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 go Ghost of a Podcast. This week, we are looking at the astrology of April 12th through the 18th of 2026. There's a lot going on this week, including a New Moon in Aries. We're getting bookmarked by some Mars energy.

So, before we dive into the details of this horoscope and your brief overview—which is steeped in oversimplification, but your brief overview of the week ahead, the TL;DR, I want to just say this. We're dealing with a lot of Mars vibes, right? So Mars, as a quick reminder, is the planet that governs your body. It's your passions. It's your motivations. It's your actions. And it's the energy with which you do a damn thing—how fast you do it, how slow you do it, your sense of entitlement, your sense of empowerment. It's all related to Mars.

So, because Mars is in Aries in early degrees, it is sitting on top of Neptune and on top of Saturn, kind of bookmarking this week. And what this means in practical terms is whatever you are feeling in your body needs tending to. And that sounds pretty straightforward, but it's not, because Neptune and Saturn's presence, respectively, create meaningful complications to most people's willingness and ability to stay with the body and stay with the feelings and impulses you find there.

And you may be feeling big mad, big sad, big tired. You may be feeling overwhelmed, overburdened. You may be feeling a sense of purpose and also a sense of not being able to rise to the occasion—fucking Mars conjunct Neptune and Saturn. And I'm going to get into these transits in greater depth. Give me a second here.

But hopefully, you can practice having empathy for yourself so that you can meet yourself without judgment, without cruelty, and tend to what's most important, what's hanging out on the surface, so that you can be effective in whatever it is you need to do. And while you're at it, you could practice having some empathy and patience for other people. There is a lot going on, astrologically and absolutely in the world. If you're feeling overwhelmed by it or if you're engaging with people who are behaving in ways that seem bananas, that seem kind of disproportionate to the situation—people are being more rigid than you would expect, more aggressive than you would expect, more disengaged than you would expect—all of this is because of these damn Mars transits, at least in part.

And so a little bit of patience, a little bit of empathy, will go a long way. And patience and empathy should never be confused with disengagement or a lack of boundaries. You can be patient and actively engaged. You can have empathy and still have boundaries and hold space for your own feelings, including anger and fucking annoyance and sadness.

In regards to what's happening in the world right now, we are on a precipice. And Mars likes to Thelma and Louise a situation. You know what I mean? Mars likes to go, go, go, even when there's no more road. And so things are happening fast and kind of furious—not to make too many movie references specific to cars, but Mars does literally govern cars and how you drive, so when it works, it works.

What I want to ground you into is what you can control. That's the energy with which you engage—Mars, right? It's now you navigate your mental and spiritual health—Neptune—and your reality—Saturn. And as you navigate these things, you are inevitably going to bump up against things that are frustrating, things that are not what you wish they were, things that are downright frightening. And I don't mean, inevitably, all those things today, necessarily. But maybe.

What all this Mars activity wants is for you to practice staying in your body—not for you to be perfect at it, not for you to always like how it feels, not for you always to know what to do about it, but to practice. And wherever you're starting from is where you start from. So, if you are never comfortable being in your body, you're going to do teeny, tiny amounts of being in your body. If you're somebody who's really kinesthetic and you're really comfortable being in your body, then this is going to look and feel really different for you.

The point is, when we work with astrology, we have the opportunity to use the information we have about the stars and the planets and to actually use that information constructively so that we are healthier and happier and we are more effective in what we do, how we do, and we can sustain those beautiful efforts. That's the damn move. And so I want to invite you to practice that. That's all. Just practice that.

This is not a time for trying to get things perfect. This is not a time even for making predictions. This is a time for being present in your meat suit. And that's really hard for some people, less hard for others. Either way, it's the assignment. So get to it, you hosers. And let me get to your TL;DR.

As I said, we have a lot of transits active this week. I'm going to give you the breakdown, but I'm not going to name the transits it's associated with. You'll get that in a minute. And as always, I will remind you that I have the transcript to this episode available on my website within about 24 hours of the episode's release. Okay?

So TL;DR. You are not what you do. Center what you love and what you value. Communicate and listen in new ways, and be willing to confront old versions of yourself with new energy. Try new things, plant new seeds, and be open. This is a time to think about and integrate what you've learned and be careful of rigidity in yourself and others. That's your oversimplified quickie overview of this week's astrology. Let's get into the details now.

