The Shadow of Mercury
how we deceive with our words and manipulate communication.
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I’m so excited to be moving onto the planetary archetypes this month. Last month, we explored the luminaries with essays on the shadow of the Sun and the shadow of the Moon. Those two alone revealed so much about how the ego and emotional body interact.
Now, we’re shifting our focus to the planets. Each one carries its own psychology and pattern of behavior, and together, they form the dialogue of the psyche. This article is about Mercury.
Planet Mercury shows how we think, speak, and connect meaning to experience. Mercury’s condition in the birth chart tells us how we translate the world to ourselves and to others. When Mercury is wounded, that process can become distorted. We might speak too quickly, silence ourselves, or filter everything through anxiety or self-doubt.
Before getting into what Mercury’s shadow looks like, it helps to understand who he is at the core. In myth, Hermes (the Greek name for Mercury) moves between all realms. He brings messages from the gods to humans, and from the underworld back to the living.
In astrology, that same movement shows up as the way we think, speak, and make sense of what happens inside us. Mercury connects with what’s conscious with what isn’t yet formed. He’s the translator between instinct and thought, and the part of the psyche that turns experience into meaning. He is mutable, restless, and endlessly inventive. His nature is to connect and play with the meanings that hold the world together.