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 is the 500th episode of the podcast, and just can't believe we've put together 500 episodes over the course of several years. This has been a real pleasure and joy for me and for my partner, who edits these episodes. And so I just want to thank you. If you are new to Ghost of a Podcast or if you've been with me from the jump, I really, really appreciate it.

And while we're here at this momentous moment, I want to acknowledge something that I think is pretty important to me and to a lot of you, which is that this is an astrology podcast, yes, but it is also inherently political because I am of the conviction that the personal is political and that in these times, these harrowing times, I am not going to talk about how you're feeling, what you're going through, how the economy, the environment, your personal life⁠—how all of these things are shaking out out of context of the reality that we find ourselves in.

Now, we are all in one big-ass boat together, but we are not all on the same floor, in the same room, and living under the same conditions in said boat. That's what's real. And I read and appreciate all of the reviews that I get for the podcast, and I want to acknowledge that the primary negative feedback that I get is that I'm political, that I'm too political, that I'm one-sided or, from the last lovely reviewer, that I am engaging in liberal whining. And I want to say really emphatically that I find that offensive. I am not a liberal. I am a progressive. And if I am whining, it is a progressive's whining, not a liberal's whining.

But, that said, I want to be clear and state for the record that I do believe that the 47th president of the United States is acting out of Hitler's playbook. Since 2016, when he got his first nomination, before he was even president, I saw that we were going to end up here. And here is a dangerous place. Here is a place that straight-up terrifies me. I'm not trying to fearmonger. I am telling you what I perceive. I'm telling you how I feel because I am an astrologer. I'm also just a person who's living through January of 2025 right alongside you. I'm just a person here with you.

This man's presidency and the evils that I unfortunately believe and certainly he will perpetrate, and the ones he's already perpetrated, are meaningful parts of why I even started Ghost of a Podcast. This project, this offering, has always been inherently political. Now, I know some weeks, or even some months, I am significantly less political in what I share, but this is a political podcast. And if that's not for you, then that's not for you. That's okay. You don't have to listen to the podcast. Of course, I want you to, and I want you to get value from it. But I have to go on the record to say that I do believe that the 47 is acting out of Hitler's playbook. And this is something that I would like to be wrong about. I would be so happy to be wrong about this.

I want to acknowledge all the people who are just living in fucking terror right now⁠—Trans people, people who are immigrants, legal or not⁠—I don't give a fuck⁠—people of color, people who are not Christian, women, anyone who's spoken out against Isreal and for Palestine, which is, I'm guessing, most of us, right? We're all scared and have really good reason to be. The astrology of the coming years is somewhat stark. And, as I touch on in the month-ahead forecast for February, which is available on my Patreon, this is the most peaceful month of 2025. And I don't mean to suggest that it's peaceful, but it's the most peaceful. Things really shift in March of this year, and they stay chaotic. They stay intense.

And again, I'm not saying this to frighten you. I'm saying this to validate you're not overreacting. Shit is bananas. If the most news you hear week by week is from me, I want to invite you to fact-check every goddamn thing I say and to do your own investigations, to find one, maybe two, news sources that you can tap into on a somewhat consistent basis so that you're aware of what's happening in the world because there's a lot happening. Each and every one of us need to find a way⁠—it doesn't matter if it's small; small is fine⁠—but find a way to participate in this world, to protect each other, to protect ourselves, and to fight tyranny and fascism wherever we can, however we can.

Now, I'm going to share something personal. And I've talked about it a little bit in public before, maybe even on the podcast. I can't quite remember. But I'm Jewish. And on one side of my family, I'm from Holocaust survivors. And every Friday night, on Shabbats, my grandfather would sit me down and tell me stories of living through the Holocaust and the camps. And the way that it started was not the camps. The way that it started was bullying, division, aggression, and anger. And it built towards agents knocking on people's doors, looking for, quote unquote, "illegals." The way that it started was people starting to panic and some people saying, "I gotta get the fuck out of here," and other people saying, "You're overreacting. How bad can it get?" That's how it started. And it's exactly what's happening now.

As scary as that is⁠—and I find it terrifying. But as scary as that is, I want to say that we have the benefit of learning from history. We have the benefit of understanding their playbook because we have access to their playbook. We have the benefit of learning from the healers and the resisters. We have the benefit of learning from history. But the only people who will actually benefit from that are people who know history. So study your history. Study your history of the last time that Uranus was in Taurus⁠—a.k.a. World War II, a.k.a. the Holocaust⁠—or of other times that you think are really resonant with what we're going through here.

