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.

Hello, and welcome back to Ghost of a Podcast. This week, we're looking at the astrology of January 4th through the 10th of 2026. And there's a lot of transits, but I want to just give you a heads-up. You may have already heard the bonus episode of Ghost of a Podcast that comes out on the 1st of every month where I break down the astrology of the month ahead. If you have heard that, then you would know that the astrology of this month is intense. There's a lot of very confronting and conflictual energy at play.

This week has a little bit of that, but it actually has a lot of supportive transits. So, whatever you have going on this week, I want to invite you to center self-care, to center finding ease and pleasure where you can. I want to encourage you to do work that you need to do, to connect with your values or with what you value. I'll get into the details of this more in a second. But I think it's really important to tap into the assists that exist when they're available to you, and this week has a lot of assists.

Now, if you do want to hear the January month-ahead forecast, it's available wherever you listen to podcasts and over on my Patreon. And if you joined me for my live webinar, The Astrology of 2026, that I did with Tony Howard, thank you. It was so fun, and there were so many of you there. If you missed it but you still want to get it, just go to the shop page on my website over at lovelanyadoo.com/shop, and you can enjoy it whenever you like.

Okay. So let's look at the astrology of this week. So the first exact transit happens on Tuesday, January the 6th, where we have the Sun at 16 degrees of Capricorn and 22 minutes, and Venus is at the exact same place. And this is happening at 8:36 a.m. Pacific Time. This means the Sun and Venus are conjunct. Now, this transit is lovely. Honestly, it can make you feel a little lazy. It can make you feel a little self-indulgent. It's a transit for feeling nice, for feeling good. And there's a difference between feeling nice and feeling good. Feeling nice is keeping things kind of surface, and feeling good tends to be restorative and has deeper reverberations. It improves your welfare in deeper ways. But both of them are lovely.

The Sun conjunction to Venus can be a time where you just eat your bonbons on the couch, where you do as little as you need to do and just relax and enjoy the company of other people or enjoy music or movies or whatever it is that you vibe with. But it can also be a time where you can align with your values system, align with a sense of purpose. Venus is related to your values and, therefore, a sense of purpose. And the Sun and Venus in Capricorn is very instructive and practical.

So, if you've been trying to figure out what you truly care about, what your values system is, what priorities you want to organize your time and energies around, this is actually a really good transit for that. It's just not going to give you gumption, unfortunately. It's lacking in giddyap. But if you bring the giddyap to the transit, there's a lot to be gained.

Now, luckily, the queen of giddyap, Mars, is in the group chat. So, on Wednesday, the 7th of January, at exactly 6:43 p.m. Pacific Time, Venus will be at 18 degrees of Capricorn and 9 minutes, and so will Mars. So we have Mars, the planet of giddyap, and Venus, the planet of values, meeting up together in very practical Capricorn. This transit can bring about a lot of different things. It can activate your social life and just kind of put you in a frame of mind where you're having fun connecting with people. This can be a flirty transit. Venus is making out, and Mars is fornicating. Venus is kind of getting along, and Mars is chemistry. So it can be fun for flirting and dating and spending time with friends and all that kind of good stuff.

Somebody's gotta make shit happen socially. And when Venus and Mars meet up, that somebody tends to be motivated. So, whether it's you or a friend, let yourself be dragged out. Connect with people. This is a wonderful transit—no downside.

Now, on a different level, Venus conjunction to Mars can be a time where you can really consider your finances and your values in relationship to them. You might make some changes in how you spend your money or where you spend your money. This transit can coincide with you really being motivated to do values-based work. So, whether it's super deep or the transit functions on more of a superficial level, the mashup of a Sun, Mars, and Venus conjunction in Capricorn is a time where you can get things done, when you can organize based on meaning and capacity. The meaning we're going to get from Venus, and your capacity is Mars. Remember, Mars isn't just motivation and what you do; it's also embodiment. So there's a lot of things that you can do that would kind of require you to leave your body in order to do them or to abandon the needs of your physical health.

All of this Capricorn energy is helping you to have a more realistic assessment of what you can and can't do and what's in alignment. So do your best to tap into this energy because it's really useful.

And that brings us to the 9th. On Friday, the 9th, it starts to busy up. We've got the Sun and Mars both at 19 degrees of Capricorn and 13 minutes, so that's a Sun/Mars conjunction exact at 3:41 a.m. Pacific Time. And then, later that morning at 9:35 a.m. Pacific Time, Venus will be at 20 degrees of Cap and 12 minutes, sitting perfectly opposite to Jupiter at the same degrees of Cancer.

So the combination is noteworthy. The Sun/Mars conjunction can make you annoying. I mean, not you personally, but also, yeah, you personally. It makes me annoying and you annoying. Everybody's annoying, and everybody is annoyed. It is an agitated, agitating transit. It is a transit where you might just feel defensive, frustrated, easily blocked. You might be feeling impatient and restless. You might feel that things are blocking you, or, conversely, you might feel really motivated and revved up to make shit happen. It really depends on how this hits your birth chart.

Either way, the Sun conjunction to Mars is a time where you want to be mindful about picking your battles wisely. Just because you're annoyed doesn't mean you get to act out against other people or yourself. This is a time where you want to pace yourself, both in physical activity so that you don't get into an accident because you're just kind of acting without consideration, but also pace yourself in your dealings with other people.

Everybody's going through this transit, and so everybody is likely to be a little reactive or easily activated, especially in their ego because Mars governs the ego. So watch your defenses and be mindful about triggering other people's defenses without even realizing it. This transit can coincide with ego conflicts, as you could imagine. But luckily, Venus opposite Jupiter puts us all in a much more forgiving state of mind.

