Mercury

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Mercury
Mercury

MERCURY, THE PLANET OF REASON

Contents

Astrology

Mythologically Mercury is represented as a "Messenger of the Gods" and this is the line with the occult facts, for when infant humanity had been led astray by the marital Lucifer spirits and had fallen into GENERATION it became necessary for the other divine hierarchies to take steps looking to a future REGENERATION and to further that object the Lords of Venus were brought to the earth to educate humanity in such a manner that love might be substituted for lust and men might thus be induced to aspire to something higher.

While the Lords of Venus dealt with mankind in general the most precocious among them were taken in hand by the Lords of Mercury; whose wisdom-teaching is symbolically represented by the caduceus or "STAFF OF MERCURY," consisting of two serpents twining around a rod and indication the solution of the riddle of life, or "Whence have we come, why are we here, and whither are we bound?" showing the pupil the spiral path of INVOLUTION by which the divine spark has buried itself in matter, also the spiral path of EVOLUTION by which humanity will eventually again reach the Father's bosom, and the short road of INITIATION represented by the central rod around

which the serpents twine. But to understand these Mysteries requires mind and reason. Mercury then is the mental educator of men and its place and position in the horoscope shows the status of the person's mind for whom it is cast.

Being the Messenger of the Gods to the other planets Mercury has no voice of its own and is even more dependent for expression upon the aspects of other planets than the Moon which rules the instinctual mind. So Mercury is really a focus through which the faculty of reason finds expression in the human being to act as a brake upon the lower nature and assist in lifting us from the human to the divine. Many may and do feel deeply, they may also have valuable knowledge, but they will be unable to express their feelings or shore their knowledge with others if Mercury is lacking in aspects. Even a so-called evil aspect of Mercury helps to bring out what is within and is therefore better than none.

When Mercury is so placed in relation to the Sun it goes BEFORE the lumi- nary it has the effect of materially brightening the mind, for the Sun represents the Ego( this is not true) and it may therefore be said that then its path is illuminated by the lamp of reason. On the other hand if Mercury is so placed that it rises later than the Sun and thus follows AFTER the luminary The Ego learns more by afterthought than by forethought for it walks comparatively speaking in the dark and must learn a great many of its lessons by experience.

As we have found that it is difficult for a number of young students to determine when Mercury goes before or after the Sun we may say in farther elucidation of that subject:

When Mercury is in a lower degree of the same sign as the Sun or in any degree of the previous sign then as a matter of course he rises BEFORE the Sun. To illustrate: If the Sun is in twenty degrees of Cancer and Mercury is in five, ten or fifteen degrees of that sign or if he is in any degree of Gemini, then he rises BEFORE the Sun.

But if he is in twenty-five degrees of Cancer which is a higher degree of the same sign, or if he is in any degree in Leo which is the sign succeeding Cancer, then he rises AFTER the Sun and loses part of his good influence.

A retrograde Mercury is also a detriment to the faculty of reason. But in the year of life when Mercury by progression again turns direct, the reasoning faculties will improve correspondingly. Mercury is strong in the airy signs, Gemini, Libra and Aquarius, but he is exalted and therefore most powerful in Virgo. Mercury has special rule over agents and messengers, salesmen, postmen and other common carriers, people engaged in advertising or printing, literary men, writers, reporters, secretaries, clerks, stenographers and typewriters, commission men and other middle men, demagogues, confidence-men and thieves.

Mercury
Mercury

MERCURY IN THE TWELFTH HOUSE

Mercury in Houses

MERCURY IN THE TWELVE SIGNS

Mercury in the Signs

MERCURY IN ASPECT WITH THE OTHER PLANETS

Mercury in Aspect


Mercury From Wikipedia

Mercury () is the ruling planet of Gemini and Virgo. In Roman mythology Mercury was the messenger of the gods, noted for his speed and swiftness . Echoing this, the scorching, airless world Mercury circles the sun on the fastest orbit of any planet. Mercury takes only 88 days to orbit the sun, spending about 7.33 days in each sign of the zodiac. Mercury is so close to the sun that only a brief period exists after the sun has set where it can be seen with the naked eye, before following the sun beyond the horizon.

