Why is it that Mercury is the coincidencia oppositorum, the union of two unlike things?

What is it about Mercury that allows the sacred art of alchemy to happen? Why is Mercury hermaphroditic, representing the union/marriage of unlike things? Why can Mercury make the two into one?

To explain it succinctly, I will ask you: does Mercury not represent communication astrologically? We all, of course, know the answer is yes.

What is communication but coming into union?

It is hidden in plain sight in the word itself. Mercury allows thing to come into union: comm-uni-cation.

Mercury is the medium by which unlike things may communicate. Mercury exists in the middle of all things. Mercury transmits all.

It is through Mercury that we can harmonize and synthesize unlike things into one.

Mercury, allowing the transmitting of information, allows unlike things to come in-formation.

Transmitting mutable information allows trans-mut-ation.

To take the information and rearrange it in a different way. To intelligently reconstitute what is into greater harmony.

Mercury can look at lead and see gold. The ingredients for the creation of gold exist there. As a matter of fact, to Mercury, the lead is as good as gold. Merely by rearranging what is, it can become something else. Mercury’s thievery, the desire for a comeuppance without “earning” it, can be achieved by creating great wealth through his clever tricks — what greater heist exists than to create enormous wealth from something otherwise considered worthless?

Mercury uses existing ingredients and reorganizes them into a better version of itself. Energy is not created or destroyed; the second law is preserved; he only rearranges what is into a higher version of itself.

This is his nature as a magician. His clever slight of hand. No magician can pull things out of thin air, breaking the second law, but quicksilver is quick enough to make it appear as such.

What do a thief — one of Mercury’s traditional significations — and a magician have in common but that slight of hand?

His brilliant intelligence allows for seeming magic to happen. No laws are broken, and yet, existing materials are worked on with such great and clever wit, that it appears as such.

Nothing appears out of thin air. Rather, existing materials are reconstituted by his caduceus.

TRICKY!