Mercurius: Catch me if you can!
NATIONAL JOURNAL OF HOMOEOPATHY 2003 Jan / Feb VOL V NO 1.
Book Review
Dr Philip Bailey MD
'Merc
(Editor: You will recollect we reviewed this book of Dr Philip Bailey in the previous issue. As an extension of the review,we include Mercury here, which is even more interesting).
Keynote: The Medium
Mercurius is a fascinating type. How do you get a handle
on something so multifaceted, so changeable and so contradictory? Probably by
considering the curious relationship between the Mercurius personality
and the image of the Roman God Mercury and particularly his Greek predecessor,
Hermes.
Mercury is the messenger of the Gods: fleet-footed,
possessing winged sandals, and also quick witted, as can be seen by the wings on
his helmet. His father is Zeus himself, the ruler of heaven, and his mother is a
lowly earth nymph who was ravished by Zeus. Thus Mercury is semi-divine,
semi-earthling, and hence, a perfect candidate for a messenger between the
Olympian Gods and mortals below. Mercurius individuals generally have one
foot in the world of dreams, and the other in ‘the real world’. They have a
unique tendency to oscillate between cold logic and surprisingly astute
intuition, between pragmatism and mysticism, between austerity and sheer
hedonism. Mercurius’ flexibility has to do with his inherent
neutrality. He is the messenger, the medium. He has no fixed personality of his
own. He merely relays whatever comes through him; at times he does not know who
he is, or what he thinks. One day he is a moralist, inspired by the purity of a
religious figure’s speech and the next day he is a sensualist, idealising the
path of hedonism, after the film "Emanuel". Mercurius’
neutrality can feel like emptiness. At times there is nothing flowing through
his highly receptive brain, and then, he is sitting in a void. At such times he
may feel very alone, as if he were sitting in a huge wasteland, or just bored,
or else terrified of his own annihilation.
This inherent neutrality makes him very impressionable, like Phosphorus,
yet far more mental, as opposed to emotional, than the latter. Only Argentum
comes close, being another erratic, but sharp mental type. Curiously, for all
his impulsiveness and his contradictory extremes, Mercurius does not
appear eccentric like Argentum. He is flighty and unpredictable, but his
intellect is somehow so spot on when it focuses, that it gives an impression of
directness rather than eccentricity, which involves a certain skewing of
perception. Mercurius individuals tend to be intuitive. They live on the
borderline between rational intellect and intuitive insight and often oscillate
between the two.
The Mercurial mind takes snapshots of the world before
it and classifies the contents and files it away. This could lead to hasty
judgements and even prejudice, but the perception of the Mercurial mind is so
quick that it arrives at accurate conclusions in apparently impossibly short
bites of time. (The term bite here seems appropriate, given Mercurius’
affinity with computers, since like the latter, the Mercurial mind is very fast,
and often eerily detached).
The ambiguous nature of Mercurius’ psychic
receptivity: When the Mercurius ego is inflated, it can abuse the insight
it gains, seeking personal power. This is the shadow side of Mercurius:
The Magician, Stage Hypnotists who make their audience do ridiculous things.
Those who deliberately play with magic (real magic, not conjuring) to gain power
over others.
The word made Flesh
In Greek mythology the child Hermes studied with the muses, those mysterious spirits who inspire poets and writers
with original insights. Under the spell of the Muses the poet writes his best
work effortlessly, because he is only a channel for the creative current flowing
through him. Mercurius embodies all of the characteristics attributed to
Hermes. He is the messenger of the gods, because he is transparent enough to be
used by them as their voice. Many Mercurius individuals are gifted
writers or speakers. Some only create under the Muse and the rest of the time
they are barren.
Even the mature Mercurius tends to have a weak
connection to his body and the Earth. Mercurius is not very grounded. He
tends to live in his head. This is another reason why he is so detached and also
why his mind may be taken over by impulses from beyond, be they inspirational or
demonic (Kent: ‘Impulsive insanity’)
The cleverness of Mercurius may be very banal. His
mind tends to be constantly on the go, making connections between apparently
disconnected items.
Pamela Tyler’s briliant book reveals the eerie
correspondence between the astrological mercury and the constitutional Mercurius
personality. ‘Mercury is THE consumer in the occult supermarket’. Mercurius
love stimulation, and feels an instinctual connection to matters psychic and
occult, even when he has had no direct experience of them.
The Puer Aeternis
Thus far, we have considered Mercurius’
impressionability, his flexibility, and his skill with words. We must now
consider a far less likeable side of him; his childish self-indulgence ie his
‘Narcissism’. The great psychologist Carl Jung coined the term Puer
Aeternis, or eternal child, who never really grows up; generally charming,
self-obsessed and often manipulative. Even more mature members of the Mercurius
tribe retain certain characteristics of the Puer (or Puella if she happens to be
a female).