Astrologically Mercury represents the principles of communication, mentality, thinking patterns, rationality and reasoning, and adaptability and variability. Mercury governs schooling and education; the immediate environment of neighbours, siblings and cousins; transport over short distances; messages and forms of communication such as post, email and telephone; newspapers, journalism and writing, information gathering skills, and physical dexterity. The first-century poet Manilius described Mercury as an inconstant, vivacious, and curious planet. In medicine Mercury is associated with the nervous system, the brain, the respiratory system, the thyroid and the sense organs. Traditionally, it was held to be essentially cold and dry, but variable in temperament according to its placement in the zodiac and any aspects to other planets. It was linked to the animal spirits, alongside the Moon. Today, Mercury is regarded as the ruler of the 3rd and 6th houses; traditionally, it ruled the 6th house, and had joy in the 1st house (the house of 'I' or 'we': Mercury facilitates self-expression here).

Mercury rules over Wednesday. In Romance languages the word for Wednesday is often similar to Mercury (mercredi in French and miercoles in Spanish). Dante Alighieri associated Mercury with the liberal art of dialectic.

In Chinese astrology, Mercury is ruled by the element water which is diplomatic, kind and intuitive. In Indian astrology, Mercury is called Budha, a word related to Budhi ("intelligence") and represents communication.


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mercury in Astronomy

Mercury (pronounced /ˈmɝkjʊəri/) is the innermost and smallest planet in the solar system, orbiting the Sun once every 88 days. Mercury is bright when viewed from Earth, ranging from −2.0 to 5.5 in apparent magnitude, but is not easily seen as its greatest angular separation from the Sun (greatest elongation) is only 28.3°: It can only be seen in morning and evening twilight. Comparatively little is known about it; the first of two spacecraft to approach Mercury was Mariner 10 from 1974 to 1975, which mapped only about 45% of the planet’s surface.[5] The second was the MESSENGER spacecraft, which mapped another 30% of the planet during its flyby of January 14, 2008.[5] MESSENGER will make two more passes by Mercury, followed by orbital insertion in 2011, and will survey and map the entire planet.

Physically, Mercury is similar in appearance to the Moon. It is heavily cratered, has no natural satellites and no substantial atmosphere. It has a large iron core, which generates a magnetic field about 1% as strong as that of the Earth.[6] It is an exceptionally dense planet due to the large size of its core. The surface temperatures on Mercury range from about 90 to 700 K (−180 to 430 °C), with the subsolar point being the hottest and the bottoms of craters near the poles being the coldest.

Recorded observations of Mercury date back to the Sumerians in the third millennium BC. Before the 4th century BC, Greek astronomers believed the planet to be two separate objects: one visible only at sunrise, which they called Apollo; the other visible only at sunset, which they called Hermes. Our name for the planet comes from the Romans, who named it after the Roman god Mercury, which they equated with the Greek Hermes. The astronomical symbol for Mercury is a stylized version of Hermes' caduceus.

Studies of Mercury

Ancient astronomers

The earliest mentions of Mercury come from the Sumerians of Mesopotamia during the 3rd millennium BC.[citation needed] They used many names to designate the planet, including one transcribed as UDU.IDIM.GU4.UD ("the jumping planet").[30][31] The Babylonians (2000–500 BC) succeeded the Sumerians, and early Babylonians may have recorded observations of the planet. Although these have not survived, later Babylonian records from the 7th century BC refer to much earlier records. The Babylonians called the planet Nabu after the messenger to the Gods in their mythology.[32]

The ancient Greeks of Hesiod's time knew the planet as Στίλβων Stilbon ("the gleaming") and Hermaon. Later Greeks called the planet Apollo when it was visible in the morning sky and Hermes when visible in the evening. Around the 4th century BC, however, Greek astronomers came to understand that the two names referred to the same body. The Romans named the planet after the Roman messenger god, Mercury (Latin Mercurius), which they equated with the Greek Hermes.[33][34]

