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 August 3rd through the 9th of 2025. I just want to say y'all did not disappoint. I have almost 500 jokes on my Patreon—most of them are puns, not all of them—also have recorded and published the first joke-inspired reading. The reading is not a joke in any way, shape, or form, but it was inspired by a joke that made me laugh my buns off. So that's fun. If you want to hear that reading or drop a joke—please, no puns—it turns out almost 500 puns in five days—it had me hit my max on the puns. So no more puns. If you want to throw in your hat to get a reading, these are extra readings in addition to the regular weekly readings on the podcast. And they will be available only on Patreon, and you can join for free. You can be a free member to access it, so it's not behind a paywall or anything. But it is available there, and it's a video reading, too, so you can see our faces.

The first reading that I have dropped is me and a sweet little fox. Sometimes it's a person. Sometimes it's an avatar. Thank you to everyone who made me chuckle or smile or laugh or guffaw. It is just really nice to have such a huge amount of jokes to look through, and of all the things for me to spend my time and energy on, it's been a while since I spent hours upon hours reading jokes. And I'm leaving all the jokes up. So, if you want to join me over on Patreon, you, too, can read 500 puns, dad jokes, and other funnies.

Okay. As I said, this week, we are looking at August 3rd through the 9th. And the astrology of this week is really clustered. If you want to know about the astrology of August in a comprehensive way, every month on the 1st, I drop a bonus episode of Ghost of a Podcast. It's a month-ahead forecast, so I look at the astrology of every damn day of August. It is available on my Patreon. It's also available—I think you can subscribe to it on various podcasting platforms.

But back to this week, as I said, this week has a cluster of transits. So the first exact transit on the week of August 3rd through the 9th occurs on the 8th. Let me, before I tell you about it, give you a little bit of context. A couple things. When we do not have planetary transits—because most days, we have Moon transits, and this essentially is your moods, or it's the mood of the collective, because the Moon is related to emotions. We always have emotions up and down, getting kind of activated, changing up, all that kind of good stuff. We also have the larger outer-planet transits. And when there aren't other planetary transits occurring, we have less distraction from those larger outer-planet themes that we have going on.

You may recall, my friends, that last week, on Friday, the 1st, Venus was exactly square to Saturn and to Neptune. We're going to be feeling the effects of that Venus square to Saturn and Neptune through the start of the week. We are also going to be feeling the effects of the two exact transits on the 8th building up throughout the week. So it'll be in exactitude on the 8th, but we will feel the effects certainly by the early part of the week.

And what we're looking at is two Mars transits. We've got Mars trine to Uranus. That will be exact on Friday, the 8th, at 11:45 a.m. Pacific Time. And then, later that night, at 7:52 p.m. Pacific Time, Mars will be opposite to Saturn. Now, these transits—they're important on their own, but I want to kind of get ahead of something here. On Saturday, the 9th, we have a Full Moon in Aquarius. We'll tell you all about it; don't you worry. But the other thing that's happening that day is, at 3:13 p.m. Pacific Time, Mars is exactly opposite to Neptune.

And so this cluster of transits from Mars to the outer planets is noteworthy. That means that we're dealing with a lot of energy. But it's also noteworthy because it kind of is a nod to how all of the outer planets—so we're talking about Neptune, Uranus, and Pluto, but also right now Saturn—are in the first couple degrees of the zodiac sign that they're sitting in. And so what that means is when a planet like Mars—any old planet—comes along and forms an aspect to one of those planets, it's likely to hit all of those planets because they're so closely clustered.

Throughout August, Pluto hangs out between 2 and 1 degree of Aquarius. Neptune hangs out at the 2 to 1 degree, mainly 1 degree, of Aries. Uranus goes from 0 to 1 degrees of Gemini. And Saturn hangs out between 1 and 0 degrees of Aries. So they're all aspecting each other, and that means, in more human and kind of experiential terms, is that they're all talking to each other. Saturn and Neptune are right on top of each other, so they're having a very intense conversation. And they are forming a sextile, which is like a dynamic spark of energy, to Uranus and to Pluto. Uranus and Pluto—they themselves both in air signs—are forming a trine to each other.

