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 have really important transits occurring, but this is normal. Important transits is kind of like saying your life is important and developments in the world are important.

Before we get into the specifics of the transits, I just wanted to do a little check-in and share some thoughts I've been having about astrology and this podcast and my work and to give you a little bit of context for how I talk about politics on this podcast. It's not a new show, obviously. It's astrology. And I want to acknowledge that horoscopes can be stressful. And I want to let you know something that you may not actually know, which is horoscopes are a pretty new invention in the context of the lifespan of astrology as a practice and a pursuit.

Astrology is really nuanced and deep. And primarily, astrology is used for nativities, which is to say birth charts. But in more modern times, where everything is commodified, we have horoscope. Horoscopes are digestible, and they're for many people at once as opposed to just for you individually. And horoscopes, like I do here on the Sunday episode of this podcast, are inherently predictive. That's what it is.

And I have issue with prediction. I  think turning to astrology for prediction sometimes is really constructive and helpful, and sometimes it can be just like trying to find a shortcut to dealing with uncertainty, the unknowable, making decisions, etc. We have to take responsibility, not just for the tools we use but for how we use them and why. And that's—it's hard.

There's been, over the last—I don't know—15 years, this tsunami of astrological information on the internet. Some of it's good; some of it's shit. There's a lot in between. Whatever. But what most of it is is predictive. And that can stress people out. It really can. And I want to just acknowledge that things are exceptionally stressful right now. And they may be stressful in your individual life, but we are arguably in a world war, at the helm of a world war. In the United States, ICE is just terrorizing people. We have environmental collapse. It came out in the news this past week that AI—I don't know—might kill everyone in the next four years. What?

We are living through existential threats. And if you don't pay attention to the news, you may be like, "Wait. What? No. It's not that bad." But if you pay attention to the news, then you know what I'm talking about. And I want to say that how we navigate uncertainty and fear is a huge part of our current assignment as both individuals and communities as a whole.

Within that, I am one individual person. I am just a person. I am not a corporation. I am not a team. I'm just literally a person in her early 50s who has spent over 30 years doing what I'm doing now here on this podcast, but I've been doing it in my little office in the Bay Area. But now I'm doing it here on a podcast. I write a horoscope. I've been doing that for more than 20 years—that kind of shit.

I'm an astrologer. This is my life's work, pursuing astrology and using it to help people help themselves. That's my goal. I want to help you help you. I am deeply passionate about the work I do. I love the work I do. I'm very lucky that way. And my values are also a huge part of who I am and a huge part of my passions.

And when I do one-on-one readings, like in my office when I was doing that as my full-time living, it was never appropriate for me to lead with my values or my politics or my belief, because in a reading, what I'm doing is I'm meeting an individual where they're at, and I'm supporting them based on their values and their politics and their preferences.

However, this is a podcast, right? And on a podcast, I have a platform. And I have to be able to sleep at night. I need to be able to live with myself. I need to be a good boss to me, my employee. And so I have to talk about politics. And there are great limitations in how I talk about it. You might feel that I don't talk about politics enough. You might feel that I talk about politics way too much. You might think I do it wrong. You might think I do a great job. I don't know.

All I know is that I'm trying. I am trying. And sometimes, I don't have the capacity to try because of a myriad of factors. Sometimes I try and I fail. Sometimes I nail it. I want you to know that I am just a person, and I am trying based on my values. I want to preserve the right to be messy and to fail and to evolve and change and grow, and I want to preserve that right for you in your life. I want you to know that living in accordance with your values means taking risks. It means sometimes losing things. And it also means being able to sleep at night with yourself.

What I'm trying to say here is a couple of things. If prediction is stressing you out, then good news for you is you don't have to consume predictive astrology. And if you think that I am doing something right or wrong, that's okay. I want to preserve the right to get things wrong, to not be perfect for all people, and I want you to have that right, too.

I want us—in this age of surveillance, in this age that is so deeply carceral and unstable, I want us to find a way to notice when we are surveilling ourselves, when we are surveilling others, when we are being punishing, and to just notice it and make choices around it. Now, I'm not saying don't hold me accountable for shit I say or don't say, just for the record. I'm talking about something broader, and I'm using myself as an example. I'm using astrology as an example.

