Questions about the Jupiter and Mercury gestures

MERCURY : the aspect of egoism

The movement of Mercury, contrasts strongly with that of loving sacrifice of Venus. Here the movement goes into the right arm which is raised up, forward diagonally and moved in a circle, radiantly and energetically.

The winged messenger of the gods, Mercury, is called by the Bushmen “The Foot of the Day” as morning star, and as evening star “The Heel of the Night”. His brisk path makes him rightly the god who guides all travellers - as the angel Raphael in the Biblical story of Tobit guided Tobias.

Through his quick dynamic movement the winged messenger unites the worlds of the gods and humankind, restoring to a balanced relationship inner and outer worlds; and this is at the same time a healing, a restoration of breathing. Here one is reminded again of the Tobias story. For the Archangel Raphael helps Tobias heal Sara, and Tobit his father - the one possessed, unable to breath out the evil spirit who held her, the other blind, unable to breathe in the world around.

We find this inner movement of breathing of Mercury active in Goethe’s studies of metamorphosis. When polarities are brought into movement, they remain not as incompatible opposites, rather they are enhanced though this rhythmically intensified movement, raised to something higher than each. This raising up, enhancing, not hardening in our differences but rather breathing between and harmonising, can perhaps enlarge our understanding of the “aspect of egoism”.