What this means is there is a great deal of harmonious energy for coming to deeper, more embodied understanding of a theme or pattern. Now, this is really valuable in terms of your individual healing journey, in terms of your ability to put the pieces together and make them make sense with your patterns. Whether you're—I don't know—healing from trauma, dealing with relationship shit, trying to understand your relationship to time management or parenting or whatever it is, this is all really helpful.

In regards to our systems, in regards to social, political, and collective growth and change, these transits are really supportive. They help us to build coalitions that are sustainable and inspired, to learn from history without being contained and trapped by it. They are supportive for getting shit done, not just in a "I'm getting shit done" kind of way, but, again, in an inspired way.

Here's the problem. Challenging transits—we're talking about our conjunctions, our squares, and our oppositions—they push you. They're uncomfortable. They create a situation where everybody is like, "I gotta hit the streets," or, "I gotta get back into therapy," or whatever it is. Sextiles and trines—these are 60- and 120-degree aspects between planets—they tell us that if you do the work, the work will flow. There will be more opportunity and dynamicism. There will be more ease in the work. But these transits don't put fire under ass, and sometimes fire under ass is the most compelling and inspiring thing for us to tap into.

And so I want to encourage you, separate from getting into the details of all this Mars stuff, to reflect on what you're doing. Last week, I was talking to you about reflecting on what your values are. Now I want to encourage you, because we're talking about Mars, to reflect on what you're doing. What are you doing? What are your motivations? How are you doing what you're doing? Because your healing journey, your participation in your personal life, in your professional or public life, your participation in your communities and the world at-large—they are not defined by your thoughts and your feelings and your prayers. They are defined by what you do, which is inspired by and supported by and informed by your thoughts and your feelings and your prayers.

But it is valuable to recognize that the human experience is a physical experience. It happens within a meat suit, a suit of meat. That's Mars. It's your body. It's the thing that marks your entry into this earthly plane and the exit point from this earthly plane. I'm a medium. I talk to dead people. So I have the perspective that we don't die, exactly. Our soul, if you want to call it that—I mean, there's a lot of different words that work, but I'll use "soul." Your soul exists pre- and post-body. But the human experience on the earthly plane is a physical experience. We are spiritual beings having a physical experience.

And so what we do is a huge part of that physical experience. It's a huge part of the lessons and uniqueness of the human experience for the soul. And so, when we go through Mars transits, it's always an opportunity to connect or reconnect with your body, with your motivations, with your ego, and to take stock of what you're doing. Now, these Mars transits I'm about to unpack for you—there's a little support, and there's a little pain in your ass. It's both. It's both, to which I say let the pains in your sweet, sweet buns inspire you to mobilize.

Let the supportive energies for your same sweet buns remind you that you are connected. You're connected to other people. You're connected to this planet. You're connected to the universe. You are connected. And there are things you can do to further enhance and strengthen your connections, to disconnect from the things that are not in resonance with you, that are not aligned with your values. You can adapt your motivations. You can change if you want to, if you believe you need to. And you can help to facilitate change in the world around you.

But when it comes to Mars, we always want to pay attention to the ego because Mars governs the ego. The Sun is related to your will, but Mars is your ego. So, when we are looking at your ego, it's important that you don't try to ram change down your own throat or to force your will or your preferences upon others. Cultivating consent in your relationship to yourself, to talking to your parts, to acknowledging—if there's a part of you that's like, "I can't hang out with this person. I just—I can't," and you're like, "Well, fuck it. I made a commitment. I'm going to do it anyways," having a conversation with yourself where you're recognizing, "Okay. There are parts of me that don't want to do this. There are parts of me that do want to do this. And ultimately, I'm making a choice, but I want to acknowledge that I got parts that are not into this"—and you want to be mindful and supportive to your parts. Be empathetic to your parts.

Mars is the ego. And when we look at the ego, we always want to look at boundaries around consent and embodiment. And that's not easy, but it's part of the assignment of Mars. Now, keeping in mind that the context of this week's Mars transits is in cahoots with the Full Moon, which is always super emotional because Full Moons bring up big emotions—whatever it is that you haven't been processing, you've been trying to kind of shove to the side, yeah, the Full Moon is just like, woop—pops it right up.

