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 looking at the astrology of April 19th through the 25th of 2026. The astrology has been bananas. It's been a really rough week, this week that we're just coming out of. A lot of people are feeling so activated. And what's happening is it's not just impacting you and how you feel in your body and how you feel in your psyche, but it's really impacting relationships.

So you may be on the subway and just having a very intense time of humans. You may be dealing with people in all manner of relationships, so coworkers, people you barely know, people you know deeply—basically all kinds of people—and finding yourself either very activated by people, finding yourself dealing with other people's odd behaviors as they're navigating their own activation. It's a lot. It's been a lot.

And I want to just kind of ground you into this because, to be honest, the horoscope I'm about to unpack for you is also a fucking lot, okay? What you do is your responsibility. How you respond to your reactions—your responsibility. The boundaries you identify and uphold in yourself and the boundaries you do or don't respect with others—it's all on you. You don't get to control your circumstances. You don't get to control what I think or what I feel or what I do. All you get to control is how you respond to your reactions because your reactions are also often really outside of your control; they're reactions.

But then there's a little bit of space, if you choose to create it and maintain that space, that is. There's a little bit of space in between your reactions and your responses. And the more time you practice hanging out in the space between your reaction and your response, whether we're talking about in your thinking, in your behavior, with your words, with your DMs, with your texts—whatever—the more practice you have hanging out in that space, the more aligned your actions, your self-talk, etc., will be in life.

And it's really hard to hang out in that space because, a lot of times, our reactions are not just relevant or appropriate to the given situation; they're kind of this messy smorgasbord of all of our past experiences and assumptions, our moods, our hormones. They're like a reflection of all the shit you're pushing down or trying to avoid. It's messy. You're messy. I mean, listen. I'm messy. We're all messy. Think of the least messy person you know. That person is messy, too, okay? Everybody's messy because it's messy to be a human. We're not an AI. We're not a machine. We are meant to be in our messiness.

And this week, like I said, the fucking astrology is messy. And so, as tempting as it may be to fixate on other people—what they said, what they didn't say, what they did, what they didn't do, what they feel, whatever—to fixate on the constraints of your circumstances or your situation, which are inherently outside of your control, I want to encourage you to orient your attention towards what is inside of your control, what is your responsibility, what you're accountable to. And that's how you hold your lived experience, how you hold yourself, and then, from that foundation, how you hold others.

The work of this requires that you stay present when you experience emotions or sensations or thoughts that your instinct is to recoil from. Don't recoil from the hard stuff just because it's hard. Hard is not inherently bad. Things feeling bad is not inherently bad.

As you know, I've been giving you the TL;DR, the short, quickie recap of your forecast at the start of the horoscope. And this week's TL;DR is, basically, it's time to revisit puppy talk rules. Now, I've talked about puppy talk rules many times on the podcast, and I'm going to do a quick refresher. Puppy talk rules is when you think about a puppy or a kitten or a tiny, little human baby or a baby goat—whatever it is that you think is adorable and beyond reproach. You think about how you talk to that little puppy. And when you find yourself being mean, aggressive, dismissive with yourself in your thinking, what you do is you institute puppy talk rules. You ask yourself, "How would I say that to a puppy? How can I reframe that to myself?"

If you find yourself talking to others or treating others in a way where it's just like, oof, you would never talk to a puppy that way, ask yourself, can you reframe it? Now, listen. Sometimes aggression is well called for. Sometimes you gotta fight. And you may encounter those times this week, given the astrology. But there is a meaningful difference between your reactions fueling maladjusted coping mechanisms or self-harm or harmful behaviors and being intentional about the fights you engage in and the energy and tools with which you engage in that fucking fight.

So all of this to say a big part of your TL;DR this week is puppy talk rules. It's going to be really important to be intentional about your responses to your reactions. Uranus is going to come in the mix, and so you want to be adaptable. You want to keep that in mind, that this is a time for being adaptable. And then, finally, by week's end, the work is going to be, be open to what you feel again instead of quickly reactive. Puppy talk rules really kind of sums it all up, if you ask me.

