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.

Hello, and welcome back to Ghost of a Podcast. This week, we're going to look at the astrology of July 19th through the 25th. And this is another week like last week with a lot going on that is deeply consequential for you on a very personal level and for us collectively.

Now, I know there have been predictions that we are, in this month and in these couple of weeks, in the presence of astrological configurations that will bring peace and a glorious reset. And I would simply urge you to look around the world and see if that tracks. We never want to abandon common sense and presence in our use and study of astrology, right?

Astrology is not a belief system. Astrology is not a superstition or even a tool for fortune-telling. It is a system for understanding the world, and it's netted in not just the present or our theories about the future, but our ability to study the past. This is true when thinking about it in the context of your personal life, from your childhood to this moment. We can use astrology as a tool for understanding your patterns, the patterns of things that feel like they happen to you or at you and the patterns around how you cope, how you react and respond, what you do with what you've got and where you're at.

This is also true for collective conditions. We can understand astrology in the context of history, the history of movements, the history of progress, of war, etc. Some of what we are going through is novel at this time. We can't necessarily use history as a guide, because shit is new. And from an astrological perspective, it's important that we are really keeping that in mind. From a historical perspective, it's important that we're keeping that in mind.

When we're looking at the goddamn weather and fires and floods and very important environmental shifts that we are living through collectively, we need to keep in mind that this climate crisis is novel. It is new. There are things inside of and around the climate crisis that are not new, but they are happening in the context of this novel, human-created fucking calamity. Let's start off positive, okay? Okay.

So I'm going to dive into the astrology of this week in just a minute, but first, I want to give you a little astrological overview of Jupiter because Jupiter is pretty active in this week's forecast. Jupiter is the ruling planet to Sagittarius. Jupiter is the planet associated with gambling, leaps of faith, big expansion. Jupiter is fun. Jupiter is exciting and adventurous. Jupiter is the planet associated with exploring and experiencing adventure. It is associated with higher learning.

We're talking about a planet that is associated with luck. Now, you don't hear me talk about Jupiter and luck a whole lot because I think that people have a weird understanding of what luck is, and I think a lot of times in the world of astrology, luck is talked about in kind of silly or reductive ways. Essentially, when things are, quote unquote, "lucky," they flow in a particular way that promotes ease and opportunity.

But luck, in order for it to truly be lucky, requires self-awareness. If you know yourself, if you know your circumstances and your nature, etc., then you are able to make use of luck by not overdoing it and not sleeping on opportunity. So, while Jupiter is technically associated with luck, it doesn't bring you happiness. It doesn't bring you success. That is a project that you collaborate on.

And so we're going to be talking about Jupiter and a lot of other stuff this week. But I want to just really remind you that Jupiter is the planet that kind of eggs you on to care enough about your life and the world, to experience it, not to theorize, not to shut it down—to experience it. And that is beautiful. And also, Jupiter is the planet that—if all the planets were little people, Jupiter would just jump in the pool before checking to see if there was any water. Jupiter takes risks. Sometimes they pan out; sometimes they don't.

When we're experiencing Jupiter—in the birth chart, by transit—if we are engaging in the expansive experience of having fun, making connections, having things come together, and it's not in any way connected to your principles, philosophies that guide your life, a care for the self and others, authentic generosity as opposed to just an emptying yourself out style of generosity, then what ends up happening is we just are shoving more, more, more, more into our pockets without considering quality and consequence. And that's really important. So some fun things to think about when we're thinking about Jupiter this week. And we shall now dive into your forecast.

Your horoscope this week begins with Mars. On Sunday, July 19th, at exactly 11:11 a.m. Pacific Time, we have a Mars sextile to Saturn with Mars at 14 degrees and 42 minutes of Gemini sextile to Saturn in Aries. So this is a fantastic transit. I think it's a particularly helpful transit in the context of the rest of this week's astrology, but there's never a bad time for this transit.

