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's astrology—it's got transits that I have been worried about for quite some time and I have been trying to prepare you for throughout the month. So I'm going to break down the details of the astrology, but I want to say that this astrology is activating, it's violent, and it is one in which major strides, major progress, can be made. Now, that can be progress in the direction you don't want to go or progress in the direction you do want to go. But what we can expect is some extreme developments.

And before I tell you about what's coming this week, I want to pull back and name something that's happening in a couple of months because I want it to be in our heads, see. This summer, Uranus moves into Gemini. When this occurs, we will have the astrology of revolution, rebellion, and real change unlocked. July is the time. Things are pretty fucking dire right now, and that might be something that you're experiencing very personally in your life or not, but certainly in the social and political conditions in the United States, it's fucking dire. Human rights abuses and devastation of the environment—I mean, things are moving in a very wrong direction.

Within that, the truth is our ability to make change is, on some level, less this week than it was last week. In a tyrannical authoritarian system, our collective ability to make change gets harder and harder the worse things get. And also, I gotta say this summer, in July, things change in a massive way. Regardless of how dire our circumstances, when people come together, when the majority comes together, big change is always possible. In your outreach, in your fear, do not retreat into yourself and forget who the real enemy is. It's not people who were lied to who believe things that you think are patently wrong. It's not people you disagree with. It's the system.

You and me—we have a limited amount of precious, precious energy. There's only so much that you can do in a day. There's only so much emotional capacity that you have. And if you are paying attention to the news, it is fucking exhausting. And so point your attention, your outrage, your energy, and your efforts towards the system. We don't have time for fucking infighting right now. Getting mad, feeling outrage, being resentful, even being frightened—these are all really important emotions, and they can be incredibly motivating for heartfelt action, for having boundaries, for being brave and acting in ways that strive to protect justice. Anger and outrage—all of these feelings are an important part of having passion and being ambitious.

And also, these feelings can be a fire that burn you from the inside and deplete you. And that's what I'm pointing to. Strive this week and beyond to focus your emotions, focus your anger, focus your outrage, and even your heartbreak away from petty disagreements and shit that, at the end of the day, doesn't actually matter because it doesn't have real power over you or anything, really, in the world. Instead, focus your energy on creating real change.

And if you really are just like, "I don't fucking know what to do," I want to point you towards a couple of things. The first is, hey, obviously, I'm your astrologer, right? I am a spiritual practitioner. I am not an organizer. There are lots of organizers and organizations out there doing amazing work, and they didn't start this week. They've been doing it a long-ass time. Find folks who are organizing. Find organizations that have lots of resources, and fall in line. Do the work.

Using an app like 5calls.org is a great step. Is it going to do everything? No. Obviously, no. But if you're just like, "What can I do? I feel helpless. I feel hopeless," do something because any action you take creates energy. Action itself is a force of will. It is energetic in nature. Find actions that facilitate progress, even if it's a little, teeny, tiny bit of progress. If I can paraphrase author and activist Heather McGhee, there is a wall of injustice in front of us, and we need to keep hammering at it and to trust that you may not be the one to see it all fall down, but it will fall down because of the blows that you made. This is how collective action has effect. It's not just because of what you do or what I do. It's the cumulative effect of all of us doing something.

Now, the astrology of this week is exceptionally activating. And so, if your ego, if your survival mechanisms, are functioning at a level of burnout, functioning at a level of overactivation, then the astrology of this week is really going to hand you your ass, to be honest, okay? This is a time where your strongest emotions are likely to rear their heads. And when our strongest emotions emerge, we generally don't feel like we have a choice. It's very easy for you to feel like, "I have no choice. I am stuck in these feelings. I am stuck in this reality. And I only have one of two choices, this terrible thing or that terrible thing." And when you feel like you only have two choices, know and trust that you are in the realm of Pluto. You are in your survival mechanisms. And know and trust that it is very rare that you truly only have two choices. We generally have a lot of choices.

And if you find yourself this week stuck between this or that, strive to take a breath and see if you can imagine a couple extra options, a couple extra choices. And within that, you might not really believe in them all. That's okay. It's a practice of expanding possibility. It's a practice of creating a little bit of space inside of yourself with your strongest emotions, which are not reliably your most mature, informed, and evolved emotions.

So, again, this is going to be a time—I'm going to give you all the details, but first, take a damn breath. When we get activated, from my astrological viewpoint, what's happening is you have the opportunity to experience yourself in heightened conditions. Whether those conditions are internal or external, they're heightened conditions. And that gives you information about where you're at. You may think, "Oh, you know, I don't yell at people. I would never yell at people," and then someone might really cross your fucking boundaries, and you find yourself screaming.