As I was saying before, astrology is not just horoscopes. And this is, in part, why I have a midweek episode where I gift a reading to you, to a listener. And it's a real, in-depth reading. It's long, so it's too long for some people. It's not everyone's cup of tea. But that's—when I think of what astrology is, it's readings. It's tailored to the individual. It's nuanced. It's healing. It's supportive.

And I hope that my horoscopes are those things as well. But the horoscopes are always going to be more general. And so I want to invite you, if you are interested in astrology but you're stressed out by prediction, to explore the foundations of astrology because it's not all about prediction—like, at all. And I know the internet focuses on prediction, but that is not the primary use case of astrology, just for whatever it's worth.

The other part of what I'm trying to get at is I've had this podcast since 2018, and it's been in the time of MAGA. It's been in the time of COVID-19. It's been in the time of AI and white supremacy and eugenics really rising to prominence. It's been in a time of environmental collapse. And I could not live with myself if I didn't speak to these things and I didn't acknowledge the context that this astrology is happening in.

And also, what's in your stewardship, what is your calling, is to know yourself and to care about yourself and to figure out what your interest and capacity is in caring about other people, in caring about community, in having these kinds of conversations. The world is on fire, like literally, metaphorically. It's on fire.

And for me to tie that into still getting predictive astrology for you—Pluto is out of bounds. It's not something we talk about enough here, but Pluto is out of bounds. And when planets are out of bounds, they act like rogue agents. They are unpredictable and extreme. And Pluto is related to life-or-death issues. It's related to survival and intensity and confrontation and all kinds of other really powerful energies. And it's in Aquarius, the zodiac sign that governs humanity, technology, and progress.

When Pluto is in Aquarius, we know that there's likely to be major developments around human rights and, in particular, the rights of women and Queers. We know there's likely to be environmental shifts. And we also know that technology is going to be potentially an existential issue. Now, does it help humanity? Does it harm humanity? I mean, look around and make your own assessments.

But the context astrologically of the rise of AI and the threat of AI—not just because it itself could, according to experts—I don't know—create a mega virus and kill us all—like, what? Fuck. What?  I don't know how to metabolize that information, but that is—it's stressful. I'm stressed to talk about it. Sorry it's stressful to hear about it. But it's also the data centers that are burning through our drinking water and heating up the world that is already running out of water and too hot.

This surveillance state that we are living in that technology is facilitating globally and domestically—this is Pluto out of bounds. And I will tell you this. Astrology is deeply inherently Uranian, and Uranus is the ruling planet to Aquarius. So it's Aquarian, right? It's got an Aquarian vibe. I think of astrology more as a kind of technology than as a belief system. And I know a lot of people think of astrology as a belief system. I personally don't.

What I'm trying to say here is, with Pluto out of bounds, with the world as it is, we will either come together with and for each other while taking accountability of our own individual capacity and needs or we will deal with the worst parts of Pluto out of bound.

Pluto in Aquarius can really focus on the rise of toxic individualism, and it can also speak to the rise of toxic communities, of communities that's sole purpose is to misuse and abuse power or surveil people. Right? So we see ICE is a great example of that. But Pluto in Aquarius is also communities of progressive people, of misfits and oddballs, of people who are queer, and I don't just mean Queer as in Gay; I mean queer as in fucking odd, queer as in not necessarily fitting in where you are. Queer, you know, in the Uranian sense.

We can come together with each other, for each other—with each other for humanity, for the planet, for those who can't advocate for themselves. And that's what I hope we do. And none of us are going to do it perfectly. All of us are going to get it wrong sometimes, misstep sometimes, pull back and leave the fight sometimes. And that's okay. That's okay.

I've said this on the podcast before. I've said this on my Patreon a bunch. But I'll say it again here, and then I promise we'll get straight to your horoscope. A huge part of why I started Ghost of a Podcast at all was because of these past few years and the years yet to come and what I saw coming. Now, the value of prediction—again, I'm very ambiguous about it.

