Tag: Mercury

In Search of Lost Time

Eleanor1 Comment

I forget exactly what prompted my first inquiry into my past lives, but I think I was reading something about energy healing and how some of the traumas of a past life may carry over into the next one.

I was skeptical, but curious, and I remember thinking, “Hm… If I’d had a past life like this, I wonder what it would have been like?”

And immediately, an image flashed into my awareness.

I saw “past me,” at the moment when I knew I would not be able to escape and where I knew I was going to die.

The woman I saw looked kind of similar to the way I do now, but there were some subtle differences.

She had black hair, blue eyes, an attractive face. She was shorter than I am, had a fuller body type, and was wearing an expensive looking dress, which seemed to be in a late medieval/early renaissance style. I had the feeling that I was deeply involved in spiritual or religious life or was somehow involved with the church.

In the brief image that I had access to then, I saw myself underground, in a dimly lit stone tunnel or passageway.

I was running from people who wanted to trap me and hurt me. I tried to see more into the reasons why. All I got was the feeling that it was motivated by hatred, by envy or jealousy. There seemed to be people who were upset at how well-liked I was, or how “good” I may have appeared in the eyes of others, or even my success or esteem in a certain area.

There was also a man involved who seemed to be older than me, but I couldn’t really determine what his role was or the nature of his relationship to me. I just knew he had something to do with the situation I found myself in at the moment I saw myself in that brief vision.

I wasn’t able to see any more then, but very soon after, I had an intuition that this was related to a couple of things corresponding to my natal chart.

The first was the three planets I have in the twelfth house: Mercury, Venus and Jupiter. This may be why I have felt compelled to hide so much of what I feel are the good things about myself. 

This could very well be where my shyness and insecurity around my intelligence (Mercury), issues surrounding my perceived beauty and value and shame about being a woman (Venus), and my lack of belief in a right to expand, grow, take up space and achieve success (Jupiter) come from. 

The last thing that appeared related to this scene was my placement of Saturn on the Descendent/7th house cusp.

This can mean restrictions in how you relate to or access the outside world, as well as how you interact with and have relationships with others.

I’m not sure exactly how this past life influenced these placements in my chart, but I very much had the feeling that the two were connected.

Neptune Square Mercury Dream

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I used an AI app called Wombo Dream to create this image of the sinking phones

Back in May of this year, I had a dream where I saw hundreds of old cell phones and pagers with open text messages displayed on their screens, all sinking slowly into the ocean.

I was out in the ocean in a row boat, paddling around and trying to read the messages on the screens. But every time I approached one of these devices, it just sunk further and further into the ocean.

I rowed around like this for what must have been hours, trying to catch a glimpse of the messages which I thought may have been meant for me.

But no matter how hard I tried everything just sunk deeper and deeper into the depths before I was able to grasp it.

Of course, as I usually do, when I woke up I asked myself what this dream could mean for me.

The first thing that occurred to me is that is that it showed me I was starting to feel the effects of Neptune in Pisces squaring my natal Mercury in Gemini. This is a transit which had started to come into effect earlier this year at the start of March (and which is going to last for the better part of the next 3 years).

This image generated by the app probably comes the closest to representing what I saw in my dream

Neptune in astrology represents dreams, fantasies, illusions, spirituality, confusion and sacrifice, while Mercury symbolizes the conscious mind, words, communication and logic.

The square aspect is usually thought to be a challenging one, where a crisis is often brought to a head, sparking an opportunity for creative resolution of the original conflicting dynamic.

So on one level, I took this dream to represent a sense of confusion I’m feeling around how I have conceptualized my spiritual principles and ideals, and what this all means for me in my day-to-day lived experience.

On another level, I think this also means that I’m being forced to confront some of the illusions I’ve had about the ways I’ve communicated with others in the past.

I think that some of these habits, thought patterns and ways of interacting with others are not really serving me anymore. This transit could be an opportunity to re-evaluate, let go of what isn’t working and find new ways to express myself and my vision.

The Caduceus, or “Staff of Hermes”

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The Caduceus is one of the most well-known symbols in the world today. However, the true story and significance of this symbol remains obscured to the vast majority.

Most of us will recognize the Caduceus as a symbol belonging to the medical community. If asked, most would likely say that this symbol was adopted by doctors and other medical professionals as their symbol representing the power of healing, and that its origins can be traced to Asclepius, the ancient Greek physician.

Others, however, dispute this theory, arguing that in reality, what we know as the Caduceus is of much greater antiquity, having been traced back even further to the Greek legend Hermes Trismegistus.

There is a Greek legend which tells the story of how he came to possess what has also been called “the Staff of Hermes.”

It begins with a Greek seer named Tiresias, who discovered two mating snakes in the middle of the road on Mount Kyllene. When Tiresias went to separate the snakes with his staff, he was turned into a woman. He remained a woman for seven more years, until again he encountered and separated another pair of snakes.

The powerful staff, together with the snakes, was then hidden in a cave on the mountain; it is said that it is here where Hermes would eventually be born, and would make his home.

It is often thought that the snakes represent the life force, or inner creative power within man (and woman). Some even speculate that, since the caduceus looks quite similar to the double-helix structure of DNA, this could be clue hinting at the possibility that Thoth/Hermes may have somehow manipulated the structure of the human genome to advance our progress and hurry us toward the future evolution of humanity.

These are all interesting ideas, but the possibilities are not limited to these two options. I believe there are many ways of reading this myth, especially in light of certain alchemical principles.

I have my own inclinations when it comes to interpreting the symbolism of this mythic origins story, but I’d love to hear what you think.

Do the snakes and staff (and wings, in some versions) have any personal significance for you? What does it mean to heal or be healed, and how does the symbolism of the Caduceus represent that?