Mercury in your birth chart: your inner personal computer
Companion piece to the June 2025 Substack Live AMA & Gathering
Intro
Mercury describes how we think and communicate. It is associated with these functions and attributes (not a comprehensive list):
Data collection, labeling, sorting.
Connections.
Curiosity.
Close networks, neighborhood, short trips.
Teacher and student, mentor and mentee.
Pace, relative quickness.
Astronomy
Closest planet to the Sun, orbit is 88 days. One side always faces the Sun while the other is always dark therefore its day and year are the same length. It is both light and dark, hot and cold.
Mythology
Mercury comes from Roman mythology, and in Greek mythology, is equivalent to Hermes. Hermes was the son of Zeus, king of the Gods, and Maia, a nymph. Hermes was the messenger to the Gods, taking messages from Mt Olympus to mortals. He also led souls to the underworld. Hermes was associated with an extraordinary number of things to the ancients, from thievery, trade, hospitality, athletics, astrology, even guard dogs.
Astrology
Basic associations:
Rules 2 signs: Gemini and Virgo, exalted in Virgo, in its fall in Pisces
Corresponds to 3rd house: perception, communication, siblings, reading, writing, teaching, learning, media, neighborhood environment
Element: Earth
Body Functions: Nervous, respiratory, hormonal
Key body action: Connecting, messages, signals
Chakra 5, throat
Left brain analytical processes, as opposed to abstract or theoretical thinking that Jupiter governs.
Gathers discreet pieces of info to build a whole.
Finds security in gathering, labeling, classifying, categorizing information.
When insecure, may fall in the trap of continually gathering as opposed to seeing the larger truth. May point to individual pieces or facts to avoid reality of the whole.
When thinking of Gemini vs Virgo, I think about curious Gemini gathering intangibles indiscriminately, then Virgo takes the intangible info and makes it tangible. Therefore, Virgo brings in discernment in order to weed out the extraneous vs. critical pieces. There is a childlike quality in Gemini’s curiosity vs a burdened Virgo resulting from the pressure to discern correctly.
It tends to take on characteristics of any planet it is closely conjunct.
Natal Mercury retrograde: soul is working on only collecting info relevant to the current life’s intention. The soul’s desire is to purge info which is extraneous to the soul’s ongoing evolutionary needs. Makes it tough to learn in our educational system of memorizing irrelevant facts or formulas because they are part of a tradition, etc.
Read on for what Mercury represents in an individual’s life: