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 have some really big astrology to tend to, just to change things up a bit. But first, I want to thank everybody who came to the Forgiveness class that I taught last Sunday. It was really powerful and heartfelt, and it was such an amazing group of people asking really powerful questions. And the topic of cultivating forgiveness is really a topic of cultivating acceptance and consciously making choices to facilitate inner peace so that you may engage with yourself, with other people, and the world more sustainably. That's really what our conversations were about. In that class, I offered a lot of rituals and affirmations and things that are really practical that you can use. And so, if you missed it and you would like to giddyap on that, you just have to visit the shop page of my website, always linked in the show notes.

And I wanted to share that yesterday, Friday the 9th, I was, man, I mean, so fucking overwhelmed. I was so overwhelmed. We were all still very much feeling the energies and effects of the Mercury/Chiron conjunction and also the broader umbrella astrological transits that we're all going through. And I was feeling really overwhelmed by events that are occurring all over the world. And specifically in the United States, what's happening with ICE is a 15-alarm fire. It is the government running a terror campaign against immigrants, and especially and in particular Brown and Black people. And while this is a surprise to probably literally no one, it is horrifying.

And I, in my grief and overwhelm, decided to hop on a live over on my Patreon, and I got to talk to a bunch of folks, where I answered questions and we kind of engaged with the realities that we are living within. And one person asked a really important question, which was, "Where's the light at the end of the tunnel?"—you know, like when is this over? When does it get better astrologically? And it's a question that I get asked all the time. I want to share with you here what I said there.

The truth of the matter is the astrology of this period is dramatic and extreme. It's fast-moving. And the astrology of this period is very hard. Within that, each of us as individuals have choice around how we are going to engage. We all have choice in how we are going to show up or not. And we as communities and as societies are built up of individual choices. While there are supportive transits occurring now and in the future, there are very challenging transits occurring at the same time. And that's not going to change anytime soon. And even if the challenging transits that we are going through all of a sudden stop—like, okay, it's over now—it doesn't mean that social collective conditions automatically reverse back to the way they were before, as if before was so great.

But the problem with focusing at the light at the end of the tunnel is it means that you're putting all your energy into looking for the light instead of adapting to the darkness that we are in. And listen. There's nothing wrong with looking for hope. In fact, there's a million things right about it. It's a great practice in many ways. But when you get bad news, when you see the terror campaign that ICE is perpetrating, when you see wars and genocides and all of these things, and you don't know how to metabolize it and you don't know what to do, and so you try to look forward at the light at the end of the tunnel, the risk with that is that you never learn how to metabolize it and you don't figure out what to do in the moment, and you don't adapt.

Here's the thing. We've got to adapt. The reality that we're in is the reality that we're in. The reality that we are in now is demanding that we pay attention to what's happening, not just to ourselves and our friends but to the most marginalized and vulnerable in our communities and in our society. It's really important. It's important because it's the right thing. It's important because that's how you maintain your humanity. And paying attention to what's happening is frightening. Listen. It's terrifying. And what's really hard is, when you experience fear or terror, to not fall back into Pluto and go into your flight-or-fight mechanisms and really lose track of your agency, or slip into Neptunian behaviors and get really avoidant or escapist or anxious or panicky.

So I want to invite you to really contemplate—not in a moment of panic, but to really contemplate, if you were to accept this is what's happening—not consent to it, not ignore it, not feed it, but to actually accept that this is what's happening—could you then identify how you need to educate yourself about what's happening and what organizations are doing work on the ground to protect people? Could you educate yourself on how you could protect yourself, your loved ones, your neighbors, your community members, depending on who you are and what your situation is? And could you take action? What actions could you take if you were to accept this is happening? Because so much of what happens is we struggle against the realities that we find ourselves in, and that struggle depletes our energies.

As an individual, you have a finite amount of energy. And for you, that might be a lot of energy, and for somebody else, that might be like a spoon, a single spoon. It depends. It depends on who you are and where you're at. But we all have finite energy. When we struggle to accept what is, then we fight against the moment and we fight against ourselves. And that makes us more ineffectual. Having a way to fall in line, finding an organization or an activist, somebody who's like, "These are actions you can take. These are things you can do," is fortifying. It's really fortifying. And listen. Not everyone's the same. You figure out what works for you.

