenses, your pettiness, your resentments—that kind of heavy emotional  and psychological activation.

When you experience activation and you're already feeling burned out or you're already feeling anxious, it's kind of a recipe for you to fall back on your oldest coping mechanisms, which are not reliably your healthiest coping mechanisms. That's kind of how things go with most humans, most of the time. It's really easy in this world, in this day, to listen to podcasts, follow social media accounts, read books, watch videos about self-help and self-awareness and healing. And it's much harder to actually integrate those lessons. It's much harder to use tools when you actually need them. And honestly, it's very easy when you feel really upset or really anxious to forget all of your tools and not resource yourself, but instead fall back on coping mechanisms that don't actually help you to cope; they just are reactions that your little animal brain is used to engaging with then you feel a certain kind of vulnerability.

There's a way that, in general, when you're feeling anxious or activated, and specifically this week in the ways in which you're likely to be feeling those feelings, that it can be really helpful to resource your body, to remember that you are a spiritual being having a material experience. And within that, tending to the needs of your body, grounding into the resource of your meat suit—these things can be really helpful. That doesn't mean they magically fix anything. It just means that they can be really helpful.

Now, on my Patreon, we have been talking a lot about this kind of stuff, and I have a lot of resources for coping with anxiety and other forms of activation. So you can join me over there if you are interested in digging deeper into this stuff. But whether or not you are feeling particularly vulnerable, anxious, defensive, activated—whatever it is—trust and believe that a lot of people around you are feeling that way, in particular this week but broadly at this time. There is so much instability and uncertainty. There are so many things to be authentically concerned about that we do not have answers for at this time, that it's hard to tolerate, and that's just with the collective.

What's happening in your personal life, in your individual experience—some of that is so personal to you. It's so personal to you as an individual. And then some of it, you're having a personal and private experience of a collective situation. And that can be maddening. It can be isolating. The way that you respond to fear and the way that I respond to fear may be really different. I may get really into checking out in escapism, and you may get hyperfocused on it or any number of things.

The point is that the way that we navigate through our triggers, our anxieties, our hopes, our fears—the way that we navigate through that stuff is often a reflection of our early developmental experiences, our family patterns, our trauma patterns, and not reliably a reflection of our greatest wisdom, right? You can accept that about yourself. What I want to invite you to do this week, and in general, is to accept that about other people, to hold space for everyone being in a bit of a messy state. Do your best to not jump to conclusions or to defenses before being curious and practicing empathy, remembering that empathy doesn't come at the expense of your boundaries. You can have empathy for someone else while at the same time holding really firm and clear boundaries with them. Life is complicated, and it's messy, and it's nuanced. And being able to resource yourself and align with your integrity through those things is the assignment. It's not an easy assignment. It's just the assignment.

This week, your mind may be really activated. You may be ruminating. You may be fixated. You may be kind of stuck on negative beliefs or processing things, maybe even communicating with other people in ways that activate or reflect your defenses instead of openness, constructiveness. Life is imperfect. You are imperfect. I am imperfect. That's okay. When you catch yourself in self-harming ruminations, maybe communicating with people in a way that is not consistent with how you want to be—maybe you catch yourself not really listening to others—the best thing you can do is meet that moment with love, with empathy, with patience—again, not at the expense of your boundaries, not at the expense of common sense discernment, but be kind. Be kind to yourself. Be kind to other people.

You can make assumptions. I mean, how can you not make assumptions? We're all making assumptions all the time. You can assume something positive if it's fictitious just as easily as you can assume something negative. I am not encouraging you to be a Pollyanna or to make up fantasies or any of that kind of stuff. But I am encouraging you to know that being sarcastic, being cynical, being negative—these are not symptoms of wisdom. These are not symptoms of maturity. They're symptoms of something else.

If you're going to make projections and assumptions, your best move is to be mindful about what is influencing your assumptions, your projections, and to reorient yourself with love. And that's not like an airy-fairy assignment. It is really challenging, but really impactful, to align yourself with love and to motivate your actions towards yourself and others with love. Love is fierce. Love is strong. Love is fiery energy—water, too, but it's a fiery energy.