If you hear the term "detention camp" and you think it's meaningfully different than a concentration camp, I encourage you to go and check out definitions of what is a concentration camp, to understand not just what they were at the very worst and on the last days of them, but what they were at the start.

Now, I know none of this sounds very astrological. And the truth of the matter is I could talk about this in very astrological terms, but honestly, I don't want to. I've dedicated my life⁠, over 30 years of my adult life⁠, to astrology. I love astrology. I use astrology frequently and well. Where we don't want to use astrology⁠—to step back from reality. Astrology is fascinating, right? It's absolutely fascinating. But this is go time. This is absolutely go time. This is time to be actively engaged, to be learning about what's happening here and now and how that does or doesn't line up from history and what you can learn and apply to your resistance here and now.

So we can get into the astrology more over time, but sometimes I just want to name things, name what's happening in real time, and to encourage you to engage with the world around you. This is one of those times, and this is what I'm doing. And I know, to some of you, this is fucking annoying, to which I say I'm so sorry, and oh well. This is⁠—it's my podcast, which, again⁠—and if you thought that was annoying, let me throw in one more thing that⁠—oh, yeah. If you want to resist tyranny, wear a fucking mask. Wear a mask in public. Protect yourself and others from illnesses. 47 has shut down the public access to the CDC, has disconnected from the World Health Organization. Why in the world would a tyrannical president do such a thing? Because the more fucked up we are⁠, the sicker we are, the more in the dark we are, the easier we are to manipulate, the easier we are to terrorize.

So take care of yourself. Take care of your community in the most simple ways you can. Masking is simply community care, community love. It's also self-care and self-love. So whatever great reasons you have for not wearing a mask over the last months or years, that's cool. Also, things have changed. Maybe put your mask back on.

Now, one more thing I'm going to say, and I think this is an important thing. As scary as things are and are likely to get, don't let it break your spirit. Don't let it disconnect you from joy and love and your ability to be resilient. Life and this world are absolutely beautiful, downright magical, actually. When your spirit is unbroken, you are a force to be reckoned with. When our spirits are unbroken, we are a force to be reckoned with. We are powerful.

So it's okay to feel hopeless and helpless. It's okay to feel scared. When those feelings come up, do something that brings you joy, that brings you pleasure, that lights you up, that gives you a sense of purpose and meaning. This is how we sustain the work ahead of us. This is how we don't let our base Plutonian urges of vengeance and hatred or self-hatred, profound insecurity, rumination⁠—all the terrible fucking parts of humanity⁠—we don't let those things drive us, right?

Things are hard right now. Luckily, most of the astrology of this week is actually quite supportive. And so there's a lot of energy for you to tap into, which of course I will delineate in a minute. But if you are aware of what's happening in the world, if you are paying attention to the news, it is so easy to lose track of your capacity and your right to feel joy, to just fucking exist, to take a break. And I want you to know that those things are a part of resistance.

Over on my Patreon, we're getting into all of that stuff. We're getting into, really, energy work and how to connect with your guides, how to better resource yourself, and we're building up to doing shielding work⁠—good, strong, energetic shielding work, boundary work⁠—so that you can protect yourself but also so that you can protect others. I post to my puppies and kittens level, which are my paid levels, but I also have free membership, and I'm posting a bunch more to my free members. So you can join me on Patreon for free, just like this podcast is free for you. So hopefully that is helpful.

Okay. Now let's dive into your horoscope. This week, we're looking at the astrology of February 2nd through the 8th of 2025. There are five exact transits that we're going to go through. Most of them are quite supportive, so that's kind of exciting, right? The first transit happens on Monday, February the 3rd, and it is exact at 1:51 p.m. Pacific Time. It's a Mercury trine to Jupiter. This transit is occurring with Mercury at 11 degrees 17 minutes of Aquarius and Jupiter at the same degrees of Gemini.

This is an absolutely lovely transit⁠—no negative side. Mercury is details, and Jupiter is the big picture. Mercury is your attitudes, and Jupiter is your beliefs. Mercury is your neighborhood and your friends and the people in your immediate environment. Jupiter is the world-large. It's people and places far from you. It's expansiveness. It's education and experience. And so, when these two planets form a trine to each other, it's expansive. You can broaden your horizons, learn new things, connect to new places and things, consider all of the details of a big-picture plan without getting overwhelmed. You can consider the big picture without losing track of the details.