But I do want to invite you to make the difficult but important decision to stay informed and to cultivate acceptance of what is, to learn how to navigate the darkness and not to never look for the light, but to not look for the light as your primary tool for coping with the darkness. If you've ever actually—I don't know—walked around in the dark, you know it takes your eyes some time to adapt and adjust to the low light, right? We must adapt. We must adjust. And as we do that, we can develop new skills, new sensitivities, new awarenesses, new behaviors.

And that doesn't mean that we stop seeking the light. It doesn't mean that we don't strive to generate, create, co-create, and facilitate light. But humans—and in particular, in New Age, woo-woo spaces, there is kind of a dangerous tendency to focus on feeling good and positivity all the time. And when things are authentically bad, as they fucking are for many people right now in the United States and around the world—when things are authentically bad, it's actually okay to feel bad.

Something else that came up in this live—somebody asked, "How do I deal with overwhelm?  I don't know what to do about the fact that I'm overwhelmed." It's okay to be overwhelmed. When you feel overwhelmed and then you panic or you judge yourself and then you recoil from the overwhelm—you strop breathing, you push the feelings down, you judge the feelings—then you make it worse because you're abandoning yourself. And I know that what I'm saying is really hard to do, and it's not a perfect match for all people.

But I want to invite you to practice something the next time you're overwhelmed: to identify, "Oh shit. I'm overwhelmed right now," and to notice where you feel it in your body. And then take a really deep breath into that part of your body and consciously and intentionally give yourself permission to be overwhelmed, to breathe into the feelings and the sensations of overwhelm as they show up emotionally, physically, spiritually, and just spend some time breathing into it.

And maybe your tolerance level for this will be 45 seconds, and maybe your tolerance level for this will be three whole minutes—maybe longer. It doesn't have to be an hour-long practice. It's about developing a practice, breathing into your feelings as a way to give your system space to feel what it feels. When you're overwhelmed, that means you're overwhelmed. And giving yourself permission to be there actually helps to mitigate that overwhelm. It's easier said than done, but it is a practice worth experimenting with. And if it doesn't work for you, forget about it. But if it does help, then you can return to it at any time as much as you need.

This is not so you can escape or evade painful realities that actually require your attention and care. It's instead to support you in engaging with the world with care. Community care, collective care—that's self-care. When your self-care is about pulling yourself out of the world and doing things that only benefit you as an individual, then you've kind of lost the thread about what true spiritual self-care is. Spiritual self-care feeds your humanity, and your humanity is fed by tending to and engaging with caring about—not just emotionally or empathically, but with your actions caring about other people, and not just your pals, but the people around you, the world around you.

As cheesy as this might sound, the light at the end of the tunnel is us. We are the light at the end of the tunnel. We—our care for each other, our willingness to fight for each other, to resist tyranny and racism and ableism and cruelty—that generates light. We are the light. You are the light. And your light gets brighter and stronger when you give yourself and the world the gift of accepting and engaging with darkness.

Okay. Let's get into this week's horoscope, shall we? We are looking at the astrology of May 11th through the 17th of 2025. The week starts with Mother's Day on the 11th of May, and the Moon is in Scorpio. So will this be a particularly easy moment? Not necessarily. Not necessarily. Mother's Day is a really complicated day for a lot of people, and it's a great day of celebration for many people. Wherever you fall in your complicated relationship to being a mom, to having a mom, to not having mom, feel your feelings. Give yourself the gift of feeling your feelings, and parent yourself by being nurturing, supportive, and having healthy boundaries.