But what I can tell you is you and I need the emotional intelligence and resiliency to be able to do hard things, to be able to make good choices in bad situations, to be able to recognize where personal sacrifice is healthy and in alignment and where it isn't. It's easy to be motivated by saviorism, but saviorism—it'll burn you out.

Practicing accountability, emotional intelligence, empathy for yourself and for others—this, this is how we get out of this as individuals and as communities together. And I really hope that we work together to get out of this, understanding that sometimes when we work together, we really find each other annoying or we're not aligned. And sometimes that needs confrontation and conflict, and sometimes that needs patience and empathy and a little bit of grace. Again, do what you can, as you can.

The news in the last few weeks has been really hard to metabolize. And it's okay to have a hard time metabolizing. But when we metabolize hard things, it has to include your emotion. If it's just mental, then it's like white-knuckling it through. So let yourself feel what you feel. There doesn't have to be a reason all the time. Sometimes you have feelings. Just let yourself feel what you feel.

And if you're like, "Oh shit. Yeah, x, y, z is what I'm feeling," good news—you can just pause this podcast. Take a minute to hang out in your feelings. Maybe ask your system what it needs. Then come on back. Listen to your horoscope—or not. You do you.

All right. That's enough of that. Let's dive into this week's forecast. Okay. So we are looking at the astrology of September the 13th through the 19th of 2026. And we start off the week with an exact transit on the 13th, but we're still feeling those two Mercury transits from the 12th. So the effects of Mercury trine to Pluto and opposite Neptune are still active, and that Mercury opposite Neptune is the real one we want to be a little cautious around because it can lead to confusion and kind of pedestalizing people and anxiety, really. Anxiety is the thing. So the need with that transit, as a sweet little reminder, is to have healthy boundaries. That's the assignment, okay?

Now, on the 13th, at exactly 7:40 p.m. Pacific Time, we have a Mercury trine to Uranus. Now, this transit is absolutely lovely, super supportive, and what it does is it can speed up the tempo of your day-to-day life. So you might interact with a lot of people or people you weren't expecting to interact with. You may have extra texts, run into people on the street that you don't usually see—that kind of shit.

It's also really good for innovation. So, if you're stuck in something and you've been trying to figure it out, this transit is your friend because it supports you in just making connections that otherwise might evade you or just not seem likely to you. It's an innovative transit, and it's really supportive for identifying, communicating, and holding those boundaries that you need to have because of the exact transit on Saturday, the 12th, that we talked about last week.

Now, happily, this transit overlaps with a Sun sextile to Mars that's exact at 12:53 p.m. Pacific Time on Monday, the 14th. We have the Sun in Virgo sextile Mars in Cancer, which is really kind of a sweet sextile because the energy that it sparks is grounded and nurturing, which we love. This is a great transit for getting shit done, for motivation, and not just in a me-centric way, although it's supportive for things that just support you, but also, it's really good for connecting with others, for creating habits and rituals that help you to connect to the people and things you care about. It helps you to move past or through your shyness or your trepidation about getting shit done or doing things in a particular way. It's an activating transit.

If you have been kind of struggling to get into your meat suit, listen to its needs, support it, this transit is really helpful. If there's a project you've been wanting to start, this transit—again, very supportive. Now, I'm going to say something that contradicts that in a minute, so don't get too excited about the starting of projects. But to me, the best part of this transit is it's incredibly supportive for embodiment, for being in the body. And so, whether that means you want to start stretching or practicing noting where you're having certain emotions in your body or anything else that has to do with embodiment, this transit is for you. It's really supportive. So lean into what it has to offer.

And then that brings us to the 14th. On Tuesday, the 15th, we have two really important transits. One of them is really challenging, and one of them is just like a whole other vibe. So, at exactly 11:35 a.m., Venus will be at 3 degrees of Scorpio and 17 minutes, and Pluto will be at the same degrees of Aquarius. So they're forming a square to each other. And then, at 6:47 p.m., same day, we have Neptune at 3 degrees of Aries and 16 minutes forming an exact sextile to Pluto, same degrees of Aquarius.