So, keeping in mind emotions are up at the surface and Mars is what's activated, it's going to be hard for you to keep on pretending that something's okay if it's not. You may be confronted with more anger, more resentment, defensiveness—classic Mars feelings. And for some people, we know how to get mad. We get mad. We get pissed. We get activated and angry. Some people get exhausted, really just weepy, with Mars. And that's not because that's how Mars functions for them; that's a coping mechanism for folks who don't know how to let themselves feel anger. Anger can lead to harm of others or harm of self, and you want to track that if you know you have tendencies in that direction because, again, this is a very Marsy week. Okay? Okay.

So let's get into the transits starting on the 8th. Let's start with the positive and supportive transit, Mars trine Uranus. This transit is dynamic. Mars and Uranus together, getting along so well, is exciting. It empowers you to have fun, to be open to new experiences, to explore different and more impactful ways of being in your body, of hooking up—Mars is fornicating, so it's always really fun to get into the physicality of Mars in that way. The Neptune transit fucks with that. So does the Saturn one. But Mars trine Uranus is fun, and it is also a transit that connects you in a very real way with different perspectives, with the ability to perceive different ways of doing things, different ways of engaging with your own motivations, with your own behaviors.

This transit can facilitate real progress. It's good for taking risks, for trying something new, for trying the old thing in a different way, for exploring possibilities. You may find yourself a little bit on the bored side under this transit. That's the only negative I can find, if I'm really looking for it. But the thing that's so helpful about the timing of the Mars trine to Uranus is that Mars opposite Saturn and opposite Neptune, which is what's happening at the same time, are both transits that make you feel kind of stuck, that make you feel like, "Fuck. I can't progress. We can't progress. There's no way but this way, and this way isn't working."

But Mars trine to Uranus gives you access to a broadened perspective. Uranus is about experimentation and uniqueness and innovation. You don't want to lose track of that. I should say Mars is at 1 degree of Libra, and Uranus is at 1 degree of Gemini. Saturn is at 1 degree of Aries. This is valuable for you to know if you can track in your own birth chart if you have any planets at around 1 degree of a cardinal sign or a mutable sign because that's what's getting hit here.

Mars opposite Saturn—this one is exact at almost 8:00 p.m. Pacific Time on Friday, the 8th. This transit is—I mean, it's not my favorite transit, see? Mars opposite Saturn is frustrating. It's confronting. It often makes people feel defensive. So you might not be frustrated. You might not be defensive. But maybe people in traffic with you or on the subway with you are. Maybe the people you're neighbors with or are coworkers with are. It's in the air. It's activated.

Now, Mars opposite Saturn—if we kind of tap into keywords, Mars is ambition. It's motivation. It's getting shit done. And Saturn is restrictions, limitation, and consequences. Whenever we're dealing with oppositions—transits that are oppositions, like Mars opposite Saturn, Mars opposite Neptune, or even the Full Moon, Sun opposite Moon—we're always dealing with projections. It's two points opposite each other, a.k.a. me and you, us and them.

And so, whenever you see an opposition transit, you always want to look out for dynamics. Whether they're relational or more communal, you always want to look out for dynamics and to try to track—if your understanding of astrology is deep enough, to track, "Okay. Am I feeling Mars right now, or am I feeling Saturn right now?" Mars is a little bit of that, "Move, bitch. Get out the way," kind of energy. And Saturn is, "You're doing something wrong. This is the consequence of doing something wrong. You should be punished because you're doing something wrong." Different energies. There's some overlap in that, but they're very different energies. Saturn is about consequences. It's hierarchical teacher-at-the-top-of-the-class kind of energy. And Mars is a boxer. Mars wants to get in the ring and fucking fight it out.

And these energies, when they're in contrast with each other, can make you feel like you're not getting what you need, like you can't do what you need to do. And that might be, if you're vibing with Saturn, because people or situations are doing it wrong; they're at cross-purposes to what you understand to be right, whether it's the right methodology, the right ideology, whatever it is. If you're more in the Mars thing, it's like, "I just need to go. I need things to move faster. I need things to go in the direction that I want it to go. And there are blocks and impediments in my way."

