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 February 1st through the 7th of 2026. We start off with a Full Moon in Leo. I want to invite you, though, first, to check out my bonus episode of Ghost of a Podcast. I drop it on the 1st of every month, and it is a look at the month ahead so you can understand kind of the big picture of what's happening astrologically throughout the month and also get ahead of all of the intense happenings that we can expect throughout the month of February 2026. You can get that pretty much wherever you listen to podcasts or over on my Patreon.

The other invitation I would like to extend to you is specific to the Black community. Every Black History Month, for years and years on the podcast, I center Black love, Black futures, Black thriving, Black joy, through offering readings to folks of the Black community on the podcast. So send a question to be considered for the podcast through the contact form on my website at ghostofapodcast.com.

Okay. So, like I said, we start off this month with a Full Moon. Of course, I'm going to unpack the chart. I want to just take a moment to acknowledge all of the brave activists and concerned citizens in Minnesota and around the United States fighting ICE and protecting neighbors. I want to also acknowledge the fear that so many racialized and marginalized people are living with in the United States and how it's growing. And I know everybody is scared because it's a terrifying shift that has occurred and is occurring. It's speeding up, unfortunately—the incarceration of journalists, the killing of people on the streets as they peacefully protest or watch and report on what the militarized goons of ICE are doing in the name of—what? Immigration? Public safety? None of it's true. None of it's true.

I woke up this morning feeling just really demoralized, feeling the weight of fear and the weight of heartbreak. I know I'm not alone to have woken up this morning with this feeling. But in the course of systemic repression and oppression, in the course of systemic injustice, there are going to be bad days and good days. There are going to be bad hours and good hours. And what's so important within this is that you stay connected to the principles, values, and spiritual convictions that motivate you to do what's right because it's right and not because of attachment to outcome. Listen. We all want freedom and dignity and justice. We all want the ability to just fucking live our lives and for our neighbors to be able to do the damn same.

But on those days where it's hard to figure out what to do, where it's hard to get the motivation to get out of bed or to do something—because these are extreme times where we must all find a way to participate in furthering justice, in furthering safety, in furthering our collective welfare—it is important that you do what's right because it's right, more than for attention, more than for clear indication that your efforts are working. When it comes to fighting systemic issues, it can take a long time. And it is psychologically, emotionally, spiritually exhausting to put yourself out there, to try, and not see progress that you want to see.

It's exhausting on all those levels to see people suffer, to suffer yourself. There are so many things to be said about this. But, one, I want to say as an astrologer looking at all of the signs, when we are fueled by hate and division, they win. When we collapse in overwhelm, they win. And when we turn away from our neighbors, when we turn away from people who are being oppressed and repressed by the system, they win. So do what you can to protect the most vulnerable amongst you from them.

All right. Let's dive in to the first exact transit of this week. It's the Full Moon in Leo. This month and this week starts off on Sunday, February the 1st, with a Full Moon in Leo. This is exact at 2:09 p.m. Pacific Time, with the Sun at 13 degrees of Aquarius and 3 minutes, and the Moon at the same degrees of Leo.

The first thing to note is that the zodiac sign of Leo is the zodiac sign that's ruled by the Sun. And so, when we have a Full Moon in Leo, it brings about a great deal of Solar energy into the mix. And what is Solar energy if not alignment, authenticity, presence? It's not all it is, but that's the best of what it is.

This Full Moon in Leo is kind of a shake-up so that you can feel into authenticity. And what that looks like or feels like in practice is actually feeling into the ways in which you are not living authentically, whether you are distanced from yourself, from reality, you're not showing up in ways that are authentic to you.

The tension between Leo and Aquarius is really the tension between centering just yourself and centering the whole, the many. It's the tension between needing attention and participating in a group and allowing yourself to be a part as opposed to the centerpiece. Leo, like Aries but different, can kind of lean into main character energy. And that's not inherently bad. But it can find you in a state where you don't know how to play well with others, or centering yourself distances you from authentic connection.