So that Neptune sextile to Pluto is an outer-planet transit, so two outer planets aspecting each other. Whenever we have these, we know that they are shifting culture; they're shifting community. They affect the whole. So they have a really personal implication for you in your birth chart, but they also shift culture in a really big way.

A lot of us have a Neptune sextile to Pluto in our birth chart. This transit was active between 1950 and '56, 1976 through 1986. So if you were born in either of those cohorts, you might have this aspect in your birth chart or a little wider than that. And it hasn't happened in exactitude—Neptune sextile to Pluto—since 1986. It's going to be active off and on, so not in exactitude the whole time, from now, 2026, through 2032.

This transit is dynamic. Neptune is spirituality, and Pluto governs the depths. And so what can happen under this transit on a really personal level—and of course, you want to look at where early degrees of Aries and early degrees of Aquarius lands in your birth chart because that's where these planets are hanging out in your birth chart, and that's the part of your life that are getting activated by this transit.

What this transit can activate or signify in your personal life is a deepening of your spiritual values, of your empathy and your care for others. It could also deepen and solidify your habits around escapism, especially where your survival is concerned. A sextile gives us this spark of energy. It doesn't magically change you from escapist to not escapist. And in our culture, after so many years of Neptune in Pisces—it's now at the early degrees of Aries, but we have cultivated, as communities, a culture of escapism, of having lots of relationships that are really parasocial and far out from us. That can be inherently escapist.

And so it's important under a Neptune sextile to Pluto to be mindful about the ways in which you engage with Plutonian issues, which is to say issues related to your survival, issues related to deep and intense feelings, resentments, shame. Pluto is really carceral. Pluto is really punishing and abandoning and all this kind of shit. That's Pluto for you. It is also the planet that governs healing and transformation and profound evolution.

A sextile from Neptune to Pluto can help you to be more empathetic, more graceful, more compassionate to yourself and to others. Or it can justify some pretty heinous impulses to hate yourself or hate others, resent yourself or resent others. If you choose to use your spirituality as a way to be more connected, more kind, more patient, this transit will help you.

If you use the energies of this time to really explore your survival mechanisms and how they are or aren't actually helping you to be the person you want to be, this transit will help you. It doesn't do the work for you. It supports you in doing the work.

The problem with internet astrology is that, a lot of times, there's these promises of, "Beautiful things will happen. This is going to alchemize you." Nothing alchemizes you. You alchemize you, okay? You've got to do the work. You've got to try.

Luckily, when there's a sextile, as this is for many years—won't be exact the whole time, but for many years—if you do the work, the work will flow. Sometimes, when the work flows, you're confronted with your shit. You're confronted with things that you've cultivated in yourself or your life that really suck, that don't make you happy, but you are ready to confront them, work with them, move on, move on and change.

Don't confuse how it feels with how it is, because sometimes, when it feels bad, it's because it's healing. And sometimes, when it feels good, it's because it's an old habit that you're used to and not because it's healthy for you. We want to kind of peek under the hood to understand what's really happening inside of us and in our relationships, in our projects, and in the world. This is like where the wind hits the sails of evolution and spirituality.

Okay. Now, we're going to talk about this transit on a more collective level at another time. Let's just keep it personal right now, and the reason why I want to keep it personal right now is because of the other exact transit that's happening this day. It's our Venus square to Pluto. Venus square to Pluto is a really challenging transit. And the reason why it's so challenging is because it kicks up obsessive and compulsive impulses.

Venus square to Pluto will have you feeling possessive, and it will activate your resentments. It may activate shame that you feel about things you did or didn't do or ways you were or weren't. This transit can coincide with manipulation, like either you're being manipulative towards yourself or towards someone else, or someone else is doing that to you. And this, of course, will hit you extra hard if it's activating something in your birth chart. So you would want to look for around 3 degrees of a fixed sign.

So Venus square Pluto can activate things in your love life in a pretty deep way, because Venus, right? It can bring to surface resentments and power struggles and issues related to fidelity or sex and sexuality, related to how you fight or how direct you are about what is and isn't working. Again, Pluto is power struggles. And so, when Venus and Pluto kind of square off, we have the risk of major power struggles.

