Print article - Mercury and its karmic and evolutive valence

Mercury is a very important planet in the karmic-evolutive analysis of the natal chart because it provides indications about our possibility of integrating the contents of the past with those of the present time into a future perspective, or rather it lets us recover past memories of life experiences then to insert them, and in case manage them in creative way, in our present existence.

In fact we must not forget that it always regards a messenger and especially in his psychological function, this planet manages to enter into and get out of the darkness (which at a symbolic and psychological level represents our unconscious, both personal and collective) without any type of problem. There is a particular feature of this function that makes it particularly important in the karmic analysis of the natal chart.

In fact its karmic meaning consists in the memories, potential, ability, competences and thought patterns inherited from past life experiences. Mercury is a kind of atavistic memory that contains the principal passages, especially of an intellectual and professional type, regarding our preceding lives. Clearly when his position is retrograde it is very probable that in the past some abilities or particular aptitudes have been experienced as difficulties, therefore in the present existence they are shown on the one hand by excessive urgency in carrying things out and at the same time they can be lived like a block, like something that hardly manages to realise itself with simplicity and truthfulness.

For those that have a retrograde Mercury in their natal chart it is very probable that in this life they have had a quite difficult educational course as a result of relationship conflict, or of incomprehension, with the teachers and sometimes there can have been a quite background in a negative educational institution due to different communicative languages or a real aversion with regard to excessively rigid and dogmatic teaching. In some cases it is possible to undergo evaluations from others well below one’s intellective potential that in some cases there can generate scarce self-esteem and a difficulty to open-up to the world and to be appreciated for one’s remarkable abilities that instead are possessed, even if in some way encrypted.

In fact, it should not be forgotten that Mercury-Hermes is particularly tied to the hermetic, or rather intelligible linguistic-interpretative codes only to those know them, in any case, comparable with those who has been down a certain route and have the skills to be able to absorb a particular type of knowledge.
The astrological prejudice that the superficial planet Mercury wants, which is not able to enter in the meanders of the soul is completely overcome by practising karmic astrology, which instead sees in this planet the great existing intellectual potential in each individual who in part has inherited something from a past life and who in the present existence is only waiting to be led to the light through a real and particular initiation rites for pupils of epistemological and esoteric doctrine.

It is certainly possible to maintain that Mercury makes knowing the doctrine Plato its own. In fact, this doctrine states that no knowledge is really acquired in this world, since all knowledge from experience derives simply from the memory, from the period in which the soul gazed at the Ideas in their maximum form of perfection, archetypes of the absolute one, present in the Iperuraneo world, where it is past, present and future content and at the same time the temporal dimension is overcome, because, as wanted by holistic philosophy, everything is the sum of individual parts. This doctrine partly corresponds what theosophy has defined as the Akashic memory, or rather the collective energy - psychic place in which the whole history of the world is contained
Mercury is activated and brings out the knowledge and potential accumulated in past lives through real initiation rites favoured from the transits of Chiron, the Lunar node and the slow planets, a topic we will discuss in the next articles.