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

Welcome back to Ghost of a Podcast. This week, we're going to do what we do every damn week. We're going to get into the transits, the predictive astrology, of this week so that you can navigate the energies that come your way with intention, with a different perspective on the energies at play, whatever's coming up in your life from other people and inside of you. That's what we're here for.

I want to just take a moment here, though, to acknowledge grief and fear, two really difficult emotions to metabolize. And I'm acknowledging grief and fear because there's so much happening in the world that is heartbreaking. Things are changing. They're changing quickly in some ways, and they're not changing quickly enough in others. Whether we look to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, Sudan, or the Congo, whether we look to the draconian measures taken by the current American regime, it's sad. It's sad, and it's scary out here.

And also, you personally—you as an individual—may have any number of things happening in your life that you're scared about the outcome, that you're grieving the transition of. These things are really hard to stay present with. Grief is so deep and so personal that the human psyche has myriad ways of distracting you from actually sitting with it so that you can metabolize it and hopefully heal or evolve to such a place where your grief is not the strongest emotion you feel.

Grief, a lot of times, doesn't go away, depending on what you are grieving or how you grieve. But there are times when we are grieving something or someone, and it is so acute that it's hard to let anything else in; it blocks out the sun, if you will. And there are other times where you can experience grief alongside joy and inspiration and anger and all the other things. And then there's fear. We live in a world where our fear is weaponized against us because fear is connected to outrage, and outrage is connected to a successful algorithm. If you are engaging with content that outrages you, you're more likely to stay with it, to read the comments, that kind of a thing.

But the truth of the matter is that fear is a part of the human condition. And it's a challenging part, but it's not a bad part. Fear, my friends, is not bad. It is healthy to be scared of things that can hurt you or others. It's healthy to have an instinct of fear before you embark on a path or in a relationship or whatever it is that is objectively dangerous and not safe and not helpful or healthy for you.

Fear on its own is not bad, but it's so hard to sit with your feelings of fear long enough and emotionally present enough so that you can understand what it is you're actually scared of. To understand your feelings of fear helps you to navigate those feelings, to understand that "Within my feelings of fear, what is it that is getting triggered or activated in my system and may not actually be happening in the present tense but is somehow alive inside of me?"

In regards to any of the things that you're frightened of, is there an instruction manual waiting to be divined? If you're scared of getting hit by a car whilst crossing the street, instead of never crossing the street, can you set about finding crosswalks? Can you set about looking both ways before you cross or finding somebody who you can cross with who can help to identify oncoming traffic or other dangers?

There's no such thing as a life without risk. It's okay—in fact, inevitable—to experience fear. But in a world where we are discouraged from exploring our fears and understanding our fears, when we are encouraged to intellectualize them or disassociate from them or, in the New Age space, to say, "That's low vibe. I'm not going to mess with my fears. I'm going to keep it positive all the time," what we're doing—we are actively actually abandoning ourselves around feelings, thoughts, and impulses that need care.

And so I do want to invite you to care enough about yourself and how you show up with and for others, to sit with your fears, to learn what you're actually scared of, to sit with them long enough to try to understand what you're actually feeling and therefore what the best course of action may be, given what you're frightened of, because if you look at the world and you see all these things you're scared of, does that point you towards ways of engaging, whether it's activism, organizing, just ways to act kindly or responsibly towards the planet, towards people, or within systems?

Saturn—our friend Saturn, right? Saturn governs many things, and amongst those things is reality, like 3D, linear reality that is true for you—like Saturn literally governs your bones, the things that actually prop up all your goo. Reality, right? That's Saturn for you. But also, Saturn governs collective reality, so not just your individual reality. It's how you fit in the larger system that you live in, the hierarchies, the structures, etc.

So it should not be surprising that Saturn is related to fear. Now, other planets are related to fear in different ways, but Saturn can be so focused on getting it right, on proving oneself, on being in control and not failing that it becomes fearful. It's related to our concrete worries about who we are as individuals and what comes next, whether or not we can handle it. This explains how it's related to conservatism—not conservation, but conservatism, which is often very motivated by fear.

