THE CLOSET MYSTIC

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!

The journey of self-knowing and self-realization is the journey of falling in love with oneself.

Ask yourself who in life knows you the most deeply —

Is that not also the person who loves you the most deeply?

You cannot understand someone deeply without loving them.

This same rule of interpersonal relationship also applies to our relationship with ourself.

Love and understanding are synonymous. Therefore, to understand oneself is to love oneself. Self-love is self-understanding. Self-understanding is self-love.

You cannot truly understand someone without truly loving them. You cannot truly love someone if you do not truly understand them.

Therefore, to know thyself, love thyself.

I want to curl up with you,

along a crescent Moon;

Kept warm by blankets

of clouds and stardust;

My breast

as your pillow.

I wish to feed you

strawberries and honey;

So that you may experience,

but only yourself,

and the sweetness that you provide.

Then,

you may understand,

a sliver

of what I am blessed with.

I wish

to stroke your hair,

to make sure

that the masterpiece

that is your face

is not obscured.

You are the triple goddess —

Your side profile

the waxing and waning Moons.

To gaze upon you directly,

Is to witness her full

Lunar splendor —

And,

when the Moon is new,

I am behind you,

Hands wrapped

around your stomach —

Massaging you —

Exploring

Your mystery —

I wish to work out the knots of your body and mind.

I wish to taste you.

Your harmonies,

symphonies,

orchestras,

Dancing along my tongue —

You are my goddess.

I have a deep conviction

That this love is eternal

A fated celestial alignment

Providing the impetus of liberation

To set me free from my confinement

My prison sentence’s cessation

Powerful Promethean planet

Granting a sacred electric current

Catch fire, feed it, fan it,

You’ve been struck — tag, you’re it!

Prepare the vessel

To receive such information

You’ll surely lose the wrestle

And end up an asylum patient

If you do not prepare the mind

To adequately receive

Those truths it may find

Beyond what you now believe

Once the doors are burst open

You’ll find no relief

Those hinges are forever broken

Sanity takes a permanent leave

So the question is

Are you a good dancer?

Give your life a goodbye kiss

And embrace the deathly answer

Is the anger truly blind?

I’m not so sure anymore

We force ourselves to act refined

But such a life is a terrible bore

I wish no longer to waste my time

spirit buried deep towards

Subterranean lines

To the Earth’s core

Human convention

Is equivalent

To the spirit’s detention

Pretty and malevolent

I’m becoming rather certain

That I must lose my mind

Unveil and pull the curtains

If the truth I am to find

Mankind and its inclinations

To cover the bare self

Is a true abomination

Stripping us of natural wealth

We live in a world with its eyes closed

Mine remain open

Longer than I’d like them to

Writing a great act of untangling

Successful act of crocodile wrangling

finally retrieving

That apple of Tartarus that’s dangling

If I don’t write,

I’ve no way to ground

after I take flight

At the speed of sound

It is a great act of banishing

A treasure chest safe to store one’s burdens in

To keep what’s deep in my core

Buried deep miserably stored

Or to release them into the world

To be sneered at or adored

To write is an act of mental decompression

As a matter of fact it cures my depression

Whenever the pen is in session

Pain meets it’s inevitable cessation

Inside exists an unbearable pressure

Greater than any instrument can measure

And the only way I can get it to taper

Is if I make my pencil meet paper

So much inside that needs to be expressed!

I’ve forced myself into a shoe that’s too small

I’ve buried myself alive

I’ve tried so hard to blend in with the humans

But the pressure has reached its pinnacle

It’s fever pitch

A zenith

If I hold it in a second longer I’ll explode

Hopefully taking with it my abode

Those who I blame on my stunted growth

How can one make sense of any of this?

I search for form where there is none

I seek ground but am met with sea

I seek clarity but fog surrounds me

How can the mortal mind bear what I am witness to?

I’m just a boy. What are you doing to me?

How can I make sense of these two worlds?

Above and below? Contrary polarities?

I’ve tried so hard to hold it together. But what if I finally let go?

The truth is my entire life has been for show.

Perhaps of the Truman variety.

But if I stay cramped here,

Underneath their staircase,

My bones will have no room to grow.

Here is the irrefutable fact:

My life is reaching a climax.

I must embrace my need for metamorphosis

Or risk entering a spiritual rigor mortis

This cocoon is just so fucking tight though

My wings have no room to stretch

I have to choose either to uphold the integrity

Of my skeleton and flesh

Or the cocoon

My home, my ancestral mesh

And The pain ceases not

My limbs in pieces rot

Torn apart by her splendor

Her truth triumphs over my falsehood

A life of being misunderstood

shock to the system to experience love this good

To safety I’d like to cling

I’m terribly afraid

But I’m ready for my butterfly wings

To be displayed

What will make this itch

At last subside

Psychological destabilizing

Tyrant king condemned to death

Inner kingdom facing an uprising

I deliver myself my own last breath

I am both the sword

And the neck it teases

Oh, how I’ve pleaded for liberation

I’ve smashed my head against the prison bars

I screamed bloody murder day and night

To at last be set free

And finally

At long last

My prayers were answered

A shrouded figure comes

With a key

And unlocks the cell

Easy as that.

With the door wide open, however,

I’m terrified

I back away

And lean against the wall

I plead for them to close it

But the figure disappears

I keep looking over

To see the cell wide open

Frightened more and more by the sight

I close my eyes and leap into an artificial night

The surety of these walls are all I need! They’re all I need!

The cold ground is preferable to that beating Sun outdoors!

Nothing can hurt me in here

Some eyes aren’t ready

to behold what’s beyond the cave.

Some lives are destined

for obedience, to behave.

Some are satisfied

by what the animal self craves.

The truth is,

it requires incredible bravery,

To liberate oneself,

from our mental slavery.

But know this:

your eyes need time.

glimpse by glimpse,

you’ll adjust to the light.

It’s dangerous,

incomprehensibly bright.

And I do miss

The days I didn’t have to fight

Great Uranus

Granting me second sight

I’ve found bliss

altogether, I’m alright,

But the truth is,

I’m a little scared of heights.

The sky I kiss,

Each and every night,

With clenched fists,

Paralyzed by fright,

Mother Goddess,

Lunar night light,

My one medicine,

holds my hand tight.

she tells me this:

“you’ll be alright,

Take it all in,

Enjoy the flight” –

Loving is dangerous

There exists no sport more extreme

No mountain to summit more treacherous

Surgery without anesthesia