Mercury has been well known since ancient times even though the planet is not easy to observe. Originally the god of shepherds and wayfarers, Mercury (which in Greece was called Hermes) symbolizes cunning and inventiveness, surprising and unconventional genius, which sometimes borders on the thief's cunning. He is the messenger of the gods, but he also becomes the protagonist of impertinent jokes to the gods of Olympus. Son of the nymph Maia and of Zeus, he was cunning and clever, the myth says that already in early childhood he stole the heifers of his brother Ares, to Neptune the trident, to Mars the sword, to Vulcan the tongs. Once grown, Hermes is admitted to the divine palace of Olympus.
Equipped with winged gold shoes, he becomes the messenger of the gods, the means by which his father Zeus communicates his decisions to men. It is he who, in the Odyssey, brings to Ulysses the news that the time has come to return to Ithaca and, in the Aeneid, he brings Enea the order to leave Carthage to go to Italy to give life to the lineage of Rome . He is the friendliest god to men: he invents instruments and rituals for them, the letters of the alphabet and the numbers of the numbers. Given his ability to cross borders, Hermes had the task of leading the spirits of the dead to the kingdom of Hades, accompanying them in the transition from life to what comes after it.
For this purpose it was also called Psychompompos, the companion of souls. And it was the only God besides Persephone who was allowed to enter and leave the underworld of Pluto without problems. It is with the Romans that the planet acquires the astronomical name still in use today, Mercury. The word Mercury derives from the terms merx (commodity), mercator (merchant) and mercari (buy): the Roman God, which in fact fully incorporates all the features of the Greek Hermes is the god of commerce and profits, symbolizing trade, all the means of communication and transport, travel, study, colleagues, collaborators, literature, litigations, the word.
One of the characteristics of the Planet Mercury, which makes it different from all the other stars, is its almost always remaining in the wake of the Sun. The planet is visible from the Earth with the naked eye, however, since its direct observation is hampered by daylight solar it is possible to see it immediately after sunset, when the planet is low on the horizon to the west, or just before dawn, when it is just above the horizon to the east. The average sidereal speed of the planet is the highest of the planets in the solar system. Its revolutionary motion is therefore the shortest of all, only 88 days, its rapidity of movement allows its observation only for a few consecutive days, after which the planet becomes unobservable to the Earth.
The aforementioned factors, which must be present together for observation to be possible, are undoubtedly at the origin of the ambiguous, unstable, fleeting nature that ancient astrologers have attributed to the Planet. Mercury represents intelligence, mental relation with the external world, contacts with the world through knowledge, all means of expression, reason, criticism, logic, calculation, adaptation.
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