Early education and the workings of the mind:
The Gifts
- Mercury in combination with Neptune gives the child a powerful imagination. The storyteller.
- The minds sensitivity & receptivity is enhanced.
- There is often an interest in the spiritual and the occult.
- A deep appreciation of art, music, and beauty in general anything which uplifts the mind. May favour fictional writing especially of the mystical kind.
Childhood Memories/My own personal creativity
In school I was told off by the teacher’s for drawing the same picture over & over again. I always used to draw a house. My school teacher thought me to be unimaginative which was not actually the case.
I thought drawing a house was a pretty common theme for all children. The meaning of a house obviously has it’s level of meaning focused on security and safety, and it has also been said to represent the protection of the great mother. The symbolic meaning of a house refers to the soul and the way we build our lives, the way we are in the world. Children’s early drawings are a form of
non-verbal communication. I was terribly shy as a little girl and my head was filled up with all sorts of images I could not communicate, and so drawings are often expressions of a child’s personality, and also a child’s emotional state, which can be analysed through the use of colour in pictures, by using art therapy. I think if we let our minds look a little deeper at the Mercury-Neptune aspect it could indicate that
the individual is learning the “art” of communication on many levels, through communicating a symbolic world that is difficult for many minds to reach, this may through literary pursuits such as storytelling, poetry, spiritual subjects, anything where the imagination is allowed free rein, or it may simply mean overcoming emotional complexes and sensitivity around communication.
The Challenges
- The mind can be distracted from the ability to focus or concentrate by the need to escape. Listening can be difficult, especially if the child is not interested in the subject or the person.
- Thinking may seem vague and unclear.
- A sensitivity to drugs, and may have problems with substance abuse.
- Learning difficulties can sometime be indicated, speech and hearing problems, dyslexia and other related conditions which may refer to confused or disorganized thinking.
By Liz Greene:
One of the most profound and disturbing ways of gaining insight into Mercury is to work with severely autistic children.Little or no communication passes from the autistic child to the outer world, nor does any external event intrude upon the child’s enclosure in uterine waters. Emotional experiences cannot make their way past the barriers to produce recognisable responses other than terror and rage. On some level we all have elements of autism within us, where the lines of communication have broken down, or where our perceptions are no longer of what is there.
The feeling of being in a fog or constant state of confusion can mean that on a deeper level the individual is refusing to deal with mundane relaity . Mercury/Neptune can at times be confused by external matters, like forgetting to pay bills, or losing objects, to experiencing misunderstandings in communication. If we look at this from the view of psychological astrology, we realize that the outer events in the Mercury-Neptunes life are simply mirroring the deep mental disorganisation inside.
Is anybody there?
The individual with this aspect may be in a room of people but not seem present, they are physically there but not mentally in the same room, it’s like their lost in thought someplace else. This is mainly due to lack of grounding with Neptune. Mercury/Neptune can feel weakened and lethargic as Neptune has a way of dissolving and wearing away the mental capacity. The level of clarity can become decreased and the individual can become abnormally forgetful and detached from reality. There is often a feeling of literally ”spacing out”. I personally have had moments where my mind feels cloudy, and it’s very difficult to keep focused. This mental confusion and lost feeling indicates that inwardly we have lost the ability or motivation to make clear decisions in life, lost direction. Often the planet Neptune symbolizes the search for enlightenment, but in spiritual terms we do not know what we have lost until we have found it. Ultimately to reach a state of wholeness in communicating with Mercury-Neptune we need to repair the bridge between thinking and feeling, and between conscious awareness and unconscious motivation.
Physical health and healing of the mind/My personal struggles in communicating
As a child I needed a minor operation on my ears and after the surgery I had to attend speech therapy lessons for some time. I am completely healed now, but I found it difficult communicating to people verbally. Maybe I still had an internal fear that they would not understand me, and through this I have always carried a deep intellectual inferiority as I found it difficult to effectively talk with confidence. This seems to be one of my greatest challenges. My communication is fine, but I seem to be blocked by my own emotional complexes. A lot of the communication problem’s may not be this evident with others. Mercury rules my Asc (chart ruler) and is powerful in my chart. I am very sensitive to people and the environment, maybe too sensitive at times and some of the the gifts of having such a strong Neptune doesn’t always seem to measure up to the high price I have to pay for the challenges it also brings my way.