And that brings us, my friends, to Monday, May 12th. And I laugh. I laugh. I laugh because it's a Full Moon in Scorpio exact at 9:56 a.m. overlapping with a Mercury square to Pluto—Pluto being the ruling planet of Scorpio, of course—exact at 10:23 a.m. This is all Pacific Time. So, at 10:23 a.m., Mercury will be at 3 degrees and 48 minutes of Taurus, and Pluto will be at the exact same degrees of Aquarius. That's a square for you. And 9:56 a.m., the Moon will be at 22 degrees of Scorpio and 13 minutes, and the Sun will be at the same degrees of Taurus. This is a deep, somewhat unpredictable and intense Full Moon in Scorpio. What else would we have, given the times, right?

Before I get into the details, I want to take a moment to ground you into—this is a time for release. This is the time for letting go. If you are really focused right now on what you're trying to cultivate, what you want to bring into your life or into the world, that is beautiful, and I don't want to rain on that parade. However, in order to manifest, to create or co-create, to bring about, generally speaking or almost always, we must also let go or close the chapter on something else. And that's what we're meant to focus on this Full Moon. What is in your way? What habits are blocking you? What inhibitions, insecurities, fears, anxieties do you wish to release in order to make room for the abundance, the effectiveness, the—whatever it is that you are looking to cultivate in your life?

I'm going to actually start by giving you some information about that Mercury square to Pluto, even though it happens technically an hour later. But let's start there, and then we'll spend a good deal of time on this Full Moon. Now, Mercury is your mind. Mercury is your beliefs, your attitudes. It's how you listen. It's what you say and how you say it. So much of how people talk about communication is focused on what we say and how you communicate, what you're verbalizing or typing and how you're doing it.

I cannot stress enough the importance of listening. I genuinely cannot stress it enough. If you were to really listen to your own thoughts, would you maybe make some changes? If you were to really listen to other people, might you have more understanding, more empathy? Pluto, of course, is profound transformation. Pluto is a challenging force of energies that engage our survival mechanisms—fight, flight, fawn.

Because these two planets are squaring each other—so what this means is they're at this pivotal turning point—there's real potential for things to get chaotic and fucking challenging, and there is just as much potential for progress to be made in a deep way, for you to engage with a real turning point, and for that turning point to be profound. And so progress may be made in a very real way.

Now, when Mercury forms a square to Pluto, one of the most common things that happens is the ruminating mind comes online. So there is a tendency to think obsessively, to get a little paranoid, to slip into conspiracy theories, insecurities, and fixations. So this is where I remind you of something that you've heard me say more than thrice. Your strongest thoughts and feelings are not reliably your wisest ones. When repetitive thoughts have that charged, obsessive, kind of roiling energy to them, yeah, they're probably not your wisest ones.

You may be feeling super defensive, and you know what? You may have a right. You may have a perfect right to be defensive or to be frightened or to be upset. That doesn't mean that slipping into maladjusted coping mechanisms is going to serve you or anyone else. A common thing that happens during this transit is your thoughts turn in a really negative and heavy direction, and then you act out. You shut down around people. You pick fights with people. You start shit in the comment section. You yell at someone from your car—whatever it is. Basically, that is a way of projecting out your struggles instead of processing them. And so, again, I will repeat something you've heard me say before, which is what you don't transmute you transmit.

So I want to invite you, this Mercury square to Pluto, to notice your thoughts. Notice the tone of voice you're using on yourself. Notice if you are looking for overly simple answers to complex and nuanced problems. Notice if you are blaming yourself or others. Sometimes blame is—you know, it is what it is. I stepped on your toe; you blame me for stepping on your toe. That's fair. And sometimes blame is a deflection from sitting with the complexity of your own complacency in a situation. Only you know what's up. So explore. Explore what's real.

This is a bad time for trying to convince other people of your perspectives. I mean, when I say it's a bad time, I mean you might really, really want to do that, and also, you may be dealing with other people who really, really, really want to convince you of their perspectives. On the social and political stage, we may see bad-faith actors starting shit. So this may play out in terms of trade war stuff, which is—the U.S. is waging trade war with everybody in the world right now. This may be in terms of people with power threatening to further abuse their power as a way to keep people in line.