As Saturn has moved into Aries, your experience of fear may be showing up differently in your body. It may be showing up differently in the world. The more you practice being present in your body for fear and with grief, the better equipped you will be to navigate the next two and a half years of Saturn's transit through Aries and the next many years of our collective developments.

Part of adulting, and also unsurprisingly part of the lesson of Saturn, is it is on you to decide and enact the principles by which you choose to live. Who do you choose to be? How do you choose to be? And what does that mean that you do? These are Saturnian questions. As we navigate the very beginnings of Saturn conjunction to Neptune, now that Saturn is in Aries and Neptune is as well, these questions are not going to feel especially safe to explore or clear to answer. These questions are meant for you to evaluate in a very material, 3D, action-based way—thanks to Saturn—and also a very spiritual, high-level way—thanks to Neptune. But if you engage with this work outside of your body, thanks to Aries, that won't work.

Finding ways of staying present in your body and in situations where, again, it's safe and appropriate for you is a meaningful part of the assignment right now. The only place that you can start is from where you are right now. So having a realistic acceptance and presence for who and what you are now is a part of all of this. And a lot of us are too busy grieving who we thought we would be or who we want to be—or caught in some sort of fear spiral that we're not enough or that we're too much—that we don't ever get to be present.

And so I want to invite you today and every damn day to find ways of just taking a moment. Put your feet on the ground—or don't. Whatever. Take a breath. Take a beat. Notice how you feel. Don't do anything about it. Don't analyze it. Just hang out in the moment. And if you can tap into your connection to this Earth or the Sun or the planets at-large—to the oceans, to the stars—whatever it is that both inspires and centers you, then all the better.

But there's a lot of very fucking intense energy at play in the world and inside of you. And waiting for it to pass, intellectualizing it, creating a narrative about it, disassociating from it, or projecting it out in directions it doesn't belong—none of that shit is really going to serve you. And we'll all do some version of some of that at least a little bit of the time. But make no mistake that when transiting planets are in the sign of Aries, we are being charged with the lesson of embodiment. And embodiment is really hard for a lot of us, right? But that's the assignment. So explore that as much as you feel inspired.

Okay. Let's get into your horoscope. This week, we are looking at the astrology of May 25th through the 31st of 2025. I love it when it's clean like that. You know what I mean? It's the last week of the month. Next week's horoscope will begin with June 1st. At that time, June 1st, you can either join me over on Patreon or subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts to get my month-ahead forecast. It's a bonus episode that I create to give you a solid heads-up for what's coming down the pike for the month ahead. So you can put that in your pipe and smoke it a little later should you desire.

For now, we begin at the beginning, which is on Sunday, May 25th, at 6:45 p.m. Pacific Time. Mercury will be at zero degrees and four minutes of Gemini forming a delightful sextile to Saturn at the same degrees of Aries. Now, Mercury sextile to Saturn is a lovely transit. It's one that kind of steadies your thinking so that you can follow through with ideas, make plans, organize your thoughts, relate to your fears, show up for your responsibility with greater ease.

So this transit is really helpful for any kind of busywork that you've been putting off. We're talking about emails, paperwork, bills, all that kind of shit. It's great for making plans, not because it gives you inspiration, but because it grounds your inspiration, which can be really helpful. Generally speaking, any kind of agreements or connections that you make during this transit tend to be quite fruitful.

So there's no downside to this transit. If what you really need to do is quiet your mind and have a damn seat, the transit will help you with that. But again, if you need to figure shit out, it'll help you with that, too. So make use of this transit by being intentional about your plans and how you relate to your thoughts. If you've been struggling to really learn something or be a better listener in some situation, again, Mercury sextile to Saturn has got your back. So yay on yay on yay.

Now, that brings us to Monday, May 26th, where we've got two important things going on. At 1:37 p.m. Pacific Time, Mercury will be at 1 degree of Gemini and 46 minutes—it moved fast in a day—forming an exact sextile to Neptune at the same degrees of Aries. And later that night, at 8:02 p.m. Pacific Time, we have a New Moon in Gemini with the Moon and Sun both at 6 degrees of Gemini and 6 minutes.