And there's the pro tip. Fighting is not the problem. Fighting in bad faith is the problem. It's really important to know how to fight fair, to be able to struggle with someone you care about, that you're in relationship with, about what is and isn't working. When it gets into character assassinations, abuse, intentional manipulation and harm, when you abandon yourself and kind of empty yourself out and let people treat you like shit, when you treat other like shit because you feel like shit, then you're in kind of the worst parts of Pluto.

And these transits don't happen just to torture you. They happen so that you evolve and grow. If there are power struggles in your relationships, then they need to be dealt with, one way or another. One way or another. And so show up. And when it comes to Venus, Venus governs diplomacy, but it also governs authenticity. And it is really important to center authenticity but to understand being authentic and being connected in an authentic way doesn't mean you have to tell everybody everything that is authentic for you. It's about embodying it. It's about walking the talk, acting in ways that reflect that alignment. And luckily, that Sun sextile to Mars that I just told you about will help you to do that, help you stay aligned.

This transit can activate or kind of bring to surface feelings of not being loved or not feeling safe, or if you're in a relationship with somebody that you really don't want to be in a relationship with, it's going to make you feel really resentful. The transit just activates that shit.

So, again, how you choose to respond is what defines you. And I want to encourage you to prioritize what's authentic and prioritize what is safe. Now, when I say safe, I don't mean always emotionally safe. We must have the capacity to hang out in the boundaries of our safety in order to recognize why those boundaries are what they are and also how to protect those boundaries, how to maintain those boundaries.

So, again, there's a lot of complexity to consider during this transit. But it's likely to be kind of hard to do that because of how intensely you and me and everyone else is going to be feeling. Now, Venus also governs beauty image issues, and we have such a kind of forward-facing world that we live in that you might be feeling all kinds of fucked up about some body issues. Pluto makes things more intense.

Here, we have an opportunity to turn a corner, to change, to weight things with their actual importance. So, if you're giving a disproportionate amount of energy to your eyebrows, and at the end of the day, your eyebrows actually aren't a defining factor of your life and they're not the most important things—as an example—then maybe you turn a corner during this transit where you recognize, "Okay. I'm going to have to let this go. I'm going to tolerate the feelings that I have about my eyebrows, but I'm not going to fixate on them, because it's causing me harm. And it's actually not—the harm is not proportionate to the gain of good eyebrows," as an example.

Another way that this can show up is around your finances, around money. Now, money is related to survival, but that's not the only thing that money is related to. Again, we want to look at the proportion of how we are weighing things and make sure that the ways that you are acting with your finances, best to your ability, reflect your values. That's not always possible, but when it is.

The one thing I want to really deeply warn you about in all topics that this transit might activate is fixation, obsession, cyberstalking. All that kind of shit is very poorly starred.  You don't want to indulge in the worst parts of Pluto under this transit. Now, I said you don't want to. You might super-duper want to, but it's not a good idea, okay? Shit-talking people, piling on people, bullying people—just don't fucking do it. Just don't do it. You may feel really justified. Don't do it. It is bad Plutonian behavior.

Sometimes, when someone does you dirty, you gotta fight back. And sometimes, when someone does you dirty, fighting back is just a way to not let go and to not take accountability for yourself and move on. There's different moments. There's different ways. Ask yourself, if you are fixated on someone that did you dirty, what you're getting out of that fixation because the truth of the matter is, if I fixate on somebody, it doesn't affect them; it only affects me. So what am I getting out of that?

This transit is challenging. It is confronting. And you may act in ways that reflect your strongest impulses and emotions instead of your wisest ones. If you determine that that is the case, notice it. Try to understand what motivated it. And commit to doing better next time.

And that brings us to our next and last exact transit of this week. And unfortunately, it's a pain in the ass as well. Okay. On Friday, September 18th, Mercury will be at 12 degrees and 32 minutes of Libra, sitting exactly opposite to Saturn at the same degrees of Aries. This is exact at 3:01 a.m. Pacific Time.

