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. Okay. So I am recording this on February 28th, and I woke up, as did everyone else, to the news of the U.S. attacking Iran and the instability associated with that. Now, this is happening under the effects of the Mars/Uranus square that was exact on the 27th. It is also occurring during the incredible instability that Eclipse Seasons trigger.

Now, Eclipses, as you've heard me say many, many times, are Moon transits. And the Moon, in the context of mundane astrology—which is the form of astrology which predicts social and collective and kind of situational astrology—the Moon is related to boundaried and borders. It's related to nationalism. And so we will hear a great deal over the next six months of rhetoric that is deeply nationalistic and very much about borders, ours, theirs, what have you.

And I just want to ground you into your humanity. I want to just invite you to ground yourself into your humanity because the astrology of these times is fast-moving. Things are developing really quickly. And when a group of people all are frightened at once, we as a group don't tend to act our best. And when we as individuals are frightened, we can start thinking about how to protect our own individual self.

And that's not a wrong or a bad thing, but when that line of thinking moves in the direction of us against them, good guy/bad guy, we want to be suspicious of that. We want to interrogate that because times of turmoil, difficulty, can test your humanity. And this is absolutely a period that is testing our humanity as individuals and as a collective.

And so you and I are likely to be navigating fear as we navigate challenges, both the challenges that are happening in your life to you personally and the challenges associated with the various groups of people that you may identify with or care about or be a part of. And then there's the challenges for all of us collectively.

War is terrifying. Nuclear power is terrifying. Genocide is terrifying. And I could go on, but I think we all know what we're scared of. But we don't all know how to cope. We are going to be talking this week in the forecast about an Eclipse. And again, Eclipses are emotional earthquakes. And so we talk about the specific astrology of each specific Eclipse, and a lot of people really focus on the zodiac sign that the Eclipse is occurring in. And that's not wrong, but it's only a piece of the puzzle.

Make no mistake that we as a collective and you as an individual are being challenged to be emotionally accountable, emotionally present, for the nuance and complexity of instability. And that instability is maybe happening on a myriad of levels, but the challenge is emotional. And we have a funny way of navigating our emotions as a people, don't we?

We are really good as modern humans at intellectualizing our emotions, distracting from our emotions, turning our sad and bad feelings outwards into resentments and outrage, and all kinds of things like this. On my Patreon, we've been talking about the difference between activation and emotion. And I want to kind of bring that into this week's forecast for you.

Activation is something that occurs inside of you that is complex, and it's a psychological, physiological, and complex set of responses to an experience or to stimulation. And underneath our activation lies our tender emotions. When you practice noticing the difference between when you're activated—maybe you're panicked. Maybe you're excited. Maybe you're passionate. Maybe you're defensive. And you practice noticing, "Oh shit. I'm activated right now," and you don't just engage with and react to that activation. And you've heard me say countless times your strongest emotions are not reliably your wisest ones, right?

That's about noticing that your strongest emotions are usually your activation. And if you can sit with it, if you can be curious about it, if you can not feed the beast of your activation but instead just really listen to yourself without jumping into narratives or even into action, then you can start to access the emotions underneath your activation. And that's what the Eclipse wants us to do. It's what every Eclipse wants us to do. It's to be able to access our emotions so that we can be accountable to them, both through acts of self-care, community care, care for others, accountability for what we've done, what we haven't done, who we've done it to.

The practice of being an ethical, caring, humanistic person can be a little exhausting because it's a lot easier to just act and react and act. This week, and every goddamn week if we're being honest, I want to invite you to practice noticing the difference between your activations and your emotions and to practice noticing when you are at a place where you cannot emotionally take in any more so that you can tend to your emotions and then come back to the world, come back to your responsibilities and your passions and all the things. It's a challenging practice, but it's a good one.

Now, we're about to look at the astrology of the first week of March, March 1st through the 7th of 2026. On the 1st of March is when I drop my month-ahead forecast, so if you want to get a sense of the astrology of every damn day of March so you can plan ahead, you can access that either on my Patreon by becoming a member or you can purchase it as a one-off bonus episode of Ghost. You can also find it wherever you subscribe to podcasts as an add-on purchase.

Okay. I'm trying this new thing where I'm doing a TL;DR for the week ahead. So let me give that to you. On the 3rd, we're going to have an Eclipse, and this is when you want to hang out in the space where emotions live in your body and be conscientious about your health and your emotions and that intersection between the two. On the 4th, we'll have a Venus sextile to Uranus. This is when you want to be open to connections sparking something, something exciting, something that reiterates or feeds your values system.