Okay. So first let me tell you a little bit about this Mercury sextile to Neptune, and then we'll get into the New Moon. So we're still feeling the Mercury/Saturn sextile, right? And by the way, get used to—whenever a transit happens to Saturn, it's going to, very quickly after that, happen to Neptune because they're sitting so close to each other. So we're still feeling Mercury sextile to Saturn, and now it's sextile to inspirational Neptune.

This transit is particularly good for any kind of spiritual work, and it's good for spiritual work because it opens your mind—Mercury—to possibility, potential, and the kind of unexpected—Neptune. This is a great time for any kind of creative work, especially if you're a creative writer or if you're trying to creatively communicate something in some way. So we don't always communicate through words. Whether we're talking about music or painting or, again, being in nature doing spiritual work, Mercury sextile to Neptune is your friend.

This transit points your mind in the direction of empathy and care. Now, Mercury is your thoughts and your mind, and Neptune is anxiety. This transit does not provoke anxiety, but it can help you to navigate anxiety in new or more effective ways, to tap into resources for navigating anxiety. So, if that's something that is important to you, I want to encourage you to take pains to learn something new, try something out, to support your thinking, because there's a little astrological support for you on that tip.

Because Mercury is related to your friends and neighbors and just people that you work with, people that you get along with, this transit is really supportive for caring about people, for having more grace for others. Lean into that. Bring more intentionality to that if you can. And happily, having this transit and the Mercury sextile to Saturn overlapping with a New Moon in Gemini is especially lovely because Mercury is the ruling planet to the zodiac sign of Gemini. And so this really strengthens the energetics of these two Mercury transits in the context of the New Moon.

Let's talk about the New Moon. Okay. I am so happy to tell you about this New Moon because it's tens across the board. This is a lovely New Moon. And I gotta say that—and I've said this—I think I actually said this last month, but I'm going to repeat it because it feels really important to me. I see the numbers—because metrics. People are so motivated by Full Moons, so motivated by Full Moons. They're interested in Full Moons. They pay more attention to Full Moon posts. They say, "Happy Full Moon."

But okay. I want to get you on New Moons because when a Full Moon occurs once monthly—for the most part—you're coming to the closure of a cycle. Everything's coming to the surface. It's dramatic, right? It's dramatic, and you notice it, and it's a lot. And you're meant to process it and to release. But the New Moon is when you set the intentions. It's when you plant the seed. And it's not especially dramatic. I mean, some New Moons are obviously very dramatic, but it's not as clearly evidential as Full Moons are. Full Moons are—you know, it's really obvious on a Full Moon that it's a Full Moon.

New Moons aren't like that, but they are so wonderful and an astrological moment that happens once a month that empowers you to set intentions and to shift how you show up within or outside of yourself in any kind of way. This is the moment, the New Moon, when you are meant to do manifestation work, intention-setting work, or to simply come into greater alignment. That's what New Moons are.

When the Moon—your emotions—and the Sun—your sense of self—are sitting on top of each other, this is a time where you can tap in and access greater alignment and, from that place of cohesion and alignment, set clearer, ultimately more honest intentions for how and who you want to be. So New Moons are a great time for manifestation work, intention-setting, showing up, being present, and starting something new, planting seeds, seeds of intention, seeds that you care about.

And this New Moon is a particularly lovely one, I'm happy to say. Broadly speaking, a New Moon in Gemini is a great time for clarifying your ideas, really exploring possibilities, making plans, connecting with people, talking to friends—that kind of good stuff. And this New Moon, Mercury is pretty close to the Sun and Moon. Mercury is about 2 degrees of Gemini while the Sun and Moon are at 6. And that makes this an even more valuable time for connecting with people and plans, people and ideas.

On a spiritual level, this is a great time for working with affirmations, setting intentions, and doing the kind of spiritual work that is kind of like a conversation, so whether that's doing candle work, giving yourself a meaningful Tarot reading or getting a reading from someone, this is a great time for bringing your heart and your head along for the journey of your idea about how you want to be, what you want to cultivate, and where you want to go. And I should say hanging out right here is a great place to go, just in case you were worried if that was not an option. It's always an option. Hang out here.

