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 is Episode 666, which is kind of exciting. I know for some people, this number, 666, is loaded. So I want to just take a hot second to acknowledge that and to say, personally, me—I don't believe in the devil, so there's no issue. But I have heard that the satanists are doing a lot of really great activism, so that's kind of cool. And religion's not my thing, but if it's yours and you're shook by 666, don't worry; I paired the title of this episode with the name of a really terrible movie.

Anyways, we have a really intense week astrologically—like, a very intense one. There are many incredibly important transits that I want to break down for you, so we're going to just dive right in. But I do want to invite you to check out the bonus episode of Ghost of a Podcast that I drop on the 1st of every month. You can get it over on my Patreon on the kittens level. You can either join me on Patreon or purchase that one episode, or there's lots of podcast platforms now that allow you to get a bonus episode, like subscribe and pay for it or whatever. So you can go ahead and do that, as well, if you want to get ahead.

And there are some things—this month, there are some things. October has got some stuff. It's got some stuff. You're going to learn more about that in just a moment because we are looking at the astrology of September 27th through October 3rd, so we are kind of half/half September/October. And this week, our Venus Retrograde begins. Venus Retrograde will last us the whole month of October through till the 13th of November—more on that soon. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

The major transits that are occurring this week are meaningfully connected to each other. Now, sometimes we have major transits and they are not mathematically connected to each other. And then sometimes, like this week, we do have a cluster of transits that are really close to each other, so it creates more of an energy field. It creates more of a pressure cooker for that energy. Let's begin at the beginning.

So our first exact transit happens on Sunday, the 27th. You've been feeling this building up for days, whether you knew about it or not. Mars will be at 29 degrees of Cancer and 38 minutes, forming an exact square to Chiron, which has retrograded back into Aries. Now it's at 29 degrees of Aries and 38 minutes. This will be exact at 4:59 a.m. Pacific Time.

Now, this transit is very challenging, and it can kick off major developments both personally and in the collective. Now, on a personal level, Mars is related to so many things. It's your ego, which is not bad or good. The ego is a part of humans, and it's something in you that is important to be in a healthy relationship to. Mars is related to your ego. It's related to your motivations, your passions, your drive. It's your follow-through. It's how you compete. It's also violence, and it's sexuality. So it's not sensuality; that shit is Venus. It's sexuality. That's Mars. So it's the act of sex. It's chemistry—that kind of shit.

And Chiron—it governs that wound that doesn't heal, that you evolve in relationship to it, but it doesn't heal, so it stays a pain point. Our Chiron issues are rooted in our early developmental experiences, so they may be rooted in your unconscious just as likely as your conscious mind. And so having Mars square to Chiron can kick up really unconscious and deep-seated confidence issues. It can kick up deep-seated and tender anger issues, competitiveness.

So you know sometimes somebody says something, and you're like, "Oh, good for you. That's amazing," but inside, you're just like "Grrr, that feels competitive, like it's somehow taking something from me," even though you know it's not? Mars is often involved when that's the case. Could be Pluto. Could be Saturn, even. But Mars is a common player.

And so what I want to really ground you into about this particular transit is that it's testing your confidence issues. It's testing your sense of entitlement. And if your sense of entitlement is, "I am entitled to more than other people," or, "I am entitled to less than other people," or, "Those people are entitled to less than I am or my allies or the people I like"—or flip that—if that's your frame of mind, this transit is likely to be rattling.

Old wounds often resurface during a transit like this, and they trigger anger, defensiveness, competitiveness, and frustration. And frustration happens when you have passions and drives that feel thwarted. Now, sometimes, that thwart, if I may call it that, is a call coming from inside the house. And when I say a call coming from inside the house, what I mean is you are unconsciously kind of the architect of your own obstructions. And sometimes it's coming from external dynamics, and those external dynamics may be a person in your way or systems set up to have you fail or struggle.

Whatever it may be, this transit is one in which you are likely to feel defensive, aggressive, irritable, agitated, and just off. And if you're somebody who just doesn't feel those kinds of feelings, or if you have a very uncomfortable relationship to those feelings, you may experience the more sublimated experience of Mars, which is victimhood, sadness, and exhaustion.