On Sunday, April the 12th, the transit I talked to you about last week will be in exactitude. We've got Mars at 2 degrees of Aries and 39 minutes sitting directly on top of Neptune at the same degrees of Aries at 10:30 p.m. Pacific Time exactly. Now, this transit—we've been feeling it for a little while, so it's not brand-new information. But it's really an important one to pay attention to.

Again, we may see violence motivated by religious extremism or spiritual extremism. You may be feeling anxious. You may be feeling kind of off in your body, just hard to settle. Mars is material, and Neptune is the ether. And therefore, when the two of them sit on top of each other, it can be hard to stay present. It can be hard to stay present in general, and in particular in and with your body and the sensations you experience in it. Because of this, this transit can be associated with projection, paranoia, illusion and disillusionment. You may be projecting things onto other people, and that might be putting others on a pedestal. That might be assuming the absolute worst of them. So you want to be mindful of and on a lookout for idealization and delusion in general, okay?

If you are scrolling through the World Wide Web—you may have heard of it, the internet—double-check before you jump to conclusions about something you see or something you feel about something you see, making sure that you are tracking the reliability of that post, making sure that you are not confusing AI for reality or whatever.

Because of the way this transit works, you may find yourself more invested or emotional about a parasocial relationship than you might otherwise be. This transit can also have you projecting fantastical, romantic feelings or sexual feelings onto someone that is not actually in your life. Be mindful of the difference between feeling feelings, thinking thoughts, and being deeply invested in them, because we don't want to lose track of reality, even while we fantasize; we hang out in possibility instead of reality. You just want to know, "Oh, yeah, this is just my fantasy life," as opposed to, "Because I feel it intensely, it is real in dynamic with someone else."

This transit may coincide with you feeling really sensitive and reactive. Or you might not be feeling particularly reactive, but you might be walking down the street, and somebody is just fucking popping off, or experiencing that in traffic or at work or in some other place where you're in community with other humans who are trying to move through their day, move through the world. That kind of reactiveness, that anger, defensiveness, paranoia—it can play out in a lot of ways.

And if you can try to seek ways of practicing being in your body with your reactions, with your passions—the proactive passions and the reactive ones, differently but similarly—then you will be better resourced. Then you'll be able to cope with whatever it is that's coming up on and around this date.

This transit seeks to teach you something really valuable, and that thing is you are not what you do. Now, what you do is an important reflection on you, right? We all know that intent and impact are different things. In the grand tally of your life, it's not about your intentions. It is about your actions. It's who you choose to be and how you choose to be.

But Mars can be so competitive, and Mars can be so much about the ego and ego drives. When Mars and Neptune come together, it seeks to teach you that you don't need to prove yourself to other people or to yourself. You want to find actions—Mars—that are spiritually aligned and have meaning for you—Neptune. The way to do this is by committing yourself to a path instead of looking for individual, finite actions and events to define you.

You are not what you do. And also, you are accountable for what you do and don't do. This transit is kind of a messy reflection on that. And if you are feeling funky about what you've been doing, why you've been doing what you do, if you don't quite know what your place is or how to enact the things that are important to you, this transit is more likely to kick up anxiety for you.

The anxiety that this transit is likely to spark is not an indication of what's wrong with you. I mean, it might be. I don't know you personally. But generally speaking, that's not what it is. It's an indication of what needs more care, more presence, more embodiment.

Conjunctions between any planets are the start of something. And we're about to have a New Moon in Aries. I mean, there's a lot of starting Aries energy. And Aries is, of course, a cardinal sign. It's a fire sign. It's the first sign of the zodiac, so it's good with beginnings. But the energy with which you approach something new—that's really important. The motivations underpinning your actions is really important information.

And so this Mars conjunction to Neptune moment is a good one for you to check in with those things, to not make assumptions about other people's motivations, and also to listen to what people tell you about who they are and what's important to them. And this applies to your personal life. It applies to your community life, your work life, and it applies to the world at-large when we look at events that impact us as a collective, like politics and things that happen on community level.

The feelings that this transit kicks up are a lot. And if you are looking for further support around that, I am talking about this stuff a lot over on my Patreon, and it's not just me; a lot of you, a lot of the folks over on my Patreon, are sharing resources for how to cope, how to show up, how to make sense of it. And there's something really powerful in being in community with other people to share an experience that can feel so isolated or all yours.

