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 are looking at the astrology of October 4th through the 10th of 2026. Last week's forecast was a lot to take in, and now that you've lived through last week, you may be able to track and place how those energies ran through your life.

And so I want to invite you, if you have a minute, to just—maybe you'll pause the podcast in a second and just think about how those particular transits that were going on, that were potentially really stressful and upsetting, that potentially provoked a lot of mental health stuff, power struggles with other people, or, on the positive side, bravery, energy, kind of a little bit of moxie, excitement.

Notice how those transits played out for you because, as valuable as these forecasts are, I hope, it's really important that we don't just look forward with the tool of astrology, but we use it as a resource for reflection. It's through reflection that self-awareness really can get solidified. Now, we don't want to spend all our time in the past or the future. The present is where it's at. But we do want to make sure that we are paying attention to how energies play through our lives. That way, we know where our struggles are, where our strengths are, and therefore what we need to work on and how we can work on them.

So just take a minute. Think it through. Reflect. And know that we are still feeling the effects of that Mercury square to Mars and Pluto. We're also very much still feeling the effects of that Mars opposition to Pluto. So the intense and potentially motivating or activating energies of last week's transits are still very much present at the start of this week.

And this week, we have the ongoing transit of Venus Retrograde in Scorpio. And so reflecting on how things play out in your relationships, how you do or don't compromise on your values when you feel scared, when you feel backed into a corner, when you feel ambitious—whatever the case might be—this is really good work for you to pursue during a Venus Retrograde.

Just take a second. Hang out with those thoughts, and know that if you ever have questions about stuff I say on this podcast, I am just one person, and so I'm not on all the platforms.  I don't spend my time on all the platforms responding to comments, because I personally can't do that. So there's one place that I do that, and it's on my Patreon. And that includes for folks who join Patreon for free and just want to ask me questions about shit I say on the podcast. That is where I can focus my energy and share thoughtful responses. So, if that is something that you would like from this podcast, join me over there, again, for free if you like, or on one of the paid tiers. That's where the conversation occurs. That's where I can show up.

And I want to encourage you, just as a hot aside, to also have healthy boundaries with how you engage with social media, how you engage with on-demand culture of the internet. It's great to have boundaries that reflect your self-awareness of what you can do in a healthy way. It's great to kind of hang out and push your boundaries now and again, to kind of check out, "Is there room for growth here? Should I pull back? Should I expand?" And that's what I do. I try to practice that, and I encourage you to practice that. So, for me, Patreon is where I show up the most. So hot tip. Take it or leave it, my friend.

Okay. We're going to dive into this week's forecast, and it starts with a challenging transit that you've already been feeling, whether you were aware of it or not. On Sunday, October 4th—may the 4th be with you—we have an exact opposition between the Sun and Saturn. The Sun will be at 11 degrees of Libra and 18 minutes, forming an exact opposition to Saturn at the same degrees of Aries. This is exact at 5:29 a.m. Pacific Time.

All right. So this transit is tricky. It is confronting. So, as my good students of astrology will know, when we're going through a transit that is an opposition, it's always me confronted by you or us confronted by them. It's experienced oppositionally. The answer is in the name. And so we know that whenever there's a difficult opposition between something like the Sun—which is your identity, your vitality, your sense of self—and Saturn—which is obligation, responsibility, wisdom, maturity—we're going to have some issues.

This transit may make you feel isolated and lonely because it can intensify feelings of, "I was born alone and I'll die alone"—kind of heavy, existential, or even nihilistic feelings. This transit can also bring up very real differences between you and others. We are dealing not just with an opposition but an opposition between the zodiac sign of Libra, which is very relational, and Aries, which is very individualistic.

And so a Sun opposition to Saturn in these signs is going to potentially bring up dynamics for you in your relationships or in your relationship to relationships. Here's what you should know here. While you may become aware of very real problems between you and someone else, Saturn puts you and everyone else in a negative frame of mind. You might be just feeling low vitality, can't find the damn spoons to do a thing. You may be feeling really guilty or like you're putting a lot of pressure on yourself to show up. And in fact, if you missed the most recent reading on my midweek episode of this podcast, it was all about guilt and how to navigate it. So you may want to check that shit out just in time for this opposition.

