The MERCURY Principle

Before studying the astrological qualities of a planet it is well worth while to take note of some of its astronomical peculiarities.

Mercury is the nearest known planet to the Sun, attempts to establish the existence of an infra-Mercurical body usually referred to as Vulcan having failed.

It has no known moons.

Its day is believed to equal its revolutionary time, so that it is to the Sun as our Moon is to us; it always turns the same face to the Sun. Its sidereal revolution is just short of 88 days. Its orbit is very elliptical, for at its nearest it is 28.5 million miles from the Sun, but at its farthest it is more that 43 million miles. Its distance from Earth varies from 50 to 136 million miles. Its orbit, in fact, is almost as eccentric as that of Pluto. Its probable temperature is put at 600ø F. as against the Earth's 59ø.

The inclination of its orbit to the ecliptic is 7ø which far exceeds any other planet except Pluto. Venus is next, with 3ø 23'.

Its maximum elongation from the Sun, as seen from the Earth, is 28ø, so that we may well wonder how the ancients, even though they enjoyed a far clearer atmosphere than ours, were able to determine its planetary nature and even learn a lot about it. Few people in these misty islands are likely to ever see Mercury unless they make a special effort to do so, at the appropriate times.

Thus it is, physically, elusive and must have seemed so even to the primeval astronomers, and also they would have noticed its quick motion, which can be well over 2ø a day, and its frequent retrogressions.

Now, whether we think this mere coincidence or an illuminating example of cosmic symbolism, the same is often true of the native of Gemini. He can be elusive, and even deceptive.

In mythology Mercury was a playful god, always up to mischief, and yet so engaging in his adroitness and "cheek" that he was always popular. He stole Apollo's bow, but when the god was chiding him, he could not but burst out laughing to find that his arrows had gone too, and so on. He was always a youthful god, and handsome, and I have seen a distinct resemblance to the old Greek statues in some lining Geminians.
Thus we associate mental and physical quickness with the planet. Also, a boyish charm. He is likable.

Quickness is motion; it is motion raised to an unusual degree.
So Mercury becomes the planet of motion and is said to rule travel, especially quick short journeys. Not exploratory ones, but those that are definitely undertaken to get from one place to another. He rules everything that subserves such journeys, such as roads and all kinds of vehicles, but in particular lightly-built ones. He seems restricted to the land; I have never heard that maritime travel is Mercurical.

Then he has come to rule devices that serve the same purpose as a journey, such as postal and telegraphic and telephonic communication.

He is the Messenger of the Gods, and so stands for all sorts of communication; imprimis, speech and the written word.

Physical fitness is universally recognized amongst us as a Virgo ideal. So the planet gives an interest in gymnastics, physical culture of all kinds, dietetics, and medical remedies. Why so?

Basically I think it comes back to the fact that all illness either inhibits movement (say, rheumatic complaints) or makes them difficult or dangerous (heart trouble and respiratory ailments) or makes them irregular or uncontrolled (say, St. Vitus' Dance), or causes them to be artificially controlled (as in cases of mental disease and the terrible padded cell and strait-jacket).

So Mercury, as god of motion, becomes at once closely concerned with fitness.

Therefore afflictions in mutable signs seem often to affect the health. Those in the two signs of Jupiter commonly indicate danger of accidents; those in the signs of Mercury, disease, especially disease of mind or lungs.

This characteristic of the mutables rather puzzled me. Astrologers have made several attempts to define, in keywords, the functions of the three Quadruplicities.

To me the most revealing correlation is with the Three Heads of the Hindu Trinity: Brahma, Creator; Vishnu, Preserver; Shiva, Destroyer.

The activity of the Cardinals seems to agree with Creativeness. The stability of the Fixed signs seems to tally with Preservation. Mrs. Hone has told me of a case known to her of a woman who has got on quite nicely with heavy afflictions in fixed signs. It is true that when they do go the fixed signs usually go with a snap; but perhaps that is a good a way to go as any. Then we have the mutables as being under Shiva, the Destroyer. That would account for the connection with disease. But Shiva is not merely a god of destruction; it is destruction for subsequent construction.

