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, the place where we acknowledge our interconnectedness, where we work from the premise of astrology, which is that the Sun and Moon and planets and the zodiac itself directly influence matters here on Earth, and based on that premise, we accept that things that happen here and Earth, whether they are happening to us directly, also influence us.

We are going to be talking about a major astrological shift that is occurring this week in addition to the transits of the moment. Before I speak to this massive shift that hasn't occurred for 165 years, I want to take a moment to pause and ask, remember the Pluto Return of the United States? You remember when we talked about that so much? Well, the thing about major developments, whether they're in a nation of the world on some meaningful level or they're inside of you, it's not like an astrological event occurs or circumstances play out and then it's done.

Everything has consequence. And when we talk about something as major as the Pluto Return of the United States, a transit that happens to nations once every approximately 250 years, we understand that because of the way that we collectively navigated through that transit, we collectively are dealing with the fall of an empire, of the United States. This is what is pretty objectively happening.

And it's interesting, right? Astrology is interesting. Understanding the patterns that play out within a nation or globally—it's interesting. But there's something a little bit more personal that I want to draw your attention to, and that thing is major developments occur, and then they take time to play out and reveal themselves to you or to us. And this is important because I think, a lot of times in life, and in particular with astrology and other New Age spirituality, we want it to be like data/action. You want your ideas to turn into plans. You want your feelings to become actionable—that kind of a thing.

And in truth, things take time to play out. Now, this is important because it's real, but it's also important because the massive shift that is occurring astrologically this week—and for the record, we're looking at the astrology of January 25th through the 31st of 2026. It's the end of the month. The first major transit and the really big news of this week is that Neptune moves into Aries. Now, Neptune was in Aries March 30th through October 22nd of 2025. So you can pause this or make a note of this and look back at what was happening in the world and what was happening in your life during those dates to get a little amuse-bouche for what's to come.

But Neptune takes about 165 years to rotate through the zodiac, which means the last time it was here was approximately 165 years ago. The last transit of Neptune through Aries was 1862 through 1874. The U.S. Civil War began two days after Neptune first entered into Aries the last time. The transit of Neptune in Aries is an incredibly important one. And for those of you who joined me on my 2026 year-ahead forecast, you know that it's not just that Neptune is moving into Aries; it's that Neptune and Saturn are meeting in Aries. And there's a lot to say, and I will say a lot about it, trust.

But for today, I want to really just kind of bring your energy and attention to Neptune in Aries. This transit brings with it, amongst other things, a sense of urgency. And that urgency is visceral. It's in your body. It's this feeling inside of you that you've got to do something or this incredible restlessness or agitation. Neptune is a spiritual planet. It governs your ideals, your beliefs. It's associated with religious conviction. And I want to be clear it's not the rules of religion; that's Saturn. It's not the doctrines and the philosophies of religion; that's Jupiter. It's the devotion and the conviction of religion. That's Neptune.

Neptune is the religious conviction that is underpinning things like Project 2025 and all forms of extremist movements. Religious extremism comes from deeply held beliefs, whether or not we like the outcome of it. The thing about Neptune is that it's not linear. It's not linear. Belief is predicated on what? On belief, generally speaking, not logic. And that's not good or bad. Again, here we are. It's an astrology podcast. We're talking about astrology, right? This requires some measure of belief or openness.

But what we want to understand is that Neptune in Aries can be a belligerent form of belief, the drive—that's Aries; Aries is driven—to have other people believe in what you believe in, the drive to mobilize around humanitarian concerns or to obliterate enemies, because when you are emboldened by spiritual conviction, you can kind of justify or excuse just about anything. And maybe you can't. Maybe I can't. But we have seen throughout the globe and through history the most atrocious human rights abuses justified by spiritual conviction. And listen. We can question the spiritual conviction and whether or not it's just bullshit people say so that they can create vacuums of power for themselves.

But at core, many people are willing to throw many others under the bus based on their spiritual convictions. And what's interesting is that Neptune is not just about this kind of fervor, devotional, deeply held spiritual conviction.  It's also escapism. So, when we look at something like masking, like wearing a mask because of airborne diseases, there was a time when we were all masking because we cared about the welfare of others. And then we became escapist. We're like, "Oh, I don't have to worry about that," "Oh, it won't happen to me," "Oh, yeah, immunocompromised people—there's not that many of them. It doesn't really matter." And people took off their masks. That was inherently escapist, right?

