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 be looking at the astrology of February 22nd through the 28th of 2026. And there's—I don't know—a lot to talk about; am I right? It's Eclipse Season. We have another Eclipse at the start of March, but we're in big Eclipse emotions still. And whatever it is that got unlodged or just activated emotionally, personally, psychologically, spiritually inside of you and in our collective conditions at the first Eclipse, it's still percolating. It's still developing. It's working its way through your system, and it's working its way through the collective. That's kind of how Eclipses function.

And then, at the same time, as you know, Saturn and Neptune are sitting on top of each other. It was exact last week on the 20th, and it's very much an active transit. I want to really simplify this transit for you because I know that astrology can get complicated and hard to really apply. So let me say this. This transit provokes moral quandaries, situations that feel absolutely impossible. It kicks up feelings of overwhelm and burden and anxieties that directly impact your day-to-day life.

Now, think about it for just a second. You know as I say the words "moral quandaries" and "impossible situations" and "anxieties," you kind of have a sense of how that impacts you, of how you experience those things, how it plays out in your life. There's another aspect of Neptune and Saturn, of course, which is Neptune is fervent spiritual convictions, and Saturn is punishment and reward. It's the way we organize societies and groups of people.

So, anyways, you're thinking about how it affects you. Maybe you're thinking about how it affects the people you know and the people close to you. But pause for a moment to consider applying the same awareness of what this transit is activating inside of you and the people you know and care about, and apply it to people who believe that their god is the only god and everyone who believes something different spiritually or religiously different than they do is going to hell and deserves it. And of course, this requires you imagine that hell is a place, and it is the worst of all the places, and it is forever and ever.

Imagine you were going through this moral quandary challenge to what you believe and to your sense of meaning in the world that Saturn/Neptune conjunction kicks up, and you believe that certain races are superior to others or certain kinds of people are deserving of dignity and self-determination, and other people, because of their physical health or their mental health, because of their gender, their race, their religion, their class—those people don't deserve self-determination. Those people need to be told how to live and what to do. And if there's punishment, that is as it is.

Imagine that those were your convictions and you were going through this Saturn/Neptune conjunction. It is really valuable to use astrology as a form of self-help and using it to cultivate self-awareness. But what people don't use it for as frequently and I think is one of the best uses of astrology is to use it to contextually understand people who are radically different from you and even people who would wish you harm or wish harm to others.

You and I are going to process our anxieties, our search for meaning, our search for stability and security, in different ways. And we're also going to do it in different ways from each other at different times of our lives. At some times of our lives, you and me might do the same thing; we might do something really similar. Or at different times, we might really go off in other directions.

But it is valuable to understand people's motivations when we are at cross purposes with them, when we are engaged in social movements for change, when we are trying to navigate through community and connection for the welfare and well-being of others as well as for our own selves. It's valuable to understand that we are all going through this Saturn/Neptune conjunction. We are all experiencing the emotional activation of the Eclipse Season and the subsequent six-month period that it will play out during until the next Eclipses occur.

Your struggle, your evolution, your growth, your successes—they're uniquely yours. You are your own Universe. Your feelings, your thoughts, your experiences are completely independent and exclusive to you. They are unique to you. And also, at the same time, your struggles, your successes, how you engage, how you evolve or don't, your empathy, your humanity—these things meaningfully impact the world, energetically and materially.

When you struggle—and this transit kicks up struggle. Eclipse Season tends to kick up struggle because big emotions are hard to process for most of us, because most of us have really big ways of evading or avoiding or smooshing or deflecting our feelings. When you struggle, when I struggle, when we struggle, when we all struggle under this influence, the remediation is meant to be the same.

Reach for your humanity. Reach for empathy. That's Neptune. And organize your actions, your engagement in the world of Saturn—in other words, in the shared reality we all live in—organize your actions and your plans in ways that reflect your humanity and empathy. Resist the urge to be punishing or carceral because Saturn can go there.

