#WingedWordsWindsday: 2023/01/31 -- Mercury: Legends & Literature

 

WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled & Edited by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 3, No. 14: January 31, 2024

 

 

Mercury: Legends & Literature Across the Centuries

 

“The Many Faces of Mercury”

By Rob Chappell, M.A.

Adapted & Expanded from Cursus Honorum IX: 3 (October 2008

                The planet Mercury made headlines in 2008 when it was visited by NASA’s Messenger probe. Mercury is the smallest major planet in the Solar System; it is also the closest planet to the Sun. It completes one orbit of our parent star every 88 days, but it rotates on its axis every 59 days – so its “day” lasts for two-thirds of its “year.”  Because Mercury has an extremely thin atmosphere, temperatures on its surface can vary between 800 degrees Fahrenheit in the daytime to -300 degrees at night.  Needless to say, life as we know it probably doesn’t exist here.

 

This enhanced photo of the planet Mercury was taken by NASA’s Messenger probe on January 14, 2008. (Photo Credit: NASA – Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

 

                Astronomical observations of Mercury are documented from the 14th century BCE onward. Because Mercury always appears within 28 degrees of the Sun in our sky, it is only visible to the naked eye either just before sunrise or just after sunset. Whether known as Hermes (to the Greeks) or Mercury (to the Romans), the innermost planet in our Solar System was named after the swift-footed messenger of the Olympian pantheon because of its rapid movement through the sky. Mercury was portrayed in art as wearing a pair of winged sandals and carrying a caduceus (a wand with two serpents entwined around it).

 

Or let my lamp at midnight hour,

Be seen in some high lonely tow’r,

Where I may oft out-watch the Bear,

With thrice great Hermes, or unsphere

The spirit of Plato, to unfold

What worlds, or what vast regions hold

The immortal mind that hath forsook

Her mansion in this fleshly nook.

à John Milton (1608-1674): “Il Penseroso”

 

                Mercury ceased to be worshiped in the Western world during late antiquity. However, the planet named after him continued to be studied by medieval astronomers, who drew up increasingly accurate tables of its motions in the sky. Starting in the 12th century, debate ensued among astronomers as to whether Mercury orbited around the Earth (as theorized by most Classical Greek astronomers) or around the Sun (as proposed by a few late antique Roman writers).

                Mercury’s name was also given by the ancients to chemical element #80 – a liquid metal also known as quicksilver or hydrargyrum. Discovered in early historic times, mercury was believed to have both medical and metallurgical applications. Unfortunately, liquid mercury is poisonous to humans if ingested, and that is what led to the untimely demise of China’s first Emperor, Qin Shi Huang Dì (259-210 BCE): he drank a mercury-and-jade potion that was supposed to have restored his lost youth. In modern times, mercury has been used in thermometers, barometers, and other scientific and medical instruments.

                Perhaps Mercury’s most enduring “face” has been that of the legendary Egyptian alchemist, philosopher, and physician – Hermes Trismegistus (“Mercurius Termaximus in Latin = “Thrice-Greatest Hermes or Mercury”). A collection of philosophical and alchemical treatises began to circulate under his name during the first three centuries CE in Alexandria, Egypt – produced by an interfaith group of scholars and sages known as the Hermetic School. The Hermetic tractates preserved Egyptian esoteric traditions about the origin of the cosmos and humankind’s place within it. In these treatises, Hermes Trismegistus dialogues with his disciples and encourages them to transmit his knowledge to posterity for the benefit of humankind. After their translation into Latin by the Italian polymath Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), the Hermetic writings exercised a profound influence upon the Renaissance intellectuals who spearheaded the scientific revolution. Such scientific advancements were perhaps foreseen by one of the Hermetic philosophers of ancient Egypt:

 

“[Humankind] will pursue the inmost secrets of Nature even into the heights and will study the motions of the sky.  Nor is this enough; when nothing yet remains to be known than the furthest boundary of the Earth, they will seek even there the last extremities of night.”

à Heart of the Cosmos (Hermetic Tractate, Early 1st Millennium CE)

 

Webliography

                To learn more about the many faces of Mercury, the Editor recommends the following resources.

·         https://messenger.jhuapl.edu/ = This is the official homepage of NASA’s Messenger mission to the planet Mercury.

