by Mercury, the gods’ messenger, embodies the mediation principle, making the pure solar presence intelligible through mental functions.
Mercury mediates between the individual self, symbolised by the Sun, and the reciprocal connection of mental functions with the surrounding environment. It embodies the pure essence of the Sun in an understandable and communicative system, capable of articulating itself through a framework of references that offer an interpretation of the self’s manifestation in the world.
Myth and exegesis
The planet is named after the Roman god Mercury, who shares many characteristics with the Greek god Hermes. According to mythology, Hermes was the son of Zeus and Maia, one of the Pleiades. Legend has it that Hermes crafted the lyre using a turtle shell shortly after his birth and stole a cattle herd from his brother Apollo. When accused by Apollo, Hermes used the sound of the lyre to persuade him to exchange the stolen herd for the instrument. As a result, Hermes received the shepherd’s staff from Apollo and was taught divination through bird flight in exchange for a pan flute and a mouth accordion. From then on, Hermes was regarded as the protector of musicians and herdsmen. In addition to these roles, he was also known as ψυχοπομπóς (psychopomp), guiding souls to the afterlife, πολύτροπος (politropos), the cunning traveller from many resources, thief, robber, bringer of dreams, and ἄγγελος (angel), a messenger and interpreter of the gods.
The characterisations of Mercury embody principles of transfer, exchange, transit, movement, and change. They reveal a continuous interplay of diverse roles, often appearing amoral yet reflecting the inherent freedom of association of the mind. This myth symbolically represents the instrument of knowledge of reality through dualistic perception in a symbolic representation, depicted by the embezzlement of Apollo’s herd of divine thoughts. This act signifies the transition from unity to plurality, resulting in the fall of divine thought. The punishment for this theft, balanced through the intermediation of Zeus, is the gift of a seven-stringed lyre whose enchanting sound captivates Apollo. This harmonious sound serves as an invitation to establish concord with the celestial spheres (the seven classical planets), symbolising the union of heaven and earth.
Mercury exercises his intermediary function as an angel and psychopomp between the divine and the human. He oversees the intellectual relationship within the elements of objective perception, such as the word and the letters, while maintaining a connection with the source and the primordial meaning behind the world of multiple appearances. It can be surmised that the characterisation of Mercury as a thief is merely a human perception, as, in truth, no actual theft occurs, and nothing is truly divided. Instead, the god’s role involves revealing an undivided truth presented in a way that seems separate from its source. Only when we enter the realm of judgment does Mercury assume the guise of the king of thieves, symbolising the separation of individuals from their possessions, akin to how Mercury “steals” the knowledge of divine thought.
The mind philosophies
The concept of the mind has been explored through various philosophical interpretations across different centuries. In Greek philosophy, the intellect was viewed as an instrument for intending or intelligere. Plato and Aristotle established its dual role as νόησις (noesis) and διάνοιά (dianoia), representing the perception of reality through self-awareness of spiritual origin and discursive knowledge, which draws its basis from the former. Subsequently, from Aristotle to Arab commentators and scholasticism, the distinction between the potential intellect and the active intellect was delineated. The potential intellect receives the intelligibles, understood as a separate intelligence or identified with God. In contrast, the active intellect makes the forms or ideas in the images understandable to the senses.
The philosophical landscape of the 17th and 18th centuries is characterised by a comparison between Cartesian rationalism and Locke’s empiricism. Cartesian rationalism posits that the intellect contains inborn ideas (res cogitans) from which an explanation of external things (res extensa) can be derived. Locke’s empiricism asserts that individuals are born with a “tabula rasa” (a fresh start), and knowledge is acquired through sensory experience. With some distinctions, Leibniz situates himself within Cartesian thought, proposing the pre-existence of a potential or inclination for knowledge that, when stimulated by sensory perception, forms the basis of ideas. On the other hand, Kant views the intellect as the “legislator of nature”, an active faculty imposed a priori to the experience. Additionally, reason assumes the role of a producer of ideas that guide the intellect towards the cognitive moment, akin to Platonic noesis. Kant further distinguishes between the phenomenon, the object of our experience, and the “thing in itself” that exists independently.
