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 be looking at the astrology of August 10th through the 16th of 2025. There's some kind of interesting repeating themes happening in this week's forecast. I want to direct you this week to meditating, thinking about, reflecting, analyzing, researching—whatever it is that most captures your interest—on the theme of progress. What is progress? Genuinely. We use words all the time, but what is progress? How do you identify progress? Do you think some forms of progress are more valid or valuable than others? I mean, that's arguably true. If progress comes slowly, do you think it's less valuable? Is there a question of depth to consider in regards to progress, like superficial change and growth or deeper change and growth?

And then, very importantly, what kind of progress are you making in your life? And when I ask you that question—or, more honestly, when I encourage you to ask yourself that question—when you regard your life and you think about the things that you're making progress on, are they the things that are most important to you? Are you taking actions towards improving, expanding, stabilizing—whatever it is that needs to be done? Are you taking actions to create or co-create the circumstances and the conditions that you want to have inside of you, in your life, or in the world around you? And how?

Have you slowed down to really ask yourself these questions? Can you sit with the complexities of your answers? This is not an invitation to get defensive or double down but instead to reflect, to explore, because each of us has agency. Each of us has power. And how you engage with your own power and agency, how you engage with your capacity, is a reflection on you. There are so many ways of being a person. There are so many ways of using astrology. I am a big fan of personal accountability.

But in order to be accountable to yourself, to others, and to the collective, it takes emotional intelligence. It takes the willingness and capacity to sit with "I don't knows" and "Oh shits" and fears and all the things. It takes for you to be able to sit with the truth of where you're at without attaching it to too many narratives that take you out of the present, without condemning yourself, others, or the collective to always being where we are, and that's hard. But again, I want to invite you to consider your relationship—because it is a relationship—to progress. You do not need evidence of the outcome in order to be on the right path in your process. And how do you know, then? How do you know if what you're doing is right, whatever right is?

I mean, right and wrong—these are very real things, and they are concepts that are, I think, very important—what is correct, what is incorrect—and also, there are ways and times that, when we evaluate progress, right and wrong can actually be too Saturnian, too structured, too limiting, too judgmental. So, again, I want to invite you to consider where you're at, what you're doing with where you're at, how you're participating in your own wellness, wherever you're at in that journey, which—it's a cyclical journey, my friends; it's not linear—where you're at in the mobilization towards what's important to you.

And again, I come back to this question of, well, how do you know what's right and what's wrong? And it's based on your values. Mars, your actions, needs Venus, your values. Pop astrology has us looking at Venus and Mars as girl and boy, active and passive—fucking patriarchy. But what we're really talking about is values and mobilization, actions and principals, Venus being your principles and Mars being your actions. These are complementary aspects of yourself, of your relationships, of your projects, of our communities, of how the world functions.

So are you taking actions that facilitate progress inspired by your values? The astrology of this week can help you to consider these really important questions and to do so without judgment, defensiveness, and all kinds of other shit that can get in the way of you being here now with acceptance and accountability. The thing about growth and healing, the thing about having healthy, happy relationships and navigating the complexities of a really often scary and challenging world, is that you can't allow yourself to be driven by perfectionism.

You're not perfect, and neither am I. And the ways in which you're not perfect are going to be really different than the way that the person that you're related to or that you're friends with or that you're working with is not perfect. And holding space for that with empathy and compassion is a practice, and it's a practice that's really hard to embody without boundaries. Where do boundaries fall into your values system? Where do boundaries fall into your relationship to honesty and accountability? Again, the astrology of this week is supportive to exploring these things.

The astrology of this week is actually really just supportive in general. But in calamitous times, when the astrology is supportive, that means that the systems that you and I and we have in place are functioning well; they're functioning fluidly. If you have self-destructive or unconscious or broken systems in place and they're functioning fluidly, that's not actually going to feel great, not inside of you, not in your relationships and in your projects, and certainly not on a community level, on a global level.

In order to be present, in order to seek alignment, you've got to be able to not just tolerate, but in some meaningful way metabolize, the complexity of your feelings. And that's really hard to do for most of us a lot of the time, and a lot of people never do it. If you don't know how to sit with really scary things or hard things or messy things, that's okay. It doesn't make you a bad person. It doesn't make you broken. And it doesn't mean you can't do it later if you decide to work towards it.