On the 5th, we have a Sun trine to Jupiter, and this is when you want to be open to expansive experiences and connections. Expand your sense of self. And then, on the 7th, the Sun and Mercury Retrograde meet, making it a really good time for self-reflection. And Venus sits on top of Neptune, making it an important time for you to consider your boundaries and relationships and for you to practice healthy boundaries in your relationships. That's a little bit of a long TL;DR, but that's the TL;DR you get from this wordy bitch.

Okay. Let's jump into the first exact transit of this week. Okay. So the first exact transit of this week is the Eclipse. On March 3rd, at exactly 3:38 a.m. Pacific Time, we have got a Lunar Eclipse in Virgo. Now, Lunar Eclipses are always Full Moons, right? So a Solar Eclipse is a New Moon, and a Lunar Eclipse is a Full Moon. We have this Lunar Eclipse at 12 degrees of Virgo and 53 minutes. It's hanging out real close to that South Node, intensifying the indication that this is a time for release.

Because this is a Lunar Eclipse in Virgo, we know that themes of perfectionism and your health are going to come up. Now, the way that these things are connected is because, honestly, being perfectionistic over the course of a lifetime means that you are driving yourself, your situations, other people, in ways that are just not sustainable. Virgo is very much the zodiac sign of discernment. It's the zodiac sign of reflection. And it's ruled by Mercury, which just so happens to be Retrograde right now.

So all signs point to turning within, to reflecting on how are you processing things? How are you navigating through your mental health—Mercury—and emotional health—the Moon? How are you feeling your feelings or deflecting or submerging or overanalyzing your feelings? In the realm of emotion, much like in the realm of water, there is no such thing as perfection. There is ebb, and there is flow. Water fits and fills a container, but itself, it is free to move. And it moves as it does until placed in a container.

And so how we want to really think about that this Lunar Eclipse is that your emotions exist inside of you. The emotions that other people are processing and navigating, they exist inside of them, and the shape of your experiences, of your coping mechanisms, of your past and your present and even how you hold the future—that is the container within which your emotions ebb and flow.

This Lunar Eclipse is a kind of invitation—an aggressive invitation, if we're being honest. It's demanding. It's an Eclipse. But it is an invitation for you to use your discernment instead of heavily analyzing. This is not a time for seeking perfection. This is a time instead for being adaptive, for being open to reflection that supports you being able to process through whatever it is that's happening inside of you and in the world and do so with care. This transit is absolutely meant to test your mental health. This is because it's in Virgo.

Within that, we are really lucky because Jupiter, the planet of luck, is forming a trine to the Sun and a sextile to the Moon. It's really tight. It's a really tight set of aspects. And what this means is that there is ease and support for maintaining an open mind and an open heart, for having expansive experiences that help you to not just evolve and grow, but to be able to hold hope, to be able to see what's possible and not just what you fear or what's happened in the past.

Jupiter is not the best at balance and proportion because Jupiter tends to rush in. And so what's going to be really important within this Lunar Eclipse is that you set a pace that you can stay emotionally present for. So this is a test, in many ways, of your awareness of your own capacity. How you navigate through your capacity has a lot to do with your ability to notice when you are stepping outside of alignment, outside of your capacity to be emotionally present and to not just tolerate what's happening or power through what's happening but instead to move intentionally through what's happening. It's tricky stuff, right? It's nuanced and tricky stuff.

There are going to be opportunities for growth throughout this Eclipse time—so, of course, specifically on the Eclipse, but Eclipses aren't just like a roller coaster that you get on, and then you get off. They're an evolutionary event that sets things into motion that will play out over the next six months. And they play out not just dynamically but really emotionally, personally, internally.

So do your best to be discerning, to reflect, to be open to what's happening emotionally and accountable for how you're processing it, how you're showing up with and for it, to be mindful that your health is yours to steward. And health—nobody's guaranteed easy or good health. Some of us really struggle with our health, mental or physical, spiritual or emotional. And some of us have better luck with that kind of stuff.

But what you don't want to do is be perfectionistic and demanding of your body or your mind, your spirit or your heart. Instead, strive to hold your parts, to hold your capacity with care. And that care is not meant to be disconnected from your lived reality. It's meant to be considerate of your circumstances, your past, your present, your nature. Holding space is a messy affair. We don't want to be perfectionistic when practicing it.

Now, of course, Saturn and Neptune are not in exactitude, but they are conjunct during this Eclipse. And it's worth me naming that we are all going through this larger process of working through burnout, working through moral quandaries and kind of impossible situations, impossible things to reconcile. What's too much? What's not enough? What's real, and what's fantasy or anxiety? It's a tough time. And so, again, meet it with grace. Meet it with humility. Meet it with empathy and care. That's the assignment in general at this time, and specifically with this Eclipse.