And it's valuable to notice in your life, are you vibing with Mars or are you vibing with Saturn in this situation? Because that will give you information about what's getting activated inside of you, which empowers you to better understand how to rise to the occasion. Whenever I see a Mars square or opposition to Saturn, I always think of the same thing. And I've probably said this on the podcast a million times, but it works, so I'm sticking with it, okay? You've got somewhere to be. You don't want to be there, but you have to be there. It's really important that you're there. And you've got to drive there, and you did everything you needed to do to leave the house on time, but someone has blocked in your car, and you don't know where that person is. And so now you have nothing but bad choices. How are you going to get where you don't even want to be but you know you have to be, but you can't leave the house?

So this is the kind of energy that this transit triggers. It's frustrating. And then what do you do? Do you call a tow truck on someone? That kind of sucks, but also, they blocked you in. Then what? Are you driving fast? Are you obeying all the traffic laws afterwards, after you got stuck and you're running late? This kind of a situation, to me, encapsulates the tension of this transit. Sometimes things go wrong. Sometimes you fuck up. Sometimes you're wrong. Sometimes other people are wrong and they fuck up. And sometimes it's intentional and malicious. Sometimes it isn't; it's just a bad set of circumstances.

We don't want to forget Mercury is still Retrograde here. So there's still miscommunications, misunderstandings. But also, people make mistakes. People make mistakes. And how willing or able you are to identify the nature of the struggle between you and someone else or you and something else and the best way of navigating it—like do you need to let go? Do you need to double down? Different situations, different times, are going to provoke different things. But your ability to check in with yourself and ask the questions—that's the one to cultivate.

Things slow down during this transit. You will feel like you're being kind of dragged to a halt, and that sucks. Or truthfully speaking, you could be someone who's dragging someone else to a damn halt. When it comes to progress, this transit is not amazing, okay? Now, that said, another way this energy can play itself out is you can have the energy to do meticulous, painstaking labor. This transit is actually pretty good for that. It just requires that you're not seething in frustration, that you're not defensive, and you're not enraged whilst doing it. Meticulous, repetitive—Saturn—labor—Mars—that's a good use of the energy.

The positive functioning of Mars and Saturn together is self-discipline. It's determination. It's clarity of motivation that inspires consistent, sustained action. This isn't the time for bolting forward. If you have a first date this weekend, I would reschedule. This transit is hard. And if you can kind of avail yourself to the hard and you can lean into that hard and do hard work, do hard things intentionally, that really works well with this energy.

As I said, this transit overlaps with the exact opposition between Mars and Neptune at 1 degree and 50 minutes, Mars in Libra, Neptune in Aries. Before the Mars opposition to Neptune is exact, a couple hours earlier, at 12:55 a.m., we have the Full Moon, the Sun and Moon opposite each other. I'm going to tell you all about that after I tell you about the Mars opposition to Neptune because of how tightly linked that transit is to the Mars trine Uranus and the Mars opposite Saturn.

Mars opposite Neptune is a really challenging transit. These are two of my least favorite transits. I'm not going to lie to you. I'm not a huge fan of these transits, and the reason why is because they're so hard to navigate. Neptune, by vast contrast to Saturn and Mars, is all about the ethereal. It's about the energetic. It's about empathy and high arts, which includes arts like arts-and-crafts arts and also spiritual arts. Neptune is about belief. It's about fantasy and beauty and façade. Neptune is so different than ego and self-driven Mars or public-facing and material—like deeply material—Saturn. So, when Mars sits opposite to Neptune, a lot of times, it just feels like you do not have the spoons.

This transit is exhausting. Neptune corrodes the power, motivation, and energy of Mars so that you are tired. You may feel burned out. You may feel physically exhausted. You may feel spiritually, mentally exhausted. This transit can kick up feelings of insecurity, being ineffectual, being hopeless or helpless, a feeling like you're victimized, like you're being victimized. You may dive in to some serious martyr feelings. Or as I said with the other opposition, it may not be you who's feeling this way. It may be your neighbor, somebody at work, your parent, your kid—whatever.