The path of progress is paved with "I don't knows," "It's not workings," and challenges. The path to progress is not linear and does not come with assurances. And yet, if you are driven by your values, if you are driven by a sense of meaning, a sense of purpose, you can feel when you have meaningfully veered off the path. Once you've veered far enough off the path, you can rein yourself back in and redirect.

The longer I practice using astrology—and being an astrologer is a practice. The longer I practice using this tool, the more convicted I become that emotional intelligence and emotional accountability is the foundation to all other forms of progress in the context of individual and collective well-being. And so I want to invite you to prioritize those things, understanding that it means you must begin where you're at. And you may be super advanced in certain emotional and psychological and spiritual levels and super remedial in others. That's okay. You don't have to define yourself by your successes or your failures. You don't have to be perfect across the board; in fact, you can't be. That's not what humans are.

True acceptance creates an internal foundation upon which authentic inquisitiveness and curiosity can bloom. And if you are accepting and curious, then it's not that hard to find answers, pathways, potentials. But when driven by anger, resentment, defensiveness, ambition, pride, or attachment to a goal, it can often get in the way of your ability to be here now. And from right here is where you begin and all your good actions and all your good intentions spring.

So meet the moment, whatever the moment is. Hang out in the messiness, and allow your attachments and defenses and all the things—the "good" and the "bad"—let all the things hang out with you without needing to manage them. Do it whenever you can, however you can, as best as you can this week. And in general, it's a pretty damn good practice.

Now, that said, let's get into your horoscope. The first exact transit of this week is happening on the 10th. At exactly 5:29 a.m. Pacific Time, Mars will be at 2 degrees of Libra and 13 minutes, forming an exact trine to Pluto at the same degrees of Aquarius. Now, Mars trine to Pluto is a powerful transit. Mars is related to embodiment. It's your ego. It's your sense of purpose. It's what you do and how you do it. And it's your motivations. Pluto is a transformational planet. Pluto is intensity. It's connected to your survival mechanisms and is always expressed and experienced in pretty powerful ways.

When these two planets form a trine to each other, you are capable of moving through some pretty deep terrain. Under this transit, you are capable of navigating through stressful circumstances, kind of scary or intimidating circumstances with greater courage, confidence, and self-awareness. And maybe self-awareness is actually not the perfect way of saying it. Maybe it's more about being in your body.

This transit is tied in with your capacity to participate in the co-creation or advancement of progress. And this is because of Pluto's transformational nature. Usually, when Mars and Pluto are in aspect to each other, it's tough. And whenever Pluto is involved, we're dealing with intense and often sticky content. That said, when Mars and Pluto are forming a trine to each other, your capacity to get shit done, to be bold and brave and motivated by your capacity for making meaningful change, is strengthened.

Now, Mars governs policing, the military, and Pluto is, again, big. It is societal. It is transformational. And so, while Mars trine to Pluto is a positive transit, the thing to always keep in mind is this astrology does not speak to whose definition of positive developments we are referring to. And so we may see systems that are powerful and that protect those in power advancing in meaningful ways on and around this date. Now, I'd like to think that won't happen because it's a trine, and it's not a more challenging aspect. But the thing about systems functioning fluidly is all they take is a little sextile or trine to get a boost.

So, if something is happening inside of you, in your life, or in the world that feels destructive but it's functioning really strongly/it's functioning really fluidly, we want to really look at, well, how is it set up, because when you properly understand a problem, you can go about finding a solution. When you don't fully understand what's wrong or what's not working the way you want it to work, it's a lot harder to participate in enacting healing or transformation or a fix.

Now, that brings us to August the 11th. And on this date, we have two very important transits and one important shift. At 12:30 a.m. Pacific Time, Mercury goes station direct at 4 degrees of Leo and 14 minutes. So what does that mean? It means Mercury Retrograde is over, and that is a wonderful thing. And also, it means that we are about to hit the retroshady period where Mercury is going to move back through the degrees of Leo that it had just been retrograding through. So, in that period, you have a lot of opportunity to clean up messes and miscommunications that occurred during the Retrograde. But you go ahead and sign your contracts, make your plans—that kind of thing—now that we are post-Mercury Retrograde.