The transit of the Sun opposite Saturn inherently is here to show you limitations. So those limitations may be a part of your identity. There's ways that we really identify with things that maybe we don't always have to. Maybe we do. But in any case, you may be highly identified with a limitation. You may feel that you are doing your best to show up and people or circumstances are the problem, and they're what's limiting you; they're what's impeding you.

Saturn is related to both growth—but growth like a goat walking up the mountain, the kind of progress that happens with climbing—or limitation, like calcification, things getting small and rigid. The tricky thing here is to sift through what you're feeling, what you're experiencing, and what your impulses are—that's related to the Sun—before you solidify your response. Your reactions are allowed to be whatever the fuck they are.

My friend, you are entitled to all of your emotions, all of your thoughts. We are not, however, entitled to any action, any words, any treatment of self or others. What we want to be able to do is sift through our reactions and our feelings and our impulses to be able to identify, "Okay, what of this is a reaction to, actually, my childhood shit? What of this is a reaction to, actually, 'I'm in a fucking mood today'? And what in this is a reaction to what this person is actually saying and doing and what actually is required of me if I am to be the steward of myself and this relationship or this dynamic or this project?" You get where I'm going.

This transit wants to teach you how to be wise, how to be accountable, how to be responsible. And these things may not sound super sexy and fun, but they're actually really useful, and they're really valuable to you and to all the people and things that you care about. So it is possible you will encounter some sort of hardship, some sort of resistance to your plans or resistance to you, period. This could look like something like having just a really awkward interaction with someone that leaves you feeling funky. It doesn't have to be super heavy, but it can land heavy. Saturn—what are you going to do?

This transit may also kind of confront you with the consequences of how you've been, of choices you've made or chances you didn't take. And Saturn governs guilt because Saturn governs consequences. Saturn governs guilt because it governs humility. And the healthy embodiment of Saturn is, of course, humility. It's like, "Oh shit. I misstepped over there. I didn't handle it the way I wish I had. I didn't learn that lesson, and here I am repeating it. I'm going to be accountable to that. I'm going to cultivate wisdom even when that comes through taking Ls," versus, "I feel guilty for the things I did or didn't do, and I can't get past it because guilt is such a hard emotion to get past."

Guilt is not true accountability. And many of us struggle with guilt. I would say most of us struggle with guilt. It's a really important impulse, thought, emotion—however we want to characterize guilt—to acknowledge and to develop a healthy relationship with. That's the lesson and the opportunity of a Sun opposition to Saturn.

If there's really tedious work that you need to do, this transit can help you with that. If there is something that requires patience, perseverance, consistency, again, this transit can be really helpful for that. It also, actually, helps that the Mars opposition to Pluto is active at this time because it deepens focus and concentration.

The problem is these transits—as much as they are good for focus and concentration, they make you impatient. And the reason why the impatience comes up is because of emotions. It's because it's hard to sit with challenging, overwhelming emotions. And what most humans do is our survival mechanism kicks in, and we do whatever we can to evade and avoid our emotions. And so we don't stick with them enough to actually move through them and get the wisdom that they actually have to offer.

Your most toxic, your most stuck, your most rigid impulses actually have something to teach you about yourself and your responses to the world or how you navigate stress. But it's hard to get those golden nuggets when you're avoiding the emotion or tamping it down or punishing yourself or acting out, etc.

So my advice to you during this Sun opposition to Saturn in this Venus Retrograde moment, where Mars and Pluto are still opposite—I know it's a lot. My advice to you is to strive to be accountable. It's to be curious about your own reactions and responses so that you might actually learn something about yourself and how you process data, how you feel about this person, how this situation is actually working for you.

Being able to be aware intellectually is great, but if it is not paired with emotional self-awareness—which happens in the present moment, not reviewing the past or projecting into the future. It happens here and now. If you don't have the capacity to do that, then what you're likely to find is that you end up repeating the same shit over and over and again.