This transit can be demoralizing. While Mars opposite Saturn favors hard work, Mars opposite Neptune makes it hard to mobilize unless the work you're doing is inspired by deeply held beliefs. Neptune is not your values system. That's Venus. Neptune is your ideals. It's your spiritual convictions. It is your hopes. Because of the difficulty of this transit, unfortunately, it can trigger addictive behaviors, whether that's codependency or checking out so you're not really listening to other people, and then they end up being like, "Why aren't you listening to me?" and then you have a whole fucking thing going on.

Neptune is escapist, and it kind of—again, it pokes holes in things. And so striving to stay present, even when and if the present feels hard, is part of the assignment. But that doesn't mean do it without discretion. It doesn't mean do it without boundaries. We love boundaries. We love discretion. I don't want to encourage you to decide in advance what that needs to mean because boundaries, as I touched on last week, are a reflection of self-awareness. So you want to be aware of how you're feeling and what you need and give yourself permission to set boundaries and limits around that, of how you engage with yourself, of what you expect from yourself, of what you offer to others, of how you show up and what you take in or on.

Mars opposite Neptune can have you wanting to stick your head in the sand. I'm not a huge fan of that, generally speaking. And also, you gotta do what you gotta do; this is life. This is a truly terrible time for fucking with drugs. So I'm talking about consciousness-raising drugs. I'm talking about pushing the boundaries if you know you have addiction issues that you're trying to deal with because Mars opposite Neptune makes you more porous, and it makes it harder to have willpower. So err on the side of caution, not as a way to restrict yourself, but as an act of self-love.

Know that you are not the only person going through this transit. Everyone is going through this transit. And so people are going to act a little weird or a little off, and they may or may not be aware of that. This is a great opportunity to practice having empathy—empathy for yourself, empathy for others—and to recognize that empathy is not a thing that needs to come at the expense of boundaries. You can care, authentically care, about other people, what they need, what they feel, their perspective, and also hold a boundary: "I can't take that on. I can't show up for you in the way that you need, and that doesn't mean that I can't have empathy for your need." It's okay to "and also" a damn thing. And honestly, Mars opposite Neptune and Saturn at the same time screams "and also," screams "and also." Okay? So find a way to apply that to your life this week.

In regards to this transit, another thing that is likely to happen is that we're all a little bit more susceptible. And so, if you're more susceptible, that means you are more vulnerable to propaganda, to misinformation or disinformation, to outright lies and coercive manipulation-style lies. So you pair that data with the Mercury Retrograde, and you have a real recipe for things being unclear.

Because we're dealing with Mars, Mars wants to do. Mars wants to mobilize. Mars is your motivations. It is important to not allow other people's bad behavior corrupt your own values system. Just because someone else is being shitty doesn't mean you need to turn shitty to match their vibes. Check in with your motivations. Be kind. Be kind to yourself if you can, and be kind to others whenever you can.

This is not a good transit for starting things, for making things happen. Neptune doesn't want anything material to happen. Neptune wants to dissolve the happenings. Neptune makes it hard to hang out in the body, and Mars is the body. A lot of people are going to experience anxiety during this transit and around this transit. And my kind of patented Neptune advice is make sure you're breathing. Make sure you're drinking water. Support your body in small ways, in the little things.

The cool thing about this transit is it can increase your empathy. It can increase your consideration and care for others, both in your one-on-one relationships but also in the context of community care. And we need that, right? That's actually a really good thing. This transit can confront you with your relationship to your body or confront you in some meaningful way in a physical relationship you have with somebody, whether it's sexual or some other kind of physical relationship. And if you can resist the urge to force your will or do something, it can be really revealing.

The problem comes up—and it's not like I'm saying don't do anything, because that's not realistic. But when we react from that egotistical Mars place, what we're often not doing is metabolizing our own lived experience. So, if you can practice sitting with whatever comes up for you that's reactive or defensive on and around this date, if you can explore what's really going on underneath that reaction, then you can get to the heart of the matter. And that's really good use of this energy. And again, I will remind you Mars is trine to Uranus. It is a support that is happening during these transits.