The work here is to recognize what is at the root of your reactions. So somebody might kick you in the shin, and then you get pissed. Okay. Well, somebody kicked you in the shin. It's not very complicated to figure out, why are you angry? But if your anger turns into a fixation on, "What about me made that person kick me?" or, "How could I convince that person to never kick me again?"—if, instead of dealing with the thing, you go into a pattern of defensiveness and insecurity and self-confidence collapse, then we know that something is activated inside of you that has its roots way before you got kicked in the damn shin. And that's what you want to work on this Mars square to Chiron.

This is the thing. Some people are going to be mean, aggressive, sharp, defensive, and act as though something is happening that you're like, "But it's not." That is likely to happen, okay? And so how you respond to whatever reactions that triggers inside of you—that's what defines you. Don't allow other people's shit to drag you down if it doesn't need to. And then, if it does, you know what? Okay. Notice it. Learn from it. Build from there. That's the best we can do.

None of the transits you ever hear anyone talk about—not me, not any other astrologer—are one and done forever. We can learn and grow and evolve. You may fail today, and that failure may instruct you to greater successes tomorrow. Leave space open for all of it. With a Mars square to Chiron and some of the other transits we have this week, things may feel dire and extreme. And those feelings are real, but the dire and extreme nature of things may or may not be. And it's hard to know when your reactions are running the show.

So one more thing I'll say about this transit. Mars is related to the body. It's related to embodiment. And so some of the struggle you may be tasked to engage with is how you embody challenging feelings, sensations, and impulses. Some of the struggle may be around how you run energy through your body. So you may do well doing something that really engages your body and helps you build up a sweat because Mars is really happy to release through anything that builds up a sweat. So—I don't know—you could go take a schvitz. You could go for a run. You could get busy with someone. You could do so many different things that make you sweat, and that can be a great release for Mars.

Something I've shared in a recent episode that I'm happy to share again, which is if you have mobility issues and you're not physically able or you just don't fucking want to go off and run your energy and build up a sweat, if that's just not realistic for you, you can just get in there and work with your head. Touch your head. Massage your head. Stimulate your cranium, your head, because Mars also governs the head. So that is an adaptation for you, should you desire or need it.

And that brings us to our next important transit of the week. On Monday, September 28th, we have another exact transit that is a really good assist. At exactly 9:22 a.m. Pacific Time, we have a Sun square to Uranus. If you are interested in tracking all this data—because I know it's a lot of information; I just want to give you this heads-up—you can be watching the video version of this episode with me. It's on the free page of my Patreon, it's on YouTube, and it's available wherever podcasts host video episodes. And I have my transit-tracking tool, Astrology for Days, on the screen so you can see the exact time of the transits and the degrees and all that kind of good stuff. I also have a transcript done by a real human, not AI, that is available on my website just sitting there, a whole-ass document that you can read during the podcast or after—whatever's easier for your brain.

Okay. Sun trine Uranus—this transit is really supportive. What it helps you to do is tap into your autonomy, what's true for you. It helps you to experiment and try new things, to be open-minded, to be more dynamically present. I am such a fan of Uranus when it gets going, and a Sun trine to Uranus can really stimulate things so it can make you feel kind of excited and alive and open. Uranus is related to our neurological system. And so, with a Sun trine to Uranus, if you're somebody who really has a hard time with focus, this transit can just have you going off on a damn tangent. That's the only thing to watch out for.

But I shall say that because of Chiron's activity and there's so much energy at play, this transit is so useful. And it's so useful because it empowers you to not just fall back on your insecurities, your fears, and your deep entrenched habits, but it empowers you to find yourself, to locate yourself in this moment, and to identify ways of engaging either with your innermost psychology, with other people, with situations that are a little innovative. And we could all use a little innovation.

So that is a lovely transit to have sandwiched between our two transits to Chiron because, on Tuesday, the 29th, we have a Mercury opposition to Chiron—not a great transit. Let me tell you about it. It's exact at 8:15 p.m. Pacific Time with Mercury at 29 degrees of Libra and 32 minutes sitting exactly opposite to Chiron at the same degrees of Aries.

