Defining Mercury II

Mountains,  Emil Nolde

Read Part I here

In which we discover that Dickens was  Aquarian - how's that for synchronicity? I honestly didn't know.

Anyway, Mercury. Is still being squared by Saturn. And I was going to say I'll have to wing it, because I can't think of anything to say, but the fact is that actually I'm just not able to pour forth my thoughts in the usual way. What seems to be required is that I slow down, order my thoughts, consider the ideas and form them into a cohesive pattern. And this process is alien to my thinking nature.

 So. Here goes. I'm still going to wing it, after a fashion.

What is the purpose of language?

 Perhaps we should start by examining what language actually is. A form of communication. A method of expression. Communicating what, expressing what? Feelings, thoughts, notions? And where do these things arise? From inside of us, or from somewhere outside? Do these thoughts and feelings belong to us, or do they appear elsewhere and  just pass through us, the human, on their way?

And what is the method of expression? Words, music, painting, sculpture, dance, theatre. If all art is expression, then is all art language? Is nature then a language? If so, what is it expressing? What is it telling us?

I came across an idea once that language is a 'land-gauge'. A gauge of the land from which it arises, the frequency of that land. Which explains the multitude of languages, accents within a particular language, and indigenous music and art. That before people put shoes on their feet, shoes with rubber soles, they were conductors of the energies of their land, singing the music of their soul's arising. And as modern life has taken us further away from our natural sources, our song has become ever more simple, dull and uninspired. Mechanical and functional. IMO. YMMV.

And I think about languages with a form my brain doesn't recognise. Chinese, say. I listen and it sounds like music, because my mind is not able to decode it in any other way. When I lived in Wales, I used to listen to the Welsh language radio station and just experience the rhythms, cadences and tones. And what they said to me about the nature of the welsh essence. There is something underlying the words themselves that itself speaks volumes.  A right brain decoding, perhaps, rather than a left brain understanding.

But what seems to tie these notions back to the complexity and beauty of the words used by Dickens,  is speed. The faster life moves, the faster humans run through their lives, the less time and space there is for listening to and creating beautiful speech. There is a stillness required in the mind and soul to be able to receive and form.

And that, that stillness is a quality of Saturn. And now I see why so many of the people I know who write beautiful words, whose expression is poetic whether they are writing a poem or an email, have Mercury in aspect to Saturn. Mercury is quicksilver, and Saturn the container that holds and stills its reflective beauty.

A wing, and a prayer :)

Defining Mercury I

Or: An Exercise (Possibly in Futility) For Saturn Transits To Mercury....

I wrote this back in January during the first pass of Saturn to natal Mercury. Finding myself tongue- tied now on the second pass, I thought it might be worth revisiting. Part two following.

I've gone quiet of late. Saturn is squaring my Sun, Mercury and Nodes and I've been slowed  right down, caused to think much about who and what I am, where I'm going and how I express myself.

In fact self expression, communication, writing, and words seem to have been major themes. I have Mercury in Aquarius and I think very fast, read very fast, and when inspired, have been known to talk so fast I forget what it was I was trying to say in the first place, and end up stuttering or stopping.  Often when I write, I cannot type or access the words fast enough to express the notion with which my mind is running. Zap, zap, zap.

Now the beauty of this is that the ego is often forced aside and great inspiration can appear as if from nowhere. New ideas and frequencies come unbidden through the Uranian mind working at it's highest, these being the realms in which knowledge and understanding can suddenly leap an octave and the human story begin a new chapter.

What this may lead to at the low end, though, is a style of communication that grabs at the nearest, easiest word or phrase. Linguistic fast food, if you like. The tool that gets the job done fastest. And platitudes become the norm. Which detaches the user from the warmth of human connection.

I remember a few years ago picking up a copy of Little Dorrit in a second hand bookshop. I hadn't read Dickens for years, and never that particular story so thought I'd give it a go. And I was stunned by the beauty of the language. Not so much the descriptive language, but the words that were coming out of the characters mouths. I would read lines over and over, immersing myself in the joy of it. The complexity and variety of the words and the way they were crafted. And the fact that people actually used to speak like this.

Consider our ways of speaking today. Some teenagers don't seem to possess the ability to communicate at all outside of text speak. Not only is most language fast, easy and purely functional (if that) the idea that words are a beautiful thing, to be explored, examined, played with, crafted,  in order to convey emotion, passion and the inspiration of the gods, is anathema to many people. WTF dude?

So all this begs the question; what is language, and what is its purpose?