So we have these ideas about ourselves and how we are or what we are, and then we get into heightened conditions and are confronted with the reality of who we are, where we are, what we are. And that's confronting. It's activating. And it honestly is easier to navigate with humility. Own it. Own it. You might think of yourself as someone who would never get mad, and then you catch yourself getting mad in a way that is just outside of your ethics. Okay. Own it. Own it so that you can evolve. Own it so that you don't get trapped acting in ways that provoke shame, and then you feel guilty, and then you beat yourself up, and then nothing truly changes because instead of focusing on, "Why did I act in this way? How can I better understand my own emotional complexes and what inspired me to act in ways that are not how I want to act?" you instead beat yourself up and compound whatever emotional complexes motivated you to show your ass.

This is a hard time. And honestly, struggle is a part of life. The astrology of this week is going to be a great example of how struggle is a part of life. But if you don't allow your circumstances to define you but instead strive to make the way you hold and respond to the struggles be the thing that defines you, your life gets easier. It doesn't make the struggles easier, but your ability to lay your head down on a pillow and have some peace with who you are—that gets easier. And that's worth its weight in gold, my friends.

Now, one more thing I want to share with you before we dive into the details of this week's astrology is I'm teaching a class. I haven't taught a class since the 2025 year-ahead forecast that I did with Dean Spade. But on Sunday, May 4th, at 10:30 a.m. Pacific Time, I am teaching a class that's a little different than what I've done in the past. It's called Forgiveness: The Astrology of Letting Go. And in it, what I'm going to do is talk about forgiveness using the archetypes of the angles of the birth chart as the structure.

So, in other words, more simply put, we're going to explore forgiveness from the first-house angle, from the Ascendant's perspective, which is forgiveness of the self. We're going to explore it from a fourth-house perspective, which is forgiveness of family and releasing the weight of the past. We're going to then explore it from the Descendant or the seventh-house perspective, which is forgiveness of those that you've been in close relationship to, talking about exes and besties and enemies and frenemies, and then, finally, that tenth-house Midheaven perspective, forgiveness of your ancestors and the generations that have come before you, forgiveness of essentially collective conditions.

I've put together this class because I truly believe that we are living through exceptional times, truly exceptional times. They are activating. They are frightening. They are dangerous. And being able to navigate your own internal landscape, to release the hook of rage and resentments that live inside of you—to release the hook from your heart—that is forgiveness. It's not consent. It's being able to take the burden of pain of things that have happened in the past and to hold them in new and more sustainable ways. As always, tickets are available on a three-tiered sliding scale. And if you'd like to register, whether you want to join live or you just want to get tickets and get the replay in your inbox after the class happens, you can find the link in the episode description and on my website over at lovelanyadoo.com. And hopefully you'll join me there, and we will get emo and get into some forgiveness.

Okay. Now let's get into this week's horoscope. We are looking at the week of April 20th through the 26th of 2025. On Sunday, April 20th, we begin with not one but three exact transits. Now, two of them are really supportive, and we want to tap into them. However, the third—a little less. We are going through all of these transits under the umbrella of a series of complicated transits. I'm going to do something I don't usually do. Before I get into any details, I'm going to name all of the transits happening this week. This is an effort to give you what I feel is an important overview.

On the 20th, Venus sextiles Uranus. Mercury sextiles Pluto—very supportive. Then, later that day, Sun squares Mars—very activating, activating of the ego, activating of conflicts, activating of battles. Then, come the 23rd, the Sun and Pluto are squaring—again, deeply activating, very triggering, can bring up a lot of conflicts and power struggles. On the 24th, Venus forms a conjunction to Saturn, which can be alienating, can bring up major consequential relationship issues, and can confront you with the need to, for lack of a better way of saying it, stand on fucking business. Venus conjunction to Saturn has so much to do with living in integrity and alignment with what you believe to be ethical and just and true in small ways and large.

And then, on the 26th, Mars forms an exact opposition to Pluto. So that Mars opposition to Pluto makes sense because earlier in the week, the Sun squares both Mars and Pluto. So we really have an activated T-square between the Sun, Mars, and Pluto happening this week, and that is cause for concern. What the astrology of this week is succeeding in doing is upending a sense of security, activating the risk of power struggles, ego conflicts, violence—and violence on all the fucking levels. The way to navigate this is to do so with integrity, to prioritize living in accord with your values over personal comfort. I know I said "over personal comfort," which really doesn't fly for most people. You know how I love to talk about masking in a post-COVID world. I talk about it all the fucking time. I know it annoys a lot of people. It pleases other people.

But let me say this. The fact that people still have fucking COVID, that there's measles and all these other airborne diseases out there, and people just raw-dog the air in public spaces speaks to the majority of people's relationship to prioritizing their personal comfort and ease over collective care. Your relationship to your personal comfort and your personal safety is important. It's valid. I want you to want to be safe and secure and to take actions to care for yourself and the people you're close to. But we are living through truly exceptional times in which we must not only consider our own individual welfare but how our actions impact, protect, or throw under the bus the people around us—people we know, the people we don't know, the people we like, the people we don't like—all of them.

The astrology of this week is confronting. The astrology of this week is destabilizing. And that can be scary, but it's also just circumstances. And circumstances provide opportunities, and those opportunities are to show up with your wisest self, with your most honest self, instead of your strongest defenses, your strongest emotions, and your strongest triggers. So try to keep that in mind as the umbrella under which we shall lean into this week's horoscope.