Listen. Mercury opposite Chiron is stressful, and it's stressful because what it does is it activates insecurity to your thinking. And so this may mean that you are just falling back on old thinking patterns that really reflect more of your self-worth issues than what you know about yourself and the world. It may have you really returning to old wounds and limited beliefs where you're like, "I'm always this. I'll never be that." And you really want to be mindful. If you hear yourself thinking that way, be like, "Oh shit. It's Chiron. Does this line up with what I know about myself in the modern sense? Does this line up with adult me?" because I'm assuming just about everyone listening to me is an adult.

The thing about Chironic beliefs is that they're so deep, they're often so webbed into the unconscious that it doesn't feel like it's a belief; it feels like it's irrefutable reality. And if you are feeling like the only reality is this reality, and the reality is shit—about yourself in your patterns, in your thinking—then you know you're dealing with Chiron. Now, we're going to be feeling this shit all week, okay? All these transits, all week.

But I want you to know that there are great opportunities because, with an opposition, we can make a breakthrough. Same thing with a square. But that breakthrough will often happen through a confrontation either with an idea or in a conversation with someone. And these days, we know that conversation is sometimes you listening to a podcast, you texting with somebody, you talking to somebody back and forth. There's a lot of ways we communicate these days that are novel in the context of human history and how we have historically used astrology.

Now, classic experience of this transit can be having a hard time listening. So put those listening goggles on. Really listen to what people are telling you. Listen to how people are communicating. This transit can make it harder to process information, so you might have a hard time just working through things because insecurities or distractions keep on popping up in your head, and you might find it hard to communicate with other people. It's a fucking terrible time for processing a relationship with someone. You want to ask for a raise? Don't do it today. Just don't do it.

Everybody's going to be in a funky frame of mind. So there's great potential for healing and for insights, but it is not likely to come without some sort of confrontation. And so the confrontation may be a beautiful thing, but it's still kind of challenging and confronting. So, if you are in a relationship—friend, coworker, neighbor, whatever—and people are really, really bugging you, you might not be able to stop yourself from saying something, or somebody else might say something. It's not just important that you say whatever needs to be said but that you take accountability for how you say it and why.

If you find yourself being defensive, like making excuses straight out the gate, then that's about you and not about the situation and not about the other person. And when it comes to Chiron, we're often dealing with our core wounds. And therefore, we are often dealing with the kind of insecurities that have us really defensive. So, again, watch out for that. Notice it in yourself. Notice it in others. And strive to be empathetic and compassionate around how you handle it.

And empathy and compassion is never meant to be at the expense of healthy boundaries. Having empathy and compassion for other people doesn't mean you say yes to everything they want/you let them in your life without any fucking condition. It means you have the capacity to hold grace for them and their experiences and their different needs from yours while also taking care of yourself and having your boundaries or awareness about your capacity in the fore of your thinking and in your actions.

That brings us to Friday, October the 2nd. And Friday, October 2nd, we have three exact transits. And, my friends, two of them are very challenging. So we're still feeling the effects of these two transits to Chiron. So everybody is already tender. Everybody is already kind of acting out and dealing with other people behaving in ways that feel really offensive or upsetting or whatever. And now we have more shit.

At exactly 2:14 a.m., Mercury forms an exact square to Mars with Mercury at 2 degrees of Scorpio and 30 minutes square to Mars at the same degrees of Leo. A couple hours later, at 1:43 p.m. Pacific Time, Mercury forms an exact square to Pluto. Now, Mercury is at 3 degrees and 7 minutes of Scorpio, squaring Pluto at the same degrees of Mars. And then, a couple hours after that, Mars forms an exact trine to Neptune.

So okay. This is a lot to take in. What we know about both Mercury square to Mars and Mercury square to Pluto is that things are likely to be explosive, defensive, and angry. The astrology of this week certainly suggests that there is a meaningful risk of people with anger issues just fucking acting out. There is a risk of violence, and violence exists on so many levels. There is systemic violence that can be something like a piece of legislation or a line in a piece of legislation that ends up harming huge communities of people for many years.

Violence exists on a very large spectrum, and it doesn't mean that you need to be scared that there will be violence that happens to you. But there is real merit in understanding the energies at play in the collective and in yourself. So, if you're driving to work and you find yourself weirdly annoyed by people and traffic, you can be like, "Oh, right, these are the transits." If you are in the presence of somebody who is making a joke that is inherently harmful or fucked up, you might be more motivated to—I don't know—assert yourself and be like, "Yeah, that's not actually a funny joke," right?