The astrology of this moment—it's not easy. It's not chill. And so it's tempting to kind of beat yourself up about that. It's tempting to lament that things aren't easier, that this timeline doesn't have more chill to it. But your best move is to meet this moment as it is, to meet yourself as you are, when you are, where you are, and to choose to accept it. Now, I'm not saying be passive. I'm not saying consent to bullshit. I'm not saying don't have boundaries.

I'm saying resistance to what is doesn't actually serve you, because acceptance is self-awareness. That's all it is. It's awareness of the moment. It's awareness of yourself. And through the practice of self-acceptance, through the practice of presence, you will be best equipped to deal with the roller coaster of shit that is likely to be active in the world this week and in your life.

So, all that said, let's dive into this week's horoscope. So the week begins with our first exact transit, which is the Mars conjunction to Saturn that is exact at 3:44 p.m. Pacific Time. Now, I talked to you about this a little bit at the end of last week's forecast because we were feeling it since middle last week as it was building up towards exactitude. It is here on Sunday, the 19th, that it hits exactitude at 7 degrees and 52 minutes of Aries. So Mars and Saturn are both at those degrees of Aries.

So let's talk about it. Mars, you know, is the planet associated with the ego, with anger and ambition. It is associated with punch-punch, bang-bang kind of warfare, old-school fighting. Mars is also passion and competitiveness and engagement. It's entitlement and empowerment. It's chemistry. Mars comes with vibes, but it's really the kind of vibes that have to be embodied, that are connected to the body.

So, whenever we see a Mars transit, a transit to or from the planet Mars, we know that there's a theme associated with embodiment that we're going to have to deal with. Now, Mars is sitting on top of Saturn. What do we know about Saturn? Saturn is the planet that governs patriarchy and hierarchies in general. It's a hierarchical planet. It is associated with our long-term goals. It's associated with time and maturity. It's also associated with scarcity and restriction and obligation. It's accountability and responsibility, and it's also accountability and responsibility.

So, when Mars and Saturn sit on top of each other, we have the risk that there's going to feel like you're just being smooshed; you're being kind of pressured in such a way that it's hard to handle it. Mars/Saturn conjunction—I often think about the jaws. If you have any kind of a tendency towards this or if it hits your chart just right, you might find yourself grinding your teeth or clenching your jaws. This is because the transit activates frustration because Mars wants to go and do. Mars is passion. And Saturn is like, "Wait, wait, wait, wait. Have you considered this problem and this consequence? I need to stand in your way because of x, y, and z."

And so, because Saturn is related to hierarchies, it's often related to people who have some sort of power over us or relationship dynamics with people where there's some sort of older person/younger person, person in charge/person not in charge kind of dynamic. And that can occur between any kinds of combinations of people.

This transit can be very frustrating. In fact, it kicks up restriction and frustration. But it's also a transit that can find you having the energy and focus to get shit done. As with most conjunctions, it can kind of be really great or really shitty. It's not inherently good or bad or easy or hard; it's just a lot of energy all at once.

So you may find that you've been experiencing a sense of stamina, like you can really work hard, concentrate, put shit to the side and focus. If you're experiencing that, that is fucking fabulous. Congratulations. You may also find that you're just like, "Ahh," all the time, just frustrated. Now, this sense of frustration often comes from feeling burdened. And some of that is a reflection on your circumstances and the times, and some of that is a reflection on whether or how you have navigated your needs and the needs of your body.

If your life demands that you exhaust yourself, is there a way that you can take that information and use it as inspiration to start building a different way? If you find that you take on more than you can handle in a healthy way, even though nobody actually said you had to—I mean, people get used to expectations when you create them. But if you find that about yourself, this transit is really going to be rough on you.

And it can be that push you need to be like, "Okay. I'm going to resist the urge to offer to do things. I'm going to resist the urge to be the fix-it guy, and I'm going to let other people fill those gaps because it's not working for me to do so." What I'm talking about, again, is accountability to yourself.

This transit is trying, and it's frustrating. There's often a way that Mars is like, "I want to do a thing." Saturn says, "No, you can't," or Saturn says, "We need to be building towards something," and Mars is like, "Yeah, but I want to do something else. I don't want to build the thing. I want to do what I want to do." So it's like we have dueling impulses inside of us, or we find ourselves in situations that are embodying that energy for us.

