reallypisces said:
I was thinking - what are the astrological factors that affect the way our mind operates - our memory, imagination, ability to think logically, the speed of our thoughts, intuition, ability to communicate effectively, ability of persuasion or understanding......What if a person has Mercury that is strong but doesn't have any aspects?
That's a huge and interesting question reallypisces!
I have a very strong Mercury: in Gemini, conjunct Sun, so I can talk about that. Both in 8th House, but I'm not sure what that might mean.
This passage in a book I'm reading at the moment (Healing Fiction by the archetypal psychologist James Hillman) really caught my attention:
Today we call an internal policing of the psyche by an inspectio become inspector-general "mind control". Here we see the staggering consequences of the denial of the daimons: it leaves the psyche bereft of all persons but the ego, the controller who becomes super-ego. No spontaneous fantasy, image or feeling may be independent of this unified ego. Every psychic happening becomes "mine". Know Thyself becomes Know Myself. What Philemon taught Jung, however, was that there are things in the psyche that are no more "mine" than "animals in the forest... or birds in the air". Moreover, without images, the imaginative perspective itself withers, only reinforcing the ego's literalism.
This passage really sprang out at me, because it's a good description of how my mind works, and seems to put its finger right on what a strong Mercury/Sun aspect (especially a conjunction) implies. One thing that comes out of what Hillman says here is the strong identification that people with strong Mercury have with their mind. This also means that their mind will be strongly developed.
Is this a good or bad thing? Aspects to other planets would make a difference. On the good side, a strong Mercury means a great ability to assimilate anything into a mental form - a very quick understanding of anything presented, which ties in with the classic Mercury/Gemini trait of fickleness, the "butterfly" tendency: if anything can be understood and processed into the mind in microseconds, that doesn't leave anything to do but to fly off and find something else to assimilate! I'm also thinking that this implies a great ability to cope: the mind is strong, and unlikely to become confused.
This leads to the bad aspect of strong Mercury: Mercury will never be at a loss. Mercury is only
one of the planets, just as Hillman stresses that the "my" part of the psyche is only one small part of it. But Mercury can act as if it's the only planet.
Elsewhere in the book Hillman makes the fascinating point that Mercury/Hermes both implies and dissolves boundaries. Hermes is only extraordinary in being able to go anywhere because boundaries do exist, boundaries which other gods can't cross. And Hermes' other abilities (bargains, treaties, messages, theft) are all connected with making boundaries permeable.
But in itself/himself, Mercury/Hermes recognises no boundaries. All the other planets belong to it, since it can zoom into their zone like a ninja cat-burglar, pick up/steal their energy, and zoom out again in a flash. I take Hillman's negative tone in the passage quoted as pointing out that this only works up to a point. Boundaries still do really exist: Pluto is still really Pluto, Mars is still really Mars, even though Mercury treats all the planets like the connected dots on an airline's worldwide route-map.
Mercury's assimilation of other planets' energies is a piece of Mercurial trickery: self-trickery, since all Mercury can take away from e.g. Pluto is not actually the real-deal Pluto energy, but Pluto energy become Mercurial. Mercury is fundamentally unconscious of its own boundaries, which is what can lead to the "withering of imagination" Hillman talks about.
A lot of thinking in astrology is about aspects: for example, how does Saturn "deal" with Jupiter, in conjunction, in opposition, etc? This is like asking what the relationship of Britain to e.g. Hong Kong or Korea is, on the ground-level reality. From the Mercurial point of view, the culture, history, politics, people, geography of these countries - which might answer the question of how they deal with each other - are a bit earthbound and boring, too heavy to carry.
Mercury doesn't enter into aspects like other planets do, because Mercury doesn't have its own zone or country. Mercury's country is not even Heathrow, Hong Kong or Inch'on airports - it's the great circles between them at 35,000 ft, where there's no weather because the sky is always clear, and no ground except cloud formations.
It's interesting to imagine reading a horoscope as the map of contending energies represented by the planets, to imagine that every planet will try to assert itself and take control of the whole chart, and to wonder
how each planet does this. (I'd love to read what other people have to say on this - I can only talk about Mercury, probably because I'm very Mercury-dominated).
Seems to me that Mercury is unique in the way it deals with other planets. It doesn't contend: it steals, but remains unaware that it's stealing, thinking that in fact it "gets" all the other planets. Unlike an aspect between any other planets, which implies contention/agreement/disagreement/negotiation, a Mercury aspect to another planet implies understanding and clarity, but also contamination (the element mercury can amalgamate with just about anything), theft, masking.
By being so boundaryless and going everywhere, Mercury creates new boundaries and contentions unawares: it illuminates the other planet with understanding, but simultaneously obscures it. Mercury thinks it's a perfect mirror capable of showing anything, but forgets that it's only a mirror. You can imagine how pissed-off a heavy planet like Pluto (which I have square to Mercury) gets seeing Mercury swanning in and out and imagining that it understands everything about the Underworld.
What I get from Mercury is never quite the real deal. It's a tricky planet, even more so because it insists so strongly that what it gives is everything. Strong Mercury people are easily trapped in their own thinking.