Okay. Let's go. At 11:21 a.m. Pacific Time on the 20th, Venus forms an exact sextile to Uranus. Venus will be at 25 degrees of Pisces and 45 minutes. Uranus will be at the same degrees of Taurus. And then, later that afternoon, at 2:40 p.m. Pacific Time, Mercury will be at 3 degrees and 46 minutes of Aries, forming an exact sextile to Pluto at the same degrees of Aquarius. Now, these two transits are lovely. The kind of high level of them is they're great for connecting with other people, opening your mind, seeing things from a new perspective, deepening your thinking, and trying out new things, which is wonderful.

These transits really help to bring down the energy and pressure of the ego, which is really useful for this particular moment. Venus sextile to Uranus expands your natural willingness and ability to connect with people in new ways, broaden what's possible and your perspective on what's happening in your relationships or in regards to your values. This is a really good day to connect to your values. Mercury sextile to Pluto—like I said, it deepens your thinking. It deepens your capacity to have meaningful conversations with other people. This is not about trying to convince others of your perspective, okay? May I be emphatic because the Sun is square to Mars. But it deepens your willingness and ability to listen to other people, to share in a way that is not inherently focused on coercion or defensiveness, which, unfortunately, the Sun square to Mars really promotes. Now, these transits are supportive, and you want to make use of them.

Now, that brings me to the very important transit that's happening—it will be exact at 6:34 p.m. Pacific Time, and that's the Sun square to Mars. Now, the Sun is your will. It's your identity. It's your sense of self. It's your core vitality. And Mars is your ego. It's your drive. It's your passion. It's your sense of entitlement. When the Sun and Mars are at odds with each other, as a square indicates that they are, tempers flare. If you have a tendency to get real mad, to get real irritated, to pop off on people or yourself, if you have a tendency conversely to—when your ego energies get activated—collapse in on yourself, start to cry, feel really exhausted or tired, to disassociate, then that shit is what's going to get activated within you this week. Now, keep in mind we're feeling these energies this weekend. So, before you heard this podcast, you were already under the influence of these energies.

The Sun square to Mars is a transit that kicks up ego battles—"This is mine. I should be able to take it," or, "You shouldn't be able to have x." The thing about this transit is that it doesn't just promote ego conflicts, but it makes everyone irritable and annoyed. And also, it makes everyone annoying. And how you navigate irritability and agitation with yourself or with others is on you. That's a reflection on you. There's not just one way of being. And a transit like the Sun square to Mars is going to confront you with how you engage with irritability and agitation. If you shove it down in your meat suit, in your body—which is a very Sun-square-Marsy thing to do—then you will find yourself likely to boil over. Whether that's in a direction of self-harm or conflicts with others is style, really. It's style. One isn't better or worse than the other.

What is the healthiest thing to do is finding a neutral or creative outlet for your strong feelings. And the feelings that we're talking about during a Sun square to Mars are not, per se, emotions. This is not the Moon, my friends. This is physical sensations. These are drives. This is energy. It is passion and ambition. It is will and want. And so you may find yourself really defensive. You may find you're not defensive, but everyone around you is acting fucking weird, a.k.a. they're defensive or paranoid or entitled or insecure or some other thing that is how this shit shows up in them.

Even though things are happening to you, with you, around you, they're not always personal. I mean, sometimes they are, and when they are, that's real. But if the people around you—and in particular, people like your coworkers or people in your community who are not having super intimate, on-on-one dynamics with you—if they are acting in ways that you find to be agitating or just mystifying, just say to yourself, "Ah, it's the fucking transit." You don't have to take it personally per se, but you do want to navigate it with as much intention and care and adaptability as you know how. And luckily, those transits by Mercury and Venus are going to help you do that. It's not going to happen organically on its own per se, but it'll help.

During this transit, you just might feel really threatened. You might feel fucking mad. You may feel a sense of resentment, a sense of drive or passion, or a sense of futility. Sun square Mars can kick up all this shit. And if you don't have an outlet, you're going to have more problems. This transit doesn't necessarily make you accident-prone, but it's more of a "you could pull a muscle" kind of thing. So listen. Some things need to get done. If you can find a thing that you believe is a useful thing to get done or a helpful thing to get done and you can put your energy behind it, that's a great use of this transit because this transit does favor acts of bravery, the kind of buildup and release of energy. So that can be quite constructive and useful and affirming.

The key is to check your motivations. Mars equals motivations. A lot of times, we do things to prove something to ourselves unconsciously or consciously. And when that's happening, we are generally not acting, first of all, from a sense of presence. When you're trying to prove something to yourself or to other people, you're not being present. And the other thing is it kind of robs you of agility because you're operating out of an old program that's running in your system.

During this transit, you may need to fight. It might be the best possible thing you can do. Just check your motives and choose your battles wisely, with intention, which means not out of a sense of a knee-jerk reaction, out of a sense of ego dances and ego battles. Told-you-sos do nothing except for make you feel superior. What is that for? It's for your ego. It doesn't do anything except for make other people feel bad, which—how does that facilitate progress in your life or in the world? It doesn't.