We all do it is what I'm trying to say. We can point to certain people or certain behaviors and say, "That's worse." We can say, "That person's motivations made more sense," or, "Their convictions are more reasonable to my thinking." But the thing about Neptune is it isn't reasonable. Neptune is fog. Neptune is present, and then it dissipates. It is enveloping. And Aries is urgent. It is felt in the body. And it is aggressive.

The transit of Neptune through Aries is one we are going to be living through until 2039. So it's a long time. Neptune transits always are a long time. And the shift from Neptune in Pisces, which is so escapist and coincided with many things, including the rise of conspirituality and QAnon, including the rise of pharmaceuticals and how we use them and how we relate to them in the world, the culture of the endless scroll—classic Neptune in Pisces shit.

But the shift from Neptune in Pisces to Neptune in Aries—we're going to feel this one. You're going to feel this one. And for many reasons, this shift of Neptune in Aries is going to be incredibly consequential. Some of that is because Saturn is right there about to meet Neptune. It's going to be exact next month for the first time. But this transition is an important one in regards to human rights, in regards to fighting, militaristic fighting.

This transit can, in very meaningful ways, coincide with individualistic spiritual bypassing, with spiritually empowered violence and the rise of autocrats around the world. This transit is one where many of us will be gripped with a humanitarian drive for autonomy, liberty, freedom. And we will put our bodies—again, that's Aries; it's so much of a body energy—out on the line for our convictions, and many others who will use their bodies to tamp that down.

Neptune in Aries is tied in with the concept of survival of the fittest or prosperity gospel shit. And I call it shit because, essentially, those lines of thinking are related to eugenics. And it's going to be increasingly important that you interrogate your own ableism, your own ways of thinking that are informed by eugenics. Because we live in an ableist society and an ableist world, we're all influenced by those ways of thinking. And it's on us as individuals and communities to really interrogate that.

The transit of Neptune in Aries is inherently volatile. And on a really personal level, again, Neptune is related to anxiety and spirituality, and Aries is urgent and moves fast. And you can see how those two energies are a little bit in conflict with each other, right? So many spiritual practices teach or require some mode of contemplation, meditation, reflection, because that's how we connect with our guidance or the Universe or God. That's how we get present and receive whatever spiritual access we have.

But Aries is in a fucking rush. Aries wants to be the first one to do a thing. That's the energetics of Aries. And so be mindful that you are not being fed easy answers that inspire you to abandon your morality. This period that we're living through is really going to bring up a lot of moral quandaries, and there may not be clean answers, or there may be clean answers on an idealistic level but not necessarily on a behavioral level, like, "What do I do?" That will generate confusion, anxiety, uncertainty, exhaustion, demoralization—all the classic Neptune feelings.

Cultivating patience in this context requires cultivating a relationship with your feelings in your body. That's pretty hard for most of us. So how can you set the intention that when you are gripped or seized with a sense of urgency or overwhelm, that you will cultivate a practice of engaging with that feeling, meeting it, and cultivating a way of coping? And there are so many different ways of coping, depending on who you are and when you are and all that kind of stuff.

Some situations absolutely call for your urgency to be—a follow it up with action. Increasingly, in this incredibly dangerous world, if you're on the streets with ICE or some other bad actor that is authentically dangerous, then your urgency is an asset. It's a gift. It's a resource. But if you're sitting in the safety of your home, if you are not in a situation that demands urgency, then cultivating spiritual and psychological and emotional tools for identifying that feeling and coping with it is essential.

For me, patience and determination are really important. For you, it might be something a little different. But this is a time when we are going to encounter a great deal of extremism. We are already encountering so much violence. This transit has been active since its first hit back in March of 2025, but this is when shit gets real. This is when shit gets real. And so who you choose to be is not just about your actions. It's about how you hold the anxiety and the stress of this moment because your internal landscape is the foundation upon which your actions are sustainable or not.

This is overwhelming. So, if you feel overwhelmed, that's because it's overwhelming. Sometimes things are shitty, and it's not essential that you find a way to feel good or okay when things are not good and okay. But it is essential that you find ways of coping with challenging feelings so that you can resource yourself, so that you can show up for self-care as well as showing up with and for others.