Do your utmost to challenge yourself to tap into the energetics of love and to allow it to motivate  both in your internal behaviors as well as in your behavior in the world at-large. This is a much more challenging assignment in such uncertain and turbulent times than it might sound like on the surface. But it is a really life-affirming assignment. To challenge yourself to align with love and empathy and even patience can empower you to feel better, to do better, and not just feel better and do better but create a ripple of influence, of connection, of feeling better and doing better. And we really need that. We need that now. We need that all the damn time.

Okay. Let's get into your horoscope. This week's astrology begins on Sunday, October 19th. Okay. So, on the 19th, at 11:51 p.m. Pacific Time, we have got a Mercury conjunction to Mars. Now, Mercury will be at 19 degrees of Scorpio and 11 minutes sitting directly on top of Mars at the same degrees of Scorpio. Now, this transit is a lot, okay? It is activating.

When Mercury, which is your mind—right? It's your thinking. It's what you say. It's how you say it. And when I use the word "say," I'm not just talking about verbally. I'm talking about typing. I'm talking about any way of communicating. It's how you listen and whether or not you listen. Now, Mercury also governs your friendships. It's the platonic dynamic between you and others. Mars in astrology is what you do. It's how you do it. It's embodiment. It's anger and agitation and motivation. Mars is related to the chemistry you feel with other people. It's your ambitions and how you go about them.

When these two planets sit on top of each other in very intense and emotional Scorpio, we know that emotions are going to be intense because your thoughts and your physical activation are intense, because both of those things are happening. So there's pros and there's cons of this conjunction.

This transit can speed up the tempo of your day. So that could be fun. That could mean you run into lots of people. You have lots of interesting or unexpected exchanges. You have chemistry with people. There's witty repartee. It is very exciting. There's vibes that are vibing. It's all very fun. This can be busy and exciting, basically.

Okay. Great. If there's something that you need to say, if there's something that you are open to learning, this transit is great. It doesn't really help with concentration, so it's not a great time to crack open a long book if you're not already really good at reading long books. But it is a time where your mind—Mercury—is hungry. That hunger is Mars. And that's cool, right? That's great. We want that.

But there's cons to this transit, to be sure. This transit can make you irritable. It can make you feel super irritable—not just irritable, but impatient and agitated.  It can make you come off as arrogant. Or if you yourself are pretty much an angel, it can make other people arrogant or just pushy and demanding. This is a demanding transit. It demands that you check your motivations before you say what you say, how you say it. This is a transit that can really sharpen your tone of voice or sharpen the tone of voice of other people. And so ego conflicts are really common under a Mercury/Mars conjunction. There's ego battles. There's arguments. There's impulsive or rash engagement.

Mercury is your bicycle; Mars is your car. And so, if you are a cyclist or if you are a motor driver, be really careful on the street, especially if you're irritated, because it's not exactly an accident-prone transit, but it's right on the edge.  So be especially careful if you are especially irritated or agitated under this influence on this day or around this day.

This transit is particularly activating because of Mars's involvement. Mars is about embodiment. It's how you feel in your meat suit. And because it's related to how you feel in your body, if you're irritated and you're just shoving it down because you have to—I don't know—work, or you've got kids and you're not trying to yell at them all day long, then you might have to push down your emotions.

The way that feels in your system can be really challenging. It can be really hard. So a lot of people experience headaches or other somatic expressions of frustration or feeling blocked. This transit may really put you in contact with a situation where you feel like, "Oh, there's nothing I can do. I deeply want to say something, do something, but I can't." And that might make you or somebody else act out, which is not awesome, but it is something that happens under this influence.

Something you want to avoid doing is being a jerk. You may get really fixated on a way in which you think somebody's behaving, an idea that you have, and become really insistent and dogmatic about it. In this way, you may end up kind of harassing or bullying someone—it's not a good look. It's not a good vibe. Try to pull your energy back in that case, no matter how strong your convictions are. It's not just important that you say or do the right thing. It's about saying or doing a thing in an effective way.  So shoving somebody's face into a truth is not usually an effective way to get them to come around to your way of thinking.

This transit may confront you with, as I said, conflicts, ego battles, hostility, bullying from somebody else or from you. And all you can do is act in ways that reflect clarity about your position. That's really what this transit wants you to do. And the path to acting in ways that reflects clarity about your position means that you're not being reactive, because when you're being reactive, you are centering the situation or what other people are saying or doing over your own inner clarity.