This is a good transit, as I said, for running energy through your body. You don't want to push it. You don't want to push it or act out of rage, because then you might not be paying attention. But use your body as a point of release if you can. Massage your head. Go for a run. Hook up. Rub one out. Do what you gotta do to connect to your body and use the vehicle of your body as a point of healthy and cathartic release. That can help you to flush out some of the energy that builds up with a transit like Sun square to Mars in a week that is so Marsy and Plutonian with the fucking Sun in the mix. That's a lot of energy building, building, building. So points of release can help you to be more intentional and to navigate the land mines of your ego and other people's egos and defenses and agitation and irritability with greater care. And if it's intense, if it's important, then it is worthy of your care.

Now, in regards to the world that we live in, Sun square to Mars can indicate violence. And this violence would be physical. This violence would be inherently violence from the patriarchy. Mars is related to maleness. Within any authoritarian, tyrannical regime, there is an onslaught of fury, of violent and unjust actions. And it creates terror, and it creates chaos. And that destabilizes you, and it destabilizes me. It destabilizes us because we are ineffectual when we can't get our bearings. And if enough people are scared enough, they start pointing fingers and looking for the reasons why this group of people or that group of people did something wrong. And listen. No matter how correct your analyses, your political assessment—whatever—may be about what group of people did what wrong, the astrology of this week, I cannot stress enough, comes with a lot of energy, too much energy.

And so make no mistake: you have power. Your energy is impactful to your own self, to your body, to your psyche, to the people that you are interacting with on a daily basis in your world, and to the world at-large. So don't get distracted. Don't lose yourself in the chaos. Instead, take that approach that you're supposed to take when you're on a boat and you're seasick where you fixate on a point in front of you, and you stay connected to that point. In other words, find something you believe in and struggle, strive, and work towards it.

Know that whatever ego shit you have going on, you are stronger when you work with others. And that's not always easy, and it's not always possible. But isolating yourself and burning bridges is not going to help. That you can count on.

Now, that brings us to the next exact transit. On Wednesday, April 23rd, at exactly 10:10 a.m., we've got a Sun square to Pluto. The Sun will be at 3 degrees and 47 minutes of Taurus. Pluto will be at the same degrees of Aquarius. Now, of course, this transit overlaps with the Sun square to Mars. Sun square Pluto is really challenging. It's challenging because of how very activating it is. As we already know, the Sun square to Mars is kicking up passions, defensiveness, and irritability, amongst a bunch of other things. And now in comes Sun square to Pluto, and what it does is it reinforces the truism that what you don't transform you transmit.

Because we know that Pluto governs over our survival mechanisms, our fear around death or annihilation, our compulsions, obsessions, our trauma, when it gets activated by a square from pretty much any planet, but certainly from the Sun, it activates the survival mechanisms that we have that are informed by trauma. And that trauma may be through traumatic experiences that happened to you at some stage of your life, or they may be epigenetic. They may be things that are just passed down through generations—fears, insecurities, defenses, etc.

Sun square to Pluto activates your survival mechanisms in such a way that it may feel like life or death, even when it's objectively not. Sometimes this transit coincides with being in actually dangerous situations where your survival on some level is actually threatened, in which case it is a good thing that this transit gives you a whole lot of energy. It kind of intensifies your willingness and ability to get in there and fight.

The thing is, when you're activated, it's hard to know the difference between what is a trigger versus a trauma. Triggers push on trauma, and they trigger a traumatic experience so that your coping mechanisms around that trauma get engaged and activated, and they can be the thing that you center in your thinking and your behavior, whereas a trauma is not triggering a thing that once happened; it is the thing that is happening now.

If when you were a kid you heard someone playing a piano, and then, every time you heard someone playing the piano, there would be some sort of big blowout with your parents and it was actually dangerous for someone in the house, then you might grow up to hear the piano and get triggered so that your defenses get super activated, and you start looking for something to go terribly wrong and start defending yourself and the people around you from things that might happen because they really did happen frequently once upon a time. And that's really different than being in the room with people who are actively fighting and things being not safe.

It's really important that you're able to track the difference between the two, not just objectively, like in the world around you and in your relationships, but also in your coping mechanisms because Sun square to Pluto, especially overlapping with Sun square to Mars and the upcoming other two transits you know I'm going to tell you about—your survival mechanisms may compel you to act in ways that are counter to your integrity or to what's necessary or called for in the situation. And this happens a lot. We get activated, we get triggered, and we act out and we feel totally entitled in the moment. And then later, when tempers cool and calmer heads prevail, we're like, "Oh, maybe I handled that wrong." And then you've got to deal.

So, if you catch yourself in a compulsive frame of mind, if you're ruminating, if you're obsessing on what you could have or should have said or done, what somebody else could have or should have said or done, what they really meant when they said or did, what could happen if x, y, or z  occurs—whatever the fuck it may be, if that kind of thinking is activated, you can say to yourself, "Ah, fucking Pluto." And when you say to yourself, "It's Pluto," what you know is that those compulsions and that rumination is a coping mechanism because you're having a hard time staying present with an emotion.