As I have said, the mutable diseases are usually either nervous, verging sometimes toward the mental, and the pulmonary or respiratory.

In this connection I recently read a quotation from Dr. Kent, one of the great homeopaths, that "Phthisis and insanity are convertible conditions, the one falls into the other," and also "the intellectual symptoms and the lung symptoms are interchangeable".

Dr. Garnett, a leading scholar of his times, wrote a monograph on the connection between Mercury-Mars afflictions and insanity; but of course many other factors have to be taken into consideration. One must regard not only the planet, but also its signs and the related houses. Mercury-Mars contacts certainly make for mental excitability. Oppositions of violent elements across cusps 3-9 seem to occur more often in cases of mental trouble or deficiency than would happen by mere chance. Afflictions involving Gemini seem to affect respiration more often than the mentality. Asthma, for example, is often shown by Gemini-Virgo squares.

Breathing burns up impurities and re-oxygenises the blood, and so it is not strange that it should come under Shiva, who, we may add, is entitled "Lord of Yoga," a practice which has much to teach us on the subject of breath.

Now we come back to our point about the relation between Virgo and physical fitness.

If the mutables have to do with Destruction and Re-construction, then on their positive side they will study good health even if, on their negative side, they may "enjoy bad health," talk about it, and wallow in it.

I have never noticed this propensity in Geminians; in fact, their attitude towards disease is usually one of impatience, as towards something that fetters their urge towards constant motion.

Dr. Dickinson always said that Mercurials are bad patients. Gemini is restless and won't carry out a cure conscientiously, forgetting all about as soon as amelioration sets in; Virgo always thinks it knows better than the physician. I remember trying to help one relative who has Moon conj. Mercury in Virgo. I forget what I gave her, or for what purpose, but it seems to have acted. So she swallowed the whole bottle of tablets outright, supposing that if three did her good, thirty would cure her. Biochemic remedies are usually harmless, even in large quantities, but not always, and she never got any more from me. The risk was too great!

The healing aspect of Mercury does not seem to have mythological support, and a good many astrologers believe that, ultimately, we shall have another planet as ruler of Virgo. However, that is just speculation.

In both signs, the "microscopic" aspect of the planet is evident. Virgo, in particular, loves small things, such as watches. A Sun-rising-in-Virgo friend, having mended all the watches in the neighbourhood, now spends his leisure making delightful sets of toy furniture.

Switzerland is said to be ruled by Virgo, and their watches are famous, as also their wood-carvings. Their standards of tidiness and cleanliness put all other nations to shame. Go into one of their inns and even if it is nearly closing time, you will probably not see a single match on the floor.

Gemini is not quite so precise or fond of minuteness, but it is limited in the sense that there is little mental speculation in its nature; it likes hard facts and has a rather card-index type of mind.

The late V. E. Robson, who had Virgo rising, Moon in Virgo, Sun, Mercury, Venus and Neptune in Gemini, had an encyclopaedic mind and could and would discourse on almost anything till the stars grew dim in the morning light. He was also an expert at card-tricks. But his books, though highly to be commended in their own fields and most carefully compiled, show little originality. Indeed whole series of adjectives have been taken, word by word, from some of Leo's works. I have known several people with the Gemini-Virgo combination and they were all extremely clever but did not always use their cleverness wisely.

Virgo is a good teacher, patient and quiet, not in a hurry. I question whether Gemini is so good, except when the pupils are also Geminian.

Sign-positions

In Aries the planet seems to me to be often rather self-opinionated and "out to disagree" with whatever is said.

In Taurus is not forthcoming enough, and may converse in grunts!
Mercury is a very human side--vide its signs--and it is not always happy in an animal environment.

In Gemini the planet is lively, brisk and chatty, but not very easy to nail down and get down below the surface to basic principles. A good conversationalist rather than a deep thinker.