In regards to world events, it is important to be informed. It is important to know what's happening in the world and to have a diverse set of news sources when learning about the world because we're talking about a Moon in Virgo, so it is about information. Just because it's overwhelming or it's stressful doesn't mean you should stick your head in the sand. And also, this is a marathon and not a sprint, so figuring out what your capacity is so that you can be informed, so that you can show up for the people you care about, for yourself, and in the world in ways that reflect the world you want to see, the person you want to be—that is the assignment.

And so this week and in particular on this day, struggle with it. You're not supposed to be perfect. You're supposed to learn. You're not supposed to have it all figured out. You're meant to struggle with the questions. That's really what a life well lived is about. So I want to gently invite you to maintain your curiosity and to not allow perfectionism or rigidity to stop you from adapting to the period that we are living through and the circumstances you find yourself in.

That brings us to Wednesday, the 4th of March. And on that day, at exactly 8:41 a.m. Pacific Time, we have a Venus sextile to Uranus, with Venus at 27 degrees and 50 minutes of Pisces sextile to Uranus at the same degrees of Taurus. This is a lovely transit. We saw it in the Eclipse chart, of course.

And this transit is particularly lovely because what it does is it sparks connections between you and other people. It sparks connections with your values system and your ideas, your ability to innovate. Uranus is a futurist, and Venus is all about connection. It's all about values systems. And so, if you are looking to connect with people in new ways and meet new people, this transit is your buddy. If you are trying to get flirty and cute with somebody, again, your buddy.

If you're trying to figure out how to navigate your finances or how to—I don't know—move furniture around in your house for the purpose of cutifying or making your space more in accordance with your values system or your aesthetic in general, again, this transit is your buddy. Something surprising may occur, something that you weren't expecting. Again, you may have a fun or unexpected time socially. This transit is fun. This transit is lovely. No notes.

That brings us to Thursday, March the 5th. And on that day, we have an exact trine between the Sun and Jupiter. It's exact at 9:14 a.m. Pacific Time. The Sun will be at 15 degrees if Pisces and 8 minutes, and Jupiter will be at the same degrees of Cancer. So beautiful trine, Sun/Jupiter. We saw it in the Eclipse chart. It's expanding, and now it's exact.

Okay. So this transit is excellent. So many good things to say about it. It increases optimism and resiliency. Jupiter gives the sense that anything can be done, and the Sun is your vitality, your sense of self, and your will. When these two things come together, it makes life more exciting. It makes things seem more possible, which is wonderful, right?

This is a transit where you can learn something new about the world, about yourself. You can make connections or synthesize data that you already had in ways that are, again, exciting and helpful. Jupiter is really great at being helpful. It can also be a little bit of a waste of time kind of energy, depending. This is a time you want to avoid soapboxes, no matter how smart you are. This is a time where you want to try to learn. I mean, you might have something to teach others, but also be open to learning from others because this transit is one where there can be a reciprocity of information, an exchange of energies that helps everyone along.

This transit can help you to feel more generous—generous of spirit, generous of your time, whatever it is. Or if you're really in need and you've been struggling with asking other people for help, this is actually a really good time to do that because everyone is likely to be feeling a little bit more generous, a little bit more like they can expand their capacity on and around this date. It is a lovely transit. If you meet new people, try new things, read a new book—whatever it is—it's a good time to open up to the world and synthesize the connections you make.

And that brings us to Saturday, March 7th, where we have not one but two exact transits—2.5 transits to talk about today, actually. So, at 3:02 a.m., the Sun is exactly conjoined to that Mercury Retrograde. Did you forget Mercury is Retrograde all week? So communication is wonky. Emails aren't going through. Misunderstandings abound. You just gotta kind of process a little bit more conscientiously when communicating with other people.

And you're meant to reflect more. So here's the thing about the reflection. When the Sun and Mercury Retrograde meet, it's not just a time where your ideas about yourself become a bigger part of your identity, but you are meant to reflect on those things. The truth of the matter is, if we don't evolve our ideas about ourselves to better match our behavior, our circumstances, what have you, then we get kind of stuck. We get kind of stuck.

The Sun conjunction to Mercury is a time for reflection on who you are now—not who you were, not who you think you should be. Who you are now. This is not a guilty moment. This is a time for emotional and spiritual presence because we're talking about water signs. The Sun conjunction to Mercury can coincide with a busy day or a busy couple of days where there's a lot more communications, and they, again, might be a little wonky because Retrograde.

This might be a time where you are running into friends, communicating with people, realizing you didn't respond to x test—whatever. You know, that kind of a thing. So be aware of that. Busy tempo, and that increases the possibility of Mercury Retrograde troubles. Before you agree to something, re-read that. Re-read that email. Ask a question.