On a more systemic level, this transit will be certainly very activating in the ongoing developments around war or wars because of the two planets involved. We may also just see more violence, like crimes of passion, on and around this date. The thing to keep in mind is that we've been dealing with so much Aries energy, and now Mars—the ruling planet to Aries—and Saturn meet up, and it's consequences.

So you may be feeling smacked down by consequences. And that's not super fun, although it may be good. You might be happy with the consequences, but you may not be. But either way, what I want to encourage you to do is to practice trusting that wherever you're at now is just—it's just where you're at now. It's just where you're at now. Consequences—it's just information. It's not written in stone forever. It's the consequences of your most recent behaviors, based on your current situation, based on the world or whatever.

So, if you can, do whatever you can to stay with your body and give yourself some space to kind of rattle in your cage. And then come to an intentional way to respond to how you're feeling or to your situation or both.

Now, later on this day, at 6:39 p.m. Pacific Time, the Sun moves into Taurus. I personally am really excited we're having a little less of this Aries heat in the mix. But Sun will shift into Taurus. You may just feel it. A lot of times, I feel like we don't really feel the shift of Solar seasons, but this one you just may. But don't completely count on it, because on Monday, 4/20, April 20th, we've got Mercury sitting on top of Saturn and Mercury sitting on top of Mars.

So, at 4:22 a.m. Pacific Time, Mercury will be at 7 degrees of Aries and 56 minutes, meeting Saturn there. And then, at 2:45 p.m., several hours later, Mercury will be at 8 degrees of Aries and 36 minutes, and Mars will be at the same degrees of Aries. Fun fact—Saturn governs weed and all kind of marijuana-related products and such. So 4/20, Saturn transit—kind of cool.

But here we go. We're feeling that Mars/Saturn conjunction still, okay? It's still very much happening. And now Mercury and Saturn are meeting. So Mercury is your friendships. It's the connections you have with other people, especially the chatty part, the part where they're your neighbors or they're your coworkers; they're in your immediate world. It's people who you connect with on your day-to-day, and it's also people who you have conversations with.

Mercury is also your mind. It's not your nervous system. It's not your brain. It's your mind. So it's your attitudes. It's related to beliefs. It's your comprehension. It's how you listen. It's how you communicate. Saturn is, again, fucking consequences. It's scarcity. And so, when Mercury and Saturn meet, you may be in a depressive state of mind. Did you need that? Do you need that? You don't fucking need that. And because it's all in Aries and because Mars and Saturn are still conjoined and Mercury and Mars are conjoined, it's likely to not feel like, "Oh, I'm Saturn. I want to take a nap."

It's more likely to be kind of an angry, restless form of depressiveness, if you experience any kind of depressiveness. And of course, I'm not talking about clinical depression. I am talking about depressive thoughts, scarcity-based thoughts, feeling lonely, feeling disconnected, feeling like people don't get you, feeling like you said it wrong, you did it wrong, the plans you made weren't the right plans, feeling stuck in your situation or in your thinking—all classic of Mercury conjunction to Saturn.

Equally classic is having the ability to really focus, to make plans, to think through the details of a big-picture situation to be able to really focus and concentrate so that you can learn something, and in particular, something technical. If there's something you have to do with your little hands, some sort of project where you're making shit with your fingers and your hands, this transit can actually be quite helpful. It could also be really frustrating. Again, it's TBD.

With a conjunction, it's the energy is lined up, and it's weighty. That's even more so because of Saturn. So it's weighty. And under that weight, we can flourish or flounder. And again, flourish or flounder—one is not good, and one is not bad. I mean, obviously, I want you to flourish and I want me to flourish. We want to do good. We want to feel good. But when you fuck up—which, in life, you will. When you fuck up, it's not an indictment on your whole fucking personality. It doesn't mean anything other than, "Oh shit. I have something more to learn here."