Because of Mars egging on Mercury, and especially because it's in Scorpio, you may act first and think later. Obviously, that's not ideal. And also, sometimes it's unavoidable and it's the best possible thing to do. This is one of those transits that triggers your emotions and your thinking in such a way that it reveals something about you to yourself. And that something is related to Mars, the ego. If it's too small, if it's too big, these are both problems.  What we want is ideally a balanced ego, a healthy and well-adjusted ego. And so, if yours is a little too much or a little not enough, you're likely to really encounter some of the consequences of that.

Because Mercury is your mind and it's your thinking, you may really be seeing red. You may be really in a reactive and angry state of mind. That's okay. But your mood, your way of thinking, does not entitle you to act out against yourself or others. I mean, of course, you can do whatever you want. But ideally, you will not act out against yourself or others. That's the assignment, and it's a sticky one because this transit is pretty damn sticky.

And that, my friends, brings us to the New Moon. We are still going to be feeling the effects of this transit on Tuesday, October 21st, when we have a New Moon in Libra. The Sun and Moon will be conjunct—because New Moons are always when the Sun and Moon are conjunct—at exactly 5:25 a.m. Pacific Time. And the Moon will be at 28 degrees of Libra and 22 minutes, sitting right on top of the Sun at the exact same degrees. So we already know everybody's activated, right? Everybody's activated. Everybody's defensive. Everybody's feeling irritable and motivated one way or another. And then a New Moon in balanced Libra comes up.

So we're now looking at the chart of the New Moon on October 21st. if you are watching the video version of this episode with me—and if you didn't know, I am now dropping video episodes of every episode of Ghost of a Podcast. You can catch them either on Spotify or on YouTube. And there will be a link in the episode description for my YouTube if you are searching for it. You don't have to look that hard.

If you are looking along at the video version, what you will notice is that I have the chart up of this New Moon. Now, whenever we cast the chart for a New Moon or a Full Moon, we use a location. In this case, I used San Francisco. But we don't actually pay any attention to the houses.  Even if you are in San Francisco or you were born in San Francisco, it is irrelevant. We just need a location in order to cast the chart. So we don't pay attention to the angles or the houses, just the planetary aspects.

Okay. So this is a New Moon in Libra. New Moons in Libra are, generally speaking, all about relationships. This is because Libra is the zodiac sign associated with intimate one-on-one relationships. So this is not like the relationship you have to a community; it's the individual one-on-one relationships inside of that group of people. Libra is a zodiac sign that can kind of get stuck on nice. When I say getting stuck on nice, what I'm talking about is focusing on the surface of getting along and moving things forward instead of getting into real kindness, real empathy.

The struggle for the zodiac sign of Libra—and I'm not talking about people who have the Sun in Libra. I'm talking about the zodiac sign of Libra. And you can have any number of planets in Libra. In this moment, we're talking about the New Moon in Libra. The struggle with Libra is choosing alignment and authenticity over being accommodating and finding ways of just getting along to get along.

The surface component of Libra is being shook out in this New Moon chart. And that is because the Sun and Moon at 28 degrees of Libra are forming an out-of-sign square to Pluto at 2 degrees of Aquarius. Now, what this means is that, this New Moon, you're going to feel intense. You're going to feel very intense. You are going to feel activated, and the capacity that you have for experiencing your own intensity is in some meaningful way going to be tested.

Because Libra is such a relational sign, this may get triggered by another person or by a relationship. It may be something in your past. It may be something in your present. It may even be ruminations about your future. But whatever the case may be, a Pluto square to a New Moon is going to intensify and deepen your emotions. It's also going to intensify and deepen the emotions of other people. Pluto is related to your survival mechanisms. And so your coping mechanisms that are quickest to come online, your coping mechanisms that are from deepest back in your childhood, are the ones that get triggered by Pluto.

So this is where I remind you something that I've said a million times, which is your strongest emotions are not reliably your wisest ones. You want to do your best to listen to yourself, to hang out with your strong emotions so that you can better understand what they're reacting to. When we experience Plutonian or Chironic—and I'm going to get to Chiron in a minute—or Chironic activation, that activation is not reliably about the thing that's happening on the surface. It's usually that thing that's happening on the surface—like you had a fight with your mom or somebody cut you off in traffic or your boss is being a jerk again. That thing is a thing, right? And it's annoying in its own way, or it's bothersome in its own way. But the depth and the intensity of your reaction is more likely to be because of what it triggers inside of you, what it reminds you of, some fear you hold about yourself or the world and how you fit into the world—that kind of shit.