Leo, as well as Aquarius—right, because it's the tension between the two—is fixed. These are fixed signs. Leo is fixed fire, and Aquarius is fixed air. And so what we know about this Full Moon and this moment is that it is engaging you and us in places where we are not inherently adaptable or flexible. So make sure that this Full Moon, on and around this date—because this Full Moon is in Leo, but also, we are in a moment that is very abundant with fixed air energy, in other words, Aquarius energy—that you are being mindful, challenging yourself to stay present with the ways in which you are not feeling adaptable, where you're stuck in your ways, where you are convicted that the way it is is the only way it can ever be because the truth of the matter is everything changes. Everything can change.

And a Full Moon in Leo is an opportunity to bring the fullness of your heart to the moment. Leo is about passion, alignment, courage. The more you can tap into those feelings inside of yourself, your capacity for those feelings, the more you allow those things to drive you, the better this Full Moon.

Now, in this Full Moon chart, we've got Pluto and Mars pretty damn close to each other in Aquarius. We've got the Sun sitting in a Venus/Mars sandwich, all in Aquarius. And Mercury and Venus are also real close to each other in Aquarius. And so what we know is this is a lot of Aquarius energy. And because of Mars's and Pluto's proximity, there's likely to be power struggles. Those power struggles may be deeply inside of you. They may exist between you and someone else or something else. It may be in the community at-large or the larger society that we are living in—I mean the fucking world; am I right?

How you emotionally process on a really personal level those threats is all about you. It's not just about your circumstances. It's about how you process emotions inside of your circumstances. And that's part of the challenge of this Full Moon. We also know, because of the Mars/Sun/Venus/Mercury sandwich, that it's relational. On top of it, of course, Aquarius tends to be quite relational—although Aquarius energies—you know, the internet likes to really focus on the humanitarian part of Aquarius, which is a huge part. It's all about groups and communities and coming together.

Aquarius energies are really humanitarian at core. But Aquarius also governs tech and tech communities, which can be deeply isolationist, which can be really individualistic. Aquarius has many facets, like every other zodiac sign does, because we're not just talking about key words. We're talking about understanding the zodiac or the planets in general as energy that functions in certain ways. And at its very best, it functions in some ways, and at its very worst in others. And who's to decide what is best and worst? This is one of the philosophical questions that we must all grapple with in life.

But whether you are dealing with your internal world where you are thinking about or emotionally processing through your place with others or in community or in society, whether you're struggling with people directly connected to you—coworkers, neighbors, friends, dates, whatever—or you're engaging with the larger Aquarian energy of you in the context of community and society—on whatever level this is playing out, don't forget this truth, which is we need each other. You need other people, and other people need you.

Don't diminish or aggrandize yourself in such a way that it bars you from authentic connection. And guess what: authentic connection includes conflict, disappointment, hurt. Authentic connection is not inherently lovely feelings or negative feelings. It's just authentic connection. And when you diminish yourself and you make yourself small or you shit on yourself, or you aggrandize yourself and you say to yourself, "I'm better than other people. My perspectives are infallible, and other people's are wrong," then you start to have real problems.

And a Full Moon in Leo, which is sitting opposite to Mars, the Sun, and Venus, is going to bring up these kinds of tensions. It's supposed to bring up tensions. And so, if you're engaged in community work or mutual aid, there may be more ego conflicts or passionate disagreements. It is easy to snap to judgment, but it's not always wise. Instead, what I want to invite you to do is hang out with the emotional messiness, the emotional messiness of your own fixed energies, your own dogged convictions and inflexibilities, and be curious about them. Be compassionate towards them. And then hold that same space for others.

There is no one who is perfect. There is no one who's going to get it right all the time. And if you can hold space for that, that doesn't mean that you therefore start eating shit from other people when they act fucked up towards you. If you can accept that you are not perfect and they are not perfect, then when somebody else's imperfections impact you in a harmful way, you have boundaries. You center clear self-care. And that is not a carceral, punishing, and aggressive way of rejecting other people. It is, instead, a way of choosing yourself.

