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 look at the astrology of July 13th through the 19th of 2025. And we are now almost one week into Uranus in Gemini. Things are changing really rapidly. You and me—all of us—are on call to adapt and to explore what's possible. Things are moving fast.

This week, there actually aren't a lot of transits, and it's not just happening this week. For the remaining weeks of July, there's not as many transits as there sometimes are. And when that happens, in my experience, what that means is that the outer-planet transits, the larger outer-planet transits like Saturn and Neptune being conjoined still loosely square to Jupiter, Uranus in Gemini, Pluto in Aquarius—all of this madness—this stuff starts to get louder. And it's not because it actually necessarily is louder; it's because these transits are functioning uninterrupted, essentially.

I expect July to be really a wild ride. And I want to just kind of center you within that by saying that anything is possible. I really feel that anything is possible. There are so many times where, as an astrologer and a psychic, I see so clearly what comes next. I don't want to, because it's been a lot of shitty and challenging things. But I see so clearly what's coming next. And right now, I don't. And within that, what I see is this amazing potential, this amazing potential for change, for revolution, things coming out of left field and going any number of ways.

What I'm trying to say is that this is the moment—literally, this is the moment—to jump into the game, to be a part of the solution, to engage in social and political dynamics. I cannot stress this enough. This isn't a time to think about, "What's the best way for me to do it?" No. Just jump in. If you can't innovate a path, that's great. You don't need to be the main character of every story. That's okay.

I heard somebody on social media say something that just really stuck with me, and I wish I'd found the name of the person who said it. But they were talking about revolutionary optimism and how revolution is an inherent part of humanity, which is true, which is how it is. Oppression happens cyclically within societies, and so does revolution. And this person was talking about how revolutionary optimism is not the kind of optimism that is like, "I hope I'll be okay. I hope I'll make it," but instead holding on to, staying connected to, optimism regarding whether or not we are going to make it, whether or not we are going to be okay, and understanding that when you're not just focused on your own individual comforts and safety, that there's this larger arc that is bending towards justice.

And as we participate and co-create and innovate and imagine and reimagine—which is what this time is calling for, right? Pluto is in Aquarius. Uranus is in Gemini. This is a time where things are bad, and they will continue to get worse. And we can fight it. And we can innovate and co-create something new and something better because the energy is there to support it. I cannot stress this enough: the energy astrologically is there to support reinvention, re-creation, and within that is renewal. And it's not something that'll happen on its own, and it's not something that will happen with ease, necessarily. But with all of our attention and energy, with our commitment to resisting tyranny and fascism, these things can change.

And kind of to that end, a couple of days ago, over on my Patreon, I hosted an hour-long talk that was very interactive. I answered a ton of questions. And it was all about how to engage with conflict, how to engage with difference, contrast, and conflict, more specifically. And we talked about it in the context of personal relationships and also in the context of being in community with other people. In this talk, I gave really practical how-to tips. And so, if this feels useful for your work, it is free. It is just over an hour long, and it's available over on my Patreon.

So you just have to become a member at the free level, and it, plus lots of other stuff, will be accessible to you. And I hope it is of support to you. And of course, there's tons of extra content that I post for paid members, but also, I am really committed to making more of my work available and accessible over there because I'm not really on social media, if I'm being honest. So you can go find me there at patreon.com/jessicalanyadoo, and yeah, join as a free member.

Okay. Now let's dive into your horoscope. It starts a little deep into the week on Thursday, July the 17th, and it starts with a Mercury Retrograde. And that'll be happening at 9:45 p.m. Pacific Time. Mercury goes Retrograde at 15 degrees of Leo and 34 minutes. So, if you have any planets at around 15, 16 degrees of a fixed sign, you're really going to feel this shift. But Mercury Retrograde is felt by everyone. And Mercury, of course, is the ruling planet to the zodiac sign of Gemini. So Uranus moved into Gemini last week. Now Mercury is Retrograde. Uranus is related to the nervous system and the brain, and Mercury is the mind. It's our thinking, attitudes, how we listen, how we communicate. And so this is a lot of mental stimulation, like a lot of mental stimulation, all of a sudden.