That's the thing about Mars. Mars is, "My success is all about me. My needs are about me." And Neptune governs the ways in which we are meaningfully interconnected and how my success is your success, and my struggles are your struggles, and vice versa. This is a challenging set of planets to be sitting on top of each other. Again, what's hard for you is what needs attention, inquiry, care, presence, embodiment. It's not what's wrong with you, not inherently.

 Now, that brings us to Monday, the 13th of April, when, at 1:21 a.m. Pacific Time, Venus will be at 16 degrees of Taurus and 48 minutes, forming an exact sextile to Jupiter at the same degrees of Cancer. This is a lovely sextile. What it does is it creates that little spark that you need to get your flirt on, to have something romantic and tender with another person. So that could be in the context of dating, although we certainly want to watch out because that Mars/Neptune conjunction is not inherently super sexual, because it really does pull you out of your body and make it hard to be in your body, and also, it inclines you to idealize situations and people or aggrandize yourself or others. So it's a sticky one for dating.

That said, Venus sextile to Jupiter is lovely for dating. It's lovely for flirting. It's lovely for friending. It's not inherently sexual, and oftentimes, our friendships are very sensual; they're sense-based. The true gift of the Venus sextile to Jupiter is that it promotes growth experiences around the things you value, whether that's your relationships, whether that's your finances, whether that's projects that you are actively engaged in.

Venus sextile to Jupiter is a lovely transit that really empowers you to connect or reconnect with what you love, with what you value. And so put that in your noodle. Look for things that you are grateful for. Look for things that are beautiful. Look for things that you have an authentic yes to, and invest in them. Put your energy into them. Jupiter is about growth and expansion, learning from experience. And Venus—again, it's your values. It's care. It's love. It's kindness. It's also appearances. It's also niceties as opposed to kindness, so pretending that you like a thing instead of actually showing up with kindness for what you care for.

So you want to do your best to expand things that have value instead of things that look like they have value. And that requires knowing yourself. And if, as you meet this moment, you realize, "Oh fuck.  I don't know what I value. I don't know who I value," that's great information for you to have. Don't lament and beat yourself up for what you don't know. What you don't know is an invitation for curiosity, for learning, for self-development, for going into the world and experiencing yourself in new ways. What you don't know is simply something you have to learn. It's not an indication that you're broken or you fucked up. Failure is really only failure if you don't learn from it.

Anyways, Venus sextile Jupiter is not about failure. Venus sextile Jupiter is about learning and growing from experience and the things that you value. So kind of exciting to have that in this otherwise a little bit challenging week astrologically.

Now, this brings us to April the 14th, which is Tuesday. And we have two noteworthy events. At around 8:30 p.m.—it's 8:21 Pacific Time exactly—Mercury moves into Aries, joining the very loud Aries planets that we have activated. But before that happens, at 10:10 a.m. Pacific Time, Mercury will be at 29 degrees of Pisces and 24 minutes, forming an exact sextile to Uranus in Taurus. Uranus is in its final days of its transit through Taurus.

It takes a real long time for Uranus to move through the zodiac, so these final moments of Uranus in Taurus are certainly meaningful as you as an individual and we as a collective really examine what we value. And this has a lot to do with technology. It has a lot to do with the rights of women. It has a lot to do with the ways in which we organize our society around our values, who has value, and how we hold and express that value, how we protect the rights of people and planet and things.

But let's come back to this Mercury sextile to Uranus. This transit is lovely. Mercury is your mind, and Uranus is your nervous system. And so this transit sparks off thinking, ideas, communication. It empowers you to make connections that you might not otherwise make. So, while we've got some fucking Neptune shit, this transit is here to help. This transit may just kind of put you in the right place at the right time to talk to somebody who just broadens your perspective, to have an interaction with a person who you just didn't expect to interact with. It's exciting. It opens something in your thinking, something in your experience, that makes other connections, some of which you may not even be aware of yet.

This is a great time to interact with people. Mercury is your texts, your emails, your DMs. It's communication with the people at the counter when you're buying the thing, the people that you walk by on the streets. It's just the people around you. And Uranus is innovative. It's eccentric. It's also the internet. So, the more open you are to experience people, to connect with people, to listen to people, to communicate with people, the more you'll get from this transit.