And here's the thing about Leo. Leo is associated with royalty. The concept of royalty, of being a queen or a king or a goddess or a god, is inherently hierarchical. It is being above others. And that's problematic. It can be problematic. If you've got a lot of Leo in your chart, you may disagree with me, and I respect that. But holding space for our differences, holding space for each individual to be powerful without then diminishing yourself or needing to make sure that other people perceive you as powerful if you're going to perceive them as powerful—that is the opportunity here with this Full Moon in Leo.

It's not easy. None of this is easy. Here's a hot take. You wouldn't be struggling with the lesson if you already had learned it. The struggles that we have whenever we hit a Full Moon, the struggles that we have whenever we engage with a person or a situation—they are things that we theoretically need to learn or we could benefit from learning. And then sometimes life is just shit, and there's shitty things that happen, and there's no lesson to learn. But even within those shitty situations, we have the opportunity to choose to center something of value. I want to encourage you to try that out. Just try it on.

Venus conjunction to the Sun, which is active in this Full Moon, is connecting you with your values system. Mars conjunction to the Sun is connecting you with your motivations. Can you be motivated by your values system and authenticity? It's emotionally very hard to do. It's practically very hard to do. It's a challenge, and it's a challenge of humanity, of centering and choosing your humanity and holding space for other people's humanity at the same time—and not just your friends' humanity, not just your allies, but everyone's humanity, because if your version of humanity is for some people but not the bad people, not the other people, then the question is where does that logic end?

This Full Moon may kick up anger, defensiveness, aggression. It may kick up really intense and dramatic emotions. And I want to say be curious about it. Be curious about what you feel. Be curious about how other people feel. And that doesn't mean abandon boundaries. It just means strive to be adaptable when you are encountering resistance and fixedness inside of yourself or in dynamic.

That brings us to Monday, February the 2nd, at exactly 4:33 p.m. Pacific Time, when Mercury is at 23 degrees of Aquarius and 3 minutes, forming an exact sextile to Chiron at the same degrees of Aries. So Mercury sextile to Chiron is a lovely transit as far as Chiron transits go. But I will say that whenever we go through transits to or from Chiron or Pluto, there tends to be some intensity.

Because Chiron is about core wounding, what can happen is we are confronted with challenges. And in this case, it's challenges around your thinking, challenges around how you process information, how you learn, how you connect to other people, or your friendships in general, your ideas and your plans. But happily, this transit is supportive. And so it favors having healing conversations. It favors therapy, going deep into something that is typically kind of painful but being able to process through old beliefs that are limiting or limited that you want to work on healing through.

And keep in mind this is Mercury in Aquarius, so we're staying on topic with that Full Moon chart and all the stuff we've been talking about. Mercury sextile to Chiron is a great time to have hard conversations, to think about thinking, honestly. How do you think about thinking? It's noticing your assumptions, noticing the language you use in your thoughts, the tone of voice you speak to yourself in. It's noticing your assumptions and how you listen.

I will never stop talking about how Mercury is not just about what you blah, blah, blah. It's how you take in information and process it. And so listening is an auditory thing, but it's also a cognitive thing. It's a processing thing. Mercury sextile to Chiron represents a time where you can listen effectively, and therefore, it's a good time for writing, reading, communicating, listening, adapting your plans or considering your plans in a new way.

This transit may coincide with important news breaks that we want to pay attention to, or it might coincide with you figuring out a way to find and consume news that is actually sustainable for how your mind works. Mercury is your mind. It's not your whole, entire psychology, but it is your mind. And so a transit like Mercury sextile to Chiron is especially helpful when we're thinking about how we think.

And so there's a lot of ways that people process information. There's a lot of ways of pathologizing that or astrologizing that. And that might be really helpful for you. But I also want to invite you this Mercury sextile to Chiron moment to just actually listen to yourself. Just listen to yourself. Just talk to yourself. Actually listen to other people. Just listen. You know what I mean? I know it sounds so small, but most of us don't do it a lot of the time. Listen. And as you listen, your ideas may shift. Be open to that. This transit can be really helpful for shifting your thinking, changing your mind, learning something new, or going deeper into any of these things, including your friendships.