Knowing what the energy is doesn't mean that it's going to be worst-case scenarios for you, but it can help to orient you to what the assignment is because when we're dealing with Mars and Pluto, these are the two planets most associated with war, with conflict. And war and conflict, on a global scale in the context of literal bang-bang, boom-boom kind of shit—that's one thing. And I'm not talking about war in that context at this time.

I'm talking about the energetics of war. I'm talking about what war is, which is somehow strategic, aggressive, and has the intent of dominance, control, containment, or annihilation. And there are so many levels on which we are engaged in that kind of thinking and acting towards ourselves and others consciously and unconsciously. Just think about your most self-destructive behaviors and habits. It is, on some level, waging war upon yourself. Now, that's a very dramatic way of saying things. I don't want to brag, but I do have a little flair for drama now and again.

Now, let's pull back and get into the specifics of these three transits. Okay. So Mercury square to Mars is our first exact transit of the day. This transit is irritating. So you're irritating. I'm irritating. They're irritating. That's basically the whole thing. We are all irritating. So you may irritate others. You may irritate yourself.

Mercury is your mind, and Mars is—it's that aggression energy. And so, when the two planets form a square to each other, it can make things just fucking annoying. So let's just start there, okay? It's not the end of the world. Irritability is a thing that people feel, and it doesn't have to mean you're a bad person or somebody else is a bad person. It just means your state of mind or the feelings that you have in your body—state of mind, Mercury; body, Mars—is just like it's a little sharp. It's a little hard to handle.

Now, Mercury square to Mars can indicate an increase in the tempo of the activity of your day, so lots of communications, lots of things to do, lots of places to go. Mercury square to Mars can also be a transit where traffic is particularly annoying. So Mercury is your bicycle. Mars is your car. Therefore, wear a helmet. Don't be an aggressive driver or rider. And do your best to stay safe. If you're feeling really fucking agitated and you're just repressing it, it is especially important to navigate the road with greater caution. This transit is not necessarily associated accident-proneness but stubbing your toe kind of stuff, like walking into walls, because there's a lot of energy in the body and in the mind, and so it's hard to be fully present.

You may find yourself fighting with people or wanting to fight with people, or other people might be starting shit with you. So there's what you say, but then there's the way you say it. Texting somebody and putting a period at the end is fighting words. Why you gotta do that unless you're trying to fight? So passive-aggressive behavior will just come across as aggressive behavior this week in general, especially on and around this specific day.

If you are feeling passive-aggressive and you are feeling entitled, then you are feeling all that Mars energy. And it's important to take accountability for how you feel and how you behave. Mars is the behaving. Mercury is, again, the thoughts, the mind. This is a transit that may find you jumping to conclusions. It might find you saying something impulsively, doing something impulsively. It may make it really hard for you to listen to what other people are saying. But listening is really, really good. Do it if you can. Try to listen.

While this transit has a lot of things that are stressful and you probably want to avoid, it can help you to find the courage to learn something new, say something, or properly listen. But that takes a lot of focus and intention. Now, Pluto actually helps us with focus, so we'll get to that in just a second. But I want to ground you into the potential of this transit. And the potential here is that you move through some limitations in how you embody awareness. That's fucking cool, right? It just takes a willingness to stay with challenging sensations in the body and thoughts.

Mercury is related to your psychology. It doesn't wholesale own your psychology, but it's related. So any kind of mental habits that you have that you can really feel in your body and that reflexively become behaviors are likely to get activated with this transit. Now, as I said, it's overlapping with Mercury square to Pluto. This transit is very fucking intense because Pluto governs intensity. That's it's job. And listen. Because Mercury is square to both Mars and Pluto, we know that Mars and Pluto are about to form a transit to each other as well. And in this case, it'll be an opposition.

So what we know is there is a lot of energy building—defensive, angry, entitled, shame-fueled energy because that's what Mars/Pluto opposition kicks up. So that energy is activated in the collective. It's activated in your group chat. It's activated in your neighborhood, in your apartment building, at work—you get where I'm going. So this is an important time to recognize that we don't all have to agree. We don't all have to cope with stress in the same way.