It's the present moment where choices are made. It's the present moment where emotions occur. And so this Sun opposition to Saturn in this very Venus Retrograde moment is your invitation to be in this present moment, even if you don't know how and it's uncomfortable.

Now, that brings us to our good-news transits of the week. Thank you. We have some. On October the 6th, which is a Tuesday, we have a Mercury conjunction to Venus Retrograde at 8 degrees of Scorpio and 13 minutes. This transit is lovely. It is really Mercury pushing that Venus Retrograde for greater self-reflection because Mercury is your mind. Mercury is analytic. It's what you think. It's how you process information. It's also how you listen.

And listening—oh, listening. Listening is where it's at. I know. I know it is sometimes very hard to listen to other people. If you know you disagree with them, if they are communicating in a way that is hard for you to take in, it is hard to listen to other people. But it's essential. If we are to really get the lessons of Venus Retrograde—it's how to relate to others in a way that reflects your values, the values you hold, the value you hold in your relationship to self—we call that self-worth—as well as the value that you perceive and want to honor in your relationship to other people, like in your care of other people—then it's important to listen to them.

And it's really, really hard at times. Anyone who says, "Oh, no, I don't have a hard time listening to people," I'm just like, "Please. We all do." And that's because of a myriad of factors, including our own insecurities, our own busyness and distractions, the different ways in which we process really important things and really subtle whatevery things. We all struggle with this, and being honest about that empowers us to start to unpack it and get through it and figure out the healthiest, kindest way forward.

Now, Mercury conjunction to Venus is one of those transits where it's just like you connect to people. You chat with friends. It's a great time for socializing. It's a great time for any kind of creative project, like an artistic creative project that requires you to sort through ideas and figure shit out, basically. That's what this transit is really great for.

It doesn't have a downside. It might make things a little bit more intense, but they are intense. So meeting people and being able to have a conversation about something that might at other times feel like it's a little too deep—that's great. I think that's great. It's really important that you have places that you can go where you can talk to people about the shit that's real for you. And a transit like this is actually quite supportive for that.

So, if somebody says, "Oh, I've had the worst day. I'm so stressed, and I have 50 things to do after I hang out with you," listen to them. Maybe that's not the time to have your deep conversation, right? Maybe you don't bring your agenda. But the thing that you can do is pivot. So this is where the other part of this transit comes in that's lovely, which is adaptability.

The transits we've been going through so far in October—yeah, they don't bring adaptability. It's difficult to change. But this transit does bring adaptability. So lean in, my friend. Be curious. Be curious about what's happening internally. Be curious about what's happening externally. And strive to be adaptable when it's needed.

The next day, on Wednesday, the 7th, at 3:42 a.m., Mars will be at 5 degrees of Leo and 24 minutes, forming an exact sextile to Uranus at the same degrees of Gemini. So this is really great news. We've had some rough energy from Mars very recently, as you know. But Mars sextile to Uranus is a really wonderful transit.

Mars is motivation and energy and power, and Uranus is progress and new possibilities. Uranus is related to innovation and eccentricity. So this is a transit that supports you in doing shit differently, in making changes and exploring different ways of being, different ways of acting, and different motivations to fire off from.

This is a great time for hooking up and any kind of sexual exploration. It's a great transit for exploring different approaches with your projects, like different ways of doing things. Mars sextile Uranus is actually a really great time for a drive. I don't know. The price of gas is—are we driving? Electric cars, I guess.

But Mars sextile Uranus is fun. It's a transit that promotes you exploring new approaches and new ways. It's a transit for trying out new things and for having the vibe, the energy needed to not do things in the conventional way, the way you've done them before, the way other people expect you to. So it's kind of an exciting transit.