This New Moon features a sextile from the Sun and Neptune and a trine from Pluto, meaning that this is a particularly dynamic and effective New Moon. Now, you know me. I'm not going to tell you it's a fucking portal or it's magic. That is not how I perceive the world or astrology or any of that. But I will say that this astrology lets me know that something that you might really labor on during a different New Moon—on this day, if you try, your efforts will be facilitated.

And so I want to invite you to really show up for setting intentions and starting something new. Maybe you don't have an altar, but you've always wanted one. This is a great time to start an altar or to clean off your altar and return to the practice. If you're a gardener, yeah, this is a great time for planting seeds, planting things. Go ahead and plant your buns off. There is so much energy pointing towards the cultivation and embodiment of clarity, your ability to sort through information—very Gemini, very Mercury—and metabolize it, digest it—thank you, Moon.

The Pluto trine brings depth. The Saturn sextile brings stability. And the Neptune sextile brings inspiration. So make sure you're carving out some time to be intentional, but more than time, carve out space because there is a way that we can spend time on tasks where we're anywhere but here. This is a great time to show up in the space that you're in, to be present, and to explore from that place. And maybe that's not your vibe, or maybe this is an important time for you to be around other people, to connect with others, to really listen to them, to share with them, to build connections and coalitions. This New Moon is so good for that.

So no downside. No further notes. I hope you make the most of this New Moon. And if you want to know more about the Tarot or candle work or any of that kind of stuff, there's a bazillion resources on the internet. And also, I have a ton of resources on my Patreon. At the puppies level, I have two full, thorough classes on two different Tarot decks. And so, if you join there, you will have access to all of that information, and you can giddyap on a new path of learning and using Tarot for yourself.

Okay. Now, that brings us to the next exact transit of this week, which is happening Tuesday, May 27th, at 10:56 a.m. Pacific Time. Mercury will be at 3 degrees of Gemini and 42 minutes forming a trine to Pluto, same degrees of Aquarius. So we saw this in the New Moon chart, and now it's exact. Mercury trine Pluto is a lovely transit. So we are in a very Gemini, very Mercurial week where Mercury is just having lovely dynamics with these outer planets and in the New Moon.

Mercury trine to Pluto is a really powerful transit without downside, which is fucking lovely. Now, want to keep in mind this is happening in the context of much larger, more challenging transits. And so, before I give you details about this transit, I want to just acknowledge that for some of you, you're going to be like, "The fuck is happening? Jessica's telling me about all these lovely transits for the last two weeks, like last week and this week, and I'm finding it to be a challenging time."

And this is where the human-centered part of being a humanistic astrologer comes in. So, when we are coping with larger, more difficult issues and then there's a bunch of lovely, supportive transits, what can often happen is you actually feel your feelings. You actually are in a position to make progress, but the only way to get to it is to go through it. And so sometimes the healing journey requires that you feel the pain of what you're journeying away from.

And so, if you are struggling particularly last week and this week, even though a lot of the transits are very supportive, I want to encourage you to do your best to engage consciously and intentionally so that your struggles help you to become more cohesive and more present, whatever that ends up meaning or looking like for you.

Okay. Back to Mercury trine Pluto. Mercury trine Pluto is great for having deep and meaningful connections and conversations with other people, learning things in a deep way, actually listening, taking in the information that you are being given and sorting through that information in a real way. This is a time where you can be moved and helped by information, or you may be able to share information, communicate information, in a way that's really effective and inspiring.

Mercury is your mind. It's communications. It's beliefs. And Pluto is depth. So, if you need to change your mind, this transit will help you change it. If you want to have meaningful connections with other people but you're shy or your relationships are in a state of flux, this transit—it's not going to magically change your circumstances, your personality, or your access to people, but it will certainly help you, starting from where you're at and who you are in this moment, to connect, to socialize, to enjoy conversating with other people.

This is a particularly helpful time for exploring your big-picture plans and not to tighten up those plans but to explore whether or not they're really working for you, what the meaning in them is. It's a great time for doing any kind of deep work, like therapy, any kind of healing work. And again, if you have the chance to get a reading or give yourself a reading, it can be really useful. It can be really inspiring.