And when Saturn—which is all about hierarchies and rules that require enforcement—when Saturn and Neptune, who is belief disconnected from reality and devotion—when they come together, it can be really messy, and it can be really transformative. So, again, I want to keep it simple for you. Reach for your humanity. Reach for empathy. And make sure that your actions and plans reflect that in a material sense.

And while I'm trying to make things simple, I'm going to give you a TL;DR for this week's horoscope, okay? So, before I get into breaking down all the transits, let me just give you a couple keywords. I will say I'm 50/50 about how much I like giving you keywords because I think when we reduce astrology or anything that is nuanced and can really help with our mental and emotional health—when we reduce it to keywords, it gets really fucking—I don't know—less valuable. And also, I understand TL;DR because we're busy. Things are real.

So heads up. On the 22nd, trust that you are capable, and do something that reflects your values and/or what or who you love. On the 25th, hold your tongue; listen. Okay? Listen. That's very important. Listen. On the 27th, be adaptable and expect the unexpected because things could get a little explosive.

Now, let's get into the details of this week's forecast. So the first exact transit of this week occurs on Sunday, February the 22nd. We've got a Mars sextile to Chiron that's exact at 8:13 a.m. Pacific Time. Now, Mars will be at 23 degrees of Aquarius and 46 minutes, and it's sextiling Chiron at the same degrees of Aries.

Okay. This is a lovely transit, actually. This is a really nice transit. What it does is it creates motivation and engagement around things that require some measure of bravery from you. So that might be around practicing embodiment, like taking care of your body and engaging with your body. It might mean something around your sexuality and your relationship to the physicality of sex or chemistry with someone or how you experience chemistry. This transit can kick up your courage in general. So, if there's some shit you want to do, if there's some shit that you feel excited about, passionate about, but you haven't gotten your juj going, this transit provides some juj. It's sparkle. It's energy and motivation.

There are no negatives to this transit, so yay. And it's overlapping with a Venus trine to Jupiter. Venus will be at 15 degrees of Pisces and 31 minutes, forming an exact trine to Jupiter at 15 degrees of Cancer and 31 minutes. So this is another fucking lovely, lovely transit. It kicks up optimism. And because it can make you feel optimistic—but not just you. You're feeling optimistic, and I'm feeling optimistic, so everybody is kind of vibing outside of scarcity issues. Because of this, it creates, quote unquote, "luck."

What happens is when I engage with an open heart and lead with kindness and happiness and all that kind of stuff, and then you're doing the same thing, we're more likely to get along. So the luck that this transit often brings is the luck that emerges from proceeding with an open yes at the center of your thinking instead of the "but what ifs," which are always there. But Venus trine to Jupiter is a transit that connects you with your values and what you love, and it creates flow and ease in embodying or relating to those things, whether they're principles or people or even if this is related to your finances, like spending money on something that you care about—although there will be a caveat to that in a couple days—or if it's navigating your resources and making choices that feel expansive and are investing in, again, your values.

But more than anything, Venus trine to Jupiter is chill. It brings chill. It makes you feel a little hedonistic, very cozy. You can end up endlessly scrolling or watching too much TV or doing something that's a little bit passive and a little bit pleasurable. Because of the overlap with that Mars sextile to Chiron, we have motivation to connect. So, especially if you have been dealing with relationship issues where you're not quite sure how to connect with other people, these two transits are a great assist. So take the assist. It's a sports metaphor, which I don't understand on a sports context, but it works just in regular day to day.

Okay. Now, that brings us to the next exact transit of the week, and it's Mercury Retrograde. So, on February 25th, which is Wednesday, Mercury will go Retrograde at exactly 10:48 p.m. Pacific Time. So, if you're much further east than I am speaking in Pacific Time, then it will start on the 26th. Now, this Mercury Retrograde is in Pisces. It goes Retrograde at 22 degrees of Pisces and 33 minutes. And it will stay Retrograde until March 20th. So, basically, March is Mercury Retrograde month. Kind of a bummer.