Ground-based telescopic research

The first telescopic observations of Mercury were made by Galileo in the early 17th century. Although he observed phases when he looked at Venus, his telescope was not powerful enough to see the phases of Mercury. In 1631 Pierre Gassendi made the first observations of the transit of a planet across the Sun when he saw a transit of Mercury predicted by Johannes Kepler. In 1639 Giovanni Zupi used a telescope to discover that the planet had orbital phases similar to Venus and the Moon. The observation demonstrated conclusively that Mercury orbited around the Sun.

A very rare event in astronomy is the passage of one planet in front of another (occultation), as seen from Earth. Mercury and Venus occult each other every few centuries, and the event of May 28, 1737 is the only one historically observed, having been seen by John Bevis at the Royal Greenwich Observatory.[35] The next occultation of Mercury by Venus will be in 2133.

The difficulties inherent in observing Mercury mean that it has been far less studied than the other planets. In 1800 Johann Schröter made observations of surface features, but erroneously estimated the planet’s rotational period at about 24 hours. In the 1880s Giovanni Schiaparelli mapped the planet more accurately, and suggested that Mercury’s rotational period was 88 days, the same as its orbital period due to tidal locking.[36] This phenomenon is known as synchronous rotation and is also shown by Earth’s Moon. The theory that Mercury’s rotation was synchronous became widely held, and it was a significant shock to astronomers when radio observations made in the 1960s questioned this. If Mercury were tidally locked, its dark face would be extremely cold, but measurements of radio emission revealed that it was much hotter than expected. Astronomers were reluctant to drop the synchronous rotation theory and proposed alternative mechanisms such as powerful heat-distributing winds to explain the observations.

In June 1962 Soviet scientists at the Institute of Radio-engineering and Electronics of the USSR Academy of Sciences lead by Vladimir Kotelnikov became first to bounce radar signal off Mercury and receive it, starting radar observations of the planet.[37][38][39] Three years later radar observations by Americans Gordon Pettengill and R. Dyce using 300-meter Arecibo Observatory radio telescope in Puerto Rico showed conclusively that the planet’s rotational period was about 59 days.[40][41] Italian astronomer Giuseppe Colombo noted that this value was about two-thirds of Mercury’s orbital period, and proposed that a different form of tidal locking had occurred in which the planet’s orbital and rotational periods were locked into a 3:2 rather than a 1:1 resonance.[42] Data from Mariner 10 subsequently confirmed this view.[43]

Ground-based observations did not shed much further light on the innermost planet, and it was not until space probes visited Mercury that many of its most fundamental properties became known. However, recent technological advances have led to improved ground-based observations. In 2000, high-resolution lucky imaging from the Mount Wilson Observatory 1500 mm telescope provided the first views that resolved some surface features on the parts of Mercury which were not imaged in the Mariner missions.[44] Later imaging has shown evidence of a huge double-ringed impact basin even larger than the Caloris Basin in the non-Mariner-imaged hemisphere. It has informally been dubbed the Skinakas Basin.[45] Most of the planet has been mapped by the Arecibo radar telescope, with 5 km resolution, including polar deposits in shadowed craters of what may be water ice.[46] Ground-based telescopes have detected the bright rays around some radar-mapped craters.

Mercury (mythology)

In Roman mythology, Mercury' (aka Hermes) (pronounced /ˈmɝkjəri/, Latin: Mercurius' listen (help·info)) was a messenger, [1] and a god of trade, profit and commerce, the son of Maia Maiestas and Jupiter. His name is related to the Latin word merx ("merchandise"; compare merchant, commerce, etc.). In his earliest forms, he appears to have been related to the Etruscan deity Turms, but most of his characteristics and mythology were borrowed from the analogous Greek deity Hermes.

Mercury has influenced the name of a number of things in a variety of scientific fields, such as the planet Mercury, the element mercury, and the plant mercury. The word mercurial is commonly used to refer to something or someone erratic, volatile or unstable, derived from Mercury's swift flights from place to place.