And if we could all tap into the part of Saturn that governs humility, accountability, a willingness to be at a place at a time—a place at a time. At this moment, where you're at may be that you need to learn something more, that you're stuck. That doesn't mean that you as a person are stuck and you as a person don't know shit. It means that's where you are right now. And with humility, with patience, with a willingness to be here now, understanding that you'll be somewhere else a little later, you get the most of Saturn. You get the most of Saturn. It's easier said than done, but that is the work here.

Now, you might find that interpersonal dynamics kind of get activated. Because Mercury is conjoined Saturn, it's not an ideal time to process with people. And in general, if you've been listening to me for a long time, you've heard me say this before: I strongly advise you to never process with people you don't trust. I'm not an encourager of ghosting, but trusting people with your deep emotions if you don't trust them to hold those emotions, if they haven't communicated in some meaningful way that they are willing to hold your emotions—yeah, it's just not a good idea. So, again, it's about boundaries.

I want to tell you a little bit more about this Mercury conjunction to Mars to contextualize all this Mercury/Mars/Saturn shit, okay? So Mercury conjunction to Mars speeds things up. It speeds things up. It means that you're more likely to interact with a lot of different people, that more people are more likely to be impatient and activated and agitated. Mercury conjunction to Mars reminds us all how annoying we are. I am super annoying, and so are you. You're so annoying. And so is everybody else. We're annoying. We annoy ourselves. We annoy other people. And that doesn't mean we're bad, and it doesn't mean throughout the whole person. It just is part of fucking life.

It's not bad to have an activated reaction to something someone says or something someone does or how they say or do it. What you want to practice doing is, again, creating some space between reaction and response because if somebody annoys you or you annoy you, and then you're cruel or sharp or defensive or just kind of prickly with other people, now we have a fucking ball, and it's rolling down the hill and it's collecting steam. It's getting stronger and moving faster.

And so the very thing that you don't want, to feel annoyed, gets worse. You get more and more annoyed. We've all done it. We've all done it. So the work is to notice your own agitation. Does it show up as anger? Does it show up as sadness or demoralization? Do you get exhausted by it? Do you get just fucking in your head about it? Do you feel guilty that you're annoyed? There are so many different ways that people are around this sort of thing. Do you take it out on other people? Do you feel entitled to be shitty to other people?

Notice how you are because all of these transits are opportunities for you to know you better so that you can live your life better. That's it. And whether you determine you need to change, that's your determination to make. What you don't want to do under a Mercury conjunction to Saturn and Mars—well, Mars and Saturn sit on top of each other as well—is start shit that you don't want to finish. It's very likely that you'll do that or somebody else will do that.

If somebody picks a fight, you do not need to take the bait. You do not need to take the bait. And it's very tempting, when somebody says something that activates you, to react with your activation, whatever that activation may be. But this is an opportunity—nay, a challenge—for you to hang out with your feelings just a little bit longer than you know how to or that you want to before you choose how to respond.

The combo platter of these three planets meeting on the 20th can empower you to be practical, assertive, to do hard things, even if you're not perfectly clear on how or what will happen, to enact plans, to communicate with your words, with your behavior, what you believe to be important. This is all very possible. But it's a lot of energy all at once.

Because it's all in Aries, because of Mars's involvement, you may really want to just fucking pop off or react. And that's a bad idea. This is a great time for exploring plans as opposed to making proclamations about those plans. Not a great time for launching something. Not a great time for announcing that you're going to launch something. This is not the moment. Wait.

This is a transit, or a trio of transits, that in many ways will reveal to you some very important parts of yourself, like who you are, how you are. I don't know about you. It's like I'm recording this on Saturday, the 18th, and I'm already fucking feeling this. I'm, for sure, already feeling this, and I bet you are, too. It's a lot of energy, and it's hard to navigate it. Just because it's hard doesn't mean you don't want to, A, meet yourself, figure out who you are in this moment, in the context, and strive to meet the moment just a little bit better than your worst instincts would have you. That's the opportunity. That's the lesson. That's the assignment.

Okay. Now, we're still feeling it, but it's Thursday, April 23rd. And at exactly 6:58 p.m. Pacific Time, Venus at the most anaretic moment of Taurus, 29 degrees and 54 minutes, sits on top of Uranus at the same exact degrees, Taurus. We're talking peak Taurus energies. That's what anaretic degree means. It's like really intense energies.