You can connect with your friends in a way that feels expansive. You can connect with your community in a way that is not just good for your mind but is based in experience. So it's a whole-body connection, basically. This transit can put you in a positive frame of mind. This transit can make you feel more resilient, more optimistic, more willing and able to find what's possible, to explore and seek answers or at least possibilities, which is awesome.

This is a great time for making plans. And you know I've been encouraging you to get your paperwork in order in terms of passports and IDs and stuff like that. This is actually a great time to do that as well. Things tend to flow. Your plans tend to go well⁠—that kind of a thing. So this is a really lovely transit. It's also great for socializing, for feeling close to other people, for learning new things, researching⁠—all that kind of good stuff. Again, no downside to this transit. But I mean, it doesn't mean it's the only transit happening.

Now, the other transit that's exact on this day is a Mars square to Chiron, so Mars will be at 19 degrees of Cancer and 36 minutes, and Chiron will be at 19 degrees of Aries and 36 minutes at exactly 4:44 p.m. Pacific Time. And this is a square. This means that Mars and Chiron are having a conflictual relationship to each other. They are not sitting opposite, so they're not in opposition to each other; they're struggling. They're struggling with each other. Whenever we have the struggle of a square, it can feel chaotic. It can feel jarring.

Now, Mars is Retrograde, and it's in Cancer. So the push here from Mars or the energy of Mars is to be in your body because that's what Mars is; Mars is about your body. And it's in Cancer, so it's your emotions. So how do your emotions sit in your body? How do you reflect on your emotions? This is a fucking thing about being a human, is that all of your experiences⁠—your body was there for them. Conscious or unconscious, your body was there. And so it holds on to all of our experiences.

And when something really stressful or scary happens and we have an adrenal response and we don't do that thing that I watch my cats do, which is really shake it off⁠—use every muscle in your body to shake it off, to run physical and emotional energy through⁠—if you don't have a release point for that adrenal spike, it gets kind of trapped and gunked up in the system. And this is part of how it comes to pass that our bodies hold on to our emotions.

When Mars Retrograde is in Cancer, your emotional patterns that are kind of stuck in your body are activated. And we're being asked to reflect on those things, to notice how they get pushed to the surface inside of you when you get activated. And that might be when you feel defensive, when you feel resentful, when you feel angry, when you feel demoralized or ambitious.

Now, again, it's important to remember the Mars Retrograde wants you to reflect on how those emotions get trapped in your body, how you experience those feelings and sensations, and then how you behave because Mars is ultimately about your behavior. It's like what you do. So how do you act when you get activated? On a more collective and social scale, we understand that Cancer is associated with borders and nationalism, patriotism. And Mars is militarized. And so here we have that theme at play in the world.

Now, let's talk about Chiron. Chiron is our wounding. It's your personal wounds from your lived experience, the parts of you that got hurt when you were little, and so, in some way, they kind of stay with your system and they keep on getting validated or invalidated, acted out or not. Ultimately, it comes down to insecurity. Where we have Chiron, we don't tend to be super secure in ourselves, because we have a lot of fears and potentially bad experiences to back those fears up.

When Mars forms a square to Chiron, there's a risk that you will experience some sort of power struggle. And "power struggles," quote unquote, are typically the jurisdiction of Pluto. But in the context of Mars with Chiron, we see it clearly reiterated. It has an energetic difference. For those who are super woo or super astrological, it is important to note there is a substantive yet nuanced difference between a Plutonian power struggle and a Mars/Chiron power struggle. But it is a power struggle nonetheless.

It is important to own your shit during this transit, to own your own power, yes, but also to own the ways in which you may martyr yourself or feel like you're victimized. It is important to recognize the ways in which you may act that are not right because we all do shit that's not right. We all hold back when, really, we should move ahead. We all come across too sharp or not clear enough or whatever it is. Nobody's perfect. And you don't have to be perfect.

But when Mars forms a square to Chiron⁠—and this is going to affect you especially if it hits anything directly in your birth chart⁠—what comes up is the opportunity for you to engage with an old pattern, in how you process your emotions in your body and in your behavior, in new ways, in ways that don't just reflect old wounds but reflect who you intend to be.

Each and every pain point in your life, each and every pain point in society, holds within it the potential for healing. Now, I mean, it's not that simple, obviously, but a transit like Mars square to Chiron is going to activate you. And within that activation is an invitation to show up for yourself, to show up behaviorally and in the world or with others, in ways that are healthier and not trapped in this victimization pattern, whether you're victimizing yourself or others, like you're blaming other people or blaming yourself or, if you are really complicated, blaming yourself and others all at once.

