The Mercury of the Secret Philosophy

In these moments of mysterious joy, it is not irrelevant to remember that sublime poem of Horace, the author of the Epodes and the Satires, which saw the light between the years 35 and 30 B.C.

Mercury

Mercuri, facunde nepos Atlantis, 

Qui feros cultus hominum recentum 

Voce formasti catus et decorae 

More palaestrae, 

Te canam, magni Iovis et deorum 

Nuntium curvaeque lyrae parentem, 

Callidum quidquid placuit iocoso 

Condere furto. 

Te, boves olim nisi reddidisses 

Per dolum amotas, puerum minaci 

Voce dum terret, viduus pharetra 

Risit Apollo. 

Quin et Atridas duce te superbos 

Ilio dives Priamus relicto 

Thessalosque ignis et iniqua Troiae 

Castra fefellit. 

Tu pias laetis animas reponis 

Sedibus virgaque, levem coerces 

Aurea turbam, superis deorum 

Gratus et imis. 

Mercury, grandson of Atlas, for the primeval man 

thine eloquence was the master:

his rudeness thou polished with utterance

and the finishing use of the palestra.

Nuncio of the Gods and highest Jove

was thy glory to invent the curving lyre,

and thy grace is to ride on a graceful carriage,

as much as the impulse of thy audacious genius inspires. 

When a child, the flock of Apollo thou robbed,

and with furious voices he upbraided thee;

yet, he had to laugh when seeing, astonished,

that even his quiver thou had stolen. 

With royal gifts Priamus left Illion,

when him, the Greek host was circling:

Pitiless Atridas, Thessalian bonfires,

everything was deceived by thy guidance.

The pitiful souls, airy shadows,

escort thy golden wand to eternal joy.

For all the Gods, an affable deity,

a delight for Olympus and the Avernus.

Thus, having chanted this sublime poem from the Horacean lyrics, it is now important to know what Mercury is…

It is unquestionable—and any Gnostic can comprehend—that Mercury as an astrological planet is obviously even more mysterious than Venus, and is identical to the Mazdeist Mithra, Buddha, the genie or god formidably situated between the Sun and the Moon. Mercury is the sublime eternal companion of the solar disc of divine wisdom…

Pausanias, in his fifth book, shows Mercury having a common altar with thundering Jupiter, father of those divines and humans...

Ancient legends state that Mercury displayed radiant wings of fire in order to express that he was assisting the Christ-Sun in its eternal course. This is why, by his own right, he was called in other times Nuncio and Wolf of the Sun: “Solaris Luminis Particeps.”

As a sequence or corollary, we must affirm that he was the chief and the evocator of the souls, the arch-magi and hierophant.

Virgil, the illustrious poet of Mantua, intelligently describes Mercury holding his hammer or caduceus with two serpents, in order to invoke the unhappy souls to a new life, those souls who were precipitated into the Orco or Limbus, “Tum virgam capit, hac animas ille evocat orco,” with the purpose of having them enter into the celestial militia, as he shows it in Vendidad… 

Mercury, the esoteric, auric planet, the ineffable one, is the one that the austere and sublime hierophants prohibited to name. Thus, by studying dusty millenary manuscripts, we can verify that Mercury is symbolized in Greek mythology by the famous hare-hunting dogs, or guardian dogs of the celestial cattle that always drink from the very pure crystalline wells of occult wisdom. Therefore, Mercury is also known as Hermes-Anubis, as well as the good inspirator, or Agathodaemon.

Remember that the emperor Juliano prayed every night to the occult sun through the intercessor Mercury…

For as Vossius, by his own right states: “All Theologists asseverate that Mercury and the Sun are one...” 

This is why that planet was considered to be the most eloquent and wise of the gods, a fact that is not strange since Mercury is found so close to the wisdom and to the Word (or LOGOS), that is frequently mistaken for both.