So I'm going to pull up the chart of that in a second, but let's just do quick refresher. Mercury Retrograde is a normal function of Mercury. It goes Retrograde a couple times a year. It is not the end of the world. It is not an emotional transit, although it can kick up emotions. It is a mental transit because Mercury is your mind. Mercury is your ideas, your plans, not in a Saturnian big-picture way, but your plans for your week or your travel plans or your day-to-day shit.

Mercury is also your attitudes. It's how you verbally communicate or how you write. Any kind of communications of language is Mercury and also how you listen, which is why in my little TL;DR, I was like, "This is the day to listen." Listen, because when Mercury moves Retrograde, appears to be moving backwards, we are meant to honor the ule of re's. We're meant to reflect. We're meant to reassess. We're meant to recalibrate.

And because of that, things start to kind of get fucked up. So communications get funky. Honestly, the evidence of you not listening or you being careless can come out more frequently. This is the time where I'm always like, "God, did that draft get stuck in my inbox?" I expect there to be a misunderstanding around plans made at work or personally. It's just kind of normal conduct for Mercury Retrograde.

And then, also, of course, Mercury Retrograde is a time where you're not really supposed to make major decisions. It's not a great time for signing contracts. It's not a great time for launching projects or making plans if you can avoid them. Now, of course, you have to fucking make plans, right? Like, "I'm making plans to meet my friend for dinner," or whatever. But there tends to be—not every bit of information is clear. Misunderstandings—that kind of shit with Mercury Retrograde.

Listen. If you gotta take a job, take a job. If you gotta sign a contract, sign a contract. But do it with the wisdom of an astrology nerd. And the wisdom of an astrology nerd is you triple-check the contract. You reiterate with the person you're communicating with, "I'm just understanding that we're meeting on the western corner of 5th and Main," as opposed to whatever other corner. You just double-check. You just communicate with more care. You just kind of roll with the punches when the punches come.

But let me pull up the chart of this Mercury, and we can talk about it a little more in depth. And if you are not watching the video version of this episode, you can catch it on the free section of my Patreon, on YouTube—it's also available on Spotify, and I believe it's going to be coming to Apple soon. So that's exciting.

Anyways, let's pull up the chart. So we're looking at the Mercury Retrograde chart, and just as a quick reminder, I've cast it for a city, but it doesn't matter even if you live in that city. We're not paying attention to the houses. We're just looking at the aspects. And this Mercury Retrograde happens with the Sun, the North Node, Venus, Mercury all in Pisces. So we know we're going to have a little bit of a wavy, sensey Mercury Retrograde.

What this means in plain English is that your sense impressions are important. Your intuition and your ability to tap into nuance and maybe even what's not being said is important. But these things are not facts. And you don't want to allow your ability to intuit or to vibe to override your basic need for plain communication. It's cool to ask the Tarot what your friend really meant when they said what they said, but it's cooler to just ask them. So we want to remember that during this Mercury Retrograde.

Mercury is sitting pretty closely to Venus, which is lovely. It indicates that this Retrograde is a good time for reflecting on your values, for reflecting on your personal connections—so we're talking about your dates, your crushes, your relationship to your love life in general—and the friends that you love love. Venus is not just romance. Venus is love love. And so Mercury Retrograde conjoined Venus is a good time to reflect on those things. And you might find that dynamics emerge in your relationships or in regards to your values in ways that really merit reflection. So reflect.

But the thing I want to take a real moment to name is that in this chart, Saturn and Neptune are of course conjoined. They're not in exactitude, but they're conjoined. And they are really tightly square to the Moon at almost 1 degree of Cancer. And so this larger theme of what we're going through that is kicking up impossible situations and moral quandaries and anxieties and burdened, overwhelmed feelings—the Moon square is making that so much more emo, like so much more emo. That's true for you, and that's true for your bestie, and that's true for your boss, and that's true for the people in the government and the people on the streets, and it's true everywhere. It's not just true in your city or your country. It's what's up.

And so the room for messiness is big. It's a lot of room. There's a lot of room for messiness. Resist the urge to create security and stability where there is meant to be questions and introspection. Mercury Retrograde is not the time where you're supposed to get the answer. I find that frustrating. I love the answer. You know what I mean? I'm a fan of knowing what time it is and what I'm supposed to do and what's going to happen. But we don't have security and stability during a Mercury Retrograde. That's not the assignment.