So what are Taurean energies? They're sensual. They're the earthy part of Venus. They are related to fixed earth energy, so this is the way it should go, this is the way I need it to go kind of energy.

But we have the planet Uranus, the great individuator, the planet that governs eccentricities, communities. It is associated with the internet and electricity. It's innovative, and it's technology. And it's sitting with Venus right on top of it. Now, Venus is related to your values system. It's related to romance, the people you like, the people you're crushed on, the people you love. It's also related to what you value and who you value.

And a huge part of our experience of Uranus in Taurus, which has been happening for many years and is about to close, has been a time where we are seeing groups of people all over the world being maligned and mistreated because, as a society, either groups of people or governments have decided that they have no value. Some bullshit; am I right?

But unfortunately, it's not the first time in history that this has happened when Uranus was in Taurus. That's a whole other conversation, except for to say that Venus conjunction to Uranus is a time where our values as individuals and as a collective are going to be up. They're going to be up. And so you may find that you have an occasion to act in ways that really reflect what you value. We're still feeling all this Mars, Mercury, Saturn, and Aries shit, but Venus conjunction to Uranus may give you an opportunity to really assert what you believe and embody what you believe in. And if that occurs, you probably want to take it with both hands, even though we've got all this other shit going on.

Venus conjunction to Uranus, on a really personal level, can spark vibes with you and someone else. You may find yourself just having fun, flirty moments. You might find yourself hooking up with or exploring, connecting with people who are different from who you typically hook up with or vibe with. This is a great time for experimenting romantically, sometimes sexually for people, although Venus isn't the most sexual planet. It's more about sensual connection.

Venus conjunction to Uranus changes things up. It creates unexpected experiences and circumstances with and around people. So you may find yourself feeling rattled. You may find yourself feeling excited. You may find yourself feeling really open or really resistant to change. Again, we're dealing with a conjunction, and conjunctions are a little unpredictable in that way. Will it feel heavy and negative? Will it feel exciting and light? You know, kind of depends on a myriad of factors.

So you want to be open. You want to be adaptable. And within that openness and adaptability, stay aligned with your values system. How do you know what you value? Well, it has something to do with how you feel in your own body. The way that we can tap into Taurus's energy and Aries energy is through the body, really. And so if something is like—you're just not sure, notice how it feels in your system—not your thoughts about it. How do you feel in your system?

The economy may do something fucking weird on or around this date. I mean, it's already doing something weird all the time. Venus and Uranus and Taurus are both connected to currency and money, so there may be something, if this is hitting your birth chart really directly, that you experience with your own finances. Or it may be something that we see in the economy at-large.

The thing to know here is that Venus conjunction to Uranus—it's kind of all over the place. And if this were a different moment astrologically, it could be really exciting. I think you've probably heard me talk about this transit at previous times where I communicated it as a more exciting transit. But the fact that it is sandwiched between this trio conjunction that Saturn/Mercury/Mars is creating and the next transit I'm going to tell you about may make you feel a little jumpier. So do what you can to get grounded, to ground your nervous system. That will really help through the whole week and certainly in particular on and around the 23rd.

And that brings us to Saturday, April 25th. So, on that date, the Sun will be exactly square to Pluto. The Sun will be at 5 degrees of Taurus and 29 minutes, forming an exact square to Pluto at the same degrees of Aquarius. This will be exact at 9:33 a.m. Pacific Time. So Sun square Pluto—we'll be feeling it the 24th, 25th, and 26th. Again, it's exact on the 25th. It's a challenging transit. I mean, I wish I had better news for the astrology of this week. It's fucking bananas. May doesn't look as bad, okay? Hopefully that helps.

So Sun square Pluto is a really challenging transit, and it's so challenging because the Sun is your sense of self. It's your equilibrium. It's your vitality. It's your identity. And Pluto is just fucking transformation. It's the shadow that the Sun of the light creates, and in that shadow can exist the things you're ashamed of, the things that you have resentments around, your unresolved shit, see? And it's a square, so it's kind of challenging you to confront so that you can integrate or release what no longer serves you. So integrate what needs to be integrated; let go of what needs to be let go of.