We can trace back the foundations of Idealist thought to Kant’s concept of transcendental logic, which focuses on examining not the object itself but our way of understanding it even if the object of knowing still exists. At the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the post-Kantian philosophers Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel sought to explore the subtle realm of thought, aiming to achieve absolute idealism, where reality is understood in terms of pure thought. According to this perspective, objects perceived as ‘external’ only exist as representations of our consciousness. All forms of idealism emphasise a unified view of reality, in contrast to the empirical inclination to prioritise sensory data. Gentile’s actualism represents the culmination of Idealist thought, in which he equates the real with the self-awareness of the thought thinking, establishing a unified connection between thought entities and the act of thinking—the Spirit-Thought. This perpetual activity erases the distinction between subject and object (monism). The difference between Hegel’s absolute idealism and actualism lies in the conceptualisation of “what has been thought”: for Hegel, it is a definitive event situated at the pinnacle of spiritual development, distinct from the Spirit, rather than a concurrent cause of the eternal evolution of the thinking act.
Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy, outlines a monistic worldview articulated in his work “Die Philosophie der Freiheit 1“. He explains the unified understanding of the world through the interplay of concept and perception, wherein a synthesis occurs between cognition, observation, and the observed. Perception constitutes the objective facet of reality, while the concept embodies the subjective interpretation of this reality. Thinking serves as the conceptual conduit that reconciles the fragmentation of perceptions, preventing them from deteriorating in a state of separation. Steiner equates thinking with intuition, denoting the capacity to apprehend the world not as a dichotomy but as an integrated reality, where concepts and perceptions converge harmoniously. The world of perception represents half of reality, actualised through the concept—the disclosure of the intrinsic and ideal relationships between entities relative to the perceptual configuration of individualities. Consequently, the subject and object of perception come together within a singular reality.
In the initial Indian philosophical-religious frameworks, the Upaniṣad conception of the Atman or Brahman (the Absolute Reality) is succeeded by the postulation, in the Sāṁhkya school, of the dyad Puruṣa – Prākṛti, signifying the Supreme Subject and its manifestation in the realm of material entities. As a consequence of this manifestation, which becomes conscious of itself, the ‘producer of the ego’ (ahaṃkāra) emerges, engendering the intellect, sensory organs, and the fundamental qualities of perceived and manipulated entities. Ultimately, prākṛti corresponds to non-self; upon the cessation of mental fluctuations (referred to as buddhi in the Sāṁkhya school), the mistaken identification of puruṣa with prākṛti dissolves, leading to the realisation of the independence of puruṣa. The means to subdue mental modifications is yoga or self-discipline, through which adepts become firmly established in their intrinsic and fundamental nature.
The doctrines of Nyāya and Vaiśeshika address the nature of our understanding of reality and the categorisation of objects of knowledge. According to these doctrines, the mind is inferred to be the coordinator of sensory input, facilitating our interaction with experience. It is regarded as the medium through which sensory stimuli are internally perceived as a quality. The self, as the subject, is the entity that engages in all aspects of internal experiences. It is distinct from other entities and attributes, including consciousness, as it is the foundation for perceiving objects, which require a subject for their experience. In the Nyāya philosophy, liberation entails freedom from consciousness, viewed as the awareness of something, thereby implying a duality between subject and object. Since consciousness is a characteristic of the self, the self remains unchanged even without consciousness. In the state of liberation, the self is simply acknowledged to exist as itself.
In early Buddhism, the mind must be understood within the broader framework of existence as an ever-evolving process rather than a causal series of independent or semi-dependent realities. The representation of the wheel of becoming (bhavacakra) encapsulates the significant aspects of the ongoing processes of what is commonly referred to as a person. Within this framework, the mind and body (nama-rūpa) rely on consciousness to function. They are integral to the process upon which the sense organs depend, giving rise to sensory impressions, perceptions, and desires or aversions towards the perceived objects. The analysis of the personality, or the processes that constitute it, can be conceptually illustrated by the five skandhas: form (rūpa), sensation (vedana), perception (sanna), volition (sankhāra), and consciousness (vijñāna), the last four of which are mental processes (nama). The Buddhist doctrine of anatta (or anatman in Sanskrit) provides a foundation for the idea that the conception of an independent self that is separated from these processes is rooted in these five skandhas. These processes contribute to the illusion of a false ego-self, leading to attachment and suffering as the self strives to establish its vicarious existence.