Mars is your ego, your sense of ambition, your sense of entitlement, your sense of can do, in a harmonious spark kind of relationship with stability, capacity, responsibility, accountability—Saturn. And therefore, it's a great time to follow through on shit, to get things done. Take a long walk. Organize—I don't know—your inbox, your closet. Move through something that is important to you that you want to get done and that requires some measure of groundedness, intentionality, and accountability. This is why I say go through your inbox, because it kind of fits the bill there.

This transit is not spectacular. It's not super glamorous. But it's really good for getting back into your body if you've been out, or being intentional about the relationship between your mind and your body. And the reason why I say mind and body is because Mars is in Gemini, and Saturn is in Aries. And Gemini is related to the mind, and Aries, the meat suit.

And so, when Mars in Gemini is sextile to Saturn in Aries, we have the capacity to really notice the body and, again, reshape, reorient the relationship to it. This can be a good time for sex and hooking up and kind of the cultivation of chemistry, but it's not Jupiter. It's not Uranus. In other words, it's not random and exciting. It's grounded, grounding, and dependable. So it just depends on what gets your motor running. You know what I'm saying?

Mars sextile to Saturn is a good transit to get shit done.  That's the most important thing I want to tell you here. It is associated with determination, concentration, and follow-through. So, if there's something you want to apply those energies to, start of the week is your time. The transit, as I said, is exact on the 19th, and then it kind of wanes in its effects, but it's still going to affect us for some days. So tap into that energy.

And that brings us to the—I would say the kind of biggest news of the week, although I don't know. You'll listen to the horoscope, and maybe you'll disagree. But the reason why is because the configuration of planets that I talked about last week that the internet is really focused on, with Jupiter, Neptune, Uranus, and Pluto all at 4 degrees of their respective signs, gets activated in a really important way here on the 20th.

At 12:23 a.m. Pacific Time, Jupiter will be at 4 degrees and 22 minutes of Leo, forming an exact trine to Neptune at the same degrees of Aries. And then, later on that morning, at 7:45 a.m. Pacific Time, Jupiter sits opposite to Pluto with Jupiter at 4 degrees and 26 minutes, opposite to Pluto at the same degrees of Aquarius.

That opposition between Jupiter and Pluto would always be a big deal. It's a very important transit. But in the context of all these sextiles and trines between Jupiter and the outer planets—Uranus, Neptune, Pluto—but also the outer planets and each other—Uranus, Neptune, Pluto sextiling and trining each other—what happens is Jupiter is sitting opposite to Pluto, activating the potential of these outer-planet transits. And this is important. This is deeply important.

Let me start off by telling you about the Jupiter trine to Neptune. Jupiter trine Neptune is a lovely transit, technically and on paper. And I've mentioned before that I have a mentorship tier on my Patreon. It's called the lover's tier. And on this tier, I do a lot of teaching of astrology and offer readings to folks on the tier. But what I want to share with you specifically about this tier is that I just shared something about how astrology works that I think might be helpful for you to hear.

When we are studying astrology, we need to learn all the rules. It's very, very important that we learn all the rules and we memorize a lot of things and we understand the functionality of something like—oh, I don't know, a trine, a trine being a 120-degree angle between two or more planets. Now, much like when you're learning how to drive, you really do have to learn the rules of the road, right? You really do have to learn that there are specific rules that must be applied by all people at all times in order for there to not be danger on the road. There are things that you must do to be lawful—okay. But also, there are things that you must do in order to be safe and keep other people safe, right? This makes sense.

But in practice, a lot of times, you have to adapt because of reality. So you might be driving down a freeway, and the posted speed limit is 60 miles an hour. But if everyone on the road is driving 80 miles an hour and you're the only person driving 60 miles an hour, it's actually not keeping you or them safer, right? And so we must adapt based on the circumstances that we find ourselves in.

You might be in a situation where the technical right thing to do on the road is actually, in practice, the most dangerous thing to do in that moment. And sometimes you have to adapt. And it's not a perfect metaphor, but hopefully it speaks to what I'm about to tell you, which is that Jupiter and Neptune trining each other is technically a fucking glorious transit. We have the two planets that govern philosophy, empathy, and humanitarian generosity forming an easy relationship to each other. One would think, "Oh, well, this is like the rise of humanitarianism. This is collective empathy and sparks of creative and spiritual joy of inspiration or experience."