Separate from everything else—and I'm going to break down this Mercury Retrograde in just a hot minute, but outside of everything else, I want to just acknowledge that the amount of information we are getting, the speed at which we are getting it, is probably too much for most brains to process. And while you can data process as much as you like—you can take in information and analyze it and reanalyze it and all that kind of good stuff, if your mind works that way—can you digest it?

I will remind you, through astrology, we understand that the Moon is how we digest. And that's emotional. So we cognitively process through data, and then we digest it emotionally. It goes through these filters, all the information you hear. Everything I just said, anything anyone says or writes or whatever, we process and digest it through our past experiences, our feelings in the moment, our assumptions, our relationship to safety and happiness and anger and resentment and all the things that are really not just psychological but emotional.

And so, while this Mercury Retrograde is not about emotions per se—and again, we'll get into the chart in a hot minute—the fact that the mind is being so stimulated, the fact that the news cycle is being so stimulated, the fact that technology and the media is being so stimulated by these two transits in such close proximity to each other—it tells me that it's going to feel like too much to digest and make sense of. And when you're in an overstimulated state, the mind does not make the best assessments, decisions. We don't do our best job of listening or of communicating.

And so, before we get into anything else, may I gently and lovingly remind you that you have the right to sort through your feelings, to locate yourself in the present moment, that information is essential and important. Being educated—so important. But education is not exclusively an analytic process. Education requires that we digest the information so we can synthesize it. And as we digest information, invariably, we learn something. Maybe we unlearn something. And this is true for your personal relationships, for your professional ambitions, for engaging with social systems and conditions and politics and all the things. It's relevant for all the things.

Nothing's going to force you to remember that you are a human and that your humanity is tied to your capacity to empathize and digest and process, but that's where the magic is. That's where our best-laid plans are deeply considerate of people and feelings and care. This Mercury Retrograde is over on August 11th, and Mercury stays in Leo the whole time. Now, I've cast a chart for the Mercury Retrograde, and there's a number of things I want to note. The most exact aspect in this Mercury Retrograde chart is a Mercury sextile to Venus. And this is actually a really lovely aspect to have.

Now, if you're newer to astrology or you need a little refresher, Mercury Retrograde is a thing that happens several times a year. When Mercury retrogrades, it is a natural function of Mercury. That's a really important thing to hear. It is a natural function, so it's not some sort of abhorrent thing that occurs. It's a natural thing that occurs. And when a planet goes Retrograde, it appears to be moving backwards through the zodiac. It goes backwards through the zodiacal degrees. And this means we apply the rule of re's, as we are reliving the degrees we've already gone through. We move back instead of forwards.

The function of a Mercury Retrograde is so that we don't always barrel forward with our ideas and plans. There is a time and a season for reflection, for reassessing, for recalibrating. And, my friends, Mercury Retrograde is that fucking time. The thing that is so annoying about Mercury Retrograde that everybody knows is that plans get wonky. Miscommunications occur. You may find yourself replaying things in your mind that you would rather not. But that's the assignment. The assignment is to reflect on your ideas. Reflect on your plans. Even reflect on your friendships and your connections with other people. And reassess what you believe, maybe what you've said, what you've committed to.

And as we follow this rule of re's, you can reconfigure your life or your plans or even your relationships. This requires communication. And when we verbally communicate with others, unfortunately, during a Mercury Retrograde, oftentimes other people don't understand what we mean. We don't say it quite right, we're not as clear as we think we are, or we are perfectly clear and we're saying it perfectly, but the other person isn't listening in the way that we were expecting them to listen. So miscommunications occur.

As a general rule of thumb, I always recommend during a Mercury Retrograde don't take it personally when somebody misunderstands, if somebody's got the appointment time mixed up, or there's some sort of stupid, annoying thing that occurs—they're late, whatever. Yeah, don't take it personally. It's Mercury Retrograde. It's going to happen. Sometimes you're the problem. Sometimes they're the problem. Try to have a little grace. Because Mercury is in a fixed fire sign, grace and ease are not the most likely of all possibilities.

