Mercury: Gateway to the Heavens

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'And I', said Hermes, 'will make mankind intelligent; I will confer wisdom on them, and make known to them the truth. I will never cease to benefit thereby the life of mortal men; and then above all will I benefit each one of them, when the force of nature working in him is in accord with the movement of the stars above.'

(Corpus Hermetica, EXC. XXIII. Isis to Horus)

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Mercury (gk. Hermes, eg. Thoth) is the innermost planet of our solar system, always in proximity to the sun. Pick up any textbook on Roman or Greek mythology and you will read about how observations of its rapid movement across the zodiac and frequent conjunctions with the other planets resulted in the interpretation of Mercury as the swift “messenger of the gods”.

Mercury/Hermes/Thoth is traditionally associated with communication, wisdom, knowledge, magic, and the psychopompic initiation into Death and the Mysteries. In this context Mercury is the communicator of sacred knowledge. This knowledge is transmitted by Mercury through its planetary cycles and celestial geometry.

The Morning and Evening Star:

Mercury as the innermost planet orchestrates a unique astronomical pattern with the Sun. For approximately four to six weeks Mercury will linger as a bright star near the western horizon several hours after sunset. During this period Mercury is the Evening Star. Afterwards it enters an inferior conjunction with the Sun and disappears from the evening sky. A week later Mercury reappears in the sky, but this time as a bright luminary near the eastern horizon heralding sunrise. Mercury is the Morning Star for another four to six weeks before entering superior conjunction with the Sun and disappearing for five weeks (35 days).

The complete cycle takes 116 days (115.9 days). This means that in one solar year, Mercury will complete 3.14 cycles. Because of this decimal interval the ancients observed Mercury in seven year periods. Every 7 years, Mercury completes 22 conjunction cycles. The Mercury::Sun ratio of 22/7 is extremely precise with only a 1hr error margin.

Pi, Geometry and Gematria:

The 22/7 Mercury::Sun ratio is also a close fractional expression of the Pythagorean irrational and transcendent number Pi (3.14...). Pi is the universal ratio of any circle's diameter to its circumference and is the essential constant by which mathematics and astronomy interpret the universe. If you don’t understand the importance of Pi, look it up!

In the letter-number system of Pythagorean Greek gematria, the value of the first three digits of Pi (314) gives us Μαγος (Magos, ‘magician’ or ‘wise man’). When we take the first nine digits of Pi in three digit segments (314 159 265) the gematria gives us Magos, Megas ('Great'), and Kleis ('Key')...interpret this how you will.

The reverse Sun::Mercury ratio 7/22, or .318 (or 318/1000), is Pi to the power of negative one. The integer 318 is the gematria value of Helios ('Sun'). A circle with a diameter of Helios (318, or 3.18, or .318) will always have a circumference of Pythagorean Unity (1000, 100, or 1). Furthermore, a circle drawn around a square with the perimeter of Helios will measure a circumference of 353, the gematria value of Hermes!



Mercury and the Triangle:

The ecliptic astronomical chart below was created using data from the Alcyone Astronomical Ephemeris to arc-second precision. The 22/7 conjunction cycle of Mercury traces an isosceles triangle inside the constellation belt that turns clockwise every 3 conjunctions.



Mercury delivers us the two most primeval symbols of polarity(▲/▼). For the initiate these are the first keys for unlocking the universe. Nothing else needs to be said.

"I will confer wisdom on them, and make known to them the truth."

Gnosis and Logos

As the Catholic Church became a political institution it simultaneously distanced itself from the Pythagorean sciences inherited by the early Christian initiates. Primarily threatening to the ecclesiastic spiritual hegemony was the doctrine of gnosis that taught that we are all “sons of God” and can all share intimate experiences with divinity without a mediating institution. The Church responded by quantifying spirituality and declaring Gnosticism a heresy.

As masterfully explained by David Fideler in "Jesus Christ Sun of God" (1993), the original doctrine of the Christian logos was related to the doctrine of gnosis and to the Pythagorean teachings of universal harmony (Harmonia). Greek logos was poorly translated into Latin as verbatum and then finally into English as 'word' whereby it lost all meaning.

In Greek, logos has several meanings: order, pattern, ratio, reason, mediation, and harmony. Only in the most mundane and topical sense does logos mean "word" (or more precisely oration, or ‘spoken word'). But even in the meaning as ‘word', our English equivalent misses the mark. We must of course place the spoken ‘word' in traditional context as an act of cosmology. This is evident in the magical properties of the spoken divine names of the Hebrew Kabbalah, the mantras of Vedas, and the formulaic nomina barbara of Greco-Egyptian magic.

The doctrine of logos can be traced back to ancient Egypt , and in particular to Thoth as the patron god of speech, writing, wisdom, astronomy, mathematics, music, medicine, and magic. In fact, among his dynastic period (c. 3000 – 330 BCE) epithets was ‘Lord of Ma'at (Order)', ‘Lord of Divine Words'. And ‘Tongue of Re', associating him with the ordering process of creation ; for in Egyptian cosmology the Sun god Re by speaking the divine names of the gods created and set the universe in motion.

In a wall painting from the tomb of Seti in Abydos (above), Thoth- as psychopomp- initiates the Pharaoh into the mysteries of death by performing the "Opening of the Mouth Ceremony". This magical rite grants Seti the logos of divine speach so that his soul may recite the necessary God-names to cross the gates of the Duat and ascend to eternity and immortal spiritual existence.

Thoth was later called Hermes by the Hellenized Egyptians (the Hermetic Philosophers) who saw in him the same principle of Gnostic revelation and logos that the early Christian's saw in Christ. In the Corpus Hermetica, attributed to the Hermes Trismegistus – the third incarnation of Thoth, we find explicit references to logos as the ordering principle, as the “son of God”, and as the Shepard of man (poimandres).

‘That Light.' [Poimandres] said, ‘is I, even Mind, the first God, who was before the watery substance which appeared out of the darkness; and the Logos which came forth from the Light is son of God.'… ‘Learn my meaning,' said he, ‘by looking at what you yourself have in you; for in you too, the logos is son, and the mind is father of the logos'…The watery substance, having received the Logos, was fashioned into an ordered world (Kosmos), the elements being separated out from it…' (Corpus Hermetica, Libellus I)

Throughout the classical Greco-Roman world (c.a. 800 BCE – AD 500), the teachings of logos were transmitted by the initiates of the Orphic-Pythagorean Mysteries and later with the Mithraitic, Bacchic, and early Christian Cults. The initiates into these Mysteries learned the Pythagorean universal harmonia of mathematics, astronomy, geometry, and music. Through mythic symbols and mythic narratives, the patterns and underlying order of Kosmos was unveiled to the initiate as perpetual manifestation of harmonic logos.

For the initiated into the doctrine of logos the knowledge of Harmonia is beyond mere episteme; it is an ontological experience directly related to the nature of being. To understand and know the universe, one has to first understand and know oneself.