And all of those things are potentials of this transit. But if we're using astrology in a human-centered way—which, of course, I am, as a humanistic astrologer—then we must accept that humans are not textbook. Society is not textbook humanity. And because of this, the Jupiter trine to Neptune may coincide with checking out, losing oneself in fantasy. Jupiter trine to Neptune can coincide with the rise of religious fanaticism.

So many—so many—of the world's evils are perpetrated by religious fanaticism, deeply held beliefs by one person or a group of persons that empower them to think that they are better and that the harm that they perpetrate on others is justified. We're seeing that all over the world, and certainly in the United States.

Jupiter trine to Neptune can coincide with toxic positivity. So what's toxic positivity? It's saying something like, oh, I don't know, "Don't focus on racism. That's a low-vibration thing to focus on. If you just don't focus on it, it won't be so bad." Not being there for a friend because their vibes are too low and it's bumming you out, but they've been there for you and it's an otherwise healthy, reciprocal relationship—toxic positivity.

And when Jupiter and Neptune form a trine to each other, they can egg each other on in the ways that they are not particularly humanitarian, that they are not particularly empathetic. Both of these planets have a little bit of a rough time holding on to the difference between sympathy and empathy. Sympathy or pity is not empathy and care. And it's really important that if you don't understand what I'm talking about, that you reflect on the difference between these two concepts and how you apply them to yourself and how you apply them to people in your immediate life and how you apply them to people and communities that you are not directly in relationship to but that hopefully you care about because they exist in the world.

This transit coincides with a risk of poor boundaries. And the poor boundaries are a result of being like, "Everything will work out. It'll be fine. I don't have to worry about it. It'll be fine." Trusting in the flow is a healthy thing. It's actually a beautiful thing. And abandoning accountability and presence and your own role to play in the name of trusting flow—that's a different thing. How do you know the difference? I don't know. It's a practice. It depends on who you are, where you're at, your nature—a myriad of factors. It's a practice.

Not asking ourselves hard questions is a great way to not know what your boundaries are, what your beliefs are, and what you're willing to do about them. This transit can coincide with a spike of humanitarian concern, or the opposite with a spike of entitlement to be concerned with one's own experience and convictions at the expense of other people's.

Jupiter trine to Neptune is important. Because we have Jupiter and Neptune, these slower-moving planets, forming an aspect to each other, we know that it's shaping society. It's not just shaping you and me. It's shaping us and now. And that's important.

And so, on a more personal level, the best things to do with this transit are to ask yourself questions about your spirituality. Get your buns in nature. If you have a spiritual practice that is affirming for you, tap into it this week. On a really personal level, this can be a time where you are transported, you open up to what is possible, and you are really able to expand your understanding of your own capacity and what's possible in the world and with other people.

This transit can be really beautiful, especially if it's hitting your chart directly. But we're all feeling it. Now, this transit overlaps with the Jupiter opposition to Pluto. All these transits I'm talking about this week overlap with each other, but this one is just a couple seconds off, a couple hours off of exactitude. And the Jupiter opposition to Pluto is one to really pay attention to, as I said.

Jupiter opposite Pluto is a transit of big swings, big swings, okay? Pluto is your survival mechanisms, and Jupiter is expansive. And so this transit is associated with flooding the zone, which is a term that was coined by evil fucking mastermind Steve Bannon. And it's a political strategy when political leaders get a ton of media coverage on just a myriad of things that overwhelm the people really intensely, and it's disarming of the people to be so overwhelmed.

This is why it's so important that we as individuals and communities are working on our capacity, because if you understand your capacity to make sense of things, to take in information, to emotionally process what you're learning, then you have more choices. And maybe you don't know what choice to make. That's okay. Starting with self-understanding is foundational.