And it's really hard to tolerate difference when that difference activates something inside of you or triggers something inside of you, but it's a really good skill to have because then you can assess when somebody is saying or doing something that is an actual threat versus something that is just upsetting. Now, they're both really valid. They're both really important, but they take a different remediation. This is on you to determine. And how do you determine it? It's a practice of adulting, really, of being accountable and present in the moment and assessing—assessing what is happening and how to best respond. There's no cheat sheet for that. It's hard to be an ethical, healthy, well-adjusted person, but it is work worth pursuing, in my perspective.

Anyways, Mercury square Pluto—this transit intensifies your thinking. It may help you to focus, as I said, because it's really good for research or getting to the bottom of something. But that same energy can have you just fucking cyberstalking people, doing deep dives on shit that is deeply unimportant but upsets you, dysregulates you.

This can be a time where you get exposed to some sort of propaganda that is intended to manipulate a reaction from you or to convince you that something is real, even though it's not. Both misinformation and disinformation are likely to be in the air this week and especially around these transits, and everyone is likely to be vulnerable. You might think you're not vulnerable. Yeah, you are. We're all fucking vulnerable to it. Nobody is immune to propaganda, nobody.

And the internet is, right now, just flooded with bots. So stay out of the comment section. Stay out of the comment section. It's very likely not real humans in the comments section, and it's really a way for you to get gripped by outrage and gripped by despair. And those strong emotions that are excavated from you online are a way to manipulate you and to change the world.

Now, this transit, Mercury square Pluto, can kick up fixation, obsession, rumination—you get the point, right? Just spiraled thinking. And because Pluto is related to your survival mechanisms, it can often be the most upsetting or triggering ideas that you're really fixated on. It might be a relationship with somebody because Mercury is related to friends, siblings, aunts, uncles, neighbors, coworkers, comrades—that kind of thing. So it may be somebody in your world that says or does something or that you remember said or did something that just fucking gets at you, and you can't put it down.

This transit can, therefore, trigger conspiratorial thinking, paranoia, vengefulness, and shame. You can point that at yourself, or you can point it outwards. It's really important that you are willing to confront some toxicity in yourself at this time because Pluto governs toxicity. We all have it in us. And it's very easy to look at somebody else's toxicity and be like, "Evil. Terrible. Bad." And you know what? Some people are evil, terrible, bad. Have you heard Peter Thiel lately? Fuck that guy.

But most people, most of the time, are just fucked up and doing their goddamn best. So you might be one of those people, a little fucked up, trying your best. This transit is an opportunity for you to not engage in power struggles but instead to empower yourself enough to engage with people and ideas within your capacity, challenging your capacity but within your capacity. That's really a big part of what this transit teaches.

Somebody over on my Patreon the other day mentioned that I've been talking about capacity a lot lately, and I have. And it is because every-fucking-body is burned out right now. Everybody is burned out, and that is by design. We are living through the rise of fascism. We are living through a lot of really intense circumstances—thanks, Pluto out of bounds. Everybody is burned out. Everybody is exhausted.

And in order to sustain the work ahead, whether it's the work of—I don't know—getting through your master's program or getting through your day or raising your kid through this phase of their development—whatever the fuck it is—it's taxing, and it's taxing in the context of a really stressed-out world where things are really teetering, and we all have these pocket robots feeding us constant information, kind of robbing from us silence.

Now, Pluto governs deep loneliness and isolation. It governs abandonment. But it also governs the depth of silence that is needed for sacredness, for things to be sacred, to be held in a private and sacred space. This is really important. Silence is really important. Being alone, having even some secrets—these things are actually really healthy and important, as long as they are not born from shame.

And so something like Mercury square to Pluto is going to meaningfully activate your need for some space. And how do you get space in life and with these pocket robots telling us news, telling us all kinds of shit that is meant to activate and elicit fixation? Our phones are designed to elicit fixation. So, if you've been thinking, "I want to just put my phone on airplane mode. I want to just turn it off for a while. I want to get an app that slows down my access to certain apps," this is the time to do it. These transits are a really good time to try that shit out.

Now, last thing I'll say—you may need to fight with somebody. Somebody might feel the need to fight with you. I don't know. And whenever it comes to fighting, I have a couple little rules of thumb. The first is don't process with people that you don't trust. If you don't trust someone, why would you process with them? Processing—really unpacking ideas and dynamics—it can only be done in good faith if both parties trust each other. So, if you don't trust a person, don't process with them. It's okay to have that boundary.