Now, I'm dropping a bonus episode of Ghost of a Podcast on the 1st of February, as I do every month, where I talk about the astrology of the month ahead. I want to invite you to check that out either on my Patreon or wherever you listen to podcasts because the month of February is a really important one astrologically, as Saturn meets Aries, as Mercury goes Retrograde, and as we enter into Eclipse Season.

Now, let me give you a word about that because that sounds overwhelming, because it is overwhelming. It is overwhelming. It is not wise to try to use astrology, your intellect, news, psychics—whatever—to predict what's going to come next in some misguided notion that that will somehow protect you from the worst possible things. Listen. Prediction can help you to organize if that's within your nature, to experience fear or overwhelm and still act in ways that prioritize organizing or some sort of planning. But if that's not your nature—or it is, honestly—I want to give you this advice.

Prioritize being able to experience challenging feelings, challenging emotions, challenging sensations, and stay connected to your humanity, and stay connected to your most deeply held beliefs. Don't allow fear or urgency to have you fall apart or act out of alignment with what you believe to be true and just. And that applies in your relationship to the world, and it applies to your relationship to yourself and to the people you're in connection with.

Aries is a very "me first" zodiac sign. It's a zodiac sign that's governed by Mars, the ego. And the potential here is to develop a more spiritually sound and honest, healthier relationship to your ego, where your ego is a resource and not a liability, where your anger and your motivation empower you where you need to be empowered, whether that's so that you can take greater action or hold back, because both take power. Both take conviction and strength.

This transit of Neptune in Aries—which, again, gets activated on January 26th—is a big one. It's a big one. And I am going to cast the chart of that event and talk about it on my Patreon, and I'm going to do it on the free level. I'm going to just drop a video where I unpack that event a little bit more in the coming days.

Let's go to the next exact transit of this very intense week. Okay. So, if that wasn't enough, our first exact transit of this week happens on Tuesday, January the 27th. And it's a Mars conjunction to Pluto. You know this is not the greatest news in town, right? Let me tell you about this transit. It's exact at 3:02 Pacific Time, and Mars and Pluto will both be at 3 degrees of Aquarius and 34 minutes.

This transit is intense. Mars and Pluto both govern war in different ways. Mars is punch-punch, bang-bang. It's the military. It's policing. And Pluto is nuclear. It's big stuff. Now, Mars and Pluto meet. Mars moves around the zodiac pretty quickly, so Mars and Pluto meet every year, and it's not like there's war every place every year. So you don't need to worry about that.

But we're looking at this on an energetic level. It's egos and a feeling of entitlement to action meeting up with trauma and trauma responses, power and power plays, and big-picture developments, big-picture shifts and movements. On a social and political level, we want to be wary of violence. We want to choose our battles with integrity and care. Things may really be just intense. The energy is hot, my friends. It is hot.

This transit can kick up control issues, possessiveness, intense ambition. It can kick up power struggles, and these power struggles demand that you have courage. If you don't have courage and bravery, then what a lot of people experience is defensiveness, resentfulness, rage. This can lead to behaviors that come out of activation instead of clear motivation. Hopefully, it's pretty clear that you want to be clear about your motivation instead of prioritizing acting out of your strongest feelings, which are, as we here know, not reliably your wisest feelings.

Now, what you can't do—I mean, I don't want to say what you shouldn't do, but maybe also what you shouldn't do—is repress your energies on and around this transit. This is because Mars is visceral. It's body. And it demands to be experienced and expressed. The goal is to choose your actions from a place of clarity instead of just reactiveness. This requires, in part, that you have some practice already in place of noticing your reactions hanging out in the discomfort and maybe the urgency—because, again, Mars is the ruling planet of Aries, so we're here hanging out with urgency—the urgency of them, and them being intentional about your response.

Depending on your situation, depending on your nature, this may all happen in the span of a couple seconds or minutes, or it may be the course of days or weeks or months. What you want to know about this transit is that it is pushing all of us. It is pushing us to act in ways that reflect not just our survival mechanisms, but also what we want to bring healing to because that's something this transit can do. It can coincide with healing of ego. It can coincide with brave and righteous action and, in particular, because this is in Aquarius, collective action.