And so the power of a Pluto square to this New Moon is that you can heal. Now, do I mean perfectly heal so that there's no more wound? Hell no. But healing is a process. You get a wound or an injury, and it's gross, and it's vulnerable. And over time, it gets itchy and a different kind of gross. And over time, it shifts and changes until healing occurs. And then maybe it leaves a scar, and over the course of years, maybe that scar fades. Healing is not a linear, fixed-point occurrence. It's a path you take, and it's an approach and a mindset that you adopt.

This New Moon is a really good one for healing. And so, if you're going to do any kind of New Moon manifestation shit, let it be only to align yourself with resources that help you to stay in embodiment of what's authentic. Let it be to help you to not get in your own way on your path to healing. This is a sticky New Moon.

The other stuff that's going on here is that Chiron is square to Jupiter. It's going to be exact this week. And Chiron is opposite to the New Moon. It's squaring, more widely, Pluto. And Jupiter is also squaring the New Moon and opposing Pluto more widely. This is a very big aspect pattern. It's big. And within it lies your capacity for healing, for healing in a really big way, or getting really activated, feeling like some sort of wound or trigger is so active in your field, so present in your feelings and your thinking, that it's the most real thing that you can report. It is real, and it is irrefutable, and therefore it cannot be changed. But most things can be changed with time, with effort, but they can be changed.

This New Moon is an opportunity for you to deepen or reconnect with your ambition to change, your desire and your willingness to evolve and to grow. Jupiter is about growth, and Chiron is so much about core wounding—in other words, insecurities that are at your base. The kind of insecurities that Chiron governs are things that feel irretractable, like they're true and there's no one that can convince you otherwise.

And when we have a New Moon—which is a great time for setting intentions and starting something new—engaging with Chiron and Pluto and Jupiter, what you know is that you are capable of growing and of healing. But it will require your intention. You must make choices that empower you to have healthy boundaries in your own thinking and with your own feelings and processes and then, as an extension of that, with your behavior. Capisce?

At the same time, as I said, that Mercury/Mars conjunction is active. So jumping to conclusions, ego conflicts, are still a risk. And it is very possible that the relationship issue that triggers you will be agitating because of that Mars/Mercury conjunction. Again, it's irritating, right? It's an irritating transit.

Now, luckily, this Mars/Mercury conjunction in Scorpio is also part of a Grand Trine between Jupiter in Cancer and Saturn in Pisces. Now, the Saturn part is quite wide, but it's still active. It's still there. It's energy to be tapped into. So what this means is Jupiter/Saturn trine to Mars/Mercury—is that you can ground your intention, decide that you are going to learn from the past and take chances in the present that reflect your courage and that reflect your willingness to center your healthiest, most empathetic motivations instead of your sharpest, quickest defenses.

And listen. Friendly reminder—just because everyone in the room is being a jerk doesn't mean you should be a jerk. I know it feels like that, like, "What's the point? If everyone else is being a jerk, why don't I just be a jerk, too?" But you have to live with yourself. These transits keep on coming in cycles. They keep on coming for you. Your relationship with yourself is foundational to your happiness and your welfare. Don't allow other people and their behavior to throw you off of a path of getting to know yourself, being a good friend to yourself, and having that healthy friendship be a foundation upon which you relate to others, no matter how social or how hermity you may be.

This New Moon may bring about major growth and even healing, but it doesn't happen on its own. It doesn't just happen through magic. It happens through your choices. It happens through your actions and your intentions. So dare to be kind of bold in what you work towards and hope for both for yourself and your relationships.

This is a good time for taking chances, but not just any chances. Use your discernment. Practice healthy boundaries. These are really important qualities of this New Moon because, as you know, every time we go through another New Moon, we are essentially planting seeds in the garden of our lives. Those seeds will have their own life. And so it's always wise to be really intentional during a New Moon about what you're planting and where because it will grow one way or another. So you might as well try to grow your own growth; am I right? Am I right? Okay. Let's get to the next transit.

