On Money, Mores, and Meaning

Considering all of the talk about money, budgets, and taxes in this political season here in the USA, I thought that I would explore a bit about a topic of great fascination to many, money. The following is material generated from discussion with my dear students. I could not have thought of these thoughts without them.

Let's look at the connections. Mercury rules money in the chart and business people, and indeed the fleet-footed god Mercury used to be on American dimes until fairly recently.

Why? Well, Mercury goes back and forth like money, business, and communication, but I think we can learn even more. 

Why would the wings be connected to the head on the coin (versus the back, the legs, etc.)? Hint: an angel has wings connected to the mid-back. What body parts and hence what planets are thereby connected? Answer: an angel is one whose Mercury (thoughts/wings/business) and Venus (love/heart/back) are connected thusly. The USA did not want to portray itself as an angel.

So what would the image on the coin represent? The head represents the Sun and also government and power and self-initiative. Empirically, people with strong Sun in their chart are typically very good with these themes.

The Mercury coin is referring to some sort of American ideal, a self made man. It unifies business/money (Mercury/wings) with self-employment/government (Sun/head). 

It is very interesting that the coin was removed (1945) around the time the World Bank kicked in (1944 in theory, 1945 in practice). If such a development is the true cause, then the World Bank has mythologically done a very serious deed; it severed the succession from king (Sun) to prince (Mercury), and hence stopped the very life blood of our country. Our money (Mercury/prince) cannot grow, mature and rise to full power (Sun/king).

By the way, why does it only feel right for wings (Mercury) to be either near the heart (Venus, for the angel) or head (Sun, for the self-made man/government) or ankles (Saturn, for the messenger)? (Think how silly wings coming out of the knees or an abdomen would be!)

It may be because Sun, Mercury, and Venus are ​always together in the chart. Look at any chart and they will be within a sign of each other (because from a geocentric point of view that is the chart, the inner planets will be toward the Sun). 

The servant messenger has wings at his feet simply because Saturn, the servant, considers Mercury a friend: the internet (Mercury) is most a boon to the impoverished (Saturn). (Bike messengers often come from poorer society and are fine contemporary representations of this combination of archetypes.) 

However, the internet is neutral to the impoverished as Mercury is neutral to Saturn in the Jyotish friendship table. 

We say "Don't shoot the messenger!" for a reason. Missiles are an act of the Sun. The communications (Mercury) is neutral to the messenger (Saturn), but the receiver (Sun) of the message considers the messenger (Saturn) an enemy and can even cause astrological "combustion" of Mercury when the latter comes too close to It. 

Moreover, the messenger may have been killed off because of the lack of mutual friendship between Saturn and Mercury so that Mercury could not protect Saturn from Saturn's mutual enmity with the Sun.

By the way, it is no surprise then that these quicksilver shoes were/are popular with the everyday, "pedestrian" people who are also represented by Saturn. 

That the shoes are expensive despite their appeal to the more poor makes sense because a 13 yr old loves expensive things probably the most in his/her life; even a mid-life crisis person spends his/her money being/acting like a teenager. Remember, both money and teenagerhood are represented by Mercury.

So, the Sun-Mercury connection may have been killed off by the World Bank, because of the lack of mutual friendship between Sun and Mercury. That is, government would never allow a truly laissez faire libertarianism to rise. It (the Sun) is too invested in Its friendships to Mars and Jupiter, that is, to Its notions of war/anger/blood and peace/religion/spiritualism. All or any of those themes are just not profitable to a government, and any real government that places money first would not have them. Mars and Jupiter consider Mercury to be an enemy, while Mercury is neutral to them.

All that are left are the angels, Mercury in strong mutual friendship with Venus. The angels alone survive.

If you are interested in more of this conflation of myth, archetype, and astrology, consider the movie "Wings of Desire": "The angel got sick of watching over people (the original title is 'The sky over Berlin...'), fell in love with a circus performer, then he decides to get rid of his wings and comes down to earth as human... having no money (he bought clothes from second hand store). But he was way happier and could be with the girl he fell in love with."

Just a few observations on this great movie:

1)  His dropping of wings is the dropping of thoughts (Mercury) which is perhaps true spirituality (since Mercury is debilitated in Pisces). Yet, he retains the full power of the heart (because Venus is exalted in Pisces).

2) It is coherent that he has no money when he drops Mercury, since money is represented by Mercury, as described above.

The angel (Venus) IS strong mutual friends with the messenger, and so, the everyday people do easily understand communications about love, even if in bits and pieces through a mercurial intermediary such as that movie or, with hope, perhaps this post. 

Never mind about changing the government. Instead, love and thereby, through a witting intermediary of communication, change the manas heart/mind/public opinion as represented by the Moon. She can then, through mutual friendship with the Sun/government, impress It and change It. If we are talking about the people (Saturn) - and hence their only powers of love (Venus) and communication, the internet, or even money (Mercury) - this is the only way to truly change the Sun. 

The trick here is that Mercury hates the Moon, just as a 13 year old boy hates his mom. Mercury will not directly, intentionally affect the Moon. Mercury, however, wants very much to impress his dad, the Sun (government), as lobbyists know.

The solution? Be in love first (Venus) to improve communication generally (Mercury), and the mind (Moon) will certainly notice and give support to the improvement, just as a mom wishes the best for her son. The government will change accordingly.

In translation, no amount of brainpower or rationale will change the nature of the government, but public opinion (Moon) sure will and quickly, and that changes only by the mano a mano power of love. 

So, thanks for taking this little journey with me. I hope you are seeing the power of the integration of archetypes in our real world and the importance of understanding them via astrology.