What this transit does is it intensifies your thinking, and it connects you, kind of unconsciously and compulsively, to your survival mechanisms, which—don't forget it's a Full Moon in fucking Scorpio—happens once a year. It's a big deal, and it's always intense. So can you trust that you or anyone else is particularly clear-headed? No, you can't. It's really, really hard to be objective when you are a subject of the thing you're trying to be objective of. It's really hard to be objective when you're in a state of emotionality.

Now, that doesn't mean you shouldn't feel your feelings. It means that when you're flooded with emotion and flooded with data, whether it's made-up data, like a conspiracy theory or paranoia might provoke, or it's actual data, like you're educating yourself or you're having a conversation with someone, when you're flooded with too much data, it becomes hard to process. And then our maladjusted coping mechanisms come online, and things get even messier. Don't fight just for the sake of fighting. I'm going to say it's the wrong time for doing that, and a lot of people are going to do it. You might not be the one doing it, but your coworker might do it, or the person in the supermarket might do it, or your friend might do it. It's a fucking mess. It's a messy, messy set of transits we're looking at here.

The kind of gift that this transit gives is it deepens your thoughts. It deepens your capacity to explore topics in a meaningful way. The trick here is to be clear about the difference between "It feels bad; therefore, it's deep" and actual depth. Heaviness is not inherently deep. This transit can empower you to come to a deeper, more meaningful understanding of yourself, someone else, or the world, to sort through activating and triggering data, and to release your attachment to how you think other people think or feel.

This is a bad time to fixate on other people's motivations. It's not your damn business. Focus on your own motivations. Focus on your own shit. It's really easy, if you are somebody who engages in community work and activism, to just be so demoralized and frustrated by other people not doing it or other people doing it in ways that you think are wrong. On the one hand, hey, man, it's human. You have your thoughts. You have your feelings. And on the other hand, it's a total waste of your energy. You could use that same energy to fortify and support yourself because that's really what this is about. The fixation on what other people are or aren't doing or what they're thinking or what they're—you could just take all that frustration, all that energy, and try to care for and support yourself and others with it.

So that's just a little bit about the Mercury square to Pluto that is the centerpiece of this Full Moon in Scorpio. And related to that, of course, keep in mind Pluto is the ruling planet to Scorpio, which is where the Full Moon is. So, just to reiterate, the Moon is full at exactly 9:56 a.m. Pacific Time on Monday, the 12th. A Full Moon in Scorpio is inherently intense because it is connecting you with your deepest, sometimes pettiest or most challenging emotions and asking you to let go. It's big. It's cathartic.

And this Full Moon in Scorpio is also a Mercury/Pluto square. So your feelings are intense, and so are your thoughts. And it's not just you. It's the people around you. And as you've heard me say before, some people, when they get really triggered or activated—and make no mistake, this Full Moon is very fucking activating—some people get awkward. Some people start acting a little narcissistic. Some people get really disassociated. Some people get aggressive. Some people get passive.

Everybody acts in ways that are a reflection of their both conscious and unconscious parts. And while that may be what it is on paper, in practice, when you're feeling activated or easily triggered and other people are acting in ways that are a little bit unpredictable, that can just be a recipe for some unpleasant interactions at work, online, at home, etc., etc., etc. I will say before I get into any other details this is a terrible fucking time for doing consciousness-raising drugs or basically just getting loaded in general. So, yeah, I don't recommend it. Just throwing that out there.

This Full Moon includes a Uranus conjunction to the Sun. So Uranus will be at almost 27 degrees of Taurus, and the Sun is at 22 degrees of Taurus. So it's a few degrees off, but it's happening. So Uranus conjunction to the Sun also means Uranus opposite the Moon. This is unpredictable energy. Uranus is your nervous system, and you remember that Mercury—your mind—is square to Pluto.

And so this is going to be a very busy and activating Full Moon. Will it come with chaos? Probably. Will it come with the potential for meaningful, maybe even unpredictable, change? Fuck yeah. May we see acts of rebellion and revolution and progress? Very possibly. The question, of course, on the societal level is always, whose rebellion? Whose revolution? Whose progress? Progress is not defined the same by all the people. You can know this by simply looking at the comments section of any post anywhere on the internet.