And if you can stick with that emotion, not only can you transmute or transform some sort of trauma response that you're having, but also, you can navigate it with greater wisdom and integrity. This requires a willingness to release control, whether it's control over yourself, an attempt to control outcomes and situations or other people. When we are dealing with a Sun square to Pluto, you must learn the lesson that what you resist shall persist.

You're listening to an astrologer right now, an astrology podcast. And part of why we fuck with astrology is because it tells us what's going to happen next, and that gives us a sense of control. I mean, the truth is it doesn't give us control, but it gives us an awareness of what's coming next or at least theories about what's happening now and what comes up tomorrow. And that can help us to navigate, help us make good choices, all that kind of good stuff.

But let's be honest. We also use astrology in our weaker moments as a way to try to control our lives so that things don't go too sideways. And that doesn't really work, and it ultimately is a motivation that is born from trauma because there is something inherent to the very nature of living, of life, that is deeply out of control. And life serves to preserve itself, right? Life wants to go on living. And when we're dealing with Plutonian energies, especially when they overlap with fucking Mars, there can be a sense of urgency. There can be a sense of defensiveness, of fear and activation, or even terror. Very few of us have well-accrued skills for dealing with that. And most of the time, when people have skills for dealing with that, they earned them through traumatic experiences.

So you can see why this astrology is particularly concerning. And from more of a social and political perspective, we can expect abuses of power. We can expect acts of terror. And I'm more concerned about acts of terror from the government, from the ruling regimes, from people with power. When you look at the astrology of the world, it's called mundane astrology. When you look at the astrology of nations, things get really complicated and really layered really quickly. But it is safe to say that there is a level of global destabilization and violence that is occurring now and that has been building for a long time. There are multiple genocides that the bulk of the world is just signing off on. And for those of us who care, we feel helpless and hopeless to stop it.

When transits like these occur, it's a tipping point. It's a boiling point. There can be, as I said, abuses of power with people who only wish to preserve their power and impose their power on others. But there can also be the power of collective resistance. There can also be the power of public outcry. There can also be the power of transformation and transmutation so that we don't continue to transmit harm to each other. And collective power doesn't always require consensus. You may have a much more radical lens and approach than someone else, and that other person may have a much more conservative, stayed, conventional approach, and they might be equally valid and important for collective transformation to occur. Don't try to control how other people do it. Just make sure you are participating in this world in a way that is in alignment with what is true for you, with your values, your experiences, etc.

This transit is triggering. And truly, the best-case scenario is that it just triggers shit inside of you instead of triggers active dynamics happening in your life. Either way, this transit triggers power struggles. So I will reiterate, if you're going to struggle, if you're going to fight, do it for what's right. Whether or not you have assurances of success or of winning actually doesn't necessarily matter. Do what's right because it's right, not because of rewards or even of gains. Do what's right because it's right without attachment to outcomes. That's what releasing control is about.

This transit can absolutely trigger addictions and maladaptive coping mechanisms. So, if you know you're really struggling with some shit, this is a great time to book an extra appointment with your therapist or ask for help. Take extra walks in nature. Do what you need to do to support yourself so that you can stay associated, so that you can rise to the challenge, keeping in mind that of course everybody's pretty fucking activated. Your therapist is going to be activated, too, because they're going through this transit. But asking for help, if you have the energy, making yourself available as a resource, staying motivated, working through your activations—this is the assignment.

And that brings us to Thursday, April 24th. At 5:02 p.m., Venus/Saturn conjunction will be exact. So Venus will be at 27 degrees of Pisces and 14 minutes, and so will Saturn. Are we still feeling the two squares from the Sun to Mars and Pluto? Fuck yeah. But now the Venus conjunction to Saturn is exact. Now, were we feeling Venus conjunction to Saturn all week? Fuck yeah. Here we are, though, Venus conjunction to Saturn.

So I gave you a little preview of this transit already. Venus is values. So it's the value you hold in yourself. We call that shit self-worth. It's the value you place on various things like the way you look or the way other people look, the stuff you have, your finances, where you put your money—that kind of stuff. It's also, of course, very much about relationships. When we look to Saturn, we seek kind of conventional reality. Saturn governs time, maturity, conservation, and conservatism. When we look to Saturn, we see the capacity for wisdom and maturity and also rigidity, obedience, and adherence to the rules of society, whether or not those rules are rooted in ethics. Now, Venus is the ethics. Saturn can be related to ethics, but Saturn can just as easily be like, "I go along because I want to get along."

So, when Venus and Saturn sit on top of each other, it can be really challenging. You may feel pressured to conform. You may feel pressure to behave the way that people in your community are behaving or to care about the things that other people care about in the ways in which they care about them. So this can be a time where you feel really pressured to conform. That pressure to conform might be something that actually helps you to grow, or it may be something that stymies you, keeps you in a rut, keeps you out of alignment with your actual values.

