‘Light’ is not simply something that enables us to see better, but it is also information – that lightbulb moment! New information arrives and transforms the way we perceive something, and therefor how we then share that information. Light carries information that can eventually transform into wisdom. With Mercury, it might express itself on the more mundane level as the mental illuminator and communicator of knowledge. The professor teaching, the students learning. On a higher level it might be the ‘seer’ and the Divine messenger of wisdom, the Magician communicating Magic. The mystic travelling to other realms, projecting the wisdom they find through the power of thought onto humanity. With Mercury we are given wings and it is up to us if we clip them or take off and fly.
In the third House…
The third house is where we perceive mentally from our immediate environment, and it is also where we share and communicate back to our environment through the power of the mind. Mercury governing the third house is like a circuit board within a computer. A mind within a mind. Moving quickly, processing information, synthesising and sharing that information, adapting with every new instruction entered. In the third house Mercury wants to communicate everything he perceives through his busy radar, always thinking, always gathering and enthusiastically disseminating that knowledge to the people around us.
Mercury flits about from place to place, person to person, making connections between Spirit and matter. It asks ‘what is the relationship between Spirit and matter and how can I articulate it?’ Mercury in the third house holds the light up to the darkness in matter, and asks us to unify the two in order that we find our way back home to God. We might find our way through studies, reading books, through travelling short journeys or through the close relationships we have – especially with young people. Ultimately, we may find our way back to God through the mind itself.
An over-expressed Mercury within the third house might have a busy, overthinking mind, a feeling that one is always right, and an insatiable appetite for knowledge and learning without balancing it with experience and quiet integration. It might miss the pure essence of Spirit through an over accumulation of ideas, and obsessive thinking. However, when Mercury is flying high through the third house expression, he is soaring to the mind of God, collecting and assimilating Divine wisdom and journeying it back down to earth and sharing that wisdom in clear, relatable ways. At this level, Mercury could literally mould elusive Divine wisdom into tangible expression, especially through speaking and writing. Mercury governing the third house likes to collect wisdom from the airwaves and bring it down to earth to alchemise the two, so we are able to embody the Light within.
The message…
The mind is both in the way of finding God, and the tool within which we can find God. The mind is the trickster, like the Greek God Hermes, but the mind is also where we can find infinity in a finite world like the magician. If Mercury could speak in the third house it would say ‘I am the way, the truth and the light.’ [Jesus]
In the 6th house…
With Mercury in the sixth house, it’s time to use that knowledge and wisdom in service to others. In our everyday workplace Mercury might work its magic through the way we communicate to and serve our colleagues, how we write and speak in our place of work. At another level Mercury may bring his service in communicating the word of God to the people for the betterment of humanity, through their daily work. In the sixth house, which is ruled by Virgo however, Mercury becomes more of a perceiver than a messenger. Whereas you might liken Mercury in the third house to the postal service; in the sixth house it could be about the deep inner communication between mind and body through a service like kinesiology. In this house Mercury has to work a little harder, go inwards a little deeper. He must observe through his mind, and toil through the process of synthesising and transmuting what he perceives until equilibrium is reached.
The sixth house is a house of self-learning, and with Mercury mastering the mind we can learn those lessons through that mind. Instead of sending out messages and wisdom as in the third house, here we are listening to the deeper wisdom that is hidden within our health, our workplace, our daily routine chores and tasks that help us to slowly over time become mature souls with experience under our belt. Mercury asks us to settle down into the ordinary day to day elements of life, and the often, dark times that come with that, and learn and grow and study through service in this earth school so that we may then spread our wings and fly.
The third house is the house of words, and the sixth the house of actions, and of getting the detail of those actions right. In fact, the shadow side of Mercury here, may play out as an obsessive need to make everything perfect. On the other hand, at its finest Mercury will provide deep introspection until lessons are integrated and the person discovers their secret wings.
The message…
The mind/body link becomes very obvious in the sixth house. Mercury here can teach us some valuable lessons through our health and demonstrate that the essence of the mind is both light and dark. The sixth house is about the service you give, and the service you receive, and with Mercury governing this area the lessons are centred around practising discipline and making the right choices. If Mercury could speak in the sixth house it would say ‘Freedom means that we become so completely free of self-indulgence that we become servants of one another, expressing love in all we do.’ [Paul the Apostle]