If you're going to be fighting with someone—I don't think fighting is bad. It's just important to be fighting for something and not only against, because when we are motivated only by fighting against instead of fighting for, it burns us out. So be clear about your own motivations. Be clear about your own ethics and ideas. And don't be scared to talk to people. Don't be scared to "dear diary" it. Mercury square Pluto will often put you in a position where you have to process your ideas, so process your ideas—just maybe not with people you don't trust.

And that brings us to our Mars trine to Neptune. Thankfully, this transit is overlapping with these other stressful transits, and it's a lovely one. Mars trine to Neptune strengthens the ego—Mars—through the power of Neptune—empathy, humanity, grace. It makes it easier for you to act in ways or fire off from motivations that are more spiritually aligned, that are more empathetic and humanitarian. And when I say humanitarian, I mean I'm including bees and trees in that.

Mars trine to Neptune—it can make you a little self-indulgent if you have habits—because Mars is what you do—that you are actively pursuing—you're full swing, there's momentum, you're actively pursuing it—that are not particularly healthy or life-affirming. Neptune is just going to be like, "Yeah, keep going. Whatever." Neptune is escapist, and Mars is embodiment. So it can kind of help you sink into escapist behaviors if you're not intentional.

But if you are intentional, this transit helps you to not be a jerk to yourself, to not be punishing, to not be like, "Oh, there's something wrong with you; therefore, you have to change," but instead be like, "Okay. My motivation is to be more spacious. My motivation is to be more kind to myself. My motivation is to lay some of my burden down, not forever, but for now." And this is really helpful in the context of these other very challenging transits.

Now, that brings us to our final day of this forecast. On Saturday, October 3rd, we have two exact transits. Mars is opposite Pluto on this day. Now, we saw this coming because Mercury was squaring both Mars and Pluto and they were in opposite signs, so bada-bing, okay? Mars opposite Pluto will be exact at 3:39 a.m. Pacific Time with Mars at 3 degrees of Leo and 6 minutes opposite to Pluto at the same degrees of Aquarius. But earlier—just a couple hours earlier—at 12:16 a.m. Pacific Time, Venus goes Retrograde in Scorpio. Shit, right?

Okay. So I'm going to talk about this Mars opposition to Pluto first because it is connected to these other transits we have been just talking about. Mars opposite Pluto is a really conflictual transit. As I said, Mars and Pluto are both related to war and conflict. And this transit happens pretty often. We don't have wars break out. Things don't go nuclear every time this transit happens. But the energies of these two planets are—Mars is punch-punch, bang-bang, and Pluto is nuclear. It's global. It's big fucking destruction—big fucking healing, but big fucking destruction.

So Mars opposite Pluto kicks up major defenses and power struggles. That's what Mars opposite Pluto does. This transit may have you acting out. It may have you defensive, entitled, just deeply fucking ashamed for something you did or didn't do. It might have you really activated around addictive behaviors and tendencies. It may have you acting in ways that stir up opposition and defensiveness in other people, even though you don't mean to be, because you may be seething and radiating the toxic energies that Pluto provokes. Sorry. It sucks. And it's not just you, and it's not just me. It's all of us.

And so this transit is a really difficult one. The most common thing that occurs is power struggles. Now, people who have major power in the world may abuse that power—wouldn't be the first time. Also, again, we want to be on the lookout for manipulations of our algorithms, of our governments, of whatever, that spark big feelings and defenses and terror.

We want to be on the lookout for those things because they may be truly dangerous, truly atrocious, or they may be literally meant as a distraction because you know what happens after you're outraged or terrified? You collapse. The human system can only tolerate so much trauma all the damn time, so we get really outraged, really upset because someone said something online that shouldn't have said something, and then your energy kind of collapses; you don't have as much energy for other things, more important things.

So listen. You do you. I don't know what's going on in your life. I don't know how this information lands or is specific to you because there are so many different ways so many different people on the planet are going to experience this. But the energetics of Mars and Pluto are what they are. Mars opposite Pluto can trigger dynamics where you are engaged in intense battles of will. Now, that is not necessarily a bad thing. That can actually facilitate meaningful progress. But it doesn't tend to be chill or fun.