The Puer feels that he is special, generally because his
mother adores and spoils him-thus helps to keep him emotionally infantile and
dependent upon her. Many Mercurius people are so bright and mentally
agile as children that they are seen as special by their parents Mercurius
is inherently good at manipulating people and get his way-through charm or
tantrums. The more the Mercurius child is spoilt, the more he will
resemble the Puer. A good example of this is the late Peter Sellers- his
biography said that ‘Sellers could take on the personality of anyone, since he
had no personality of his own’. This intrigued me, since it sounded so
Mercurial and so I read the book: ‘the Life and Death of Peter Sellers’ by
Roger Lewis and found that Sellers was one of the clearest examples I have come
across of a Mercurius Puer. Lewis started out as a great fan of sellers,
but the further, he probed into his hero personality, the darker it became.
Sellers’ own uncle remarked:. ‘He was a horror, a monster of a child. We
would have gladly have cut his throat’. He was totally spoilt by his
histrionic mother, and allowed to do whatever he chose. He once pushed a visitor
into the fire, burning her badly. He would spit into people’s hats, dismember
his toys, and squash the cat in a sofa-bed. If his mother left the room, he
would scream until she returned. This manipulative behaviour continued
throughout Seller’s life. He would always get what he wanted, whatever the
cost to other people.
The Mercurial Puer is intolerant of any discomfort. I once treated a young
teenage girl for attention deficit disorder. She was bright and quick, almost
unnerving in her detached cleverness. She was a computer wiz-ard who had no
problem concentrating with her computer, but at school she was restless and
moody. (This reminiscent of Mercurius, who is attracted to electronic
gadgets, and gets bored with people). Her father told me that she had a very
strong will, and would throw tantrums when she couldn’t get her own way. She
had a powerful sixth sense: she could will the dice to fall on particular
numbers when playing games. Her sharp impersonal intellect, her distractibility,
her love of computers, and her psychic proficiency all put me in mind of Mercurius.
When she had to have an injection she made more fuss than a three year old. If
she had a scratch it was the end of the world. This extreme sensitivity to discomfort confirmed Mercurius, which had
a stabilising effect upon her behaviour.
Homoeopaths know Mercurius to be intolerant of both
heat and cold. described as the ‘human barometer’. The metal mercury itself
is highly responsive to small changes in temperature, which is why it is used in
thermometers. I have a Mercurius friend who sneezes whenever the
temperature falls slightly. In the car, he is constantly fiddling with the
air-vents. Food too he has to have it exactly as he likes it. If slightly too
cool, he sends it straight back.
One of my Mercurius patients told me a similar story.
He always ate too much, and was thus soft and flabby. At one time, he resolved
to diet and work out every other day. Although his workout was mild, he
succeeded in turning his spare tyre into firm muscle, but no sooner had he
achieved his goal, then he collapsed with a mystery illness that completely
sapped his strength. After that he went back to eating too much and doing no
exercise. It seems that for some Mercurius individuals, the forced
imposition of structure upon their undisciplined lifestyle can be catastrophic.
Mercurius Puer is the over grown child Arthur, played by
Dudley Moore, himself almost certainly a Mercurius. Arthur is totally
dependent upon servants to look after him, and though lovable because he is
charming, he is selfish and quite incapable of taking responsibility for
himself, let alone anyone else. It is a great struggle for Arthur to overcome
his self-indulgent neediness, and many Mercurius individuals go through
this same struggle. They may have absolutely no will power, (even to resist a
pretty woman when married) so they don’t bother trying to resist. So too with
food, thrills or whatever desire (Clarke: ‘Willpower lost’).
The Mercurius Puer is boyish (or girlish) in many
ways. He tends to be cheeky, irreverent, irresponsible and addicted to pleasure,
confirmed in several Mercurius patients. One young man (who looked even
younger) came to see me to help him give up recreational drugs. He was a top
hairdresser, and loved his work, but he worked with typical Mercurius
speed, and at weekends he wanted to switch off and have a good time. So he took
drugs. Lots of drugs. Mercurius tends to take things to extremes, and
this man’s drug intake was enormous. Despite his huge drug intake, he prided
himself on not being an addict. He told himself that if his habit did not
interfere with his work, he was not addicted and it did not. However, it was
taking its toll on his body and his relationships, and so he had come for help
in giving up his weekend habit. Some of the words he used to describe himself
were pure Mercurial essence. He said that when he took drugs, he did’nt just
lie around like a zombie. He had a lot of fun with a whole group of others, who
relied on him to create ‘the action’. Mercurius is forever on the
move, hence my patient’s indifference to passive ‘spacing out’. He said he
played ‘the pied piper’ for his friends, who willingly followed. The Pied
piper is an entirely Mercurial figure, a young man who trips lightly through the
town bewitching first rats, and later children with his pipe. He performs the
first act for a fee (the Puer is self-serving even in his playfulness), and when
he does not get paid, he lures an entire town of children to oblivion. This is
the dark side of the playful Puer. Cross him and he becomes a heartless demon.