That said, it's a Uranus/Sun conjunction in Taurus, so it's a great time to align with your values, releasing attachments to feelings, habits, maybe even relationships, that are in the way of you embodying your values in a way that reflects the progress you want to facilitate in your life and in the world. You may feel really, again, nervous system activation. Your mind may be way overwhelmed, and it may be hard for you to parse through the differences between your thoughts and your feelings. And if that's the case, I want to refer you back to what I said at the early part of this podcast episode about coping with overwhelm. Don't abandon yourself is what I'm trying to say. Don't be mean to yourself as a way to try to control yourself and stop yourself from feeling some feelings that are hard to process and make sense of.

Take a minute. Just take a minute and breathe, and accept what you're feeling. Give yourself permission to feel what you're feeling, even though you might not know what to do about it or where it's going. Give yourself permission to be where you are in the moment. And then you may need to pull it together and go back to work or whatever. But give yourself a moment to be where you're at, wherever that is. The habit you may be called to break this Full Moon in Scorpio may be the habit of abandoning yourself. Wouldn't that be fucking gorgeous? I mean, it would be hard. It would be challenging. But what's the downside of that—learning how to stop abandoning yourself?

There is a Saturn sextile to this Full Moon, and it's also sextile to Uranus. And this is grounding and stabilizing. So, if you set the intention to—I don't know—breathe through your feelings, Saturn is actually going to be pretty supportive towards that. At the same time, Jupiter and Saturn are square. It's wide. It's not exact. But they are square. And so the question of proportion is activated in all of us, like what's self-care versus self-indulgence? What's denial versus not fixating on problems? It's hard to know proportionately what's too much and what's not enough.

And the way to find the answer is to explore, instead of doing what most of us do in moments of activation or fear, which is we look for—all caps—THE ANSWER. There's not a THE ANSWER. Instead, there is a path to take where you're willing to explore the boundaries and limits of what's healthy, what's appropriate, and what's sustainable for you at any given time. And this requires your willingness to fuck up, your willingness to fail, your willingness to make a mistake, to be wrong, and to learn from it, you see. And that's hard. It can get easier with time if you really try at it, if you practice, giving yourself the gift of not defining yourself by every individual thing that you think, feel, or do, but instead by the big picture.

But we are here in this moment. For now, we're together. And whatever it is that you're feeling, I want to encourage you to accept it and to try to identify if the ways in which you're coping or engaging with your feelings, your life, your situation, and the world at-large—whether or not it is sustainable, whether or not it's enough or maybe not, whether or not it's too much or maybe not. Maybe you need a little more here and a little less there.

In your quest for living well, you will be happier, more at peace, and more effective, you will have the capacity to be kinder to yourself and to others, if you don't seek perfection but instead you seek the path. And the path is full of brambles. There may be bears on the damn path, and those bears may want to eat your face off. And they may just want to walk down the path and pass you by if you don't fuck with it. The path is what you got, and how you engage on the path is adaptable. Don't be perfectionistic. Don't be cruel. It will make the path easier to sustain and healthier.

Now, one more thing that I'll say about this Full Moon—it may be an important turning point in your life, in your psyche, in your self-care journey, and it may be an important turning point with something very important in the world. So, again, this is your gentle yet insistent reminder to stay engaged and informed with the world so that you may be a force for facilitating progress and justice. True peace cannot exist in the presence of injustice. So stay engaged. Show up. Change your plans if you've got to. This Full Moon brings with it adaptability and, very potentially, the need for adaptability. If you accept that things are as they are in any given moment, then you can more readily and healthily rise to whatever occasion occurs.

And that brings us to the end of the week. On Saturday, May 17th, we've got not one but two exact transits to talk about. And if you are like, "Oh, cool, two more transits. That should be fun," maybe not. These transits are each, in their own right, very disruptive, okay? That doesn't mean bad, because sometimes you need disruption. Sometimes it is upsets that create the very conditions where we can make changes or be different, and that's really cool.