But it's good to remember that Leo is all about heart and passion and follow-through. And so this Mercury Retrograde is a good time for you to bring that energy into your reflections. If you find that you need to change your mind, change your damn mind. The only way to grow, to learn, and to succeed is to fail and to falter and to figure out you were wrong about a thing, because it's not about having a perfect opinion about all things at all times. It's not about being educated about all things at all times.

It's about being on a path where you evolve and you understand things at different levels, and then you come to figure out at a certain point, "Oh shit. I thought love was this, but actually, love is not that. Love is this other thing." You evolve. And as you evolve and you change your mind, what you say, what you do, the plans you make, the people you connect with may also change. And again, Mercury wouldn't go Retrograde if we weren't meant to reflect on our ideas and our beliefs.

So Mercury sextile Venus is a lovely transit. It'll be exact on the 18th, the following day. And I'll kind of break down the details a little bit more in a minute, but it's a good transit for socializing and for connecting with other people. It kind of brings a bit of ease to your thinking, which is nice. It can point you towards thinking a little bit more about getting along than getting through. But there's nothing negative about this aspect, okay?

Now, that said, there are some really challenging things going on in the bigger picture. We still have Saturn and Neptune very close to each other. They're not exact, but shit, are they close. They're not even 30 minutes apart. They're close, close, close. So we have this larger theme of Saturn being people with power and the systems at-large and Neptune being fervent religious or spiritual belief—peace, humanity, escapism all merged up, right? All merged up.

This transit can give us what we've got right now, which is a bunch of world leaders who are willing and able to do whatever they want to erode and bypass check marks and systems so that they can expand their power because they have people who believe in them or believe in some sort of ideology that they all believe empowers them to stomp on the necks of others. That's the negative expression of this transit.

A positive expression of this transit can break down barriers, increase collective empathy, and create the spaciousness for us to reimagine systems that are more humane and empathetic. The idea of moral gray area is one to excavate in this Mercury Retrograde, like what do you think is a moral gray area, and is it really? This larger transit that we're going through—again, very stressful, very intense. Luckily, Pluto is currently trine that Saturn/Neptune conjunction, and that empowers us, as a collective as well as individuals, to go deeper—right?—to go deeper, to get messy with it, to explore what's possible.

On a more personal level, this transit kicks up anxiety, a sense of helplessness and hopelessness, a feeling that you must conform in order to be safe, or a feeling that you must empty yourself out completely in order to show up for others. The Saturn/Neptune conjunction, especially in Aries, makes it hard to embody balance, proportion, and stamina. It's hard to stay embodied, which is a lot of what Aries energy wants of us. It's hard to stay embodied when you are experiencing anxiety or depression. And of course, Saturn is depression; Neptune is anxiety. So that's happening as this larger transit, or set of transits, during the Mercury Retrograde. So, as we are in a state of reflection, these other, larger themes are occurring.

So I want to invite you to lovingly—because Mercury is in Leo—reflect on your relationship to hope, your relationship to follow-through and reality, your relationship to anxiety and depression. Now, I'm not referring to clinical conditions. That's not my scope. I'm talking about the kind of anxiety and depression we experience when we live our lives and read the news and all the fucking things.

Now, another thing in this chart is that we have a pretty tight conjunction between the Moon and Chiron. At the moment of the Mercury Retrograde, the Moon and Chiron are only one degree apart. This speaks to how difficult it is to stay emotionally present and in your body at this time. This feeling of, " I don't know how to handle this. I don't know how I'm supposed to show up for myself, for others, in this moment"—because of this aspect, this Mercury Retrograde is likely to feel especially triggering, unfortunately.

And you want to keep in mind that when a person is triggered, it is usually related to some sort of pain point, whether we're talking about trauma from your childhood, something around a loss or sense of abandonment in your past that you on some level feel like, "Oh shit. Something's wrong with me." On some level, you feel like, "Oh, this is my fault." And for some people, that feeling makes you mad at everyone, defensive, and angry. For other people, it's going to make you feel just like shit about yourself and somehow victimized. And for other people, it shows up in different ways.