This transit, Venus opposite Jupiter, is great for socializing because it makes you feel gregarious and open to connecting with people and having new experiences. It can make you feel really friendly, really open, really flirty. And the combination can be great if you're going out and socializing or dating and hooking up with people. This can be a really good time if you're out trying to mingle with the people—you know what I mean?—whether you're single or not. However you do you, you do you.

But it can also be that your ego is activated because of that Sun/Mars conjunction, but you kind of are disingenuous and dishonest in efforts to keep the peace because of that Venus/Pluto opposition. Now, that might not be you, but you might be dealing with somebody else who behaves this way. Their actions are loud, but they're trying to cover it up with niceties. Be mindful about doing that, and if you catch somebody else doing that, don't take it personally. That's a reflection of them.

Whenever we go through transits, whether they're easy or challenging, whether they bring light into our lives or they force us to deal with a struggle that we don't really know how to engage with—whatever it is, it ultimately reveals you to yourself. It creates space for other people to reveal themselves to you. This information is useful. Strive to make use of it, not by jumping to conclusions or condemning yourself or others to whatever judgments you have, but by being interested in what's going on in your relationships, what's going on inside of you. And consider whether or not it lines up with your values system, because if you're acting in ways that don't reflect your values, it's time for a change. If your relationships do not feel safe, if they're not authentic, maybe it's time for a change. And it's a new year, so why not be open to change? Why not be open to change?

And that, my friends, brings us to Saturday, January the 10th. At 12:42 a.m. Pacific Time, the Sun is exactly opposite to Jupiter. And then, later that morning, at 6:25 a.m. Pacific Time, Mars is exactly opposite to Jupiter as well. So the Sun and Mars are still right on top of each other. They are one minute apart. So we've got this Sun/Mars energy, right? And Sun/Mars energy is activating your ego, your motivation, your passions. That's what the transit does. And depending on what's happening in your life and where you're at, that might be really frustrating, and it might be really exciting.

And along comes Jupiter. So Jupiter sitting opposite to the Sun and to Mars is expanding the energy and experience of the Sun/Mars conjunction. So, whatever it is you're feeling the 8th/the 9th is going to just kind of get bigger come the 10th and 11th. This transit is not bad, and it's not good. The oppositions between the Sun and Mars and Jupiter—what they do is they can make you feel more optimistic, more resilient, more brave. They can expand your sense of courage, your sense of excitement, and your willingness to have experiences, so not to just theorize about things, but to actually get in there and get messy with it, like in a fun way. In a fun way. Jupiter tends to be more on the fun side.

The downside is Jupiter is a jump in the pool before checking if there's any water in it kind of guy. And so these transits can really expand the impulsiveness and the restlessness of the Sun/Mars conjunction. You may find yourself acting out in ways that you were not expecting. Your energy may be all over the damn place. You may do something and then realize that you've put your sweet, little foot all the way in your sweet, little mouth because Jupiter does that. Or it might not be that the transits are landing that way for you, but other people might be just driving too fast in the road, acting in ways that are competitive or just taking up a lot of space in ways that trigger you or activate you.

The problem with these transits is that they're a lot all at once. In the world, we may see religiously inspired acts of violence. We may see people acting out impulsively, crimes-of-passion style. This is not necessarily bad or good. We are looking at actions, actions that come out of strong impulses. And sometimes that's what we need to move the needle forward in something in our lives, in our internal development, or in regards to something happening in the world. And then sometimes those kinds of actions are destructive. They might not be intended as destructive, but they land as destructive.

What we want to remember during these two transits is that intent is not equal to impact. And if you don't take a beat, check in with your motivations, do a temperature check of what's happening around you, then you may act in ways that don't land the way you expect them to. And then you have to deal with that. And you know what? Okay. You deal with it. You deal with it. Life is full of things you deal with.

But know that following the flow of energy when we're going through all of these transits—the Sun/Mars conjunction and both of those planets opposite Jupiter—what we know is that the flow of energy is kind of like a raging rapid. And so it's not super reliable. It's something you're going to have to wrestle with. And good things can come of it, for sure. But being intentional and staying connected to your environment is really going to help, like really going to help.

And that, my friends, is your forecast for the week of January 4th through 10th of 2025. Now, I'm going to tell you something. It's my damn birthday. I am a January 11th baby. And so this week and next week's horoscopes are going to be a little shorter than normal because I'm giving myself a little birthday break, but I can't leave you. I can't stop sharing the forecast of the week ahead. But I can tell you that these episodes are going to be just a little bit shorter.

Now, that said, let me just run through the transits because that was a lot of transits, and I went through them pretty quickly. Let me run through the transits one more time for you. On the 6th, the Sun and Venus are conjoined in Capricorn. On the 7th, Venus and Mars are conjoined in Capricorn. On the 9th, the Sun and Mars are conjoined in Capricorn, and Venus in Capricorn is opposite to Jupiter. And then, on the 10th, the Sun and Mars both sit opposite to Jupiter in Cancer.

Now, as always, if you want to learn more with me, join me over on my Patreon, where I post all the damn time, even during my birthday week. And if you want to learn more about the astrology of this month and of the year ahead, I have got you covered with lots of resources. So you can check out my website for all of that.

And I'm going to say one more thing about my birthday, which is I'm turning 51 years old. Let's normalize women talking about their age. I am proud to be 51. I have a lifetime of experience behind me, and you only get that through aging. So I would like to welcome you to my crone era here on Ghost of a Podcast. I'm ready to embrace it, and I hope you embrace whatever it is that you are growing into this year and beyond.

All right. That's it for Ghost of a Podcast this week. I will talk to you soon. Take good care of yourself and others. Buh-bye.