trans-states.org

To truly grasp this most cunning of characters, best described, I will argue, as the cosmic expression of heterogeneity, I will turn first to historical understandings and depictions of Mercury and the Mercurial arising from early observational astronomy, astrology, and astral magic. In this way, I will give a cursory sketch of an earlier conception of this most protean form within western esotericism and occultism.

Drawing on this, I will consider Mercury’s malleability, how mercurial intelligence and impulse is shaped and adapted readily by context and motivation. Equally, how this form is to be most fully understood astrologically in relation to the polarity of which it is a part, that of the Mercurial-Jupiterian. Wherever we find Mercury we, too, find Jupiter. Thinking in polarities is implied in the logic of western astrology, but it also reveals novel pairings that have broad implications for the interrelated system it describes.

I propose that considering the Mercurial and its associated impulses within this pairing offers a fuller spectrum of expression to more clearly describe this necessarily ambiguous force.