The risk with the transit Jupiter opposition to Pluto is that there will be legislation—Jupiter—introduced or passed that taps into the survival fears of groups of people—Pluto. Survival-based fears are a little bit in the eye of the beholder. It's important to remember that what your morality is, you're applying to what I'm saying, to your use of astrology. And so understand that this transit, Jupiter opposition to Pluto—when we are looking at it from a collective perspective, we are needing to consider the fears and ambitions of those with power because Pluto is involved.

So how do those with power act when they're flooded with more power or they are flooded with the drive to grasp more power? If you don't know what NSPM-7 is, the National Security Presidential Memorandum-7, this was introduced at the end of last week, and it would allow the Trump administration to, quote, disrupt, identify, defund, debank, arrest, and prosecute political terrorists described as left-wing extremists. And this would be people who are anticapitalist, people who are anti-Christian—however the Trump administration is defining this.

It puts progressives, activists, racialized people, people who are not Christian, Queer people, and, as we know, in particular, Trans people, in a state of vulnerability. This is kind of the worst of Jupiter opposite Pluto because the United States isn't just trying to institute this inside of the United States. The U.S. met with 65 countries, I believe it is, to try to press this agenda.

This is unfortunately within the realm of expectation with a transit like Jupiter opposite Pluto, keeping in mind that Pluto in Aquarius is a transit that is sparking mass surveillance. The speed of technology is so much faster than the speed of our capacity to protect humans or the environment, or political willingness to even fucking try, it seems.

I do expect that, this week, there will be a flooding of the zone in the news sphere. And I still want to encourage you to do your best to stay aware of what is happening in the community you live in, the country you live in, and the world at-large. You don't have to know every damn thing, but do your best to stay aware.

Now, on a more personal level, Jupiter opposition to Pluto can coincide with obsessive thinking, with fixations and compulsions in your thoughts and in your behavior. And you may find yourself manipulating people in situations. You may find yourself engaging with somebody else who's being manipulative. Jupiter opposite Pluto triggers big compulsions, big reactions, big survival mechanisms. Jupiter expands things and makes them bigger, and Pluto is fucking dramatic. It is healing and destruction.

It is a big deal. So we really want to pay attention to this transit and how it triggers all of these other transits because it is triggering the other transits. Jupiter is activating the risk of spiritual bypass, the risk of exhaustion and fatigue, the potential of healing and making connections that empower you to make your life better, to make the world a better place, to understand the interconnectedness of so many things, not in a theoretical, disembodied way, but in a material way that you can actually experience.

If you are somebody who is struggling with addiction, Jupiter opposition to Pluto is a transit that is likely to activate your addictive tendencies or the core issues underneath your addictive behaviors, making it an excellent time for therapy, an excellent time for self-work, and a fucking terrible time for letting go of the reins and letting shit just happen.

If you can avoid spending large amounts of money on something or making permanent decisions during this transit, that would be fantastic. Jupiter and Pluto sitting opposite each other is dramatic. And therefore, your feelings and assessments—other people's feelings, words, assessments—is likely to be dramatic. So, if you can, wait. And if you can't, do your best to access neutrality inside of yourself before making life-altering choices. If you can't do that, that's important information for you to have.

This transit can intensify your drive to succeed, your drive to make an impact or expand your personal sphere of power. And as you can imagine, that could have wonderful consequences or negative consequences. Power itself is not bad or good. Power is energy. It's how we use power. It's how we attain power that can be regarded as good or bad. And so finding ways of inhabiting your own psyche, your own body, your own life, that are powerful—in other words, empowered—is like ten stars, no notes, right? Wonderful. And achieving personal power on the backs of other people by abandoning accountability and care for others, the world, whatever, may be not so great. I mean,  I don't know what you believe, but I would say not so great.

And so Jupiter opposition to Pluto is inherently confronting, as all oppositions are, right? A confronting aspect. And how you experience that confrontation, how you rise to the occasion of that confrontation—it's on you. Don't forget you have choice. You have agency. And within that choice and in that agency is accountability, is responsibility. I know that a lot of people use astrology in such a way that it feels like you're not really responsible for things; things happen to you. It's in the stars. But I want to really passionately remind you that you are co-creating your life. You are co-creating your relationships. You are co-creating the world.