And in particular, this one is going to kick up really big emotions. And those big emotions are around things that are outside of your control, that are outside of your ability to completely figure out at this time or to sort through at this time. So this very emotional Mercury Retrograde is happening throughout all of Pisces Season. So Mercury goes direct on the day that the Sun moves into Aries on the Spring Equinox. This whole Mercury Retrograde is Mercury in Pisces Retrograde.

So this is a great time to reflect on your mental health. And within that, if you're talking to me, if you're talking to me, talking about your mental health in the context of Mercury in Pisces is very much talking about boundaries. How are you navigating your boundaries? Whether that's with—I don't know—social media, around the needs of your health, however you want to apply that, in your relationships, in your relationship to yourself, how are you navigating boundaries?

I will never stop talking about the importance of boundaries. But this Mercury Retrograde is really all about you reflecting on how you are identifying your boundaries, holding your boundaries, maintaining your boundaries, respecting your boundaries, expressing your boundaries—all that kind of good stuff. And again, this could be happening on any number of levels, but it's something to reflect on because that's the assignment.

And that brings us to the last exact transit of this week. On Friday, February the 27th, we've got two exact transits. Mercury is exactly conjunct to Venus at 9:35 p.m. Pacific Time. And then, in the morning, at 8:21 a.m., Mars is exactly square to Uranus. Mercury conjunction to Venus is a very chill transit. It kicks up the desire to connect with others and kind of some flow around that. So you may just run into people, connect with people, in a way that is lovely.

It might also start you with the questioning around your relationships or your values in this Mercury Retrograde cycle because, of course, Mercury goes Retrograde on Wednesday, and then on Friday, it's meeting up with Venus in exactitude. So we know that this is a big part of the Mercury Retrograde story. What that will mean for you may be super unclear until you have some serious retrospect so that you can look back at it, right? It's the damn rule of re's.

Okay. But that Mars square to Uranus—that's something worth talking about here because Mars square to Uranus is disruptive and explosive and unpredictable. Mars is, as we know, punch-punch, bang-bang. And Uranus is explosions. It's technology. It's the power of the individual and the power of community. Isn't that interesting that Uranus governs both individuality, the drive to be true to yourself as a person, eccentricity, stepping outside of the norm, and at the same time, it governs community?

To me, this really speaks-—I know this is a little bit of a tangent, but to me, this really speaks to how when communities are not just each of us being a cookie cutter of each other, but we are a group of individuals meeting each other with acceptance and care and respect, with interest and engagement, our communities are stronger because diverse communities full of whole people are a beautiful thing. Fucking Uranus—am I right?

But okay. Back to Mars square Uranus. Mars square to Uranus transit can activate impulsiveness, defensiveness, reactiveness because Uranus is like electricity to Mars, which is the ego and entitlement and motivation and passion and your damn body, your meat suit. And so, for some people, depending on your nature, depending on your circumstances, this may make you feel really enraged, really frustrated, really blocked or stymied. For other people, it might make you feel motivated, like all of a sudden things fucking come together, and you're making connections, and you're finding the energy and the will to do a thing.

It can kind of go either way. You could experience a little bit of both. Honestly, I think a lot of us experience a little bit of both with this transit. The thing you want to make sure of is that you're not being so reactive or impulsive that you're only really considering yourself. Because Uranus is related to the individual and Mars is the ego, which is super individualistic, you may act in ways that are just not considerate, just not at all considerate. If you have that tendency, if you find yourself behaving in that way, just be like, "Oh shit. It's a transit. Okay. I'm going to adapt." Maybe you need to make a little bit of repair, but then you're going to adapt.

That's the work of this transit. It is to act. It is to engage. It is to find courage and do something, but also to notice here the line between freedom and empowerment is versus entitlement and selfishness. And sometimes it's a fine line. Sometimes it's not a fine line, right? It depends. It depends.