If you've been doing your homework over these past couple of months with Venus Retrograde, you have been reflecting on what you value. You've been thinking about it. You've been processing it. You've been making strides in the direction of it, whether it's to correct or better engage with and embody your values—and then this transit comes along, and it's consequential. There's consequences for your self-worth and your sense of security and stability in your own damn skin based on how you have or haven't been embodying your values, your truth, alignment.

And then there's also the social component of it. This transit can bring up feelings of isolation and insecurity. Venus and Saturn, you've heard me say many times before, are both very security-oriented. And so, when they sit on top of each other, especially in a hypersensitive sign like Pisces, as it's doing now, what we have is the risk of a fear-based or a scarcity-based adherence to getting along just to get along.

In the mess and the chaos and the activation of all of this Mars/Pluto stuff, there is a risk that your drive to not stand out, to be safe, to not be a target could compel you to not do what you believe is right. And so it's something to be mindful about. It's also something to be mindful about in others. Different people have different stress responses, different fear-based responses, and are going to handle this in different ways.

Now, sticking with the social level for a moment here, Venus and Saturn are both, in very different ways, related to money and the economy. And so, when you see these two planets together, it smacks of austerity. It smacks of consequences. This is not the week to be spending large amounts of money, unless it's necessary, unless it's preplanned. This is not a great time for investing in general. I mean, it might be unavoidable. A person's gotta live. But it's not a great time. We may see important shifts in the global economy one way or another. And you know, we may not, but we may. So let's pay attention and learn both about the world and about astrology, shall we?

Okay. Now, on a more personal level, if you have a tendency towards people-pleasing, this transit can accentuate that, again, out of fear or insecurity. And if those impulses and feelings emerge inside of you, if they get activated in the dynamics of your life, I want to just gently insert the question, "Am I being authentic?" because you can get approval when you're inauthentic, and it makes you feel lonely and sad. Listen. We're all inauthentic sometimes. We all lean on people-pleasing behaviors at times in our own individual ways. Bring awareness. Make sure that you're not betraying your own values, your own ethics, your own integrity in what you do and how you do it.

This transit can coincide, especially if it hits your chart directly—may have problems in your relationships or in a relationship where you have to deal with the consequences of something that's real between you and someone else. Because this transit makes you feel sad or bad—it can kick up depressive feelings—there's a risk that you rush to fix things or that the person you're engaged with rushes to fix things because it feels bad to have them not be okay as opposed to, again, bringing more authenticity to the situation.

Because this transit is associated with depressive feelings and thoughts, you may feel lonely. You may feel isolated. You might feel stuck. And those feelings are likely to be very real, and also, those feelings are likely to be activated inside of you in part because it's related to a pattern. And that's worth investigating. And you might investigate it and then be like, "I don't know what that damn astrologer is talking about. That's not the case," or you might investigate it and be like, "Oh. This comes up"—insert pattern, right? And the thing about our patterns is that we are the consistent in them.

And sometimes it's fucking mystifying. "Why is this a pattern in my life? How am I consistently engaged in this pattern?" And honestly, you don't always have to know the root. You don't always have to know why. But understanding that there is a pattern that's functioning in your life or inside of you is useful because then you can be like, "Okay. So I have the opportunity to engage with this the way I have historically or in a new way. What do I intend to do?" And that can help you to transmute, to evolve and change, instead of to keep on projecting out or repeating your own patterns in a way that doesn't really bring you peace or happiness.

So Venus conjunction to Saturn is hard. Feelings of guilt or insecurity can come up for a lot of people. And here's the thing. You might be working with somebody day after day, and you might think of them as really confident, but they actually might be really insecure about something that you have no idea about. And when they're insecure, they might be micro-managey, or they might be flaky or anything else. You just don't know. And so, again, we have another transit that is activating folks to act in weird-ass ways. So do your best to be patient, to offer yourself and others grace, and to not rush to process things in such an activated time unless you're convicted that you're ready to do it and that it feels important at this moment.

Now, one last thing I'm going to say about this transit, and I'm going to say it at the risk of sounding cheesy. The astrology of this week, and in particular this Venus conjunction to Saturn, is like—it's a lot of insecurity. It's a lot of anger. It's a lot of defensiveness. It's a lot of agitation. And I want to gently but in a heartfelt way—I want to remind you of the power and the simplicity of love, of loving yourself enough to say, "I'm having a fucking hard time, and I don't know what to do, and I don't know why, and I don't know how to get out. But I'm going to be kind to myself in this moment"—to loving others enough to say, "I can't talk to you right now because I'm really agitated, and I will pick a fight with you for no damn reason," loving yourself and others enough to own if you acted out, if you handled things in an imperfect way.

Love is powerful. It is forgiving. And true love—love, self-love, love of the planet, love of the world, love of other people, love with people—is boundaried because boundaries are self-awareness embodied. Boundaries allow you to be authentic and honest with yourself about what you can and can't do, where you're at and where you're not, and it allows you to be honest with others. So don't underestimate the power of love today and this week and beyond.