There's free will, and then there's the astrology of it all, the fate of it all. It is a dialogue. It's a group project, not a solo project. The more that you can do this week to notice what's happening inside of you, what's happening in your life, to be aware of what's happening in the world, and to meet those things from an empowered place that reflects your philosophies and principles—that's a really good thing. That's a really good thing, even if it ends up bringing you down a bumpy road. It's pointing you in the direction of what you believe in and what's important to you, and that's what's fucking important in life—not that you get everything right, not that you're perfect, but that you are living your life in ways that reflect your convictions and your beliefs, what's important to you, because, after all, it is literally your life.

Okay. Before we move on to the next transit, I've got just one more thing to say. Now, I do not have the skill set—I haven't studied weather and astrology, and actually don't know anybody who has that specialty and has established a really high accuracy rate. I don't know. And I, again, will affirm that the climate crisis we are living through/we are very much in the throes of is novel. So it would be hard to make predictions astrologically.

Now, that said, given Jupiter's behavior this week, I certainly am going to be paying attention to major shifts in climate. I'm also going to be paying attention to war, of which we have many active wars. Many people in the United States may be surprised to find out that you're at war with Canada. You're in a trade war with Canada. There are many wars happening on many fronts at this time.

And when Jupiter is opposite to Pluto, there can be an expansion of not battles, but wars. Battles, we look to Mars; Pluto is war. And Pluto in Aquarius, in particular, is the technology of it all. We want to pay attention to that, to what's happening in the world, because there may be an expansion of violent and punishing elements in the world and in society. And again, your awareness is foundational to your participation. And your participation is essential for co-creating a better world that is safer for more people and doesn't center the rights and preferences of fucking oligarchs and billionaires and now a trillionaire. Fuck that.

Okay. Let's move on to our next Jupiter transit. On Tuesday—yes, we're only on Tuesday—July 21st, at 4:11 a.m. Pacific Time, Jupiter will be at 4 degrees of Leo and 38 minutes, forming an exact sextile to Uranus at the same degrees of Gemini. Jupiter sextile to Uranus is another transit similar to Jupiter trine Neptune, which is technically absolutely fucking lovely. It is the expansion of personal freedoms—Jupiter/Uranus. It is growth within technology—Jupiter/Uranus. It is a transit that promotes and expands the potential for experimentation and adventure and community connection.

It also is a transit that can expand the advancement of technologies. Now, again, that might sound great to you, but when you take a realistic, grounded approach to understanding how many technologies are owned by people with nefarious ambitions, it's a risk. There's a downside. And Jupiter is still opposite Pluto, obviously.

The effects of all of these transits intensify all of the transits, and that can be really beautiful and wonderful or really fucking awful, or, most likely, it can be both. Jupiter sextile to Uranus can inspire you to take risks and be adventurous and explore possibility. This is great for therapy. If you're meeting up with your shrink, fan-fucking-tastic. This is great for various healing modalities. It's great for any kind of exploration that encourages growth, autonomy, authenticity—wonderful, right?

Jupiter sextile to Uranus also kind of confronts you with the risk of taking on too much without a whole lot of consideration. Jupiter and Uranus are the two most impulsive planets in the zodiac, and now they're egging each other on. Have you ever gone shopping with a friend who's just like, "No, get it, get it," no matter what you try on in a store? That's Uranus and Jupiter sextile to each other, just like, "We should totally jump off the cliff. Yes, yes, yes. Don't worry about it. We should totally get in the car with those people." Jupiter sextile Uranus is just down, down to explore, down to try it out. And that's awesome, except for when it isn't, right? You take chances in life, and sometimes you're glad you did, and sometimes you're not.