If you are a student of goddamn anything, Mercury sextile to Uranus is a great transit for learning. So open your noodle and do your best to learn. Whatever it is you're trying to learn this transit will help along.

Okay. that brings us to Thursday, April 16th. And I did something in the intro of this episode that is very classic of one of the transits I'm about to tell you about. I made a mistake. I forgot to tell you that Mercury is sitting on top of Neptune. So we had Mars conjunct Neptune on the 12th. We're going to have Mars conjunct Saturn on the 19th. And today, Thursday, the 16th, Mercury is conjoined Neptune. That'll be exact at 7:01 p.m.

Listen. I'm going to tell you there's two other transits happening as well. I'm going to tell you all about it. But first, let me just say it is classic of a Mercury conjunction to Neptune that I forgot to mention it. It's written in my notes in front of my face, but that's classic of this transit. It creates confusion in your thinking. It has you missing kind of obvious things. It's because Neptune is foggy, and Mercury is your mind. So it kind of creates some form of brain fog. It creates confusion. It can create uncertainty, anxiety. I'll get more into it. But I just want to say, sometimes, you just—like, you are the astrology. And sorry. I am the astrology in this moment.

Okay. Let's dive in a more linear, chronological way for a second. At 8:10 a.m. Pacific Time on the 16th, the Sun will be at 26 degrees of Aries and 38 minutes, forming an exact conjunction to Chiron. Later that early afternoon, at 11:56 a.m. Pacific Time, Mars will be at 5 degrees of Aries and 25 minutes, forming an exact sextile to Pluto at the same degrees of Aquarius. And then, finally, as I said, at 7:01 p.m. Pacific Time, we've got Mercury at 2 degrees of Aries and 48 minutes forming an exact conjunction to Neptune. It's a lot of fucking energy. This is a lot of energy.

So I'm going to kind of pull up, and I'm just going to give you an overview, and then we'll break down each of the transits. So, big picture, yeah, you're likely to feel really easily activated. You're likely to be easily triggered. And listen. It's possible that you're a perfect angel who has no triggers, and you're completely unfazed by this astrology. But you are going to be in the world with everybody else, and somebody is going to get triggered, at least one person. But it's more likely that a bunch of people and a bunch of situations activate each other.

And this is because the Sun conjunction to Chiron is confronting. It's confronting to the self. And the Mercury conjunction to Neptune is—it's fussy. It's confusing. It's confused. And that Mars sextile to Pluto makes things move fast. So things are moving fast. There's a lot of Aries energy, which already speeds things up, heats things up. And it's a really intense recipe for reactiveness, jumping to conclusions, and shit getting complicated quickly.

Let me break down the pieces of this. The Sun conjunction to Chiron—what it does is it lights up your wounding. That's fun. So, basically, the Sun is the great illuminator of the zodiac. So the Sun is your center. It's your sense of self. It's your identity. It's how you want to be seen and how you often are seen. Chiron is your core wounding. This is related to some of your deepest insecurities and the ways that you struggle with being here in this life.

When the Sun meets up with Chiron, your core wounding gets activated. Now, that might occur because you are being asked by your circumstances, by your relationships—whatever it is—to show up. And the ways in which you're being asked to show up or that you feel that you need to show up is activating or triggering your wounding, your insecurity, your ways that you really struggle with yourself on a core level.

So the opportunity and the lesson here is to meet the moment based on who you are right now instead of who you fear you might be, who you once were, who someone told you you were once upon a time. This transit is an opportunity for healing and growth, but it comes through struggle and being confronted.

Now, the Mars sextile to Pluto is a real asset. I mean, nothing's perfect, but it's an asset. Mars sextile to Pluto increases your bravery. It deepens your motivation for acting. It can spark you to be a little more reactive. It might inspire you to be a little bit more defensive than need be. But paired with the Sun conjunction to Chiron, it can really help you to be brave, to really deeply engage with whatever insecurities or fears about yourself that you're experiencing.

The Mars sextile to Pluto is really helpful for recovery and transformation. That Mars is in such a lovely conversation with Pluto, it really does help us to get out of the fuzziness that this Mars conjunction to Chiron brought up, that feeling of, "I just don't know how to be here.  I don't know what I'm feeling. I don't know how to handle it." Now that we're experiencing that Mars/Pluto magic, we are more firmly in the body. We are more firmly in the moment. There's a greater sense of "can do" that occurs. And that can really help not only with Mars's journey through the zodiac right now but also with that Sun conjunction to Chiron.