Now, is it possible that there will be advancements in tools of war and surveillance? Unfortunately, yes. However, I'm going to stay focused on the positive, in an unusual change of pace, and just say this is a great time for you if you are an organizer, if you are engaged in any kind of project that requires innovation and energy to rally your energy and try something new. That's what's important to know. Also, I think it's important that we pay attention to what's happening in the world and on the news on this transit and literally every other day because we care about the world, right? Caring about the world—it's hard to do that if you don't know what the hell is happening in it.

Okay. That brings us to our next transit. Now, this is another kind of lovely transit that is happening at the same time as our New Moon in Libra. On Saturday, the 10th of October, we've got a Venus Retrograde square to Mars. It's exact at 2:31 p.m. Pacific Time, with Venus at 7 degrees of Scorpio and 21 minutes squaring Mars at the same degrees of Leo. So we have our fixed-sign square. Our New Moon happens several hours before that at 8:50 a.m. Pacific Time, with the Sun and Moon at 17 degrees of Libra and 22 minutes.

Now, I'm going to tell you about that Venus square to Mars first, even though the New Moon is the bigger transit and happens first. Venus square to Mars is—it's got pros and cons to it. On the one hand, this transit is really great for motivating social and romantic connection or sexual, flirting, hooking-up connection—either/or. And this is because Venus is sensuality, and Mars is sexuality. And Venus is connection and diplomacy, and Mars is motivation and courage, passion.

And when these two planets face off each other, it provokes energy. So you can think about squares as challenging transits, which they are. But we want challenges. You don't really get chemistry without challenge. It's like a challenging energy. It makes you nervous, right?

The thing about a Venus square to Mars is it is motivating. So it's a great transit for putting yourself out there, dating, socializing, going to a party—that kind of shit. If you've been feeling like, "I don't want to go. It's the weekend. I don't want to hang out. I don't want to do shit. I just want to be home," on the one hand, I'm never going to tell anyone to leave the house if they don't want to.

And then, also, this transit is actually really great for pushing yourself and for connecting with other people. Now, this is strengthened by the fact that Venus is Retrograde. This is where the "season of the ex" shit comes in because when Venus is Retrograde, we will often have to reflect on our past relationships and on our self-worth issues and on the values we hold in relationship to other people, in ourselves in relationship to other people.

And so you may run into someone who you've already been with, who you've already been friends with or dated or hooked up with or whatevs. You may just be revisiting it in your thinking. It just might be really up. They might come across your feed. There are so many different ways that we interact with people. There's different layers upon which it can happen. So it can kind of happen on any of the layers with this transit.

Venus square to Mars can provoke defensiveness, anger, and, because Venus is Retrograde, self-worth issues. It's important that you reflect on your choices. We are all engaging with life, and sometimes life comes at you and things happen to you, and that's real. And then, in some ways, we are the architects of our own lives.

And so it's really important to reflect on what you are architecting in your life, what you are calling in, what you are choosing to participate, the energy with which you are choosing to participate in whatever—the energy that you give to things.

Sometimes I will catch myself really focusing on something that makes me feel bad and, in the grand scheme of things, in accordance with my values, really doesn't matter. And once I recognize, "Oh shit. This is not consistent with my values. I'm just fixating on this thing"—once I recognize that, I just pull my attention away and focus it elsewhere. You can do that, too. I mean, maybe you can't. But it's a great approach to take, so try it. Try it out. Try it out this Venus square to Mars.

Now, it's especially important to recognize that this Venus square to Mars will be very close to exactitude during our New Moon transit. And this means that it's an important transit to watch out for. This increases the indication of a very relational New Moon. You didn't need an indication for that because it's a New Moon in Libra, the zodiac sign that we most frequently associate with close relationships, with one-on-one intimate relationships.

But it's also happening during an active Venus transit that's almost in exactitude while Venus is Retrograde. So your relationships are up. How you feel about your relationships, how you feel about people, your own self-worth, your relationship to the way you look and the value you place on appearances—oh my God. Can we just talk about the value we place on appearances, how things appear to be on the surface versus how things actually are? Venus governs both. Venus governs alignment and appearances and being accommodating to a point where you've abandoned alignment and authenticity. Venus governs both.