In Cancer he may get sentimental and want to talk of the old folks at home and how the roses round the door, for some undisclosed reason, make him love mother more; in the U.S.A. map Mercury is in Cancer, of course.
The memory is likely to be good because Cancer always harks backwards; and an element of shrewdness and business acumen may well be present. The American "Mothers' Day" was promoted by the stores, who were anxious to sell gifts to sentimental offspring.

Mercury in Leo is usually a jolly fellow, generous and good-natured, with plenty of the rather obvious sort of fun that Leo relishes. Some say the position makes for a proud and dogmatic mind but I have not noticed this.

Mercury in Virgo hardly needs a description. It is precise, painstaking and fussy, but often has a pleasant whimsically.

In Libra it finds a ready outlet for its gift of self-expression, and this position bestows powers of lucid explanation, so that you get the possibility of a good lecturer or teacher. Libra loves clear thought and Mercury here tries to clarify its own conceptions and those of others. It is sociable and agreeable.

In Scorpio it is reserved, mysterious and difficult to understand, often sardonic and bitter. It has been said that Scorpio will make a mystery of going across the road to buy a box of matches. Still, there are great possibilities in this position. It should be an excellent research student but it will have to leave the clarification of its discoveries to Libra and their popularisation to Sagittarius.

In Sagittarius it is the zodiacal chatterbox, and that's about all you can say of it, except of course that it is good-natured and means well. It has a way of starting off "I always think". But it doesn't.

Mercury is stronger in Capricorn than in any sign. It is a position of real mental ability and fluent expression.
There is often a serious religious element (Milton and Gladstone) and also an interest in politics, as one would expect.

Mercury in Aquarius is less able than Mercury in Capricorn. Its characteristic is broad-mindedness and universality of interests and sympathy. It is more social than Mercury in Capricorn, but it is less effective in the affairs of life. It is interested in the things of the spirit rather than in politics or business.

Traditionally Pisces is a bad domicile for the planet, which, in this sign, is said to indicate a woolly and silly mind and a babbling tongue. It is true that it is seldom lucid in expression and sometimes the ends of its sentences seem to have little connection with their beginnings. It is perhaps symbolised by the professor who gazes at the egg whilst boiling his watch. But after all, the professor is presumably an erudite man, even if he is a poor egg-boiler, and perhaps not very good at holding his audience of undergraduates. Added to this, Pisces nearly always bestows kindliness, and is rarely anyone's enemy save his own.

So much for the planet in the twelve signs, wherein it is of course always subject to modification by aspect and by the general tenor of the horoscope.

Aspects

I do not propose to delineate in detail the suggested values of Mercury's aspects, as this has been done, to the best of my ability, in one of my books. Mercury with Sol, rather self-opinionated and liable to adopt the attitude of The Great I Am; with Luna, quaint, fantastic, old-world; with Venus, kind and artistic, but for some strange reason, apparently usually childless; with Mars, quick, excitable, disputative; with Jupiter, not always as good as you might think and as it seems somewhat liable to seek easy ways of success; with Saturn, often profound or at any rate gifted, and (once again, unexpectedly) a great talker; with Uranus, intuitional and maybe talented, but under affliction, as pig-headed as they make them, in three cases out of every four; with Neptune, whimsical, impish, a humourous observer of life; with Pluto, if we may take recent outbursts of Mr. Harry S. Truman as evidence (he has Mercury conj. Pluto in Gemini) given to explosive utterances not distinguished by tact.

It is noteworthy that the most famous of these had to do with Truman's daughter, whose vocal efforts a critic had described as less pleasing that the lady's personality: this brings one to the point that Mercury signifies young people in general and one's children in particular; also, he rules critics.

House Positions

These of course in a general sense indicate the field in which the qualities are exercised, just as an Army division comprises units of many qualities and each type or class operates in a special field.

But house position does often affect character markedly. This is obviously true of planets in the 1st house, but it is also true of the others. Persons born within two or three hours or so of each other do not merely differ in being engaged in different fields; they have also distinctive dispositions.