Now, the Mercury conjunction to Neptune is another conversation altogether. It's in Aries, so that means that we're going to be experiencing this more viscerally, more in the body, than we would otherwise. It also means that it's likely to be a little bit more of an insistent, burning impulse. Now, "What's the impulse?" you may be wondering. Mercury conjunction to Neptune—like I said, it kind of confuses your thinking. It creates uncertainty. It creates overwhelm.

Now, if you look up this transit, there are a lot of astrological sources that will say it deepens your spirituality. It connects you to forces that are larger than you and empowers you to be more psychic. I don't find that that comes to bear for most people. This is because that interpretation of this transit worked in a world where we weren't hyperconnected all of the time. That interpretation worked in a world that wasn't so deeply Mercurial. Now we have pocket robots that demand that we are all connected all the time and that we must be available for communication, whether it's receiving information or going back and forth with information, all the time. So it changes everything because there's only so much data a mind can hold.

And so, when a transit like Mercury conjunction to Neptune occurs in the modern world, we are more likely to experience anxiety, overwhelm, paranoia, and collapse, just like, "I can't. I just can't. I don't know"—right? That kind of collapse. So, if you are feeling those feelings, there's an astrology for that. But you might be interacting with somebody else who is just trying to power through their own anxiety, and therefore, they act fucking weird. They say shit where you're like, "Why would you be so mean about that very simple statement?" or, "Why would you have such a sharp tone of your voice?" or, "Why are you being so defensive? I didn't say or do anything." It's because everybody's all fucked up from this Neptune/Mercury/Mars/Saturn in Aries mishigas.

Within that, you have the opportunity to be curious. Mercury is so good at being curious. Be curious. Be curious about what you're thinking. Be curious about your own anxiety. Are you breathing? It's a really good question to ask whenever Mercury and Neptune meet, even with the easy transits like the sextile and the trine, but especially with the conjunction, the square, the opposition. And we're going through the conjunction now.

It's a really important time to make sure you are breathing, that you're not holding your breath and waiting for things to pass. It's the little things that help the body to stay present. It's supportive to the body. Neptune has a tendency to starve itself, to deny, to exist on fumes, basically. And what Mercury needs, though, is it wants dynamic interaction. It wants exchange. And so we don't want to starve ourselves of exchange, but we do need to have boundaries under this transit. So Mercury conjunction to Neptune is a transit where you're likely to need boundaries.

You might need to have boundaries in your own thinking so you don't let yourself fixate on things that are not your damn business, that are not in your control, that are what-ifs that will happen in their own time—so boundaries with your own thinking. You might need to have boundaries with other people around what you can and can't do, what you will and won't talk about. You might feel confronted by other people's boundaries, and you might need to engage with them. It might feel bad; it might not.

But you want to be mindful about what are the boundaries in what you're thinking, communicating, and what's happening in your life. Boundaries—a lot of people regard them as limitations. They're not limitations. They're supportive containers. They're clarity—clarity from the self, clarity for others, clarity from others. Boundaries. Love the boundaries.

So it's a great time to think about what your relationship to boundaries even is because, in order to sort through the total access to information that a Neptune/Mercury conjunction provides, you need to have some sort of boundaries so that you can recognize, "Oh, I can't listen to everything. So what am I going to focus in on?" Boundaries. They're a reflection of how well you know yourself, one of many reflections of how well you know yourself.

Okay. Now, that brings us to a very important transit. On Friday, April 17th, we have a New Moon in Aries with the Sun and Moon at 27 degrees of Aries and 29 minutes. This will be exact at 4:52 a.m. Pacific Time. Now, I'm going to pull up the chart, but I want to gently remind you that that Chiron, because it was conjunct the Sun, is also going to be a very important part of our New Moon chart. We are going to be having that Mars sextile to Pluto and the Mercury conjunction to Neptune as really important parts of this chart because, while they are waning in their exactitude, they're very close to their exactitude.

So okay. Let's pull up this chart. And if you're watching the video version, you can look along with me. If you listen to podcasts on a platform that does not support video versions, I am dropping the podcast in video across platforms, so you can find it over on my Patreon on the free page. You can find it on YouTube or whatever podcast platform supports video.