Okay. The Sun square to Pluto is motivating. But the problem is, because of Pluto's involvement, that intense motivation that Pluto brings can often be coming from a sense of activation and maladjusted coping mechanisms as Pluto is associated with your fight-or-flight mechanisms instead of out of clarity and presence. So what you want to do, to the best of your ability, is to practice being present so you can have clarity, so you can act in a way that is as clean as possible. I mean, we're all messy, as I said at the top. But we want to take responsibility for our mess, to the best of our ability.

Okay. So this transit kicks up power issues. So it may be a power struggle between you and someone else. It may be a power struggle that you are experiencing with somebody else but is more a projection than an actual interaction. Or you may be dealing with someone else who is projecting a power struggle onto you that you're like, "What exactly are we struggling over?" But you still have to deal with it, right?

The kind of imbalance and struggle for power is inherent to Pluto. Now, power is not inherently a bad thing. Corrupted power, misused power—that's a bad thing. So this is, therefore, as you may imagine, a terrible time for being manipulative, for trying to control people. Even if you are confident that you're right and they're wrong, manipulating them, coercing them, trying to control what they do, how they do it, why they do it, that's—it's going to blow up in your sweet, little face. Okay? It's just not—it's not it. It's not the move.

If somebody's going to make a mistake, it's their mistake to make. If somebody has a worldview or whatever that is counter to yours, it's their life. In AA, they say never deny an addict their bottom. This expression or this truism is not said so that we ignore people in their time of need and don't try to help them. It instead speaks to the difference between helping someone and enabling them.

We are all on our fucking path. And you may look at my path and be like, "I would never do that. I would do x, y, and z instead." Okay. And yet my path is mine; your path is yours. That's how life is, right? When transits like the Sun square to Pluto emerge, what can often happen is you start focusing on everybody else's problems instead of your fucking own. And obviously, that's not it.

This is a transit that is kind of designed to teach you to let go. Let go of what's not yours. Let go of control. That doesn't mean let go of care and investment in others and in situations. It does mean that you can learn through this transit the difference between trying to control what comes versus tapping into your own agency and your own power so that you do what you are convicted is right for you or the situation you're in, the world you live in.

This transit can be powerful. It can be transformative. Or it could just be one where you're all fucked up and there's power struggles. And even if it's the latter, you can learn from that. You can learn from that. You can grow from that.

This is a challenging transit. Now, Pluto is also related to war, but it's more like nuclear. It's less about hand-to-hand combat. You go through a Mars transit, and you want to fight with somebody. You go through a Pluto transit, and you're plotting revenge. It's like more of a toxic energy. Again, this is a time where you want to protect yourself from those who would do you harm and try to not be somebody who is out there trying to destroy others. Of course, there are circumstances where that might be appropriate, but not a lot of them.

Now, this transit—like I said, it's challenging, and it's stressful. There's a lot you can get from it. Be open without attachment. Be open without attachment. That's the move. And that's the last exact transit of the week. Thank God. I feel like we did enough here.

Now, I'm going to run through these transits one more time. But before I do, I just want to take a minute to shout out everybody in my five-week alignment journey. We are just at the third week going into perfectionism, right at the precipice of this really bananas week. And I just want to just acknowledge you and all the really deep work we're doing and thank everyone who decided to sign up for that.

Okay. So here we go. Your quickie rundown is, on the 19th, Mars and Saturn meet. On the 20th, Mercury meets Saturn, and it meets Mars. On the 23rd, Venus meets Uranus. And then, on the 25th, the Sun forms an exact square to Pluto.

As always, within about 24 hours, you will be able to find the transcript of this episode on my website, so you don't have to take seven million notes unless you want to. And we have ongoing supportive conversations over on my Patreon as a way to integrate, cope with, and better understand the astrology of these times. And so, if you want to meet me there, we have a beautiful community, and I invite you to check it out.

And while you're checking things out, you can always go to my website, find the contact form, and send in a question to be considered for the podcast so that you can get a reading with me on the show.

And as always, I want to thank you so much for joining me here for Ghost of a Podcast. And I will talk to you in just a couple of days. Take care this week. Buh-bye.