What this transit does is it activates your drive to go deeper, have power, have success, maybe get back at someone or something. So it's all stuff to be mindful of that can be toxic in its motivations or not. What you want to make sure that you're doing is acting in ways that are proportionate to your situation and that reflect healthy motivations. And you know what? Sometimes you can't do that, but that is the best-case scenario of this energy.

Mercury is in the mix, so your thinking is still likely to be really obsessive and compulsive and ruminating. And so it's important that you choose your battles carefully, that you are mindful about where you're allowing your energy to pour, because with a Mars/Pluto opposition, it's rushing in, the energy that you bring to a thing. And you may think, "Oh, I'm just trying to create progress. I'm just trying to stand up for myself." And the way you do it may actually alienate other people because it's really aggressive or because it feels really disingenuous. Feeling angry and acting friendly and cool is deeply disingenuous.

It's important to be honest with yourself about the energy with which you are approaching a situation because people are not—not everybody is psychic. Not everybody is picking up on energy. But on some unconscious level, people do respond to energy. And so that's why you're like, "My boss is smiling in my face. Everything seems fine, but I can tell that they're mad." Sometimes that's paranoia, and sometimes that's, "Yeah, I'm picking up on the fact that they're mad." Maybe they're mad at their partner. Maybe it's not you at all, but you're picking up on it. And people are like that. So check your motives. Check your approach.

Pluto is, as I said, kind of meaningfully connected to solitude and isolation, but it's also the planet that governs merging, so not regular-degular collaboration; Venus is more related to that. It's me and you, man. But Pluto is deep merging. And so what happens with these challenges involving Pluto is that you may find yourself wanting to either go it alone or find an ally that you completely merge and you have to be completely on the same page with. If you get into that kind of conspiratorial mindset where it's us against them, then you are likely to be in a Plutonian trance, which is essentially power struggle. It's not going to go well, probably.

So, again, take a moment and breathe. It's okay to sit with yourself and be like, "Oh shit. Inside me, I feel chaos." That's not fun. It's not easy. But being able to be honest with yourself—"I am at a 10, and this situation is more of a 5. I need to own that before I go dealing with the situation"—that can be really helpful.

So one more thing I'll say about this transit on a personal level is that Mars opposite Pluto is not a great time for first dates. It's not a great time for putting yourself in dangerous situations. And if you're going to hook up with somebody, make sure that you trust them. It's just a really intense set of energies. Now, this is particularly true for you if you have something at around 3 degrees of a fixed sign because that's where these planets are hanging out.

Now, before I move on to our Venus Retrograde, this configuration of Mercury, Mars, and Pluto is really confronting and activating. And so do what you can to create space and time—even if it's in the bathroom while hanging out with friends or something—to really reflect. Just reflect. "What am I feeling in my body? Where has my mind been focused? What have I been doing?" Just reflect.

These transits can be very challenging and very confronting, but they can also be a time where you come into greater self-awareness, where situations and relationships are meaningfully moved forward. And this doesn't happen from the magic of astrology. It happens through your efforts. So reflect. Be intentional. Strive to be brave and to act in proportionate ways to the situations you're engaged in.

And the one last thing I'll say—Mars opposite Pluto is always a time to be paying attention to the development of war and conflicts and policing in our communities and in the world. Because Pluto does govern societal shifts, we want to pay attention to what's happening and practice good internet literacy by not just reading a fucking post and being like, "Aha," but instead double-checking, making sure that it's sourced, making sure that the date of its publication is real, checking that there's a real author and it's not just fucking AI slop. It's harder and harder now to know what is true and real online, so you gotta do a little more due diligence. It's fucking worth it. It's annoying, but get in there.

Okay. Now let's talk about Venus Retrograde. Okay. Venus Retrograde—let's talk about it. So, when a planet goes Retrograde, you're meant to go more internal than external. This happens because the planet appears to be moving backwards through the zodiacal degrees. So Venus goes Retrograde in Scorpio on October 3rd, and it will Retrograde all the way through November 13th, as I mentioned before. It ends its Retrograde in Libra, so it'll go back into Libra.