Okay. Here we are. It's a New Moon in Aries, exact at 4:52 a.m. Pacific. And almost everybody is in Aries. We've got Neptune conjunct Mercury conjunct Mars conjunct Saturn, all between almost 3 degrees and almost 8 degrees of Aries. And then we've got Chiron, the Sun, and Moon all around 27 degrees of Aries. That's a lot of fucking Aries, okay? That's a lot of Aries. We'll talk about all that Aries in a moment.

Pluto, at 5 degrees of Aquarius, is forming a sextile to that early-degree stellium of Aries. So it's sextiling Neptune, Mercury, Mars, and Saturn. That's lovely. We've also got a Jupiter sextile to Venus. It's wide. It's separating. But that's it. Everything other than Pluto, Jupiter, Venus, and Uranus—everything is in Aries. It's a lot of fire, and it's not just fire, right? It's cardinal fire.

So cardinal signs are the signs that govern the shifting of seasons. So it's spring. When we have this much Aries active during a New Moon in Aries, we know a big change is coming. Now, when you hear me say that, you might think, "Okay. My room is pink, and now it's going to be blue." It's not always that material. We don't want to be so quick to convert our feelings, our evolution, into something material that we miss out on the process; we miss out on the opportunity.

So keep in mind we are talking about a lot of fire, and that's activating. It's engaging. But it's not a controlled burn. It's got its own life. And so it's really important that you practice being present during this Full Moon because it's a lot of fire. That Neptune/Mercury/Mars/Saturn conjunction in Aries creates the potential for idealization, confusion, anxiety, overwhelm, feelings of being blocked or burdened or inspired and pulled in lots of different directions. It could be some combination of all of that. It could be more one component of it for you or another.

But what we want to know is that our attention is being activated, triggered. So, whenever we are triggered in that Aries sort of way, we know that the more aligned you are, the more activated in the present moment from the place you're at with clarity about your own motivations and your own capacity you are, the better things are going to go.

And again, it's okay for things to be hard for you. It's okay if you're struggling. You are not the only one struggling. It's a lot of struggle for a lot of people all over the world, right now and always, although right now is a big moment. So practice humility and kindness, empathy and accountability. That's what this astrology is asking of you. And it's asking that of you in general and across the board and especially in this moment, this very fertile moment of a New Moon. New Moons are when the Sun and Moon and aligned, and so we can plant seeds. We can be intentional.

Because of Chiron's proximity to the Sun and Moon—Chiron is at 26 degrees of Aries and 41 minutes, while the Moon and Sun are at 27 Aries and 29 minutes, 28 minutes. Because of how close these three bad boys are, we know that wounds are going to get activated. Your wounds are going to be activated. And to the extent of which that impacts you is specific to your birth chart, specific to your circumstances. But know that identity issues—so the Sun is related to your sense of self and your identity, and your personal life, the Moon, your feelings, your memories of the past—they're all going to be activated around that Chiron in Aries stuff.

So this is going to activate issues related to embodiment, how comfortable you are or aren't hanging out and being present with action in your body. I'm not talking about that kind of fun, sexy action, although you know what? Maybe. Maybe, should you be so lucky. But more what I'm talking about is when your emotions and your wounding, your insecurities, are activated, can you or how do you stay present in your body and with your body for whatever it is that comes up so that you can respond intentionally, adeptly, and in ways that reflect not that wounding but your wiser parts?

The potential of this New Moon is really huge for healing. It's massive for healing. This New Moon and the astrology all around it may crack open an old wound so that you may heal it, so that you may meet the moment on purpose. This New Moon can empower you to feel entitled to take a seat at the table of your own goddamn life. That's powerful, right? The ways in which you've been kind of hiding from your own power, hiding from presence in your life, really owning who you are, how far you've come, what you're doing and why—this New Moon wants to interrupt that. And that interruption may feel confronting.

Whenever we're dealing with conjunctions, there's an aura of confrontation because one planet is on top of another planet is on top of another planet. So it is a little confronting. But if you can be present, if you can practice being present, then that confrontation can help you to heal, to show up, to meet the moment from where you are, as you are, based on where you've been, but as you are now.