In the Yogācāra doctrine, a manifestation of Buddhist idealism, reality is posited as entirely mental or purely consciousness, stemming from seminal consciousness (ālayavijñāna). The nature of this seminal consciousness is inexplicable, but its relative manifestations encompass sensory perceptions, mental functions, and self-awareness, which facilitate the perception of a self. Notably, the presence of ālayavijñāna does not contradict the fundamental Buddhist principle of origination from causes or dependent origination articulated by the Buddha (paticcasamuppada), as it remains entirely applicable within the realm of relative reality.
The Mādhyamika doctrine, or the Middle Way, does not provide a conclusive definition of reality. Instead, it seeks to illustrate the complete relativity of all mental constructs by closely examining their contradictions. That is accomplished by understanding śūnyatā, which refers to the emptiness or lack of inherent existence.
In summary, the Vaibhāṣika and Sautrāntikā philosophies posit that reality embodies an ever-changing process wherein only the atomic elements are fundamental and exist independently, uncaused and immutable (svabhāva). The Yogācāra school advocates for the existence of the mind alone, considering external reality unreal, lacking svabhāva. According to the Mādhyamika philosophy, both realists and idealists fall into the same error by failing to adopt the middle path between being and non-being, thus unable to avoid the pitfalls of eternalism and nihilism. The Mādhyamika doctrine upholds the belief in absolute reality, though it asserts that this reality cannot be apprehended conceptually but only experienced directly. Essentially, most individuals operate within a world constructed by the mind. While one does encounter a tangible reality that forms the basis for establishing defined entities and relationships, this reality is often misconstrued as a mental creation of names and forms.
Understanding the assumptions underlying examining the mind in Tibetan Buddhism necessitates clearly elucidating the concept’s significance. The concept is a term to which we attribute meaning either through association with a specific data set or through a theoretical definition established via deductively formulated postulates. The former process gives rise to “concepts given by intuition,” while the latter yields “concepts given by postulation.” In traditional Western philosophy and theoretical psychology, the mind is posited as a universal or, more precisely, a postulate. It has been conceived (1) as the self or the subject that engages in perception, recollection, imagination, emotion, volition, etc., functionally linked to an individual physical organism; or (2) as a metaphysical substance pervading all individual minds, with its material counterpart in substance (the mind conceived as an epiphenomenon 2).
In Tibetan Buddhist doctrinal systems, the various schools utilise distinct terminologies and approaches, which, while complementary, differ in their exposition of mental factors. Nonetheless, there is a general consensus that the mind transcends being a mere receptacle of information or a function of the brain; instead, it comprises individual moments of cognition and their continuum, thus constituting our sense of awareness. In Tibetan Buddhist psychology, the concepts of “mind” and “mental events” are intuitively derived, and their whole meaning is immediately apprehensible. Understanding an object’s factual information and data constitutes the mind’s awareness [sems]. Based on this objective reference, confronting the object through specific functions is attributed to the operation of mental events [sems-byung].
In the “mind,” there could be a form of pure ego linked to all “mental events,” which we can describe as manifestations of a distinct mind. Alternatively, considering that the “mind” itself is an event, one could perceive it as being of the exact fundamental nature of the events it encompasses. The field of Buddhist psychology has traditionally dismissed the notion of a “centre”. Nevertheless, upon acknowledging the interrelatedness of certain terms [sems, sems-byung], it becomes evident that there is something to which they all maintain an asymmetric relationship, even in the absence of a central core. That is because each term is connected to the others in a specific manner, creating an asymmetric relationship with all other terms.
This implication has led Buddhist philosophy to distinguish between “mind” [sems] and “mind as such” or “nature of mind” [sems-nyid]. This differentiation underscores the pure awareness or cognition [rig-pa] as the “pure fact” beyond the scope of verbal description. On the other hand, the “fact described” or “lack of pure awareness or ignorance” [ma-rig-pa] denotes the conceptualisation of pure fact, which inherently leads to falsification. Further, “mind” [sems], distinct from “mind as such” [sems-nyid], is synonymous with the lack of pure awareness [ma-rig-pa].