This transit sucks. It sucks because Mercury is your mind. It's your attitudes. It's your friendships. It's your short-term plans. And Saturn is obligation, consequences, constriction, rigidity. And so what this can mean is, first of all, you're in a depressive frame of mind. You just feel fucking down in the dumps. You are in a scarcity-based mindset where everything seems like it can't possibly get better. You're stuck. You've always been stuck. You're alone. You've always been alone. Your plans don't work. You may feel shitty about your intelligence or your ability to communicate. You may be doing a poor job of listening. Or you might be even projecting really negative ideas onto other people.

Saturn is a real pain in the ass. And when we have oppositions in astrology, you know what that means, right? Have you been listening to me for long enough you know? It's expressed and experienced between me and you or us and them. It's oppositional. So you may be a little bit more on the Mercury side. You may be a little bit more on the Saturn side. Or it may flip-flop depending on what relationships or dynamics we're looking at in your life.

In any case,  Mercury opposite Saturn will put you and everyone else in a negative frame of mind. And some people, when they're in a really negative frame of mind, act really positive and saccharine. And other people act really sad and down in the dumps. Other people get mean and controlling or micromanaging. That's the fucking rub here, is that when people are activated around scarcity, insecurity, and the drive to do well or to prove oneself, which—Saturn sparks all that shit—any number of coping mechanisms may come online.

So it's important that you don't take other people's conduct personally around this date, okay? So for the week. And that's really hard to do because it is happening to you personally, right? But the way people behave is often a reflection of them first and foremost and then, in a more secondary way, a reflection of you or your relationship with them.

Work environments are likely to be kind of stressful under this influence. This is a terrible time for a first date. It's a terrible time for starting the great American novel. This is just a rough transit. It's good for editing. It's good for pruning. It's good for cutting back growth. It's good for having difficult conversations between people who take responsibility for themselves and their actions. In other words, it's a bad time for having processes or major communications because it's really hard for everyone to take responsibility for themselves and their actions.

Saturn is consequential. And so a opposition to Saturn for Mercury is going to bring up consequences for you in your thinking, in your plans, with your ideas. And again, you may feel lonely or sad or down in the dumps. And if you reach out to your friends, they may also be feeling that way. So they might not be available, or they might be acting kind of weird.

Best thing you can do is, if you're hanging out with someone you trust and they're being kind of weird, to be like, "Hey, I'm in a weird mood. Are you being weird or am I just in a weird mood?" This transit doesn't make communication better, and so it's not a great time for, like I said, processing, signing contracts, or making major decisions or plans. So, if you can put those things off, even to the start of next week, that would be fucking great.

But there is a utility to this transit, and it's only possible if you're not mean to yourself and others, if you're not being punishing and cruel to yourself. The utility is to recognize what's not working. Maybe it's not working because of your mood. Maybe it's not working because of somebody else's mood. Maybe it's not super deep and not working, but it's just not working. Or maybe there's a bigger pattern at play that you're really confronting. There's a value in that.

You don't have to do something about a problem you identify right away, necessarily. It's important that you explore your problems, not just when you first identify them under this Mercury opposition to Saturn, but just kind of take some time thinking about it so you can identify what needs doing, if anything.

And that, my friends, is your forecast for this week. I hope it was instructive and helpful. And as always, we are having more in-depth conversations over on my Patreon, where we talk about the astrology of these times. We talk about the woo. And I even have a mentorship tier. Right now, we're having a lot of conversations about ethics in astrology and within woo, and we're, as always, unpacking charts and learning about astrology. So you can join us over there if you are interested.

And I'm really excited to share that a couple weeks ago, me and Dean Spade, author of Love in a Fucked-Up World—we solicited questions over on our Patreon from folks, and we just sat down and answered a bunch of them. And you'll get to hear that conversation and our answers to folks' questions on Wednesday. So tune in to the midweek episode.

And remember, you're always invited to send me a question through the contact form of my website over at ghostofapodcast.com.  You can find the contact form there and send me a question to be considered to get a reading with me on this very podcast.

All right. My dears, I hope you are taking really good care of yourself and of others, and I'll talk to you in just a couple of days. Bye.