Now, the other exact transit that's happening on this day is happening at 3:27 a.m. Pacific Time. So, again, these are all tight, tight to each other. Venus is going to be at 1 degree of Aries and 17 minutes, joining Neptune at that same exact place. So, when Venus and Neptune conjoin, it's a mess. Girl, it's a mess. And the reason why it's a mess is because Venus is like, "Let me take care of you. Let me show up for you." And Neptune is devotional.

And so you may find yourself putting other people on pedestals, fixating on parasocial relationships, having paranoia and insecurity or anxiety in your relationships. All of these things are a reflection of being off with your boundaries. This is an opportunity to cultivate greater clarity about your boundaries in response to the reality of your relationships, your own spiritual and emotional needs, and the circumstances you find yourself in.

You may need to say no to somebody that really, really wants you to say yes. You may need to recognize that you have a limit on how much you can hold or navigate in your life. You may find that some of your values systems are perfectionistic, thanks to that Eclipse. You may find that you are being idealistic in your approach to self-care, the management of a situation, some part of your life. And if you do, then you can just fall into a Neptune soup of anxiety, or you may get really tired and exhausted, or you may feel really escapist. Or you can do what Neptune really wants you to do, which is cultivate boundaries.

Where do you need a boundary? What would a boundary look like in this situation or in this dynamic? How can you identify your limits and your capacity and your needs?  How can you express those things, whether it's through your behavior or your language, and then how can you maintain that gently?

Neptune is—it's adaptable. It's the ruling planet to Pisces, which is a mutable sign, just like we're talking about Virgo, that Lunar Eclipse—it's mutable. So there's something very adaptable about the energy that we're meant to hold. So that means don't be rigid, in plain terms. It's not time for rigidity. But that's where that .5 transit is, okay? Because on Sunday, the 8th, for next week's horoscope, Venus and Saturn meet. They're going to be in exactitude.

And this is the fucked-up part about our Neptune/Saturn conjunction. Anytime we have a transit to one, we have a transit to the other. And a Venus conjunction to Saturn can have you feeling really rigid, feeling really scarcity-minded. So other people aren't doing enough for me. Other people did this shitty thing, so I can do that shitty thing—that kind of thing.

And it's important that you honor your values and ideals, that you do not hold relationships in a devotional way such that you are either devoting yourself to self-care or you're devoting yourself to the care of others. Instead, what we want is balance. What we want is balance based on the reality of what you care about, of who you care about, and your capacity, how much you can do in a day.

Being able to hold space for someone else is beautiful, but when it comes at your own expense, that's a problem. Being able to navigate your space, your peace, and self-care is beautiful, but when it comes at the expense of showing up for the people and things that you care about, for others and their very different needs from yours, that becomes a problem.

This weekend, the weekend of the 6th, 7th, 8th, we're going to be really feeling this shit. And so, if relationship issues emerge, you can say to yourself, "Ah. I'm an astrology nerd. I knew this was going to happen." And know that the assignment is healthy boundaries. The assignment is healthy boundaries. So don't fixate on your parasocial crush. Don't put someone on a pedestal or think that you are above it all, because that's what this transit is kind of going to make a lot of us want to do. But it's not the move. You know what I mean? It's just not the move.

Now, the last thing I'll say about this particular transit is it's in Aries. That energy can be a little impulsive, a little quick to act or react, and it's also very body-based. So notice how you feel in your body. There is a connection here between the Eclipse bringing up health issues and this transit by week's end that is stimulating reactiveness in the body, activation in the body.

The more that you can be attentive to what's happening inside of you, the better equipped you'll be to act in integrity with what's true for you, with how you want to be. And that, my friends, is the name of the fucking game.

Okay. That's your horoscope for this week, the week of March 1st through the 7th. As always, I have transcripts available on my website within 24 hours of the episode drop. You can watch the video version of this episode over on my Patreon, and more and more platforms are starting to publish video episodes, so depending on where you listen to your podcasts, you may be able to catch the video episode there.

The astrology of this time, the astrology of this week, is one that triggers a lot of things in progress. And so I want to remind you gently but firmly that this isn't the time to seek perfect answers, perfect feelings, perfect relationships, but instead to really strive to show up. That's all. Showing up is messy. Showing up is imperfect. But it's the way that you co-create the conditions in your life and in the world that you want to see. It's the way that you practice being the person that you want to be and not a result of just the worst things that happened to you and your strongest reactions, but instead the embodiment of your intention, your capacity, your hope, and your dreams.

As always, I thank you so much for joining me here at Ghost of a Podcast. Take really good care of yourself and others, and I'll talk to you in just a couple of days. Bye.