Even his attire is mercurial, being a mixture of opposites.
The Fool
Mercurius embodies not one, but three or more of the archetypal figures in
the Tarot pack. He is the Fool, who is an aspect of the Puer, and also the
Magician, the Hierophant and the Emperor. This has, no doubt, something to do
with alchemy, where Mercurius was the spirit in the vessel to be
transformed from one stage of refinement to a higher one, just as the Magician
is said to be a ‘higher octave’ of the fool. Since Mercury is also the
messenger of the Gods, the link between the unconscious mind and the rational
mind, who was taught divination by the Muses, it seems only proper that he
should feature so prominently in the Tarot deck, which is, after all, a symbolic
representation of the stages the psyche goes through in its quest for wisdom.
Combines the contradictory aspects of idiocy, wisdom, innocence and the
Trickster.
In the Tarot deck, the Fool is pictured as a young man
wandering carefree with a sack on his back, about to blithely step over a
precipice, with a dog barking at his heels. It expresses the sanguine,
unthinking innocence of the Mercurius Puer. One classic example of the
Fool who pops up in so many of Shakespeare’s plays. (In ‘Two Gentlemen of
Verona’ he is called ‘Speed’-an appropriate name for a mercurial figure.
Shakespeare says of one of his fools. ‘This fellow is wise enough to play the
fool, and to do that craves a kind of wit. He must observe their mood on whom he
jests, the quality of persons, and the time. This is a practice as full of
labour as a wise man’s art’). Shakespeare’s Fools are treated as idiots by
the other players, and they usually ‘play the fool’ most of the time, yet
their foolishness hides wisdom which derives from their detached, non-aligned
status. It is the fool who will tell the King the truth about himself when none
dares or can see it. The Fool sees all. But says nothing, until he is asked. He
then reveals his remarkably astute powers of observation, not with a proud
flourish, nor with gravity, but with lightness of an imp, or an impersonal
alien. This impersonality causes him to appear foolish. He will often have
nothing to say in conversation, since the talk centres around personal opinions
or likes and dislikes, which he has no interest in.
One of my Mercurius patients, a teenager who suffered
from rhinitis, said that at school he was silent most of the time, because he
knew nothing about the fashionable music that his peers raved about and he could
not relate to the emotional and essentially childish way in which they mocked
certain things and heaped adulation on others. He had no personal opinion about
Mandy’s flirting with Steven, and he hadn’t learned the in-jokes about the
teacher. In a sense, he appeared a fool because of his detachment, yet his
detachment was not deliberate. He desperately wanted to make friends and was
even willing to try to learn their language, but he was not good at appearing
interested in things he considered trivial. He was very knowledgeable for his
age about science, politics and history, but he was socially an outcast. Because
he did not seem like one of them. He was smarter, but completely ignorant of
matters they considered important.
The Puer has aspects of foolishness because he does not think
before he speaks or acts. He is so spontaneous that he is able to take advantage
of any circumstance that Fate delivers. And since, he is also very ‘plastic’
he is able to go with the flow and adapt, which can make him appear very lucky.
But can get into all sorts of sticky situations, because he does not look before
he leaps: eg tendency to jump into relationships impulsively for the excitement!
The Mercurius fool tends to be very absent minded. One reason is that
he lives entirely in the present. This means that he does not learn from past
mistakes. It also means that he does not plan. The wife of one Mercurius
patient told me that when they go away for the weekend she has to plan the
route, otherwise, he will just guess it, and get hopelessly lost. He has supreme
confidence that he can ‘wing it’ but often falls flat on his face. He just
doesn’t think. He may be able to connect abstruse pieces of scientific or
esoteric information, but he cannot remember to take his keys when leaving home.
This is an example of the tricky, unreliable nature of the Fool. If, through
negligence, he fails to perform some entrusted task, he will use his quick wits
to excuse himself. Or else his mind will be a blank, and he will give no excuse.
Mercurius is apt to be empty or blank mentally some of the time (with
mercurial, it is a case of all or nothing). It is this very emptiness which
allows him to observe so objectively and also to open inner wisdom. However, it
can also leave him stupefied, with nothing to say. Peter Seller’s headmaster
said "Sellers made no impression whatsoever. He merged into the woodwork.
He had little in common with all of us." This same Sellers made an enormous
impression as an impressionist since he did not have to play himself! Mercurius
can appear foolish both because he is hasty with words (Kent: ‘A marked
feature running all through hastiness’), and also because he says nothing at
all. Peter Sellers played such a blank fool in the film "Being there".
They appear youthful, innocent, detached, bright and sparkly,
the curious combination of mental blankness and bright spontaneity which is so
often seen in Mercurius.