I want to encourage you to know that if you find yourself experiencing outsized emotional reactions, it's likely to do with this aspect showing up so strong in our Mercury Retrograde. There is an opportunity in it, and there's a lot of risks. So, on the risk side, I think I've done a pretty good job of explaining that. I will say this makes you and me and everyone else more susceptible to propaganda, to disinformation and misinformation. So we want to be really mindful about the medias that we consume and the conclusions that we jump to. If you are feeling some kind of way and you go online and let your algorithm just egg you on, it's not the best use of your emotions. It's not the best use of your mind. Strive to be self-aware enough to know when you are activated.

The positive potential is that you can move through the wounds that are underlying your triggers and activation with more embodiment and self-awareness. This Mercury Retrograde has amazing potential for anyone engaged in a healing process or practice. That could be around healing yourself from trauma, being in some sort of a therapy, and it can also be from excavating how hate-based, oppressive systems are metabolized inside of you. There's a lot of levels and ways in which this can play itself out. Mercury Retrogrades don't tend to bring about ease, but they do facilitate self-awareness. And an extension of self-awareness is greater awareness in your relationships. So don't forget to include your heart in that process. Luckily, Leo is a zodiac sign that has got so much heart to it.

The last thing I'll say about Mercury Retrograde is, if you can avoid making major purchases, signing contracts, or making major life plans, including big trips, I would. But that's not always possible. We don't use astrology to get superstitious and weird about life here at Ghost of a Podcast Industries. No, we don't. We use it as a weather report. And so the weather is weird communication, hard on plans. And if you have to communicate and you have to make plans, which you probably do, triple-check that contract. Put it off if you can. If you can't, work with the energy. If you gotta make plans, yeah, just know there might be delays or problems. Adapt your attitude and your expectations. Then it becomes a learning opportunity instead of just a pain in your sweet, sweet buns.

Now, as promised, that brings us to Mercury sextile Venus. This transit is exact Friday, the 18th of July, at 6:37 a.m. Mercury will be at 15 degrees of Leo and 34 minutes. It is, of course, Retrograde now, and it's sextile to Venus at the same degrees of Gemini. Mercury sextile Venus is really about connecting with other people, reflecting on your ideas and beliefs in the context of your value system. So this is actually a lovely soft pitch from the Universe to support us as we ease into this Mercury Retrograde, which is actually a little bit on the touchy side.

If you do need to talk to someone and have kind of a sticky conversation, technically speaking, Mercury sextile Venus is the time to do it. And the truth is, during a Mercury Retrograde, we often do need to process with people because shit that was said or done, or not said or not done, comes back up because things from the past can reemerge so that we can return to them.

Okay. So pretty straightforward transit. And now, on Saturday, July 19th, it's 5:48 a.m. Pacific Time, and the Sun is at 27 degrees and 6 minutes of Cancer, forming an exact square to Chiron at the exact same degrees of Aries. This transit is challenging. The Mercury Retrograde is a support because it helps us to reflect. To do inner reflections is always very helpful when it comes to a Sun square to Chiron.

This transit highlights your feelings of not being sure how to rise to the moment. This transit can create or highlight a crisis in confidence or self-worth. The Sun is your sense of self, and it's your will. And Chiron is core wounding and struggles around embodiment when it's Chiron in Aries. And so how do you belong to your family? What does it mean to belong to a place or a people? And how do you feel that you fit in? How do you feel that you don't fit in?

Something that came up for a bunch of people in the conversation I had with folks about how to engage with conflict was that when others don't agree with their point of view or their perspective, that it makes them feel defensive or it makes them feel upset, and it's hard to engage. And when this happens, when you feel threatened by someone not getting you or somebody not understanding you in the way you want to be got or understood, it often is a reflection of you anchoring your self-worth and even your belonging to yourself in someone else. And we do that. We do that as a learned behavior. We do that unconsciously. We do that when we don't feel that we have a right to belong to ourselves. And the truth is you can both belong to a community, to a family, to multiple communities, to specific people, and to yourself at the same time. And within that, there can be conflict and contrast and messiness because thus is being a person, and thus is having relationships.