Now, that brings us to our last exact transit of this week. On Saturday, April 26th, at exactly 6:05 p.m. Pacific Time, Mars will be at 3 degrees of Leo and 48 minutes, and Pluto will be at the exact same degrees of Aquarius. This is Mars opposite Pluto. First of all, this transit might sound familiar to you, and that is because of the damn Mars Retrograde. We have been going through this transit for months, around six months. Is that bananas? I think it is, and it's also true.

So this transit was exact November 3rd of 2024. It was also exact on January 3rd of 2025. And here we are again, my friends. It's exact. And so we can look back. What was going on in the world on those dates? What was going on in your life on those dates? This transit hasn't only been active on those dates. We've been in the influence of it the whole damn time. It's been a lot more active at some times than others, but here we are.

Now, you know that Mars and Pluto are the two planets associated with war in their own ways. Mars is punch-punch, bang-bang, stab-stab. It's all about pushing and shoving, hand-to-hand combat. Pluto is nuclear. Pluto is generational. It's real big. And so it's not that every time Mars opposes Pluto, we have war—certainly not nuclear war, obviously, right? Because Mars moves through the zodiac frequently enough that that's not the case. But we're talking about the energy. We're talking about the energy of it. It is combative because Mars is aggression, ego, the desire to prove oneself, the sense of entitlement that one needs in order to take up space and try to make things happen in the world, and it's also competition and combat.

Pluto is survival mechanisms. It's our unconscious motivations. It's terror and trauma and healing and power. It's also abuses of power. It's all the things. And so Mars opposite Pluto—you can see how it activates really intense energies in you as an individual, in us as a group, and in fucking people and situations around the world. Typically, when we experience this transit, it lasts a few days, not even a week. But because of this damn Retrograde, we have been going through this for a very long time, and in this very long time, we have seen a lot of really intense abuses of power. We have seen massive changes in the world and some scary ones.

This transit has been instrumental to the start of the Pluto in Aquarius cycle. It has been pushing on us, the people, to mobilize. Whether we've done it, whether we've done it well, I don't know. But that is part of what this energy is about. Being intentional about what we give our attention to and the motivations that underpin that is huge. It's a huge part of what this transit has been about. This transit has been, and is, confronting. It's just really confronting. It has probably confronted you with your own fears around survival, a sense of urgency and intensity. In this period, you may have achieved some really important and powerful things, whether they're in your self-care and healing path or something in the world. You may have found yourself struggling against forces that feel immovable and insurmountable.

Whatever it is that this transit has been for you, it's reaching an important apex moment here on this day, here this week, here in this moment. There is value in reflection, but it's incredibly hard to authentically reflect when you're in the middle of activation, which is what we are all in the middle of right now. So there's value this week in taking a moment to reflect on what has happened in these other exact activations, and also, if you can't do that, if you're just too activated to do that, if you're too irritable, defensive, angry, overwhelmed, burned out to do that, that's okay. There's always time to do it later.

Now, we keep in mind that we're already activated because the Sun is square Mars, and you're irritable and agitated, maybe having a hard time sitting still in your own skin.  Sun is square to Pluto. And so there's this great intensity and feelings of being triggered or just really unsafe in some meaningful way. And now Mars opposite Pluto comes in the mix, and it may activate some major conflict. Again, it may be internal. It may be an ego conflict in the world, in your life in some way. It could happen on any damn level, or—don't worry—it could not happen at all for you. I don't know.

But I can say this. I am concerned about abuses of power from men with power. I'm deeply concerned. I think we're all fucking concerned. And this transit is not what I would characterize as good news to that end. If you're going to struggle—and you might have to struggle—struggle towards justice. Struggle towards the embodiment of your values, of what you believe to be true. If you're going to be defending something or someone, if you're going to be defending yourself, don't do it from a sense of defensiveness. You don't have to justify your rights or the rights of others. Do what's right because it's right. I know I've said it before, but it's worth repeating.

Mars opposite Pluto is a transit that is profoundly transformational. Not all aims, not all approaches, and not all motivations are particularly healthy or helpful for transformation—for reals, right? So check your motivations. Check your behavior. Check your approach. Check your tone. But this transit is not all bad. It comes with great energy, great intensity, and great power. And power is not good, and it's not bad. Power is energy. It's how you yield it.

A hammer is not a bad thing. It's great if you want to get a nail in some wood. However, it can be used to smash a person. It can be a violent tool, or it can be a tool for building a house. A hammer is not inherently anything. It's how we use the hammer. This energy is like a fireball hammer. It's very intense. And how you engage, how you show up or don't, what you do or don't, whether you take the bait when other people try to get you to waste your energy or act out—that all is a reflection on how you engage with the power that you're feeling or the powerlessness you're feeling in this moment.