This transit can spark serendipity, things just kind of fucking coming together, just amazing things that just gel and affirm each other, which is wonderful. But as the saying goes, it's easy come and easy go. So know that this is not a Saturn transit. This is Jupiter and Uranus. So, in more plain terms, this is not a time for making things stable, secure, and long-lasting. It's a time for exploring and experimenting.

In the context of developments with technology, as I've already named, technology is developing so much faster than humans can keep up with, so much faster than legislation to protect the environment and people. And this transit can really speed up technological developments, and that is not inherently a good thing. So it's something we want to pay attention to, major news around shifts in technology and people's access to technology.

This can be related to surveillance, in that Jupiter sextile to Uranus is associated with technology that connects us all. And that sounds great. I want to be connected to you. I want to be connected to my friends, the people I knew 100 years ago. I want to be connected, right? Don't you? But the problem is this technology that connects us all is owned by people, and they are surveilling our every fucking word that we type, every photo that we take. And so it doesn't just connect us all. It does something else and something that is deeply more nefarious.

We want to be paying attention because these are not just transits that are happening this week. These are shifts in society. These are generational shifts. So, on a personal level, there's so much positive potential. And on a collective level, there's also positive potential, but there's just as much negative potential. And we want to be realistic about that.

Now, that brings us to the 22nd, when it's Leo Season. Happy birthday, Leo. And on the 23rd, which is Thursday, we have two important things happening. The first is the first transit in Leo Season from the Sun. And at exactly 8:36 a.m. Pacific Time, we'll have the Sun at 0 degrees of Leo and 49 minutes forming a square to Chiron.

Also, at 3:58 p.m. Pacific Time, Mercury Retrograde is over. We will still be in the Mercury Retroshade for some time, but the Retrograde is over. And hopefully, what that will look like for you is a shifting in communication. Your ability to handle details, communicate effectively, will get easier. You may communicate with greater confidence. But before it ends, the Sun forms an exact square to Chiron. So let's talk about it.

The Sun is your identity. It's your sense of self. And Chiron is your core wounds, the ways that you really struggle with being a person, you struggle with your humanity, you struggle with yourself. They're not things that happen to you, per se. They're the coping mechanisms and convictions you developed as a small child in reaction to things that happened to or around you. So it might be in reaction to the world. It might be in reaction to a parent or a sibling or to something that happened to you—or, if you're really lucky, a combo platter.

So Sun square to Chiron is a challenging transit. It activates old core wounds. And when old core wounds are activated, what ends up happening is you're not just reacting to the person who said the fucking thing that triggered you; you're also reacting to the trigger itself, so every time it happened in the past, all the coping mechanisms you employed in the past—that kind of a thing.

This transit can really coincide with a self-esteem or self-worth crisis. It can have you really questioning your sense of self and your place. It can have you feeling small, unfortunately. And no Sun in Leo moment wants to feel small, but that's the fucking struggle of Chiron, is, "Am I good enough? Am I good enough in this context? Am I good enough in that context?"

The way to work with this transit is to practice self-acceptance, keeping in mind that acceptance is not consent; it is awareness. Acceptance is just awareness. It's a lack of resistance to what is in this moment. So, if you're just riddled with low self-esteem and you're anxious and you're feeling all fucked up, if you can find a way to be like, "Okay. That's how I'm feeling right now. That's not how I am. That's not what I am. It's how I'm feeling right now"—if you can just start with acceptance of what you're feeling, then you can start to unpack, "Okay. What do I need? How do I nee to handle this?" because—and you've heard me say this before—when you are activated with whatever—anger, low self-esteem, whatever it is in the moment—you are not going to be able to find a solution to your problem because you are present in the energy of rage or scarcity or whatever the hell it is.

And so what you want to be able to do is tend to the feelings now and seek a solution or the next best steps a little later. First, tend to the emotion. This is essentially a form of self-parenting that is an act of kindness to yourself and empowers you to be a better friend, sibling, child, parent, partner, coworker, community member, whatever it is we're looking at.

So much of this astrology this week is fucking excellent for therapy. Sun square Chiron—no exception. This transit is the most confronting alongside that Jupiter/Pluto opposition. The difficult thing about this transit is how it can make you feel like you can't. It can trigger old feelings that you just don't really know what to do with.