That brings us to our next exact transit, which is another sextile to Chiron. It's happening on Wednesday, the 4th of February, at exactly 2:23 p.m. Pacific Time. And this sextile is from Venus. So we have Venus at 23 degrees of Aquarius and 7 minutes forming an exact sextile to Chiron at the same degrees of Aries. Venus sextile to Chiron brings up issues of self-worth. It can bring up old, wounded, insecure, vulnerable issues of self-worth so that you can apply your adult values system to them and evolve and grow and even heal.

This transit is really useful. It's really valuable because it helps you to work through old beliefs that keep you insecure, that keep you small, that keep you separate or distanced from your body and embodiment because Chiron is in Aries. This is a good time to connect with friends, lovers, allies, community members, because Venus is all about heartfelt connections. It's love-based connections, so not necessarily in love, but in like for sure. Mercury is your friends, and Venus is more loving, intimate connections. These two transits of Mercury and Venus sextiling Chiron are really good or deepening connections with yourself and others. But again, it's a little bit by overcoming or moving through some blockages that exist.

Venus is your values system. It's the values that guide you and that underpin your assumptions, beliefs, and behaviors. And so, when Venus forms a sextile to Chiron, you can explore your values and your vulnerabilities with more confidence. There's energy supporting you to grow. And when we do this in community—Venus is in Aquarius, right? If we do this in community, it can be really powerful, and it can signal major motion and movement within our movements, within our communities.

This week in general, this day in particular, is a good one for thinking about self-worth, for noticing how your self-worth functions. For some people, it's defensive and reactive. For some people, it's internal. For other people, it feels really distant and far away. And there's a million other options. Reflect on your relationship to self-worth because our self-worth as individuals is foundational to how we connect with others, how we share of ourselves, how we meet the moment, and our sense of resiliency at the end of the day.

Now, I should mention, now that we're a couple days out from the Full Moon in Leo, that we are now in what is officially deemed Eclipse Season. We will have our first Eclipse, which is a Solar Eclipse, on the 17th of February. Now, I don't want you to jump ahead and overthink it, because Eclipses, like Full Moons, are emotional events. So I want to encourage you, as preparation for the first Eclipse, to practice being emotionally present, to practice feeling your damn feelings—feeling your damn feelings, see? So simple, but so hard, especially as things are chaotic and overwhelming and scary right now.

In Eclipse Season, the temperature gets turned up. The volume of our emotions and our unconscious gets louder. It gets more intense. And that makes it harder to process pretty much everything. So a transit like Venus sextile to Chiron is especially instructive and helpful because it connects you with your values, which can help to guide you as you navigate challenging emotions in yourself and in your interactions with other people. So emotions running high—meet the moment in ways that reflect your values and your self-worth.

And that, my friends, brings us to the last exact transit of this week. On Thursday, February the 5th, Mercury forms an exact square to Uranus. Now, Uranus is a big player in the astrology of this month. We're going to be experiencing squares to Uranus every damn week of February. And that means that we are going to be on shaky ground. That's what time it is. It's Eclipse Season. Mercury goes Retrograde at the end of the month. And it's a Uranus square week.

So expect the unexpected. We are all being challenged to navigate through the unpredictable. And within that exists possibility, so much possibility. That's the thing about squares to Uranus, is they are destabilizing. They can be disruptive. They are certainly unpredictable, and they can be chaotic. But there's also so much energy for change, for adaptation, for exploration and innovation. And we need all of those things right now. I need those things in my life. Don't you need those things in your life? I mean, when do we not?

But this is a time for Uranus. It requires adaptability. Now, it doesn't give you adaptability; it just requires adaptability. That, we need to work on. So let's talk about this Mercury square to Uranus. Mercury is your mind. Uranus is your nervous system. So how you process data, how you process stress, how you process new ideas and connections, and how you process the unexpected, like interruptions to your plans and ideas—that's all fucking Mercury square Uranus shit, all of it.