So that brings us to Thursday, October 23rd, at exactly 3:19 p.m., when Jupiter will be at 24 degrees of Cancer and 35 minutes, forming an exact square to Chiron at the same degrees of Aries. This transit is a big one. And as you know, it was active in the New Moon chart. Jupiter and Chiron together can go in really different directions. Chiron is related to core wounding, as we know, and it is a part of you that you really struggle with.

Somebody recently said on my Patreon that an astrologer had told them that Chiron is the wound inside of you that just never heals, and they were asking about that. They were like, "That sucks. What is that about?" And the way to think about Chiron is not that it's wound that never heals; it's that it's a wound that you are, as you grow, always orienting and reorienting to. So it's not something that you want to fix or heal in such a way where it's like a broken bone—now it's broken; now it's not. But instead, this is a path that you're on. It's a journey that you are engaged in. And at different points of your life, it's going to feel or look really different ways. Chiron in Aries really challenges you to be in your body and to better understand your own relationship to embodiment, especially when you feel off or shitty or vulnerable in any kind of way.

Now, Jupiter is growth. A lot of astrologers will tell you Jupiter is luck and beneficence and love and all these things. But I am not the one. I am not the one. I will say instead that Jupiter expands things. It makes it bigger. And so, if you are on a healing journey and you're super self-aware and you are evolving and growing and working really hard, and Jupiter transits come along, then it will expand that. And you may have great insights and growth spurts. But if you are, conversely, just really checked out and not really taking care of yourself and not really showing up for the things that are important to you in your life and a Jupiter transit comes along, it'll expand that. I'll make that bigger.

That expansion may challenge you to kind of shift your behavior, shift your attitude, or it may just make it bigger. So Jupiter can go in any direction. It's not promising you healing and perfection. So the Jupiter square to Chiron—your wounds, your insecurities, your vulnerabilities can feel really big as they come to the surface. You could also feel really brave and resilient in the presence of these insecurities or core wounds. This is the thing about the transit: it really depends on how it is hitting your chart and how it's hitting you.

You may feel really inspired to engage with your shit and to work on it in a healthy, constructive way, or you just may feel kind of overwhelmed by the intensity of your feelings. Either way, the opportunity here is for self-reflection and growth. Jupiter has a way of being a little arrogant and doubling down at times. So do your best to not double down on your negative worldview or your insecurities.

If you find yourself doing that, then take a beat. Just take a beat. Take a breath, and see if you can access something inside of yourself that's different. This is a time for you to foster your sense of self, to connect to your agency and your compassion for yourself because these are the things that will help you to heal your Chironic wounds. It's not easy work, but it's really important work. So, if it comes up in any way, small or big, in your life or in the world around you, do your best to engage with it.

Now, speaking about the world around you, because we're dealing with not personal planets—right? Technically speaking, Chiron isn't a planet at all; it is an asteroid. And Jupiter is a social planet. It would make sense for us to consider the implications of how this is going to show up in the world. Now, this transit may trigger intensely nationalistic feelings or behaviors out of people. Chiron in Aries, forming a 90-degree angle to Jupiter in Cancer, may find militaries, or armed guard of sorts, acting in ways to protect the border or to protect nationalism in some way with violence. This would happen, it would feel like, on a dime because when we're dealing with squares, it's like a sharp turn. That's the energy of a square.  It's a sharp turn. Things happen. It feels, in some ways, all of a sudden even though it is related to patterns.

The capacity for healing extends to the collective. It's not just about you on an individual level. And so, if you are a part of groups, if you are actively engaging in trying to make the world better—we can call that activism. We can call that humanitarianism. We can call that spirituality. We can call it whatever you want to call it. But if you are working actively to make the world a better place and to find your place inside of it, you are very likely working alongside other people.

Everyone is going to be really activated this week and, in particular, on and around this date. So do your best to be connected to your own resiliency instead of locked into old limiting beliefs that you hold about yourself and the world. You can tap into your agency to be more compassionate to yourself and to others, again, not instead of boundaries—alongside of boundaries. Not instead of motivation to make change in yourself or the world or both, but alongside those motivations.