We may see militarized forces really clamping down violently, and we may see groups of people, communities continue to valiantly come together and fight for each other. This is a really profound transit contextual to the time we are in. It's important that you are mindful of this transit. The more awareness that you cultivate around this transit and what it's likely to trigger inside of you, the better equipped you'll be to notice your aggression, your defensiveness, your motivation, your bravery—whatever it is—come to the surface. And then you can bring the intention of healing, the intention of using your power not just to resist your fears but to enact and embolden your hopes, your dreams, and what you love and who you love.

Now, I'll say one more thing about this transit. If you have been seeing what's happening in Minnesota, what's happening in Iran, what's happening in any number of places in the world, whether we're looking at collective conditions or you're seeing some sort of really important injustice on a personal level, in your immediate world—whatever the case may be—and you have not been brave enough, you have not been able to motivate to get involved and to act in ways that reflect your solidarity, that reflect what you care about, your humanity, this transit may motivate you to do just that.

It intensifies bravery. It intensifies your energy. I want to encourage you to tap into that energy because this is a time that requires us all. And there are so many different ways to engage in important battles in life and in the world. It's time to find yours. It's just time to find yours if you haven't yet. It doesn't have to be like a forever answer. It's about, what are you going to do right now? What's needed right now?

I want to remind you this week and every goddamn week that the present is where you have agency. You have no agency over what happened in the past. You cannot control what happens in the future or how you respond to it. In this moment, here and now, you have power. You have agency. What you choose to do and who you choose to be is right now. It's not 15 minutes ago, and it's not in 15 minutes. It's now.

Finding a way to get present, to tap into your meat suit and the moment that it's experiencing, is an important skill. And it's one that's going to become increasingly important as Neptune spends the next many years moving through Aries—Aries, again, the zodiac sign governed by Mars, this pushy motherfucker that we are talking about right now.

Okay. Now, that brings us to our last exact transit of the week and the month. On Thursday, January 29th, at 2:17 a.m. Pacific Time, Mercury will be at 14 degrees of Aquarius and 57 minutes, and so will Venus. It's a Mercury/Venus conjunction. This transit is cute. She's cute. It's when your friendships and the affection you hold for them are all on the same page. It's a great time for building coalition with other people on a community level, for building intimacy or just reconnecting and connecting with friends, loved ones, coworkers, whatever.

If, in fact, there is some sort of project you're working on, whether it's at work or in some sort of other project, this is a good transit for connecting with people, for listening to them, making them feel valued, reaffirming shared values. It's a lovely transit, nothing major, to be honest. It happens pretty frequently. But it is a lovely transit to tap into, especially because the temperature is hot this week.

And so affirming shared values, just hanging out and going for a walk with a friend, is valuable. And I say going for a walk because Mercury is—it's a little bit about walking through your neighborhood. And so I want you to know that the energetics that I'm referring to are not literally using your peds, and it's not necessarily physically moving through your neighborhood. But it's about meandering and exploring and connecting to your immediate environs, which can be done online. It can be done in your apartment. It can be done on lots of levels.

Now, as a kind of hot heads-up, on Sunday, February 1st, we do have a Full Moon in Leo. Again, temperature is up right now. Two really important things for me to say about it, which I will repeat; don't worry. This Full Moon is just a Full Moon, but when it's over, Eclipse Season begins. So no big deal. Just a big deal. And this Full Moon in Leo is a reminder to take heart, to be brave. That's what Full Moons in Leo are so much about.

Love is not just a thing we experience with individual people. It's a thing we experience with the world, with life. Love is a motivation. Love is a practice. And I want to give you that to reflect on as we build towards that Full Moon in Leo on the 1st.

All right. That was a lot. Very briefly, I will remind you, on the 27th, Neptune moves into Aries; it is a big deal. On the 28th, Mars and Pluto meet up in Aquarius. And then, later in the week, on the 29th, Mercury and Venus meet up.

February is Black Love Month here on Ghost of a Podcast. And so, if you are part of the Black community or Black communities and you would like a reading on the podcast, go ahead and send a question to be considered for the show. And just make sure to put "Black Love" or "Black Joy" or "Black Futures" somewhere in your question. I will this month, as I do every year, prioritize giving readings to Black folks. And it doesn't have to be about romantic love. It's just for the love of fucking life. Am I right?

All right. Take really good care of yourself and others, and I will talk to you in just a couple of days. Bye.