Undoubtedly the Mercury houses affect the disposition.

This has always been recognised as regards the 3rd , which
theosophical astrologers correlate with the "lower" or factual mind. But the 6th is just as important, though it has more to do with instinctual elements, which appear as "moods" or the more negative types of emotions. A square from 3rd to 6th may produce a very difficult diathesis and might point to ill-temper due to intestinal toxicosis.

Has the 3rd house much to do with brethren, as tradition tells us? Very little, I should say! Sometimes you get a bit of evidence that it does, but more often, in my opinion, there is hardly any connection at all. The family, as a whole, falls clearly under the 4th, in general outline.

Has the 6th much to do with health? Yes, I think so.

Has it much to do with "service" and one's work? I should say very little indeed, if anything; but on this matter I am willing to be corrected. To discover horoscopically what work a man does is, to my mind, just impossible. What one can tell is what a man ought to do if he is to be successful and happy.

I do not think that Mercury himself, elusive fellow, takes much colour from the house he occupies, for he is no home-lover. He is strong when close to an angle and being carried to it by axial rotation, and when he is on a house-cusp, which, by E.H.D., means when he is in exact aspect to the ascendant. He is less happy in the "fixed" or succedent houses because they try to slow down his movements, though it could certainly be argued that this is really good for him. In cadent houses he is obscured but probably not unhappy, except for the 12th. Mercury in this sector, afflicted, is often unfortunate in that defects of the senses, such as deafness, sometimes occur.

Mercurical Stars

It will be worth while to spend a little time on the principal fixed stars that are of a Mercurical nature. My thesis on the stars is that they partake of the natures of their constellations, in whatever sign they may fall, and that the traditional Arabian values are so much nonsense, overdue for the astrological dustbin.

It has been said by the astrologers of the early nineteenth century that Geminians often attain eminence because of the number of brilliant stars in the sign, or, to be accurate, in the same longitudes as the sign. I fancy this was a bit of flattery to R. C. Smith, the first "Raphael", who seems to have enjoyed the admiration of a little coterie of friends who called themselves the "Mercurii".

Robson lists the following stars that are in the constellation of the Twins:

Tejat, Dirah, Alhena, 3rd, 3rd and 2nd magnitudes and all three said to be of the natures of Mercury and Venus. Their longitudes, as at January 1, 1920, were respectively 2, 4, 8 Cancer. Once again according to my thesis, these Geminian stars would implant a definite Mercurical value on the three Cancer longitudes mentioned.

Then we have Wasat 17.5 Cancer, Propus 18 Cancer, Castor 19 Cancer, and Pollux 22 Cancer, all in the constellation of the Twins but in the sign Cancer, and all transferring, in my view, a Mercurical influence to the areas of sign Cancer in which they fall.

R. C. Smith and his friends were, however, looking at the matter from the converse side. They were thinking of stars in all sorts of constellations, but falling by longitude in sign Gemini. Of these there are many, as you can see from Robson's book, but the principal are:

Alderbaran, 1st magnitude, in 8.5 Gemini and belonging to the constellation of the Bull. It has only 5.5ø of latitude and is probably important, carrying a Venus value to the area of Gemini in which it falls.

Rigel, Bellatrix and Betelgeuse are all in constellation Orion and fall respectively in 16, 20 and 27.5 Gemini. To judge by the mythology of Orion they must have rather robust qualities. They all have considerable latitude, as you can see for yourself if you look at them on a clear winter night. They are all far below Aldebaran, Castor and Pollux, which are near the ecliptical line.

Capella, the beautiful yellow star in Auriga, the Charioteer, falls in 20 3/4 Gemini but has 23ø north latitude, so in these parts of the world in can neither rise nor set. It means a "kid". I only know one man who was for a time an enthusiastic keeper of goats, and believe it or not, he has Sun in 20 3/4 Gemini! This was also, it seems, the ascendant of George Bernard Shaw and he relates in one of his prefaces that he had a tame goat as a pet when a child.