Whenever I think about this transit—any opposition or square to Pluto will do this, really, but it reminds me of this truism that I have repeated to you many times. If you've listened to the podcast for a while, you've heard me say it before. Do not process with people you don't trust. You don't need to. If you're not having a good-faith conversation or a good-faith argument, it's not worth having it at all. You have precious energy, so precious. And it's on you to treat your own energy as precious. Sometimes having a fight with someone is the healthiest, wisest thing to do, and sometimes it's just a way to deplete your energy; it's a distraction. And it takes presence, bravery, and wisdom to know the difference. And nobody knows the difference all the damn time because nobody's perfect, and that's okay.

This is a transit that will trigger your evolution, just like all the other transits this week. And all you can do is your best, and the only place you can start from is here. If you are going to make a bold move, start something up, act up or act out—whatever it is that you're going to do, just know that you're going to stir the pot. Everybody's going through these transits. People are going to get activated. And that shouldn't necessarily stop you, but bridges that are burned cannot be unburned when your mood changes. So, again, proceed with intention.

This transit—as I said, it triggers your survival mechanisms, your flight, fight, or fawn. It therefore can mess with your physical body, whether we're talking about rushes of adrenaline, your system shutting down on you, feeling just heart-racing stuff. Now, I'm not saying this as medical advice, obviously. I'm an astrologer, not a doctor. This is a podcast, not an exam. But I am saying that when Mars is involved in a transit like this, we tend to feel things really intensely and in the body. So listen to your body. Support and care for your body however you can.

This is a time for acting in efforts to facilitate transformation, healing, and repair. It's a powerful time, and you can make a serious impact. Also, what can happen is that things break the fuck down; they explode. If you are walking down the street and you're like, "My spidey senses say something's dangerous," then leave the street, okay? Trust your senses. Because this transit is so activating, it can spark violence. And you don't want to put yourself in an unsafe situation unnecessarily. So, if you can avoid it, avoid it. In other words, maybe be a little conservative this week in the risks you take.

This is a spectacularly bad time—yeah, I said it—spectacularly bad time for consciousness-raising drugs, for getting loaded and putting yourself in precarious situations. If you're somebody who struggles with addiction, you may feel particularly activated this week, certainly on and around this date. And so tap your most reliable friend. You don't have to go it alone. Ask for support because the thing about Pluto is that Pluto—when it activates our survival mechanisms, it gets us to feel like we're all alone. A lot of the astrology of this week—almost all of it—can make you feel like you can't trust other people, that you alone are experiencing this thing, that no one can actually help you. And it's isolating. And that isolation makes the worst parts of Pluto come up—the vengefulness, the pettiness, the resentfulness, the vindictiveness, the impulse to self-harm or to punish other people. So you want to, to the best of your ability, reach out to reliable, trusted resources.

This transit and this week in general—it's a time of striving. It's a time of striving, okay? It will be easy to ruminate or fixate on fears, negative thoughts, patterns that you wish not to repeat, and potentialities in the world that are truly frightening. I'm not saying be a Pollyanna. Trust me; I'm not. But there is a way to think about very real potential problems or historical problems that is helpful, that's constructive, and that empowers you to keep on moving, and then there's ways that are just basically self-harm or even avoidance, a self-harming form of avoidance.

So, if you catch yourself in ruminating thinking, do your best to bring yourself to a neutral place. So you could just repeat a neutral word over and over and over in your head—"oranges." Oranges. Repeat it over and over and over again till you get to a greater state of neutrality. And then, from there, you can try to get to a place that is more constructive or more healthy or more supportive or whatever the situation calls for, if you can, if this is happening on a psychological level. There's a lot of levels this shit can play out on, and all you can do is set the intention to rise to the occasion as it presents itself, to trust yourself to do your best, and if you can't do your best or you don't do your best, to be kind enough to yourself to love yourself through it, learn whatever lessons there are to learn, and keep on giving.

As always, within about 24 hours, I will have the transcript available on my website. And if you would like more support from my work, it is available to you over on my Patreon. I'm going to try to do a live at some point this upcoming week because I know it's going to be a lot, and I will do a live for all my members, not just the paid members.

Now, very briefly, I shall say on the 20th, Venus is sextile Uranus, Mercury is sextile Pluto, and the Sun is square to Mars. The 23rd, the Sun is square to Pluto. The 24th, Venus is conjunct Saturn. And on the 26th, the very important Mars opposition to Pluto occurs. Now, if that wasn't enough, guess what: on April 27th, which is Sunday, we have a New Moon in Taurus. It'll be exact at 12:31 p.m. Pacific Time, and it will be very much about this week's transits. Because the Sun and Moon will both be in Taurus and they'll both be square to Pluto and Mars, it's going to be very, very, very intense. I'll be talking about it on my Patreon this week, but also, we'll talk about it next week. But I just want to put it out there that this is coming. Again, bad time for consciousness-raising drugs. Not a great time for doing magic work where you're trying to control or direct outcomes, but a powerful time for transformation, release, and healing. So let's just put that out there. Don't overthink it. It's a Moon transit. It's about being present, and it's about emotions.

My loves, take a deep breath and remember to take good care of yourself and others. And I will talk to you in just a couple of days. Bye.