A transit like the Sun square to Chiron tends to kick up wounds. It kicks up your struggles with belonging to yourself and your struggles with belonging in general. And the struggle is both the bad news and the good news. The reason why it's bad news is because that feels terrible; that sucks. It probably comes up through a conflict of some sort. Whether it's in your mind or in context with other people, whether it's real or imagined doesn't mater on a certain level. But it is that very conflict, it is that contrast and that struggle in your consciousness, in your awareness, in dynamic, that creates the space for you to choose yourself, for you to not anchor yourself in someone else's opinion, to create and allow for space for people to not get each other, to not be in agreement, to not be the same.

The thing about astrology that is so fucking cool is that it articulates the detailed ways by sign, by placement, and by literal degree that we are different from each other. It also, within that, articulates the ways in which we are just the same. But if all that you can tolerate is the ways in which we are the same, then life gets a lot harder. Then people become tribal and go off into groups and can't tolerate others who are different. And that's not great.

So, this Sun square to Chiron, I want to invite you to consider the ways in which you do or don't belong to yourself. Notice when and where and if you lose a sense of self-worth or clarity about who and what you are out of insecurity, triggers, or conflict. The Sun—it is the part of you that wants to be seen and validated and even, depending on zodiac sign and placement, praised. The sun is a big, bright light. And Chiron discovered its power through its pain in a cave in the dark.

Sun square to Chiron is a challenge, and it is a challenge for you to choose yourself—not defensively, not because no one will choose you, but because we all must learn how to choose ourselves in this life. It's foundational to be able to sustain true intimacy with others, engagement in activism, an art practice, a spiritual practice that is free of toxic individualism. And transits like the Sun square to Chiron are so instructive and helpful. They really, really are. And to have this happening at the same time as our Mercury Retrograde that has that Chironic Moon vibe is actually really useful, even if it's not particularly easy or fun.

So, with this transit and with the astrology that's happening over the whole of this week, I want to encourage you to create space for reflection, to try to facilitate some spaciousness within your hour or your afternoon or your day or your week—or whatever you can finesse—to actually sit in the feelings, to sit with yourself, to actively choose to not leave yourself behind for diplomacy, to try to convince someone else to choose you—whatever it is—and hang out in the discomfort because as you learn to hang out in discomfort, you discover and cultivate and then rediscover and cultivate more tools and skills. The process of that is sticky, and it's not fun. And the outcome is invaluable.

Nothing in this week's transits are conclusive or written in stone. This week, the astrology is inviting you to reflect and reconsider, to explore and excavate, and to do so in a values-based way and with kindness. So however you rise to the occasion, even if it's really messy, even if it's not very successful, is good. It really is. I will remind you that progress is progress is progress. And the tiny amount of progress is progress. And from an energetics perspective, which—who are we kidding? We talk energetics here. From an energetics perspective, the energetics of even the smallest amount of progress can move mountains of energy.

So don't get hung up on how big or how small your progress is. Just stay with the practice of cultivating movement and growth and evolution, whether it's inside of you, in your relationships or your ambitions, in how you connect with the world, with how you show up. This life is your life, and you’re a co-creator of it. I mean, you're co-creating it with circumstances, many of which already occurred, many of which are still developing and are outside of your control. But you are still co-creating it. You always have choice. You always have agency—now, within what parameters may be very out of your control. But if you accept the reality that you find yourself in, then you can conserve your energies for what actually matters, for what you can influence. And a lot of the transits of this week are supporting you in doing just that.

Now, a very quick repeat of these transits. On the 17th, Mercury goes Retrograde. On the 18th, Mercury Retrograde forms a sextile to Venus. And on the 19th, the Sun forms an exact square to Chiron.

As always, if you get value from this show, make sure to hit the Follow button or the Subscribe button wherever you listen. And you are invited to send in a question to be considered to get a reading with me on the podcast, and you can do this with the contact form on my website.

I hope you're taking really good care of yourself and others, and I'll talk to you in just a couple of days. Bye.