This New Moon is an opportunity to participate in the radical act of acceptance—of self-acceptance. It shouldn't be so radical to practice self-acceptance. But in the systems of the world that we all live in together, the system works best when we don't practice radical self-acceptance, when, instead, we fall in line; we act the way we're supposed to. We do what we're supposed to. And I'm not saying abscond with responsibility. I am a Capricorn. I would never say that to you. I'm not saying burn bridges. But I'm saying show up as you are. Maybe you need to compromise as you are. That's cool. But do it on purpose. Do it intentionally.

This New Moon is an invitation, an invocation, of alignment, of returning to self and self-seeding, allowing yourself to be yourself on purpose here and now and having that clarity of self, that practice of presence empower you to be intentional about what you are seeding, what you are growing inside of yourself, in dynamic with others, in the world, and in your life.

This New Moon in Aries is dynamic. It's a lot of fire. And some people will feel total exhaustion because it's hard to hold that much energy. If that's how you feel, that's okay. Meet yourself where you're at. Meet yourself where you're at. And I'm not saying push yourself, although this astrology is going to push you. I'm saying challenge yourself to show up. So, if exhaustion is a coping mechanism, if distraction is a coping mechanism, if rigidity is a coping mechanism, if sadness is a coping mechanism, challenge those coping mechanisms.

Pluto is forming a sextile to all these early degrees of Aries. This is really supportive. It empowers you to go deeper into your old coping mechanisms, your old assumptions, and to meet that moment in ways that are more authentic to who you are now and the capacity you truly have instead of your habits around your belief of your capacity. So, for some of us, we push ourselves too hard and we power through. And for others of us, we pull back and we collapse, and we don't challenge ourselves to mobilize when that's actually what's in our best interest.

There's lots of ways of coping. There's lots of ways of adapting. You don't need to be any one way. But this New Moon in Aries is asking you to cultivate awareness and accountability for how you are, who you are, right now, and to be willing to heal—whatever that means.

Chiron is hard because it's that part of you that really just doesn't believe in you, that struggles to believe in you. But just because it's hard doesn't mean it's bad. It's not bad. It's actually lovely to step into alignment with yourself, to allow the fire of Aries to motivate you to be an active participant in how you grow and where you're going and how you choose to get there.

So much of life is out of our control, but what's not out of your control is your ability to accept the moment as it is, to meet the moment as it is, to set your intentions about how you want to engage, and to practice kindness when you falter, when you fuck up, which is just a part of life. Choose who you want to be at this time, not out of a sense of fantasy, not out of a sense of obligation, but based on who you are right now. This is the best use of this New Moon's energy.

And this brings us to Saturday, April 18th, where we have our second-to-last exact transit that I'm going to talk to you about. Bear with me. So, at 1:34 p.m. Pacific Time, Mercury forms an exact sextile to Pluto. It's part of that Pluto sextile to those early degrees of Aries placements. We've got Mercury at 5 degrees of Aries and 26 minutes forming an exact sextile to Pluto.

So this transit deepens your thinking. It adds the capacity to more deeply understand, communicate, listen. We love to see it, right? Similar to how I was talking about earlier in the week when Mars was exactly sextile to Pluto, this transit really deepens your capacity to connect with other people, to be brave, because again, Pluto is very deep. It's all about healing and transformation. It's related to your flight-or-fight mechanisms. But when there is a sextile from a personal planet to Pluto, we have the capacity to engage with survival mechanisms as an asset, as a resource.

And so this Mercury sextile to Pluto is really going to empower you to have those meaningful conversations, to listen to something or read something that just sparks something inside of you that helps you to grow. This is a lovely transit, and we love that it is in exactitude right on the heels of that very important New Moon in Aries.

Now, if there's one thing I would warn you about, it's that it could lead to a little bit of fixated thinking, a little bit of obsessive thinking—because Pluto, right? But it's not like a major worry. It's more, if this is your typical go-to coping mechanism, you could kind of lose track of the point with fixations or obsessive thinking. So just be a little bit mindful of that.

Now, that's the last exact transit for this week. However, as of the 15th of April, we have been feeling the buildup to the Mars conjunction to Saturn. That'll be exact on the 19th, which is Sunday of next week. So I mentioned this at the start. I just want to kind of give you a little bit of context because we're going to be feeling it through this week, and it's almost in exactitude by Saturday, the end of this week's forecast.