In terms of movement work, this transit can be really explosive in any direction. It can signify violence and in particular violence on the street. It can signify major progress, kind of unexpected, where things come together. But progress by whose standards is always the question. When I say progress, I know what I think progress is. Maybe you and I agree; maybe we don't. Maybe we agree about some things, and then me and someone else, we're going to completely disagree on everything. That's the thing about progress. Whose progress, by whose standards? This transit doesn't guarantee anything.

This is not energy that can be repressed without negative consequences. So those negative consequences might be that you try to shove down how you feel about your partner when they pissed you off this morning, and then you end up acting out against your totally innocent coworker or somebody in traffic. So what you want to do is recognize how you're feeling and be as intentional and conscious as you can be about how you're engaging with your feelings.

It's not always appropriate or possible to find a healthy outlet for frustration or anger or defensiveness or whatever the fuck else comes up for you around this transit. But being a good steward to your own energy is your job. You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to find the solution all the time. But steward your energy intentionally.

And luckily, Uranus provides the innovation and the motivation you need to maybe try something new or just be open to doing something differently than you've done it before. This can be a really fun transit sexually, as long as you feel safe. It's a good time for experimentation, theoretically. Mars square Uranus—things happen fast. And so, in that way, again, you really want to make sure you feel safe. If you're playing and get to try something new, that's great, as long as you feel like you can slow things down or stop them whenever you need because we all know consent is queen.

Okay. So Mars square Uranus—if you do have, all of a sudden, a new crush on somebody who's not your type, let it ride for 72 hours before you do anything about it. This is definitely a transit where you can all of a sudden be vibing with someone, and then the transit passes, and you're like, "What? Why?" You know? Or it could be exciting and awesome. But either way, proceed with caution, with care, and in a healthy way, keeping in mind we're still doing healthy boundaries. We're still navigating with empathy and accountability—that Neptune/Saturn.

But now, with Mars square to Uranus, things are cooking. And we're going to be feeling this transit for a little minute. So don't forget that your body, your meat suit, is a part of this transit. So how you engage with your body, how you listen to your body, where you notice your feelings inside your body—they're all really relevant. And because Uranus is the nervous system and Mars is so physical, do what you need to do in order to navigate and manage your nervous system in ways that are helpful to you.

And that, my sweet, sweet friends, is your forecast for this week. I'm going to run through the transits one more time, but before I do, I just want to say, over on my Patreon, we're having a very in-depth conversation about ghosting, which is not something I planned on, but it organically came up out of conversations we were having about love and connection and stuff like that. It's really kind of a cool conversation, if you ask me, because what we're doing is we're unpacking how to navigate accountability and communication and boundaries and real relationship shit. So, if that feels interesting to you, come on and join us over there for that conversation. And if you are already a patron, I just want to say thanks. I love it over there and love the work that we get to do together.

Okay. So, as promised, on the 22nd, Mars is exactly sextile to Chiron, and Venus is exactly trine to Jupiter. On the 25th, Mercury goes Retrograde, where it will stay until March 20th. And then, finally, on Friday, the 27th of February, Mars is square to Uranus, and Mercury meets up with Venus. And this is Mercury Retrograde, of course.

Then, on the 1st of March, just like the 1st of every month, I drop a bonus episode of Ghost of a Podcast where I break down the astrology of the month ahead. And because we are in Eclipse Season and Mercury Retrograde, there's a lot to talk about there. So, if you want to hear that bonus episode, you can get it a couple different ways. You can become a member on my Patreon at the kittens level, or you can go to Patreon and purchase it as a one-off, or you can purchase it on multiple different podcasting platforms. So you can listen to it in any number of ways, should you have the hankering.

Anyways, I thank you so much for joining me here on Ghost of a Podcast. And I hope you use the resources that I share, and everything you do with astrology in general, as a way to help you to become more emotionally present and accountable so that you can show up for yourself, the people in your life, and the community at-large in sustainable, empathetic, and aligned ways.

All right. I'll talk to you in just a couple of days. Bye.