In this context, pure awareness [rig-pa] is susceptible to being overshadowed by negative emotions and mental states. Yet, the individual’s original energy or inner nature persists as “evaluative discrimination” [shes-rab], representing the precise discernment of all phenomena. This stands in contrast to the constant impositions of the ego, which is regarded as a postulate or fiction [yid-la-byed-pa] onto reality.
The distinction between “evaluative discrimination” and “ego-centred postulates” clarifies the conflicting forces within each of us. By imposing postulates, individuals aim to exert control over every aspect of their lives, viewing themselves as incomplete entities. Consequently, their actions are driven solely by self-serving motives, rendering everything a mere means to an end. Conversely, through “evaluative discrimination,” individuals may uncover their potential for growth and well-being, nurturing it to allow the complete development and utilization of all their capacities, resulting in the dominance of the “true” human being – one in whom all abilities are fully evolved and functional.
Astronomical symbolism
The distance between the pure, undivided reality (the Sun) and its intellectual expression (Mercury) is symbolised astronomically by the phenomenon of elongation, which refers to the angular separation of a planet from the Sun as observed from the Earth. Mercury’s maximum elongation is approximately 28°. That suggests that the mind can be viewed as an instrument for expressing reality, inextricably linked to its source but with a certain degree of freedom, allowing for variability in expressive modes. Notably, Mercury can only form a conjunction aspect with the Sun. Moreover, a planet located within the longitude arc of 3° to 8° 30′ is considered combust. In comparison, a planet at a maximum longitudinal distance of 17°, excluding combust degrees, is said to be under the Sun’s rays. A very narrow conjunction (from 17′ to 30′) is referred to as cazimi, the heart of the Sun, and according to Arab authors, it is a position of strength for the planet.
Mercury’s close proximity to the Sun integrates the cognitive organising system with its source. During an exact conjunction, also known as cazimi, a complete union between the pure solar presence and Mercury’s cognitive modes of expression is experienced. This union bestows individuals with an acute awareness of their destinies, thereby diminishing the imperative to develop analytic tools independently. However, when Mercury is combust, and full integration is lacking, the relationship is disrupted by the potent solar radiance of proximity, causing the planet to appear almost “burned” or dazzled. Some have perceived this condition as a negative aspect, denoting a deficiency in insight and sound judgment, albeit offset by proficiency in business and money matters.
Another perspective posits that the combust Mercury is magnetically drawn to the Sun and its sovereign principle yet struggles to disengage, resulting in a pendulum-like reliance on intuitive knowledge and mental analytical tools. We may assume a predisposition towards subjectivity in the event of a negative aspect. When the separation between the star and the planet exceeds 17° of longitude, the mind seeks meaning more through postulation than intuition. Here, the analysis of relationships and connections is grounded predominantly in internal or external perceptual objects, reflecting a practical or rational intellect over a speculative and philosophical one. In such cases, the likelihood of developing adaptive strategies or mental disorders is increased.
A further distinction is drawn between Mercury’s conjunction with the Sun as either inferior or superior. An inferior conjunction occurs when Mercury is positioned between the Earth and the Sun, while a superior conjunction occurs when the Sun lies between the Earth and Mercury. While few interpretations of these events are given, we can say that the effects are more significant during a superior conjunction – when Mercury rises after the Sun.
Regarding retrogradation, Rudhyar makes an interesting statement on the fact that the planets in direct motion follow the bipolar vital movement of the Sun and the Moon (counterclockwise). In contrast, in the retrogradation, the planet moves “against” it, in a certain sense acting as a counterpoint. In the case of Mercury, retrogradation would not indicate a dull or weak mind but a need to contrast pure solar vitalism to access a conscious development of intellectual potential; however, conflicts can still arise in some cases.
- Rudolf Steiner – La Filosofia della Libertà (The Philosophy of Freedom) – Milan 2007. ↩︎
- An epiphenomenon is an incidental event that accompanies a primary phenomenon without directly impacting it. It is categorically distinct from the primary event, which, in a causal context, is regarded as an effect resulting from the phenomena identified as causes. Thus, an epiphenomenon represents a supplementary occurrence that unfolds “alongside” the primary causal relationship and, by definition, does not influence the other associated phenomena. ↩︎
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