Now, at 8:32 p.m. Pacific Time, Saturn will be at 1 degree of Aries and 12 minutes, forming an exact sextile to Uranus at the same degrees of Gemini. At 10:30 p.m. Pacific Time, Venus will be at 14 degrees of Cancer and 4 minutes, forming an exact conjunction to Jupiter. Let's start with the Saturn sextile to Uranus. These are two outer planets. Saturn is classified as a societal planet and Uranus as a generational planet.

This transit indicates that we can create structure that is infused with notions of progress, with possibility. Saturn is a traditionalist, and Uranus is a futurist. When they are in a sextile to each other, which is a dynamic spark of energy, they are  communicating effectively. They are learning from each other. They are in cahoots with each other. When two planets are sextile, that means we can learn from the past and use those lessons and apply them to the future. It means that we can envision something better without throwing away all the foundations and lessons of what did and didn't work.

This transit is fucking fantastic for facilitating progress because Uranus sometimes governs people like technocrats who have this vision of a better tomorrow based on technology, but it doesn't take into account actual human lives. It doesn't take into account the impact on the masses. In other words, Uranus can govern thinking that empowers you to not really worry about the details when the details are the environment, the climate, humans. The trouble with Uranus is that it can be idealistic and lose track of humanism along the way.

Now, I am a card-carrying humanist. I am a humanistic astrologer. That is really my perspective. So I really love a transit like this where Saturn can ground Uranus into the current reality that we hang out in. Uranus governs unpredictability, revolution, and upheaval and can be calamitous, but it can also be expansive and open windows and doors that desperately need to be opened. Saturn is pragmatic. Saturn is the administrative stuff. Saturn is the rules and regulations. It's the patterns and the step that need to be honored, respected, learned from, and taken in linear 3D reality.

Uranus is technology, and Saturn is the lived use and application of tools. So Saturn sextile Uranus is a great time to facilitate progress based on what is actually needed. This transit is fucking excellent for organizers and activists. It's excellent for anyone who is trying to build something, whether you're trying to build something inside of yourself like some sort of habits or boundaries, anybody who's trying to build something in the world like a creative practice, a career, a relationship to mutual aid, and it's an excellent transit for people who are trying to help build society. Whether it's creating plans for resisting tyranny or for building bridges and infrastructure, this transit has no downside. It is wonderful.

I want to encourage you to do something this week. And to kind of contextualize that doing I'm inviting you to do, I want to encourage you to recognize that internal progress and internal evolution and adaptation is doing. Maybe other people can't see it, but internal work is work. Wherever you're at, this is a time for engagement and activity to facilitate progress.

Now, later that night, Venus is conjunct Jupiter. This is one of those transits where astrology on the internet is going to be like, "You're going to fall in love. You're going to walk through a portal, and the portal will make you fall in love. Somebody's going to fall in love with you." That's not the fucking case. Venus conjunction Jupiter is a lovely transit, and especially if it hits your birth chart directly, it is likely to be quite lovely. But Venus conjunction to Jupiter, just like all the transits, are not magic. They are transits. What they do is facilitate energy, energy that you engage with and everybody else engages with.

Venus conjunction to Jupiter is a fucking top-tier transit for connecting with your values system, for expanding your relationship to your values. Venus is related to values, and Jupiter is philosophies. And they're both related to ethics, these two planets. This is a great transit for getting to know yourself, for making progress in your relationship to your values, whether it's internal or relationally, like with other people. It can bring about fantastic flirting. If you happen to meet someone new and start a new relationship, it may be lovely, but really, what this transit promises is that you will seek things that feel good. You will seek things that make you relax.

So is that inherently what we can count on will give us love and romance? No, not reliably. But if you are single and trying to mingle, yeah,  put yourself out there. You know what I mean? If you want to find love, this is not a bad time to avail yourself to dynamics that can produce interpersonal connection that makes you happy. That was a very complicated way of saying go on a date. Go to a place. Flirt your face off. Do what you must do, although it is valuable for you to know, if you don't already, that there is a major spike of COVID in the United States at this time, and this variant is rough. It is rough. So, if you are not driven by the desire to mask for community care, you may want to consider putting your mask back on to protect yourself so that you don't get sick and feel shitty, because the astrology of this moment is actually quite lovely. So you don't want to miss out on it. Take care of yourself. You know what I'm saying? Okay.