In a meaningful way, the best way to handle this transit is reliant on your ability to have boundaries, to have behavioral boundaries, emotional boundaries, energetic boundaries. This is a really hard thing to do, especially where you don't feel confident. But the places inside of yourself or in your life where you don't have great boundaries or where you need better boundaries⁠—they need your attention. And this transit is going to activate those parts so that you can bring your attention, hopefully gently, hopefully with care, to those parts so you can develop healthier boundaries.

Now, in regards to the world at-large, I have all kinds of red flags dotted around this transit, a.k.a. around this date. And instead of trying to predict what that's going to look like, I want to just say this: you⁠—you. You specifically. You. You have agency. How you choose to engage, what you do, what you refuse to do, your boundaries, your courageousness⁠—that's how you can participate. If shit goes sideways⁠—and you know shit is going sideways right now⁠—you can rise to the occasion to the best of your ability given your circumstances, your nature, etc.

Now, luckily, we have some supportive transits involving Chiron that will make it more possible to do that because the supportive transits from Chiron bolster self-esteem, not through things being easy-peasy and everything kind of going your way, but by your self-esteem getting bolstered. So there's astrology to help you this week, which is really lovely.

Okay. Now that brings us all the way to Friday, February the 7th, where we have two more transits that are exact. At 4:14 a.m. Pacific Time, Venus will be at 2 degrees of Aries forming an exact sextile to Pluto at the same degrees of Aquarius. It's 2 degrees and 16 minutes, if you like to be exact. Later that night, at 10:22 p.m. Pacific Time, the Sun will be at exactly 19 degrees of Aquarius and 44 minutes, forming an exact sextile to Chiron at the same degrees of Aries. Now, Pluto and Chiron⁠—they both govern really intense parts of you. They're connected to your survival and, again, deep wounding, insecurities, self-esteem issues.

And so, when we have two sextiles⁠—the first is from Venus, and the second is from the Sun⁠—to these players, you can trust that meaningful progress is possible without as much pain and strife as you may experience at other times, which I fucking love. The Venus sextile to Pluto is excellent transit for going deep and going deep in your relationships, letting people know how you feel about them not just through your words but through care, through acts of care, whatever that looks like for you⁠—and the truth is letting people know how you feel about them and acts of care may be words for you, but Venus and Pluto here are saying to imbibe those words with energy, with love, with care.

This is also a great time⁠—if you've been struggling to figure out what your values are or to act in ways that better reflect your values⁠, this is the transit. This is a fantastic transit for that. This is a great transit for organizing your finances or reshuffling your finances so they better reflect your values system or what you want to be building in terms of your liquid resources. Venus is related to cash in hand. It's your liquid resources. And Pluto is your investments. It's what's in your retirement fund or an inheritance or in the market. It's money that you have but is not in your hands. So these are all great things to consider under a Venus sextile to Pluto.

If you are flirting with people, if you have a love relationship, whether it's a sexual relationship or not, this is a great transit for connection. What you want to know is that if you have a tendency to ruminate or obsess or to project onto other people, whether it's in a parasocial relationship or a personal relationship, this transit can activate that stuff. So you want to be careful⁠. Ditto if you have some sort of substance abuse issue that you've been struggling with that gets activated when you're socializing with other people.

This transit can kind of activate those things, not in a way where it makes it worse, but where it's just functioning smoothly. The sextiles and the trine⁠s—they show us that everything's functioning smoothly. But if what you have in place in your psyche, in your relationships, in your behavior, is self-destructive, is not helpful or healthy when it flows, that's not necessarily a great thing. So this, again, is a powerful and somewhat fluid and easy time for growth, expansion, and change if you're brave enough to engage with those things. And then, finally, I will say if you shit-talk and gossip during this transit, that may come back to haunt you later. Nothing bad will happen now, but it'll come back on you. So don't be a jerk.

And that brings us to that Sun sextile to Chiron that's happening at 10:22 p.m. This transit is really lovely, again, and it is lovely because it can bolster your self-esteem, not just by having something lovely happen where you're like, "Oh, I'm great," but instead by putting you in a position where you have a win; you're in a position where you typically act, again, kind of out of low self-esteem or low self-confidence, but under the effects of this transit, you engage differently. You find your center of strength, your resiliency. You find some sense of confidence in yourself, and you act from that place. And something meaningful shifts. That shift may be really subtle. It may be really dramatic. With a sextile, it's more likely to be subtle. It's powerful. It's beautiful.