If you're engaged in spiritual work, this transit can help you to go deeper and to be actively engaged in deriving more meaning from whatever it is that you're learning, exploring, or working through. So, again, I want to encourage you to stay present, to get present, and to tap in because this transit can really help you to tune up.

And that brings us to the last exact transit of the week and the month. On Thursday, May 29th, at exactly 9:13 p.m. Pacific Time, the Sun will be at 9 degrees and 1 minute of Gemini conjoined to Mercury at the same degrees of Gemini. So we've got a Sun/Mercury conjunction in Gemini. Sun conjunct Mercury—this transit, I tend to find, is a bit of a mixed bag. The Sun is your identity and your sense of self. Mercury is your beliefs, your attitudes, what you say, what you listen to.

And in this very digital landscape that we live in—and we live in other landscapes, but the thing that can go very sideways with this transit is that you become so identified with your beliefs or with what you say or communicate to others that it becomes a function of your ego, your ideas about yourself, or the ideas that you are asking other people to accept about you can become a part of your ego. And in this way, you stop properly listening. You're not listening to yourself. You're not listening to the world. You're not listening to, really, other people.

The truth of the matter is it is very hard in a world in which so many of us are posting our identities and our beliefs online to sort through the difference between what we technically believe, what we definitely want to be true, and what's actually true because the Sun and Mercury are not the body, and they are not the heart. And because of that, so many times, people have ideas about themselves that are not integrated, metabolized, and/or embodied. I would say we all have that in various parts of our nature at various times, and some people all the damn time in all parts. But it can feel nice to just live in your head in some ways. but it's not really healthy or helpful, not in the long term.

The Sun/Mercury conjunction, just like every other Sun/Mercury conjunction, is a transit that can reveal to you ways in which you are overidentified or too highly identified with what you believe, with your ideas. And that might mean that you need to shift your ideas or that you need to get more aligned and integrated about how you actually embody and live those ideas. This transit can find you very in your head. It can find you really busy, having lots of connections and communications with other people.

Oftentimes, a Sun/Mercury conjunction represents a time where you're just going to be super busy. There's lots going on, some of which you planned, a lot of which you didn't. This transit can kind of rest your flexibility and adaptability. If you can go with the flow, that's ideal on this day and around this day. Be open. Be open to connecting with people in new ways. Be open to different ideas. Be open to exploring who you are and what you believe outside of having to declare it or create a narrative about it. Just hang out here now and explore what's possible. Explore your ideas and your beliefs, your attitudes. Explore your relationships. By doing so, you're making the most of this transit and not getting locked into ideas and narratives that actually rob you of the present moment.

And that, my friends, is the astrology of this week. I'm going to run through the transits one more time for your note-taking pleasure. But also, if you want to follow along and use the same tool I use to track the transits day by day, you can subscribe to my astrologer's pro tool called Astrology for Days over at astrologyfordays.com. You can also wait for the transcript to come out. It usually takes about 24 hours of this episode. So you can go back and comb through the notes.

On the 25th, Mercury forms an exact sextile to Saturn. On the 26th, Mercury forms an exact sextile to Neptune, and we have a New Moon in Gemini. On the 27th, Mercury forms an exact trine to Pluto. And on the 29th, the Sun conjoins Mercury. Mercury is so busy, so loud.

So I should say one more thing, which is I promised you last week that I'd be dropping my first video episode on Wednesday, and I'm so excited to share it with you as I discuss Project 2025 with author, activist, and journalist Anne-christine d'adesky. But technical difficulties got in my way. They got in the way of all of us. And to that I say shit happens, and also, I'm so very, very sorry. If ever you notice something weird is happening with the podcast, I will always make a public post on my Patreon if there is anything weird happening with the show like there was last week. But if all the fates conspire to allow me to drop my first video episode of the podcast on Wednesday, then you will see it. And if the forces that be conspire against me, then you will not see it. That's all I can say. I'm hoping for the best, but I'm a Capricorn, so I'm also preparing for the worst.

All right. Thanks for joining me this week and every week. Take good care of yourself and others. And, Mercury allowing, I will talk to you in just a couple of days. Buh-bye.