Now, Venus conjunction to Jupiter is also a really good time to consider your finances. And you can do this from a philosophical perspective of, "Well, what am I spending my money on? And do the companies that I spend my money with reflect my values systems?" So checking out the BDS list or divesting from various platforms where they're convenient but they're not consistent with your values—this is a good week for engaging with that stuff. Venus conjunction to Jupiter—while it does make a person a little self-indulgent, a little lazy, it is actually quite good for that.

It's also a good time for investing your money. So I am not a financial astrologer. That is so outside of my interests. But there is a whole field of financial astrology, and I am guessing that financial astrologers are real excited about Venus conjunction to Jupiter because Jupiter is growth, and Venus is your personal liquid finances and resources. So, if that's of interest to you, you may want to look outside of this podcast for information on that.

This is a good time for making art or being inspired by being in the presence of beauty, whether that is through art, music, film, whether that's by spending time in nature, or whether that's playing with the way you look and style. Whatever it is that gives you that sense of joy and taps you into that feeling that only art can do, Venus conjunction to Jupiter is good for that.

Now, one last thing I'll say about this transit is that there is a meaningful difference between niceness and kindness. Niceness is done to preserve the appearance of things being A-OK and just fine. Niceness is not predicated on authenticity, honesty, or alignment. It's predicated on diplomacy, like, "Let's just keep everything nice on the surface." Kindness, true kindness—that can actually be a lot messier and stickier. It is predicated on authenticity and honesty and alignment. Kindness requires boundaries. It requires a sense of where you begin and end so that you can track the difference between what needs to be said and what is your shit. Kindness can be more challenging. It requires greater accountability from the person being kind. It doesn't always go perfectly well, whereas niceness—like I said, it preserves the appearance of things being just fine.

Venus conjunction to Jupiter can be a time for you to advance your relationship to kindness, but most frequently, it's a time where people tend to be real nice. So I invite you to consider, again, your relationship to your values. Are you prioritizing being nice to preserve your ease and comfort during a social or personal interaction? Or are you being kind? Are you showing up authentically? Being nice to others can be really draining because you're often having to abandon yourself or what's authentically happening in a situation in order to be nice. Kindness is not draining at all. It's not draining at all because you're showing up as is.

This is one of the core lessons of Venus. What's more important to you, how things seem or how they truly are? This transit, Venus conjunction to Jupiter, is an opportunity to consciously, intentionally, and with your whole heart, confront that question.

And that brings us, my friends, to the last exact transit of this week. On Thursday, August the 14th, Mercury will be at 5 degrees of Leo and 5 minutes, no longer Retrograde—huzzah—and it will form an exact sextile to Mars at 5 degrees of Libra and 5 minutes as well. Now—little spoiler—we will experience this transit again on the 18th of August. So that tells us that this transit is actually really important. Luckily, it is a supportive transit.

Mercury is not just your mind, your beliefs, and your attitudes, although it for sure is that. It's also your friendships. It's your communications. It's your neighborhood. It's the shit that you do day-to-day because Mercury governs Virgo. It also governs Gemini, but it governs Virgo, so it's related to your day-to-day activities. Mars is what you do. It's the motivation for you doing it. It's your passions and can be related to purpose in that way.

Mercury sextile to Mars can speed up your thinking. It can make you impatient and restless, but because it's a sextile, it's more likely to make you feel like, "Okay. I'm going to get up. I'm going to get it done. I'm going to respond to these emails. I'm going to talk to this person." It might speed up the tempo of your social life, which is lovely, or at least it can be quite lovely. And in particular, it can be quite lovely because Mercury sextile to Mars can make you feel bold. It can make you feel confident and a little bit more willing to put yourself out there and take risks, to speak your mind.