And this is the cool thing about astrology. It's kind of like we are seeing the heads and tails of the same coin. The negative expression and the positive expression exist within a spectrum, and most of us function within that spectrum as opposed to always on one end of the stick or the other end of the stick, or one side of the coin or the other side of the coin—sticking with the metaphor, Jessica.

So this is a really important New Moon to be self-aware of the patterns playing through your life. Now, I'm going to pull up this New Moon chart. As I said, our New Moon is at about 17 degrees of Libra. And we have one direct aspect to that New Moon, and that's from Saturn. Saturn is sitting at almost 11 degrees of Aries. It is a wide opposition, but it is an opposition.

So a New Moon in Libra is a great time for being intentional about your relationships and your values. It's a great time for being intentional about how you want to show up, about the need for diplomacy. Libra is very much associated with diplomacy. So it's not enough to be like, "I'm going to say this to someone." It's important to not just consider what you want to say to them, but what is the fair and reasonable way of saying it so that you are being just in your approach, so that you can be heard by the other person.

Mars, by contrast, just goes in there and is like, "This is what I want. This is what I feel. This is what needs to happen," whereas Venus, the ruling planet to Libra—Venus is much more concerned with, how can we meet in the middle? How can we connect and share a perspective? How can I compromise and you compromise and then we come together to something new? It's more Libra vibes.

Now, Saturn sitting opposite to that Sun and Moon makes this New Moon more consequential, gives it a little more gravitas. You know what I mean? And this can show up for you as, again, kind of like I said about that Sun opposition to Saturn earlier in the week, having to deal with consequences, consequences of who you are, how you've been, the energy with which you approach people, or the energy with which you relate to yourself, or some sort of combo platter of all that.

The Saturn opposition to this New Moon is really good for being responsible, for being accountable, for actually cultivating wisdom. So how do you cultivate wisdom? It's the act of learning from your experiences. That's it. That's it. It's not data-collecting information about your experiences. It's actually integrating and owning and weaving into the fabric of who and what you are, learning from your experiences. Saturn is the planet that teaches that. So this New Moon has a great deal of potential.

Now, if you were planning on doing some sort of spiritual work of setting intentions with a New Moon, this one is your buddy, okay? This one has the potential to really develop roots because of Saturn's proximity to the Sun and Moon. It's not so close that it's going to be like a fucking hammer, but it is close enough that it gives us the gravitas that we would want for our intentions to really set root.

Now, we have something else that is important to name, which is that Mars opposition to Pluto. It was exact last Saturday, but it's still in orb to be affecting you and me and fucking everything else. And it is T-squaring Venus, Venus Retrograde, the ruling planet of Libra. Throughout the week and into next week, we will be feeling this energy, this power struggle intensity energy. We will be seeing it in world events, as we have seen it over this past week show up really prominently in world events. And we will feel it in our lives. Potentially, we will see it in our lives.

And so the T-square here really pushes the question of, how do I meet this moment in ways that reflect my values without squashing my impulses, passions, convictions, and needs? How can I navigate my survival mechanisms without acting only out of my survival mechanisms? And the answer on this New Moon and throughout this Venus Retrograde period is a return to your values.

And again, if you don't really know what your values are, if you don't really get the concept of values, this Venus Retrograde—even particularly this New Moon—is a great time to explore. There are many people who have written on the concept of values. There are many different tools for identifying and assessing your values. I encourage you to look for these kinds of things if that is useful to you.

But at the end of the day, we don't want to look outside of ourselves to identify what it is that we value. What we want to do is look at, what do you actually value? It is the things that you return to over and over and over again that reflect your values. And for most of us, it doesn't feel like a great reflection.

This New Moon may illuminate, really intensely show you, that the things that you have been prioritizing and valuing don't really reflect the things that actually give you a sense of purpose. And if you become aware of such a thing, that's great information for you to have. It might not feel great, but it is great information for you to have.