The positive is you can really grow. You can make progress during this transit, and the progress you make is powerful. It's important. And it can help you to heal. So, when I say heal, when it comes to Chiron, we don't heal past our wounds. We heal in our relationship to our wounds. So it doesn't mean the wound isn't there. It's that you are no longer in a state of resistance; you are in a state of acceptance. You have a healthy relationship to the struggle itself.

With this transit, you may be dealing with confrontation. We're dealing with fixed-sign energy, earth and fire. And so you might need to rally your energy and assert yourself, or you might need to double down on your values and stick to your principles.  I don't know what the answer will be for you. This may or may not even come up. But if it does come up, it's important that you honor the things you believe in, your principles, your values, because that's what the astrology of this week is requiring of us all.

Now, I should say that because of Jupiter's presence this week activating so many planets—and I know that's not what's happening on the day of this transit, but it's active all week—there's going to be a lot of busyness—like, a lot of busyness. There's going to be a lot of action and a quicker tempo going on this week. And because the Sun in Leo is squaring Chiron in Taurus, the zodiac sign known for taking a fucking slow approach, this transit might be extra challenging because you might feel like you're really being rushed past your comfort zone, or conversely, you might feel like other people are not moving at the pace that we need to move in order to get things done, in order to make progress.

So it's the astrology. It's imperfect. It's messy. Do your best to show up for whatever happens, in whatever ways it happens, in ways that reflect your wisest, most authentic and aligned parts instead of your most activated and insecure parts. In other words, do your best to seek to meet the moment collaboratively. And understand that that might mean you're making compromises and things aren't perfect, but you're doing your best with where you're at and what's happening. And again, this, my friends, is life.

Now, that brings us to our last exact transits of the week. On Friday, July 24th, we have two exact transits. Mercury, now direct—yay; huzzah—forms an exact sextile to Venus at exactly 10:49 p.m. Pacific Time, with Mercury at 16 degrees of Cancer and 20 minutes forming an exact sextile to Venus at the same degrees of Virgo. And that's happening at 9:12 a.m. Pacific Time. Later that night, at exactly 10:49 p.m. Pacific Time, Neptune forms an exact sextile to Pluto. So more outer planet madness for the family.

Okay. Mercury sextile Venus—this is a transit that happens frequently. You've heard me talk about it many times before. It's a social transit. It empowers you to connect with other people, have nice social flow. It's really good for creative work. It's really good for just connecting to people in a way that is empathetic, that is fun, that is dynamic—that kind of thing. It's not too deep of a transit. And then we have our Neptune sextile to Pluto, with Neptune at 5 degrees of Aries and 20 minutes, Pluto at the same degrees of Aquarius.

So another lovely transit between two outer planets. This transit is excellent for deepening a spiritual practice. It is a transit that can also deepen your capacity or your willingness to work on humanitarian or social justice-oriented movements. This energy deepens—because of Pluto—spirituality or connection to nature and each other—Neptune. It takes your survival mechanisms, and it infuses them with the capacity to have greater empathy and care, to really connect to the spiritual concepts of how we are all connected and whether it's, quote unquote, "good" or, quote unquote, "bad." It is an experience. And experience has value. Very spiritual, very high level, right?

The downside of this fucking transit is it can lead to spiritual bypass. It can lead to spiritual bypass because of exactly the same shit I just said. It can lead to a really generalist care for the world in which you don't pick a lane, make a choice, follow through with action. Again, this transit can represent a deepening or even a weaponization-—fucking Pluto—of spiritual or religious convictions.

So, when we talk about something like the rise of white Christian nationalism, there are spiritual and religious ideologies that motivate the beliefs that underpin the actions of the people. With a Neptune sextile to Pluto, what we believe kind of gets a little more entrenched. And you could see how that could be a very good thing or a very shit thing. Knowledge is power.