You are not meant to control, contain, predict at this time. And that's really vulnerable. And when you feel out of control or helpless or really unclear about what the fuck is going on, it can make you feel demoralized and give you a crisis in confidence. That sucks, and I hope you don't feel that way. I hope I don't feel that way. That sucks. But it's also an opportunity. It's an opportunity to seek new perspectives—Mars trine Uranus—to organize your behaviors or to become more clear about what you're actually doing repetitively with that Mars opposition to Saturn, and to seek meaning in that shift of awareness. The only way to fix or heal a thing is to actively engage with the thing. You can't bring healing to something you don't understand. That's not super realistic.

So, whether this is happening on a personal level or professionally, whether this is happening to you as an individual or to us as a collective, confrontation with what is not working is important information that has to be infused in the foundations to creating systems, convictions, beliefs, connections that do work, that work better.

Now, that brings us to the Full Moon. On Saturday, the 9th, the Moon will be full in Aquarius at 12:55 a.m. Pacific Time. And the Moon will be at exactly 16 degrees of Aquarius and 59 minutes. Whenever we deal with a Full Moon in Aquarius, there is a potential that we are dealing with collective issues, issues of liberation. And a Full Moon is not just happening to you and me. It's not just happening where you live. It's a global event.

And so things come to the surface during Full Moons, and there is a lot happening in the world at this time. From the American concentration camps, or ICE detention facilities as they like to call them, from Sudan to Gaza to the Congo, there are horrifying conditions that people are living under. And we are complicit in all of it. You and I might not be the people who are doing the things, but we are complicit, and that is really hard to bear. Some people will hear me say this and get defensive, not just because of the Mars transits, but for sure, that's not going to help.

And there's the thing. Caring about humanity, caring about the environment, caring about living beings is really healthy. And it's really healthy to feel bad and burned out by seeing human suffering on your pocket robot and in the news all the goddamn time. It is really healthy to care. And Full Moons—they bring up feelings. They bring up emotions. And it's one of those evidential things about astrology for people who are not into astrology, because emergency room visits go up during Full Moons, and there's more drama that happens in the world that's objectively visible during Full Moons.

Full Moons bring up a lot of emotion. And we see changes in geopolitics. We see changes in the way that individuals and nations are responding to what's happening in Palestine. And a Full Moon in Aquarius may just be a time where something or some things important boil over; they come to the surface, demanding to be dealt with. It may be a time where the people come together in the name of humanity.

Aquarius is a very adaptive sign. It's the innovator of the zodiac. But it's also a fixed sign. And this is where it's important, again, to track the defensiveness of this week's astrology because you may really get it, but you may feel defensive about that awareness for any number of reasons. The point is we can lose track of our values and alignment by sticking with a perspective just because it's what we did yesterday.

And when something like an Aquarius Full Moon occurs, there is this emotional energy to adapt. But for some people, it will just be fixed energy. And so it will have a kind of sharpness to it—a self-defense energy, basically, is what I'm getting at. And that paired with the Mars transits is a pain in the ass. So you might feel very fucking fixed. You might deal with somebody who has all the evidence in the world that the sky is blue, and they might look up, point to the sky, and say, "Uh-uh. It's pink with yellow polka dots, and nothing can convince me otherwise."

This Full Moon, you may, if you're super into woo stuff and astrology stuff, see all kinds of confusing, high spirituality shit out there. Some of that shit may be a little bit fear-baiting. Some of that shit may be like baiting you to feel like you are above it all, that you are not the problem; you could never be the problem—Neptune stuff, right?

I want to encourage you to tap into the very real potential of this transit. It is not a portal. It is not a gateway. I mean, sure, if you want to believe that, that's great. But it is a Full Moon, and a Full Moon in Aquarius happens once a year. And it is an opportunity for you to consider what you believe and whether or not it is heartfelt. The Sun is in Leo; the Moon is in Aquarius. To be willing to adapt—and that Mercury Retrograde is here to help with that. To be willing to adapt based on new information, to allow big feelings, big needs, big yearnings to come to the surface so that you might better understand them and position yourself or reposition yourself in relationship to them—that's what the Full Moon in Aquarius is about.

In regards to social, community-based conditions, this may be a really important week. With all this Mars mishigas, I don't know.  I don't know how it's going to play out. It's so messy. And so this is when we want to remember that perfect is the enemy of progress. We don't need perfection. You are not perfect. I am not perfect. And they are not perfect.

