Mercury In Astrology: Expression and Interactions

Mercury in Astrology and how we think, communicate and interact with others

Next to the Sun, speedy Mercury is probably the second most famous planet in astrology. Coincidently, it’s the closest body to the Sun’s bright rays, with a cycle of 88 days. Mercury reflects our thinking, communication, daily tasks and interactions with siblings, neighbours and work peers later in life.

Symbolic of the mythological messenger Hermes, Mercury is fluid in nature and likes to flit around, gather information, meet people, and then do the rounds again. An energy that is happy when it deals with new information, processing, and dissecting data, thrives on mental challenges and keeps physically busy, especially with their hands.

The style and ease with which we interact with others, process information, assimilate ideas, our attitude and aptitude to learning and how we express ourselves are coloured by the astrological signs.

The water Mercury will attach emotion to thought, feel their way through communication and use emotional instinct to make logical decisions. The earthy Mercury would base ideas on logic and reason. Thoughts will be linear, straightforward and defined. Firey Mercury turns the heat up with creative ideas, communicates assertively, and can quickly process data. While an airy Mercury thinks abstractly, it can also process information quickly and is likely a wordsmith, but it can become too detached.

The wings of Hermes are illustrated on the helmet and feet, reflecting the mind and body and the qualities of the two signs it rules, Gemini and Virgo.

How we process information and the perspective we formulate from our Mercury energy connects to how well we interact with others and see the world. In Gemini style, Mercury is detached and objective by nature; it wants to get on with it by performing simultaneous tasks. Its versatile nature makes the energy inherently agile, with a pronounced capacity to do many things.  Associated with the number six and thriving in the 6th house, Virgo style, it requires a sense of balance, seeing patterns, and knowing what works and what doesn’t keep the multi-winged god light and effective to perform its natural duty of service.

The house Mercury sits in can tell us where we focus our thoughts, the area of life we enjoy daily, and where we continually like to make improvements. It also gives insight into where we are apt to multitask skillfully and are prone to express a dualistic nature.

Mercury delights in its own home in the 3rd and 6th. The airy and earthy house keeps Mercury physically and mentally busy and gives the multi-winged deity the purpose and intent it naturally requires. Consequently, with such concentrated Mercurial energy, it can be highly wired and neurotic. In the firehouses, the body is active, the mind is lit with creative thoughts and expression. In emotional water houses, the attitude is more passive and internal. The focus is on the private life, like intimate relationships, the home or the outer reaches of 3d reality.

The ancient father of astrology, Ptolemy, believed that human development mirrors the qualities of each of the 7 planets (those that were visible and discovered back in Hellenistic times). The Moon rules the age between 0-4, Mercury 4-14, Venus 14-21 and so on. While considering the context of culture and time, the type of nurturing and environment to which the energy was exposed, Mercury rules the childhood stage. Generally speaking, around the age of 4-14, when we move further away from the womb and from relying on our mother, we gain greater mobility and become more independent. It is also a time when we string our first words together and find out more about ourselves through interaction with others, those confined to our locality.

More independence is gained in the later Mercury years when we create our circle of friends. A time when we understand how things operate within a social context and the challenges and ease we experience in a group. It’s an impressionable stage, the start of peer pressure when our values are integrated or questioned. Interchangeable with our attitude towards learning, it’s a period that reveals our capacity to learn. As the schoolyard stage sets the tone for Mercury in our adult life, how well it goes, the experience we assimilate from the natural disposition of the sign can be honed or suppressed, nurtured or damaged.

Mercury is also the divine trickster, having the inclination to manipulate and charm its way through life. A dualistic nature that can start to become polarized during childhood. And an added quality, for better or worse, to our perspective of the world and our place in it. Did we have to win approval through underhanded ways? What impressions do we carry forward? How much can we continue to speak the truth without a filter? How does this impact our learning, or how did this stage of our development affect our understanding and shade our lens of the world? Our viewpoint of the wider world (Jupiter) starts at our Mercury stage of development.

Mercury is symbolic of how we process our thoughts, how we assimilate ideas and the interactions and tasks we have on a daily basis. The perspective we develop through our childhood stage hues the natural functions of our Mercury later in life and whether there was an easy flow or if our wings have been clipped or weighed down.

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