We're going to be feeling the effects of this transit for a minute, so stay with the energies. Stay with the intention of facilitating progress instead of doubling down on keeping things the way they are, because things, my friend, are changing. They are changing. You are changing, and the world is changing. And there is no way around it. So how are you going to meet this moment? How are you going to meet yourself? How are you going to engage with others? This is where you have free will. You have choices. You may not have the best choices. You may not like your choices. But you have choices. So do your best to make the best-aligned, most empathetic, most humane choices you can make in how you engage with yourself and others.

And that brings us to Friday. And on Friday, the 24th of October, damn if we don't have a Pluto transit, a Sun square to Pluto, overlapping with the Jupiter square to Chiron. It's not easy. It's just not easy. It's not an easy transit, okay? Luckily, we have a Mercury trine to Jupiter overlapping. The Sun will be at 1 degree of Scorpio and 24 minutes at exactly 6:24 a.m. Pacific Time, and it will be forming an exact square to Pluto at the same degrees of Aquarius.

A little later on that morning, at 8:08 a.m. Pacific Time, Mercury will be at 24 degrees of Scorpio and 37 minutes, forming an exact trine to Jupiter at the same degrees of Cancer. So Mercury trine Jupiter—it is such a welcome, delightful transit to have with these other two because what it does is it empowers you to be more resilient in your thinking, to not just have friends or people that you can lean on—because it could be like comrades. It could be neighbors. It doesn't have to be your deep friends, but your social connections that you can lean on. It also empowers you to actually lean on the right people at the right time for the right thing.

Mercury trine to Jupiter is a transit where the details, which your Mercury, and the big picture, which is Jupiter, are kind of copacetic in your thinking. In other words, it's a great time to make plans. This transit will empower you to be curious and resilient in your thinking whilst going through these more challenging transits.

So Sun square Pluto—Sun square Pluto is an intense transit. The Sun square to Pluto, in a really different way than the Jupiter square to Chiron, can trigger a crisis in confidence, a crisis of self-confidence. The Sun in astrology is—it's your sense of self. It's your identity. And Pluto is transformational. It's also your survival mechanisms. And your survival mechanisms—we're talking about fight, flight, or fawn.

And so what this means is that when these two planets are forming a square, which, again, they were doing in the New Moon chart—so the effects of this transit have really been stretched out through the week. When this transit occurs, you may feel like you have to fight for your very existence. You may feel like you are losing control and you have to claw your way back into it. This is not a time for being in control, for the record. You may have to engage in power struggles. That might be unavoidable. But be mindful about what you engage with because some bells cannot be unrung. Do you know what I'm saying? Choose your battles wisely. Not all battles need you as a fighter, and not all ways of fighting for a righteous cause are the right ways of fighting in that cause.

In other words, be smart. Be smart. And how do you do that when you're feeling so activated? And again, as I warned you, this week's astrology is activating. And this activation is happening under a larger umbrella of anxious, destabilizing energies astrologically. The key here is to utilize the intensity and the energy of this transit because the Sun square to Pluto does intensify your energy, which can be really useful. It can help to motivate you to get involved in things that are important to you, to work through challenging problems. It can be a really helpful transit.

But it is a transit that can find you kind of on your back foot and, in that way, acting out of your survival mechanisms, your strongest emotions and not your wisest ones. If you find yourself being manipulative, possessive, jealous, maybe a little petty—maybe your resentments are getting really activated—then you know Pluto is online, right? And the best way to engage with Plutonian issues is by not resisting.

So I have a whole class on Pluto available on my website if you're interested in diving deeper into Pluto. But my rule with Pluto is that because Pluto is water—people think about Pluto, and they think of fire, which is understandable because it is a really intense set of energies. But Pluto is the undertow of the ocean. It is that part of the ocean that is stronger than you, no matter how strong you are. If you've ever been caught up in a riptide, you know you're not supposed to fight against it. You're supposed to release and let yourself float way.

And so, in functional terms, what this means is when you're in the throes of a Plutonian fixation, Plutonian feelings, it's important to not allow yourself to be moved by the focus of your fixation but instead to focus on the emotions. If you're feeling really panicked, first, cope with the feelings of panic, and then try to figure out the situation. If you're feeling really angry, find a healthy and constructive way of engaging with your anger before you figure out what to say or do in your situation. Now, it's possible that you'll be in a situation where you absolutely, for your survival or for the welfare of someone, you have to act immediately. But that sense of urgency that we feel under Pluto is usually not true. Now, again, sometimes shit is dire, and that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about feelings of urgency that are really about your defenses. Watch out for those.