This is a great time for any kind of therapy or healing modality, especially those that engage you consciously. So I'm not talking about consciousness-raising drugs. I'm talking about being physically present⁠—because we're still feeling that Mars square to Chiron⁠—and you are psychologically present with the Sun and Venus.

This transit can aid you on your path to evolving past perfectionism, to being true to yourself, whether that's in your psyche and how you relate to yourself, or in relationship with other people, in the world in any way. So, again, this transit is a beautiful one to tap into. But nothing happens magically on its own. These are energies that you want to work with as consciously as possible, especially if you've been really stressed out, especially if you're really struggling to figure out how to show up in your life or in the world. These transits are really instructive in helping you to find alignment, to find creativity and a willingness to approach things from a slightly different angle or with a different energy, a more aligned energy from the same old angle, because sometimes it's not just what you do; it's how you do it. It's your motivations. It's the energy with which you approach a damn thing.

And that brings us to the final exact transit of the week. On Saturday, February the 8th, Mercury will be at 19 degrees and 49 minutes of Aquarius, and it will form a sextile to Chiron at the same degrees of Aries. This will be exact at 11:21 a.m. Pacific Time. This transit, not dissimilarly from the Sun sextile to Chiron, is one wherein you can sort through your ideas and attitudes around core past wounding, a.k.a. your insecurities, your identity, your sense of self.

This transit can empower you to come to greater and deeper understanding of your own complexes and patterns and how they're playing out in your relationships. And when I say relationships, Mercury governs all forms of platonic relationships, so that can include a romantic relationship, but it's the platonic side of that relationship. It's about how you connect with others. It's how you communicate with them, how you listen to them, how they listen to you, how they communicate with you. So it's, again, not just like we text or we talk. It's the more meaningful layers of communication, of what's being said, what's not being said, and how heard you feel.

This transit is really helpful for making breakthroughs. So, again, that's great for therapy, any kind of healing modality. It's great for having heart-to-hearts with other people, getting deep with your dear diary, reading, learning, soaking up ideas. You may be called to speak up on something, to speak truth to power on a damn thing, in which case, yeah, green light. Go. The transit between Mercury and Chiron⁠—it's going to challenge you to speak up in ways that are scary, that you're not sure if you're doing it right or if you even have the right. And that's the nature of courage, isn't it? It's to act in spite of your fear.

Fear is important. Whether that's insecurity or actually nail-biting fear, fear is important. Fear is an important experience for all animals to have because it alerts you to danger. And also, sometimes our fears don't alert us to any danger; they alert us to the presence of fear. And the only way to figure out, "Is the thing I'm scared of something that's actually happening now? How do I want to navigate what's actually happening now?" or, "Is my fear a fear of things maybe happening at some time, whether it's in the past or the future?"⁠—in that case, then the remediation, the way to handle it, is meaningfully different.

So being able to sit with your fear and to listen to your fear empowers you to make choices and have options in the presence of your fear. The most human thing is to recoil from fear and insecurity, but that's not what we're meant to do. I mean, sometimes, I guess. If a bear is chasing you, recoil. Run. But otherwise, practicing finding new ways of steadying your mind in the presence of fear so that you can receive it and sort through the data that it comes with⁠—that's really empowering. And a transit like this one⁠ and, honestly, most of the transits of this week are really impactful for doing just that. So be open. Explore. And in particular, explore around the edges of your comfort zone. And that's the last transit of the week.

As a very quick recap, on the 3rd, Mercury will form an exact trine to Jupiter, and Mars Retrograde will form an exact square to Chiron. On the 7th, Venus will form an exact sextile to Pluto, and the Sun will form an exact sextile to Chiron. And the following day, on the 8th, Mercury also forms an exact sextile to Chiron. And that's your week in the stars.

In case you missed it, Episode 499 was a special one in that I shared the live recording from my talk at Charis Books in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 12th, where I talked a little bit about the astrology of 2025 and then I answered audience questions. We got deep. We got personal. It was beautiful. And again, if you were there, thank you so much for coming. I love you, Atlanta.

Thank you so much for tuning in to Ghost of a Podcast this week and very week, and I will talk to you in just a couple of days. In the meantime, take really good care of yourself and others.