This is a great time for learning new things, but you might be on the go, so learning new things in a way that you can metabolize through your body because Mars, of course, is related to the body. This transit favors being forthcoming, a.k.a. direct, for taking risks, and—again, big surprise here—facilitating progress, making things happen. And when I say "things"—such a general word, right? When I say "things," they can be in relationship to your thinking, to your mind, to your attitudes, to your plans, or it may be actually the building of things, the doing of things, getting out on the streets, organizing a project—whatever it may be.

This is an inherently social transit. It favors interacting with people. So whether your interactions tend to be more online or in meatspace doesn't really matter. It's about engagement with others. And it's important for you to stay meaningfully connected to what you say. How you say it and why you say it is important, and it's a reflection on you. So, if you—whether it's like you're commenting on a post somewhere or you're engaging with somebody in traffic or you're talking to somebody that you're actually close to—whatever the context is, how you engage with other people, what you say, and why is not a reflection on the people you're talking to and what they did or didn't do; it's a reflection on you. Own that.

And sometimes, when we own that, it makes us feel bad because we were like, "I did not do what I thought I would do in that situation," or, "Oh shit. I acted out and was a dick towards this person. They didn't deserve it." Own it. Sit in the messiness. That's how you evolve. That's how you grow. That's how you participate in the co-creation of personal and collective progress. Hang out in the messiness. Nothing about this week's astrology will force you to hang out in messiness. Those are the challenging transits that do that. But if you choose to hang out in the messiness during the supportive transits, it makes it so much easier to do in the challenging             transits. In other words, choosing to evolve and grow, to be accountable and present, is easier than being forced to do those things, capisce?

Now, one last thing I'll say about this transit and, honestly, all the transits of this week—it's great for dating. Whether that means if you're single and you're trying to meet new people for friendships or for romantic or sexual relationships or we're talking about existing relationships, these transits can really be supportive because they are about actively engaging in relationship. And because there's so much Mars in the horoscope, it involves your body. It involves your passions and chemistry. So that's exciting. That's fun. Tap in with as much kindness, healthy boundaries, and self-awareness and presence as you can. That's the move. That's the move.

Now, it's very important to me that if you are interested in getting a reading with me, that you send me a joke. August of 2025 is the month where I am celebrating the seven-year anniversary of Ghost of a Podcast—no seasons, just fucking weekly or twice-weekly podcasts from my Capricorn heart straight to you. And on my Patreon, if you're on the puppies or kittens level, you can drop a joke. There's a post—you have to kind of scroll down to find it, but there is a post inviting jokes. And the joke that makes me laugh out loud is one I will choose, and that joke that I choose, I will give the person a reading. And then that reading will be available in video format for all of my patrons, so people who are on the paid level and people who are not on the paid level.

I'm also running a promotion on my Patreon to get 50 percent off the kittens level, which includes the month-ahead forecast and a bunch of other exclusive content up until August 24th. Honestly, why does it end on August 24th? It's because I've never run a promotion before, and for some reason, I chose the 24th, and I couldn't edit it. So there's no real reason why it's only available until August 24th, but you know what? It is. So, if you have been kind of edging on whether or not to join, maybe 50 percent off for your first month's subscription over on my Patreon will be inspiring to you. Either way, join me over on the free level, on the paid level—Patreon is where I drop a lot of content that I think is really supportive and supplementary to this podcast.

And if none of that sounds particularly exciting, don't forget to send me your questions on the contact form of my website to be considered to get a reading with me on the podcast. It's the only way that I do readings these days. So, again, you can go over to my website at ghostofapodcast.com and fill out the contact form to be considered to get a reading avec moi.

Okay. I'm going to run through the transits, but as always, I'll remind you the transcripts are available on my website within about 24 hours. Okay. So, on the 11th, Mercury goes direct, Saturn sextiles Uranus, and Venus sits on top of Jupiter in Cancer. And then, on the 14th, Mercury forms an exact sextile to Mars, which will again reoccur later in the month on the 18th. So put that note in your day planner, in your Trapper Keeper—whatever it is you do—and yeah, that's your horoscope for this week.

Thanks so much for joining me for this week's horoscope on Ghost. I hope you take very good care of yourself and others this week and every week, and I will talk to you in just a couple of days.