And as always, you may be an innocent party in your life, and it may be that other people are acting out in a Plutonian defensive theme. If that's the case, again, choose your battles. Choose your approach with wisdom. Learn from your own past and your own patterns instead of allowing the loudest or most destructive person in a situation to direct your behavior. You don't always have to engage. Remember this. You don't always have to engage. You get to choose. Now, again, you might not always have great options, but you do have options.

The Sun square to Pluto can unfortunately kick up addiction, self-destructive habits, that kind of stuff. Because Pluto is intense and compulsive, any place in which you tend to be compulsive with your behavior or in your thinking or your coping will be activated this week in general and specifically on and around this day. So use that intensity for healing and for getting to the bottom of things instead of tripling down on your fucked-up feelings. Okay?

This is a transit that can help you to move through something very deeply, but it requires that you engage with integrity because when you don't, Pluto does act like a boomerang and it comes back at you. So act with integrity. That is my best advice.

Now, one last thing I'll say about this transit is that—listen. With everything that's happening in the world, a Sun square to Pluto is certainly going to be on my radar to pay attention to abuses of power. And because Pluto is an outer planet—it's a generational planet—we can see really systemic abuses of power happen under this influence. And again, we're not just going through this transit. It's like part of the New Moon, so it's really in the mix this week.

Hopefully, you can use your awareness of this not to be defensive, not to slip into fearful thinking or behaviors, but instead to be on the lookout, allowing people and situations to reveal themselves to you so that you can be strategic and intentional about how you engage and respond.

That brings us to our last exact transit of the week. That's happening on Saturday, October 25th, at exactly 2:17 p.m. We have Mercury at 26 degrees of Scorpio and 6 minutes, forming an exact trine to Saturn at the same degrees of Pisces. This transit is really, really supportive, and I'm happy to tell you that, because this Sun square to Pluto, Jupiter square to Chiron shit is kind of a lot.

The Mercury trine to Saturn is a transit that will help you to steady your thinking, to actually learn from what's happening, to communicate in ways that are accessible to whoever it is you're talking to and to properly concentrate and listen when you are consuming information in whatever way that you consume information. Mercury trine to Saturn is another great transit for making plans. Now, these other activating transits are not necessarily great for making plans because you're in such a reactive state. However, the Mercury transits are really good for that. So, depending on what's going on, you're going to be feeling, maybe, one of these transits more than the other—information for you to have.

Mercury trine to Saturn is a good idea to organize things in general, so pay your tickets. Respond to emails. Open the junk drawer. Actually look through it. Throw some shit away. Saturn is related to your ambitions. It's like the mountain that you climb. And Mercury is the details. It's the little things. And so this is a really helpful transit for assessing and exploring different ways that you can engage with the mountain that you climb through life.

And that, my friends, is this week's horoscope. There's a lot going on, and all you need to do is stay present to the best of your ability and continue to try to the best of your ability. You don't need to be perfect. You don't need to be perfect. You don't need to predict what's going to happen next and how it's going to feel in order to be a good steward of your own safety or a good friend or community member to others. Just gotta keep on showing up.  And it's easier said than done, but it's also that simple. So don't let it get more complicated in your thinking.

Now, I'm going to run through the transits one more time. But also, I want to remind you that I always have the transcript available on my website within 24 hours of the episode release. And you can always check that out so that you can comb through the details of the horoscope because I know it is a lot of information.

Okay. On the 19th, Mercury sits on top of Mars. On the 21st, we have a New Moon in Libra. On the 23rd, Jupiter forms an exact square to Chiron. On the 24th, the Sun is exactly square to Pluto, and Mercury is exactly trine to Jupiter. And then, finally, on the 25th, Mercury is exactly trine to Saturn.

I want to thank you so much for joining me here for Ghost of a Podcast. And if you want to learn more with me, go ahead and join me over on my Patreon, or check out the classes available on my website. If you want a reading with me one-on-one, the only place I offer that is on the podcast. So, if you would like a reading with me, you can go ahead and send a question to be considered for the podcast through the contact form on my website. New episodes come out every Wednesday in which I give an in-depth reading to one of my beloved listeners.

All right. Take really good care of yourself and others, and I'll talk to you really soon. Bye.