Worship

Mercury did not appear among the numinous di indigetes of early Roman religion. Rather, he subsumed the earlier Dei Lucrii as Roman religion was syncretized with Greek religion during the time of the Roman Republic, starting around the 4th century BC. From the beginning, Mercury had essentially the same aspects as Hermes, wearing winged shoes talaria and a winged petasos, and carrying the caduceus, a herald's staff with two entwined snakes that was Apollo's gift to Hermes. He was often accompanied by a cockerel, herald of the new day, a ram or goat, symbolizing fertility, and a tortoise, referring to Mercury's legendary invention of the lyre from a tortoise shell.

Like Hermes, he was also a messenger of the gods and a god of trade, particularly of the grain trade. Mercury was also considered a god of abundance and commercial success, particularly in Gaul. He was also, like Hermes, the Romans' psychopomp, leading newly-deceased souls to the afterlife. Additionally, Ovid wrote that Mercury carried Morpheus' dreams from the valley of Somnus to sleeping humans.[1]

Mercury's temple in the Circus Maximus, between the Aventine and Palatine hills, was built in 495 BC. This was a fitting place to worship a swift god of trade and travel, since it was a major center of commerce as well as a racetrack. Since it stood between the plebeian stronghold on the Aventine and the patrician center on the Palatine, it also emphasized the role of Mercury as a mediator.

Because Mercury was not one of the early deities surviving from the Roman Kingdom, he was not assigned a flamen ("priest"), but he did have a major festival on May 15, the Mercuralia. During the Mercuralia, merchants sprinkled water from his sacred well near the Porta Capena on their heads.

Syncretism

When they described the gods of Celtic and Germanic tribes, rather than considering them separate deities, the Romans interpreted them as local manifestations or aspects of their own gods, a cultural trait called the interpretatio Romana. Mercury in particular was reported as becoming extremely popular among the nations the Roman Empire conquered; Julius Caesar wrote of Mercury being the most popular god in Britain and Gaul, regarded as the inventor of all the arts. This is probably because in the Roman syncretism, Mercury was equated with the Celtic god Lugus, and in this aspect was commonly accompanied by the Celtic goddess Rosmerta. Although Lugus may originally have been a deity of light or the sun (though this is disputed), similar to the Roman Apollo, his importance as a god of trade and commerce made him more comparable to Mercury, and Apollo was instead equated with the Celtic deity Belenus.[1]

Mercury was also strongly associated with the Germanic god Wotan; 1st-century Roman writer Tacitus identifies the two as being the same, and describes him as the chief god of the Germanic peoples.

In Celtic areas, Mercury was sometimes portrayed with three heads or faces, and at Tongeren, Belgium, a statuette of Mercury with three phalli was found, with the extra two protruding from his head and replacing his nose; this was probably because the number 3 was considered magical, making such statues good luck and fertility charms. The Romans also made widespread use of small statues of Mercury, probably drawing from the ancient Greek tradition of hermae markers.

Mercury gave birth to many modern words, mainly of Latin and/or French origin, such as: Merci, Mercenary & Merchant. (This was recently quoted on BBC Radio 2's "Factoids")

Mercury and modern occultism

In occult circles Mercury is given primary rulership over things magical. This may in part be due to Mercury's association with Odhinn by way of the days of the week.

The name Wednesday comes from the Middle English Wednes dei, which is from Old English Wēdnes dæg, meaning the day of the Germanic god Woden (Wodan) who was a god of the Anglo-Saxons in England until about the 7th century. Wēdnes dæg is like the Old Norse Oðinsdagr ("Odin's day"), which is an early translation of the Latin dies Mercurii ("Mercury's day"), though Mercury (the messenger of the gods) and Woden (the king of the Germanic gods) are not equivalent in most regards.Odin is the magical god, and also the head of the Norse pantheon. Mercury's quickness may be likened to the sparrow.

See also

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