So, at 4:32 p.m. Pacific Time on the 17th, the Sun will be at 27 degrees of Taurus and 18 minutes, forming an exact conjunction to Uranus at the same degrees. Essentially, what we're dealing with is those energies are going to be pulled out throughout the week until we hit Saturday, when the Sun and Uranus are exactly conjunct. That means you can expect the unexpected all damn week. This is going to be a disruptive, unpredictable, and upsetting week. Within that is potential for progress, for revolution, rebellion, innovation, and quick and certain change. And that is not good, and it is not bad. It is upsetting, but it is ultimately just fucking energy. And what it requires is you to meet it. So do your best to be open and adaptable.

Later that night, at 9:36 p.m. Pacific Time, Mercury will be at almost 14 degrees of Taurus, forming an exact square to Mars at almost 14 degrees of Leo. And this shouldn't surprise you because Mars and Pluto were square to each other very recently, and at the start of this week, Mercury was square to Pluto. So now Mars has moved much further past Pluto. It is no longer square to Pluto—huzzah. And now Mercury is fucking square Mars.

And this transit is irritating, okay? It is annoying, it is activating, and it is irritating. You are going to be super annoying during this transit, and I am going to be so annoying during this transit. We are all going to be annoying is the point. And what that means is that you're going to be irritated by other people and/or yourself. That's fun.

So pairing up the unpredictable, chaotic energy of the Sun/Uranus conjunction and the disruptive, agitating ego conflicts and irritability of the Mercury square to Mars—it's not ideal. It's not ideal. Big picture—don't start shit that you don't want to finish. Pick your battles wisely. You are likely to be irritable. Do not take it out on others. Find healthy outlets that are not other people. And I must assert that a healthy outlet is not shit-talking on the internet or picking fights in comment sections. That's not a healthy outlet. Pick your battles wisely.

In terms of my concerns about a violent and heavily armed force—like ICE, but not just ICE—I'm fucking concerned when I look at these transits. I'm not going to lie to you. The potential for unrest and violence is very real during these transits. And that doesn't mean it will happen, but it means we want to be mindful of the energy and participate in it with intention. Not everybody centers nonviolence. Certainly, the people with the most power in the world do not center nonviolence.

We may see a major tipping point on or around this date. This whole week is suspect on that tip. And so, again, how you engage with your own activation is important because what you feel—you can feel whatever you want to feel. Your feelings are a wide-open landscape. You can think whatever you want to think. Your thoughts are a wide-open landscape. But what you choose to do, how you choose to show up, how you engage with others—that is all a reflection on you.

Sort through your messy, sticky, fucked-up thoughts and feelings. Don't repress them. Engage with them. Confront them. And then make decisions about who you wish to be and how you wish to be. We spend so much time beating ourselves up for our thoughts and our feelings that we waste that time because we never transform and evolve by understanding our thoughts and feelings and making decisions about who we want to be. And transits like these are really going to activate people. They're going to activate you. So who do you want to be? How do you want to be? Understand that the answer to those questions is a path and not a destination. And sometimes paths are winding and unnecessarily long, and that's fucking life.

So okay. Specifically, the Sun conjunction to Uranus—this transit can be exciting. It can bring about unexpected connections and opportunities, and you may feel that you have a chance at freedom, to be true to yourself, to show up without self-imposed or externally imposed shackles. That's cool. You may feel really like, "Fuck it. I'm just going to take a chance and do what feels right." You may be inspired to make major changes, or an opportunity may come your way that you weren't planning on that just kind of changes the game. In terms of social and political conditions, this is a transit of rebellion and revolution, of unexpected change. This isn't a time for resisting change. This isn't a time for resisting possibility and potential, but instead for exploring those things. Maybe you sign up; maybe not. But explore it.

For some people, this transit is going to be all about nervous system overstimulation or dysregulation. And so, if you're somebody whose nervous system gets a little frazzled at times, you probably also have self-care tools for supporting yourself around that. I encourage you to put those things in place this week and, every time you get a little dysregulated, a little overactivated, to be like, "Oh, yeah, I knew that this was coming astrologically. I need to just take a beat and do"—insert thing. Right?