This transit brings about disruptions so that you adapt. Now, does that mean we're constantly needing to change? No. Adaptation is not necessarily about changing. It's about shifting. When I think about what Uranus wants, sometimes Uranus splits the earth in two and asks you to make a choice, to change. But sometimes it's more like riding a skateboard or a surfboard. It's about finding your balance when there's not a stable, secure ground underneath you, when there's movement.

And when that movement is unpredictable and out of your control, can you center yourself? Can you find your anchor inside of yourself? Mercury square to Uranus asks that question. Can you change your mind without losing your identity? Can you hold space for different opinions without it somehow invalidating your worldview? For a lot of people, the answer is no. But that's what Mercury square to Uranus is trying to get you to do.

Build new coalitions. Have new ideas. Explore new possibilities. If there is some sort of tension between you and a friend, this transit can bring it up. This transit is nothing like Mercury Retrograde, but what I'm going to say sounds Mercury Retrogrady. It's this: we can have technological difficulties during a Mercury square to Uranus. You're in a meeting; your internet crashes. You thought you sent an email—it was important. It never got sent—that kind of shit.

And this is because we're moving too fast. Uranus makes us move really fast. We're moving too fast, and we don't clock things. Or simply, the energy is just fucking bananas, and the energy is too much. And so there's some sort of overload. You thought you hit Send; you didn't. Anyways, this is a great time to explore your relationship to technology. It's a great time to divest from big tech in whatever ways you can, small or large.

This is a great time to explore ideas, but what you want to avoid—this is the shit side of this transit—is being dogmatic. It's demanding that people perceive things the way you perceive them, that they agree with your ideas or your methods, your plans. This transit can bring about rigidity of the nth degree in your thinking, in your communication, in your friendships, and in your plans.

So do your best to meet that rigidity with curiosity because curiosity creates an opening for you to explore pathways. Sometimes you're curious and you explore options, and you end up doing what you planned on doing to begin with. Fantastic. Sometimes not. When we open our minds, we create the energy of openness. And within that, opportunities, ideas, connections may emerge in ways that you're really clear about because they're obvious as hell or in more subtle ways that are like seeds that eventually grow into something that you recognize and that you can work with consciously.

When Mercury forms a square to Uranus, I'm always mindful that breaking news is not inherently reliable. This is a pretty chaotic, communication-oriented transit. And so there may be misinformation, disinformation, or propaganda campaigns we want to be mindful of. We want to do our own part by making sure that we're not unwittingly spreading chaos or misinformation. And there's ways you can do that. They all require that you move a little bit more slowly through your internet-based or communication-based behaviors.

This transit can find you just really fucking activated in the mind. Things might be moving really quickly. You might be having lots of social things or lots of work things come up. And also, your mind just might be zing-zing-zingy. So what can you do to tend to your nervous system? What can you do to create conscientious pauses between ideas that activate your mind or your nerves? You already have ideas around this. You already have resources around this. And I only know this because we all have the same internet, and the internet gives us endless resources.

So it's not enough that we data collect. We must apply the information that we cultivate. We must apply ideas. Mercury square Uranus teaches us this, and it teaches us the pain of not prioritizing self-care, of not tending to our nerves and our mind and our friends. If you have been remiss and you've not reached out to your friends lately, this is a great transit to do it. Just don't expect an answer, because everyone's busy today and around this day.

So, whether this transit is exciting and fun and dynamic or it's confronting and challenging and chaotic, the medicine is the same. Meet the moment. There is no rush. Strive to be open and curious. That's the assignment.

And that's this week's horoscope. So quick run-through of the transits of this week. On the 1st, we have a Full Moon in Leo. On the 2nd, Mercury forms an exact sextile to Chiron. And then, on the 4th, Venus does the same. And finally, on the 5th, Mercury forms an exact square to Uranus.

As always, if you get value from this podcast, please consider hitting that Follow button or subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Do what you can to show up for yourself and others, and I will talk to you in just a couple of days.