But what we do is we cast a chart for the moment it goes Retrograde, and that just gives us a little sense of what to expect from this Retrograde. Now, broadly speaking, Venus Retrograde picks up reflection on your values, reflection on your love life, reflection on your relationship to that way you look, so your aesthetic. If you have an art practice or some sort of creative practice, it will activate that.

Venus is also related to your finances. It's your liquid resources. So it's the money you have in your hands, and it's the shit you own—your stuff. So Venus Retrograde can activate blasts from the past. Some people call it the season of the ex. I think it's funny and cute, but I don't think it's actually super accurate. Sometimes people come back into your life that were once gone. If that occurs during a Venus Retrograde, it's really important that you check in to see if things have changed on a values-based level, either inside of them or within you. That's super important.

Venus Retrograde is a time for reflection on your values, to really make sure that your relationship between what you value and who you value and your actual deeply held values—that they're right sized, that they're proportional. Now, with this chart of the Venus Retrograde, it includes a Mercury conjunction to our Venus Retrograde. This is actually really lovely. It supports you in really thinking through your values. If you're somebody who's always been like, "I don't know what values are.  I don't know what I value," this Venus Retrograde is an excellent time for you to reflect on your values system, to educate yourself about the concept of values so that you can better understand what values are and what you actually value.

Now, this Mercury conjunction is connected to the square to Pluto and Mars and that Mars/Pluto opposition. So all of the intensity that we have been talking about and that you will experience during these transits is brought into our Venus Retrograde. This is why it is exceedingly important that you do your best to meet the moment with as much authenticity and honor as you can, because it really will be a part of our Venus Retrograde cycle. Venus goes Retrograde in Scorpio. The ruling planet to Scorpio is Pluto. So, again, it's a nice, intense theme.

Compulsion, defensiveness, and other feelings that I've already named are likely to be really activated within our Venus Retrograde. Now, a lot of people really struggle with the way they look, with love and romance. A lot of people really struggle with finances, how to navigate what you own or what you have, or how to even navigate where to shop and how to shop in an ethical way. These things are really good to wrestle with during a Venus Retrograde.

Now, another thing that we have active in this chart at the moment that Venus goes Retrograde is a T-square between the Sun, Saturn, and the Moon. The Sun and Saturn are opposite each other, both squaring the Moon. And this just brings some gravitas and some weightiness to our Venus Retrograde. It's really important that you engage with your values in a consequential way—in other words, you take accountability for what you value, your relationships, your finances, all that kind of stuff—you take responsibility for it, understanding that responsibility doesn't mean everything is clean and easy. It just means that you are owning where you're at and how you're navigating through life, you see.

Now, this has already been a really long episode, so I'm just going to kind of leave it there. We can talk more about the Venus Retrograde. I will most certainly be dropping content about it over on my Patreon, so you can join there, where we are actually right now really deeply engaged in a conversation about boundaries. I'm answering folks' question in a series of videos. So, if you have been struggling with boundaries, like how to have them, how to respond to other people's boundaries—that kind of stuff—you can join us over there and be a part of that conversation. And again, I will, for sure, talk more about this Venus Retrograde as it goes.

There's nothing you need to do this Venus Retrograde. There's not some sort of thing you have to do week 1. Whenever there's a Retrograde, we want to follow the rule re's. We want to reflect and reconsider and reassess. So allow yourself to start to do that. This week is going to be very activating, so don't worry too much about the Venus Retrograde right now. Stay focused on all these other planets, which will be demanding of your attention and energies.

And as always, I want to thank you so much for joining me here on Ghost of a Podcast. If you get value from this show, please do hit Subscribe or Follow or whatever the button is called wherever you listen to your podcasts. And consider writing a positive review because it does help, and also, it makes me feel nice. So thank you for that.

And don't forget the only place you can get a reading with me is on this podcast or on the lovers tier of my Patreon. But if you would like to be considered to get a reading with me here on Ghost of a Podcast, you can go ahead and send in your question through the contact form on my website.

Also, I'm realizing I haven't said this on the podcast for a long time, and it definitely is worth saying: wear a mask. Get that vaccine. You know what I mean? COVID is still out there. It's still fucking people up. And wearing a mask in public spaces, especially crowded public spaces—it's a form of community care. And we love community care, don't we?

So put that mask back on if you've taken it off. Take care of yourself. Take care of others. And I will talk to you in just a couple of days. Bye.