If you act out, if you snap—which, honestly, you might, or somebody else might—here's an easy solution. Say to whoever it is that you act out against or that you snapped at, even if they're a total jerk, "Hey. I'm sorry. I didn't need to say it that way," or, "I didn't mean to come at you with that energy." That's all you need to do, even if they're wrong, because if you're wrong and they're wrong, you don't need to worry about them being wrong. All you need to do is worry about you—or not. But that's an option because, again, if you're not expecting yourself to be perfect, then you're allowed to make mistakes. And if you make mistakes, what makes them not so bad is when you actually learn from them. So, if you act out of pocket, just name it. "Oh shit. That was out of pocket, and you didn't deserve that. I'm sorry. That wasn't appropriate in this situation." And move on.

Now, as I said, this transit is overlapping with Mercury square to Mars. And this is where your thinking—Mercury—and your ego—Mars—are clashing. And so you may be, again, irritable. You may be distractable. You may be inclined to jump to conclusions. You may be really defensive. You may be a little aggressive. Or, if you're more of a passive person, you may be passive-aggressive. You may be paranoid. You may feel weepy and exhausted.

Because of this, a lot of times, people fight during this transit or have conflicts. This is because Mercury is your friendships, and Mars is chemistry. Mars is motivation, and Mercury is attitudes. And so, if you're not really clear about what your attitudes are or your motivation for having your attitudes, something or someone may just poke whatever inner bear is hungry and ready to fight.

If you can avoid it, do not attempt to make plans or decisions during this transit. It's not a good time for it. This is an activating time. So this includes, if you are an activist or an organizer, it's not the greatest time for responding to events by making plans because they're not as likely to stick as they would be in other times, and also, they may be very reactionary. So, if you can allow yourself to be in a more watchful state, both watching your own reactions and assumptions and also letting matters kind of unfold a little bit for the next several days, that will be ideal.

This is a good transit for learning about your ego functions because you're likely to experience it in motion. And because it's a Mercury square to Mars, that motion is going to be quick. It's going to be uncomfortable.

This transit can make you accident-prone. Mercury governs bicycles, and Mars governs cars. Mercury is also a pedestrian walking through neighborhoods. And so be very careful if you're walking or wheeling around town or if you're on a bicycle. Be very careful if you're driving. These transits are messy and loud and explosive. So keep your head on a swivel. Be mindful. It's a great time to be a defensive pedestrian and defensive driver. Assume everyone's lost their damn mind. Try to keep an open, adaptable, and accepting perspective as you engage with the messiness of humans, including your own messiness.

I'll be totally frank. In the context of war and armed conflict, these transits are concerning. They're explosive. You may need to take action impulsively. Things may happen, and you may need to just show up and react. The Mercury square to Mars is a transit where it can be dangerous to take risks. The Sun conjunction to Uranus can mean that it's essential to take risks. It's a messy set of transits.

Sometimes you need to center your own safety. Sometimes you need to center your values and place the safety of others as the most important thing. And that deliberation often needs to be made in a split instant. How you show up, who you choose to be, who you vilify, and who you protect—these are all a reflection on you, and they're an important one. And I want to encourage you to be brave, to center what you believe is right. And while, of course, I hope you believe what I believe in regards to what's right and what's wrong, ultimately, I'm encouraging you to center your values and your beliefs. And that means you need to do the work of identifying those things and changing your mind when confronted with new information if needed.

If you abandon your morals and your ethics and your values when things get frightening, when things get serious, then they're not really your values. They're philosophies. They're ideas. This is a period that is testing your values, the principles that you choose to live by. Again, I want to encourage to be brave and to seek alignment with yourself and understand that that's interwoven with how you show up for and with others.

Now, going to run through the transits one more time. On Monday, the 12th, Mercury is square to Pluto, and we have a Full Moon in Scorpio. And then on Saturday, the 17th, the Sun is exactly conjunct to Uranus, and Mercury is exactly square to Mars.

Thank you for joining me this week and every week for Ghost of a Podcast. Take good care of yourself and others, and I'll talk to you in just a couple of days. Bye.