So how well you know yourself and what you believe, the principles that you are convicted around—not just what you care about, but what you believe you need to do, what you feel called to do to embody that care—that knowledge is powerful. It's powerful for you, for your life. And it's powerful for your communities and this calamitous moment that we find ourselves in.

And so this particular transit is a good one for you to not look outside of yourself for answers but really check in with what you believe and how deeply you believe it, to really connect to nature, the world that you live in. You might be gasping for air because of fucking forest fires. You might be living through flood or heat waves or any number of things that make it hard to connect to the Earth. But when things are on fire is not when we turn away from them—not if we want to survive.

It's time to really pay attention to what's happening, to understand your place in your body, your place in your life, your place in relationship to the Earth you live on, and to understand that these are deeply spiritual things to consider, as much as they are also beneficial to your psychology and your emotions and potentially even your physical health and welfare.

Neptune sextile to Pluto is not inherently technically an emotional transit, because emotions are the Moon. But Neptune governs anxiety, fantasy, coping mechanisms, deeply held beliefs. And again, Pluto deepens those things. It can have you fixated on or compulsively referring back to those things.

And so making sure that you are bringing your emotional intelligence, your emotional care, to this self-inquiry, if you are engaged in spiritual groups or creative groups or humanitarian groups, making sure that you're being intentional about how you are showing up as an individual is really important. And it's really emotional. It is. The astrology of this week—again, it's not technically Lunar, but fuck, it's emotional.

We are on a roller-coaster ride together, and the way you're experiencing it is completely personal to you, and also, it's happening to us as a collective. And that's hard to wrap one's mind around, especially when life gets bananas. And life may get bananas this week. But we are all in this together. We are not in the same part of the same ship, but we are all in the same boat. We are, one way or another.

And that interconnection that is a spiritual truth but also a material truth of all life together is a principle taught to us by Neptune. And Jupiter is also really interested in this concept. And so it's really activated astrologically this week, which means it's activated in you and in us.

Now, one last thing I'm going to tell you about this week's astrology—on Saturday, you're going to start to feel the effects of the Sun opposition to Pluto that will be exact on Sunday. So I'll talk about it in next week's horoscope in greater detail. But that transit is compulsive. It is obsessive. It represents power struggles and all kinds of other intense dynamics that can lead to manipulation, conflicts, or even violence and danger, like real danger to your psyche or your person.

And so I want to just throw that little bit of knowledge in the mix because impulses are running high. Reactiveness is going to be running high. Deep spiritual and psychological reflection that I'm encouraging—you may or may not have time for it. And then Sun opposition to Pluto is further activating. That transit can represent a time when you heal, but you heal through drama or calamity or problems. So watch your impulses. Make sure that you are creating space between your reactions and your responses to the best of your ability as frequently as you can.

The astrology of this period is testing your capacity. It's testing you, and it's testing us. And that is not bad or good. It is what time it is. It is the season we are in. And so I want to invite you to be curious about it. I want to invite you to talk about these concepts with people that you have good conversations with. Talk to people who are both different than you and who vibe with you. This is a time for exploring. This is a time for learning. But you won't learn if you don't try, so try. Try, okay? Just try this week.

Now, I'm going to give you the TL;DR for this week because it is a lot of information I just dropped at you. This week starts off with the capacity for determination and spiritual uplifting. The zone will be flooded. Experimentation and exploration are very well starred. You will be called upon to excavate old wounds, and Mercury will go direct, so communication will get a little easier. There is potential for great spiritual growth. And within it all, healing is possible.

I want to thank you so much for tuning in to Ghost of a Podcast this week and every damn week. If you would like to get a reading with me, there's one way to do it, and it's on this podcast. So go ahead and send me a question through the contact form on my website. And while you're on my website, I have a free chart-drawing tool that you can check out that my wonderful forever fiancé built. And I've also got classes available, and if you haven't already, you can pick up my book, Astrology for Real Relationships: Understanding You, Me, and How We All Get Along.

All right. Take really good care of yourself and others, this week for sure, and every week. And I'll talk to you in just a couple of days. Bye.