So how are you going to use that information? How will you change if you decide you need to change? How can you be curious about how you got to where you are? And I'm not talking about the story of how you got to where you are. I'm talking about the emotional components, the emotional habits, the emotional coping mechanisms that brought you to where you are because here's the fucking thing, see. Each and very one of us develop emotional coping tools from early developmental experiences. And if you don't evolve those tools over time, they become maladjusted coping mechanisms. They become tools that once worked but really just keep us stuck.

And it's humbling to be confronted by that. It's really hard to be like, "I know this isn't working, and I don't know what else to do." But by hanging out, being present in that unknowing and in the mixed emotions and not rushing to find an answer or to prove to yourself that you didn't make a mistake or whatever the fuck else—that is actually where growth and change occurs. Staying emotionally present with "I don't know" is really valuable. I can't stress strongly enough how valuable it is to be able to own, "Huh. I'm really good at this; I'm really bad at this. I have no idea about this other thing," right?

To be able to say, "I don't know," is powerful because you don't have to know everything. You don't have to be good at everything. You get to make mistakes. And so do they, and so do I, and on and on. The energies of this New Moon can support you in becoming more empathetic and kind, better aligned with your values. It can help you to better understand the survival mechanisms and guilt, even, that is driving you further and further away from yourself.

And that self-awareness is not going to magically heal you, and it's not going to magically change your habits. But it is the seed that can be planted for a whole new era of growth. That's what New Moons are for. And that's what the cultivation of self-awareness, that's what the use of humanistic astrology, human-centered astrology, is for. And if you didn't know, I'm a humanistic astrologer, and this is human-centered astrology.

So how are you centering your own humanity in what you're experiencing, the struggles you're having? You are not meant to be perfect, my friend. My friend, you are not meant to be perfect. You're not meant to be good at everything. You're not meant to be without struggles. You're not meant to have it all figured out. Literally, you're not meant to. It is not a bug. It's a feature.

We are here to grow and evolve. Just look at infant to elder. We grow and evolve. Bones fall out of our face. Don't get me started on teeth. Don't get me started on teeth. We are meant to go through growth cycles that, at times, hurt, that don't always make sense. It is a feature and not a bug.

This New Moon, this week, this month, I want to invite you to be curious, to be curious about where, yeah, you don't know, where you're struggling, where you are not in alignment with your values system, where you are not even sure what you value anymore. And instead of being punishing or mean or defensive or vicitmy about any of it, just try to hang out with the awareness. Notice the feelings without attaching to them and weaving a narrative to justify or defend them.

Just hang out with your feelings. I know it sounds like doing nothing, but try it. Try it for one minute. You will see it is clearly doing something because it is so hard to do. And it is what is necessary in order to evolve, to mature and be truly accountable to yourself and the people and things you care about.

Okay. So let's hit up that TL;DR for this week's forecast. So we start off our week with that Sun opposition to Saturn, so you want to consider your limitations and how you can work with them responsibly so that they don't limit you but help you to be more accountable. We have our Mercury conjunction to Venus Retrograde and that Mars sextile to Uranus, and with those, you want to connect to others and explore possibilities.

And then, when we make it to our Venus square to Mars and our New Moon in Libra, the TL;DR is to prioritize self-worth and bravery in your relationships and how you connect to people and things you care about and to prioritize aligning with your values, including self-worth, so that you are planting seeds intentionally for things that you really wish to see grow.

And that is your forecast for this week in the stars. As always, I want to thank you so much for joining me here for this podcast. And if you get value from my work, please hit that Follow or Subscribe button wherever you listen to podcasts because, yes, it does make a difference.

If you would like to hear my bonus episode of Ghost of a Podcast, it is available over on my Patreon and on a lot of subscription platforms. So you can go ahead and find that bonus episode wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Finally, do not forget that there's only two ways of getting a reading with me these days, and it is here on Ghost of a Podcast or on the lovers tier of my Patreon. But for the podcast, I want to invite you to send me your question if you'd like to get a reading with me or if there's something that you're just really wanting to know about about your chart or about astrology in general. There is a contact form on my website that gives you all the prompts of what you need to share with me in order to have your question considered for the podcast.

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