The Pole Star itself falls by longitude in 27.5 Gemini, though of course it is nowhere near either the sign or constellation of that name, having 66ø of north latitude.

Polaris does seem to symbolise steadfastness, as when Shakespeare makes Julius Caesar say:

"I am constant as the northern star,
Of whose true-fixed and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.
The skies are painted with unnumber'd sparks;
They are all fire and every one doth shine,
But there's but one in all doth hold his place."

I happen to know two people whose Suns were the one in conjunction and the other in opposition to Polaris, and both were certainly fixed firmly in their principles.

But the stars present special problems, and here is one: Polaris and Betelgeuse, though so far apart in the heavens, have almost precisely the same longitude, and so, ecliptically, they are in perpetual conjunction.
There are many similar cases.

There is only one bright star in the constellation of the Virgin, the famous Spica, the Ear of Corn, which is in 22 3/4 of the sign Libra. One would suppose that this imparts to this are of Libra an agricultural propensity, but I have never noticed this. It might also indicate a certain girlishness or effeminacy to men in whose men in whose maps it is prominent, or perhaps a tendency to be ruled by women.

There are no 1st magnitude stars in the sign Virgo. Zosma and Denebola are 2nd magnitude. Both have considerable latitude and belong to the constellation of the Lion. Their respective longitudes are 10ø and 20.5ø Virgo. One does find Virginians at times who are possessed of quite leonine firmness and outspokenness, and perhaps they are born under these stars.

Mercury and Morals

Alan Leo wrote somewhere that just as mercury shows the temperature in a thermometer, so the planet shows the moral elevation or depravity of the native.

This demonstrates what silly things the best of us may sometimes put on paper.

I cannot say what Mercury may indicate in the prenatal epoch or some other special horoscope; but Leo was writing of the nativity, and in this he certainly does not show moral status.

How this can best be judged is a difficult problem, involving, as it does, first of all, just what one understands by "morality" or "goodness". So various planets will have to be considered, but perhaps least of all Mercury.

He admires cleverness, "know-how" and good craftsmanship, but is left comparatively cold by acts of heroism or self-sacrifice, philanthropy, and so forth.

I am never tired of quoting the Prince Consort, a good and quite surprisingly wise man, at least two generations ahead of his times. He had Mercury, his ruler, opposed to Saturn and square Mars, Uranus and Neptune.

A strongly aspected Mercury tempts to devious ways because it the native "cute" and apt to joy in trying out his cleverness, matching his wits against those of others. He loves finding short cuts and sometimes these are not true rights of way but go across other people's property!

In morality, as such, Mercury has little interest. If Mercurials contradict this in their lives, it is for some other reason than their Mercurialism.

In contradiction to the Prince Consort I once knew a woman who had a most wonderfully aspected Mercury, in Libra in 3rd, with Leo rising. She was capable and was, in a Leo way, very attractive, dressing excellently; she had also a truly remarkable gift of repartee--no one would catch her out conversationally. But, so far as I know, she had no outstanding depth of character or wisdom, but lived according to the standards of her environment.

I will close with a few remarks on the horoscope of Mr. Theodore C. Taylor, given in the last (March 1951) issue of Astrology, on page 4.

Mr. Taylor, now over one hundred years of age, still attends business daily. Apart from this, he has kept his mental youth in an extraordinary degree. Even when asked for his data, he wanted to know "what it was all about". He was also a pioneer in co-partnership, has been a great traveller, and is interested in physical culture and dietetics.

One would expect a strong Mercurical element and would not be wrong in so doing.

The Moon is in Gemini near the lower meridian and exactly opposed to Pars Fortunae, giving it exceptional strength. It is in very close sextile to angular Mercury. Three planets, Venus, Mars and Jupiter are in Virgo, within 5ø of one another and in the 8th house (E.H.D). Thus Mercury is the "ultimate dispositor" of everything in the chart, including ascendant, midheaven and Pars, save only the Sun.

With this glimpse of a "Grand Old Man" who is strongly under the protection of our planet, we close our paper.