It's important to stay connected to the understanding that community and coalition and comradeship is most effectively built with people who are different from you as well as people who are the same or similar to you. And that requires adaptability. That requires emotional intelligence. That requires that sometimes you go slow when you are fucking poised to go fast and vice versa. Sometimes you have to speed up because everyone else around you is doing it, even though you feel that the best thing to do, whether it's for you or for progress, is to go slow. We adapt. We compromise. And we do it for progress. And sometimes that progress is really personal, and sometimes it's collective.

This Full Moon in Aquarius features a very tight opposition between Mars, Saturn, and Neptune. So Mars is opposite Saturn and Neptune. More wide—not very wide, trust—Pluto is opposite Mercury Retrograde. So obsessive thinking, defensiveness, perfectionism, and power struggles are likely to come up. Whether they come up inside of you or inside of other people and you have to deal with that shit—TBD. But that's what's happening this Full Moon.

This is a really important time for practicing being in your body and present, as uncomfortable as that's likely to be. So, if what that means for you is that you're really irritable, then hang out in irritability. If what that means for you is you're fucking exhausted and burned out, nurture your exhaustion. There is a meaningful difference between enabling and supporting. When you're enabling yourself or somebody else or something else, you're basically doubling down on and encouraging unhealthy behaviors, unhealthy attitudes, whereas supporting yourself or someone else can sometimes actually be a little bit more confronting. But it's the encouragement of healthy, progressive, productive behaviors and attitudes.

So, again, this is where, with Mars, we always want to check in with the motivation. I expect this Full Moon to be on the messy side, but the potential for progress—individual, community-based progress—is very real. It's just not going to be perfect. Can I reiterate? I'm not talking about progress that leads you to the end of a problem. I'm just talking about progress. And if you can loosen your grip on attachment to outcome, if you can be present for the process—checking in with your motivations, checking in with your behavior, checking in with your unconscious bias, checking in with how you're navigating relationships with others and with the world at-large—if you can navigate that stuff, then you are making the best possible use of these transits.

Make no mistake. From all the chatter and the fucking noise on the internet about astrology that drives me bananas sometimes, Full Moons are here for this very important thing: emotional evolution, emotional maturity, emotional accountability, emotional growth and presence And there are spiritual aspects to that, sure. But it's a Moon transit. It's about your emotions. It's that time of the month when you are invited to check in with your emotions when they boil up to the surface. Who are you? How do you do? What is the nature of your relationships, of your life, of the world when uncontained emotions rise to the surface? That's really valuable information that you won't get if you're not emotionally present for it.

Now, luckily, that Mars trine to Pluto is a really strong transit this week, and it is exact on the 8th. It'll be exact again next week, which is really cool and unusual. And so it has a lot of potential. Now, keep in mind Uranus is the ruling planet to Aquarius. So we have this nice reiteration. There is great potential for progress, but it requires your presence. It requires accountability. It requires healthy boundaries. And again, you don't need to be perfect in any of this shit. You just need to try, to attempt. And the only place you can start from is here. And the only version of you that can do this is this one, the one that exists now.

So stop fighting yourself. Stop fighting other people, trying to make them into something they're not. Accept where you're at so that you can identify the healthiest boundaries, the most sustainable and heartfelt ways of engaging and supporting with yourself, with others, and with the world at-large, not seeking perfection but instead seeking progress. And in the case of a Full Moon, we're talking about emotional progress.

And that's it. It's a very intense week in the stars, and it's going to be particularly intense over the weekend. So make your plans accordingly. On Friday, the 8th, Mars is trine to Uranus and opposite to Saturn. It'll stay very close to that trine to Uranus throughout the weekend. On the 9th, Mars is opposite to Neptune, and we have a Full Moon in Aquarius.

As always, if you want to learn more with me, join me over on Patreon. I already have content up from the last week about defensiveness and perfectionism because that's what's up right now. And if you would like a reading with me on the podcast, I invite you to fill out the contact form on my website over at ghostofapodcast.com, and submit your question to be considered for the podcast.

All right. I hope you take really good care of yourself and others this week and every week, and I will talk to you in just a couple of days. Bye.