Chart body
Mercury
How you think, speak and connect ideas.
In a birth chart, Mercury describes your mind — how you think, speak, learn and connect ideas.
What it actually is
The smallest planet and the closest to the Sun, orbiting in 88 days. It never appears more than 28° from the Sun in the sky, which is why your Mercury is always in your Sun's sign or one either side.
In a chart: Two to three weeks in a sign, with three retrograde stretches a year.
How Mercury is read
At its best
Quickness — you get there while other people are still reading the question. Language that makes complicated things portable.
The difficult end
Cleverness as a way of avoiding depth. Winning the exchange and losing the point.
What to do with it
Say the harder, slower true thing rather than the fast interesting one.
What Mercury rules
Traditionally Mercury rules Gemini and Virgo. If one of those is your rising sign, Mercury is your chart ruler — the planet a traditional reading treats as standing for you.
The metal of Mercury
Quicksilver Hg
The one metal that flows at room temperature, and the only one to share its planet's name. Read as quickness — a mind that will not sit still long enough to be held.
The other chart bodies
Where is Mercury in your chart?
Its sign says how it acts; its house says where in your life it acts. Both come from real positions at your birth moment.