·         https://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/pym/index.htm = The Divine Pymander of Hermes Trismegistus is the foundational text of the Hermetic tradition.

·         http://www.webelements.com/mercury/ = Read all about Mercury (Hg), the 80th chemical element in the Periodic Table.

 

Hermes Trismegistus instructs his disciples in this Renaissance mosaic from the cathedral in Siena, Italy. The tablet pictured at right contains a Latin translation of a passage from the Hermetic writings.  (Image Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

 

“Alchemy”

By Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

I lift my heart as spring lifts up

A yellow daisy to the rain;

My heart will be a lovely cup

Although it holds but pain.

For I shall learn from flower and leaf

That color every drop they hold,

To change the lifeless wine of grief

To living gold.

 

“A Triple Trisagion”

(A Prayer from the Hermetic Writings)

Translated by G. R. S. Mead (1863-1933) in The Hymns of Hermes (1905)

                Holy art Thou, O God, the Universals' Father. Holy art Thou, O God, Whose Will perfects itself by means of its own Powers. Holy art Thou, O God, Who willest to be known and art known by Thine own.

                Holy art Thou, Who didst by Word make to consist the things that are. Holy art Thou, of Whom All-nature hath been made an Image. Holy art Thou, Whose Form Nature hath never made.

                Holy art Thou, more powerful than all power. Holy art Thou, transcending all preeminence. Holy art Thou, Thou better than all praise.

                Accept my reason's offerings pure, from soul and heart for aye stretched up to Thee, O Thou unutterable, unspeakable, Whose Name naught but the  Silence can express!

                Give ear to me who pray that I may ne'er of Gnosis fail -- Gnosis which is our common being's nature -- and fill me with Thy Power, and with this Grace of Thine, that I may give the Light to those in ignorance of the Race, my Brethren and Thy Sons!

                For this cause I believe, and I bear witness. I go to Life and Light. Blessed art Thou, O Father. Thy Man would holy be as Thou art holy, e'en as Thou gavest him Thy full authority to be.

 

“Hermes Trismegistus”

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

 

Still through Egypt’s desert places

Flows the lordly Nile,

From its banks the great stone faces

Gaze with patient smile.

Still the pyramids imperious

Pierce the cloudless skies,

And the Sphinx stares with mysterious,

Solemn, stony eyes.

 

But where are the old Egyptian

Demi-gods and kings?

Nothing left but an inscription

Graven on stones and rings.

Where are Helios and Hephaestus,

Gods of eldest eld?

Where is Hermes Trismegistus,

Who their secrets held?

 

Where are now the many hundred

Thousand books he wrote?

By the Thaumaturgists plundered,

Lost in lands remote;

In oblivion sunk forever,

As when o’er the land

Blows a storm-wind, in the river

Sinks the scattered sand.

 

Something unsubstantial, ghostly,

Seems this Theurgist,

In deep meditation mostly

Wrapped, as in a mist.

Vague, phantasmal, and unreal

To our thought he seems,

Walking in a world ideal,

In a land of dreams.

 

Was he one, or many, merging

Name and fame in one,

Like a stream, to which, converging

Many streamlets run?

Till, with gathered power proceeding,

Ampler sweep it takes,

Downward the sweet waters leading

From unnumbered lakes.

 

By the Nile I see him wandering,

Pausing now and then,

On the mystic union pondering

Between gods and men;

Half believing, wholly feeling,

With supreme delight,

How the gods, themselves concealing,

Lift men to their height.

 

Or in Thebes, the hundred-gated,

In the thoroughfare

Breathing, as if consecrated,

A diviner air;

And amid discordant noises,

In the jostling throng,

Hearing far, celestial voices

Of Olympian song.

 

Who shall call his dreams fallacious?

Who has searched or sought

All the unexplored and spacious

Universe of thought?

Who, in his own skill confiding,

Shall with rule and line

Mark the border-land dividing

Human and divine?

 

Trismegistus! Three times greatest!

How thy name sublime

Has descended to this latest

Progeny of time!

Happy they whose written pages

Perish with their lives,

If amid the crumbling ages

Still their name survives!

 

Thine, O priest of Egypt, lately

Found I in the vast,

Weed-encumbered somber, stately,

Grave-yard of the Past;

And a presence moved before me

On that gloomy shore,

As a waft of wind, that o’er me

Breathed, and was no more.