Mars conjunction to Saturn is frustrating. Mars is the ruling planet to Aries. Saturn is in Aries. Neptune is in Aries. Everybody's in fucking Aries. And so having Mars confronted by Saturn may just—it's like if all this Aries stuff has been pulling our rubber band, pulling our capacity, pulling, pulling, pulling, things might snap with a Mars conjunction to Saturn because it's not just about this transit; it's about all of the Aries energies that Mars governs, see?

So Mars conjunction to Saturn—you've heard me talk about this transit before if you've been listening to the podcast for a long time because it happens kind of routinely. It's just that the circumstances surrounding the conjunction aren't always as important as they are now. Mars conjunction to Saturn can make you feel really stuck. It can make you feel like something or someone—Saturn—is getting in your way and telling you you can't do the thing you want to do. Or it could be that you finally have the correct understanding of reality, the correct motivation, and you can make shit happen. You can get shit done. You can do the work, and the work works.

Conjunctions can be really helpful, or they can be really activating. It just depends. This is not a good time for active conflict. Tell it to the world leaders, but I don't think they'll be listening. This is not a good time for active conflict. Things don't go well. Things don't go well under this influence. If you are pissed off at someone, do not start a fight this weekend. If somebody else tries to pick a fight with you, do your best to handle it so that things don't explode, because it can be really messy with a Mars/Saturn conjunction.

This transit is frustrating. We will often feel stymied or challenged in a way that is just constricting. And that constriction that Saturn brings to Mars—Mars tends to be explosive in response. And that can lead to overreactions, outsized responses, defensiveness, rage, embitterment. You get the picture. It's not a great picture. You've heard better pictures.

And so Mars conjunction to Saturn is building. We'll talk about it more next week. But if you find yourself grinding your teeth or clenching your jaws, that's classic Mars/Saturn behavior. If you find yourself just frustrated with things that are outside of your control, that's classic Mars/Saturn behavior.

So can you stay present and inhabit the moments in which you feel frustrated or blocked or things really aren't going the way you want them to? Can you practice being here now, even when here now is activating, aggravating, or just overall frustrating? If the answer is "No, not really," that's great information for you to have. And if the answer is, "Yes, I can; it's just hard," also great information for you to have.

You don't need to be perfect. You don't need to get everything right. You just want to be in the practice of living as close to alignment with what you believe to be right, with what's true for you, as you can in this moment, meeting each moment as best as you can. None of us are perfect. None of us are perfect. Just do your damn best. And as you're doing your best for yourself, make sure you're showing up for other people, keeping in mind that showing up for others sometimes means being like, "Hey, friend. What's up? How can I be there for you?" and sometimes means, "Hey, friend. Guess what. I can't be there for you right now. I don't have the capacity. But I just wanted to let you know it's not about you. It's just what's up with me." Sometimes it's just about communicating your boundaries so that other people don't take personally what isn't personal. It's a messy moment. Everyone is likely to take some shit personal that isn't personal.

Okay. I just want to take a quick moment to say thank you to everybody who's shown up for my series on alignment. We are only on week 2, but man, this is really—it's shaping in a really beautiful way. So I'm really excited to be offering the first five-week series I've ever offered and to be particularly focusing on this topic at this time. So thanks so much if you are on the journey with me. And if you are not, but you're like, "Shit. I want to be a part of that," I intend to either do this series again with a new group or make the five-session class available on my website in the future. So we'll see what happens.

Okay. Let me just run through these transits one more time for my note-taking friends, a.k.a. the Virgos. All right. On the 12th, Mars meets Neptune for an exact conjunction. On the 13th, Venus forms an exact sextile to Jupiter. We've got a Mercury sextile to Uranus on the 14th. On the 16th, the Sun meets up with Chiron for an exact conjunction. Mars sextiles Pluto, and Mercury sits on top of Neptune—a meaningful conjunction. On the 17th, we have a very important and kind of activating New Moon in Aries. And then, on the 18th, Mercury forms an exact sextile to Mars. And hot tip, hot take—we're going to be feeling that Mars conjunction to Saturn around the 15th, building, building, building to the 19th. So we're really going to be feeling it at the end of the week and through the weekend.

I want to thank you so much for joining me here for Ghost of a Podcast. If you get value from the show, make sure that you hit Follow or Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. All right. I hope you take really good care of yourself and others, and I will talk to you in just a couple of days.