Why is Mercury always close to the Sun in the Zodiac?

let's work it out

A few months ago, when I first started to sample Vedic Astrology, I heard a few times that Mercury was always close to the Sun in the zodiac, never farther than the next sign before or after. This seemed strange to me, because I knew that Mercury orbits the Sun once every 88 days, so if Mercury orbits the Sun once every 88 days, wouldn’t that mean he make a complete transit of the zodiac once every 88 days?

I’m not the only one who thought this. I’ve been meaning to look into this for a while, but yesterday I was listening to an interview on Dustin Cormier’s astrology channel, wherein his guest said this:

“It’s also interesting to see that the Unconscious side of the Human Design chart is based on Design date, which came about three months, 88 degrees of the Sun’s arc, or one revolution of Mercury prior to birth. And, that’s just an interesting thing to contemplate as well, that Mercury goes through the entire zodiac one time from your Design to your actual birthday, and it kind of brings it all together for us.” (YouTube link to that video, starting at 40:08 for this quote)

The relevant part to this discussion is of course that someone else thinks that “Mercury goes through the entire zodiac” in 88 days (which of course calls into his question his specific assertion regarding Human Design, but that is not the issue here).

The foundation of my interest in Vedic Astrology was trying to understand the difference between the tropical and sidereal zodiacs. I had known for a number of years that there was some difference, that Vedic Astrology “used a different zodiac”, and had even had two readings done with the sidereal zodiac, but I didn’t know what it actually meant, i.e., the technicalities of the difference.

I feel I have a good grasp of those basics now. However, if I thought that Mercury goes around the entire zodiac in 88 days when that is not true, it shows that there is definitely something lacking in my knowledge, so I’m writing this article in order to remedy that deficit.

Before trying to find the answer in the global-wizard-portal, I’m going to try to think it through.

What exactly does it mean that the Sun is “in Aries”. It means that the Sun is at a certain point on its yearly path. OK, but we know that in actuality the Sun doesn’t move relative to us, we move relative to the Sun. So that means that the “Sun in Aries” means that the Earth is “in Libra”…hmmm, I’m not sure where to go with this.

So we know that the signs are not the constellations, but let’s pretend that they are for a moment, just to get a grasp on what is happening, to have a different way of approaching the topic. Siderealists will say that when the Sun is in the tropical Aries, sidereally the Sun is at about 6 degrees of the constellation of Pisces. What does this mean exactly?

When I was first researching this topic I came across this 3 minute video by the YouTube channel Sumerian Astrology, run by a woman who claims to be doing authentic Sumerian Astrology (I say “claims” not because I doubt it, but because I haven’t looked into…I just don’t know, I’m not trying to dis her). She believes that sidereal is right and tropical is wrong…but, regardless, what she demonstrates in the linked video is that when we say the Sun is in the constellation of Pisces, what we mean is that if we were able to see through the Sun, to see what is on the other side of the Sun at the ascending equinox, we would see the constellation of Pisces.

So if we want to know what constellation Mercury is “in”, we want to look past Mercury and see what is behind it. That is, if we could look at Mercury and draw a straight line from the Earth, through Mercury, to the constellation behind, what would that constellation be?

If Mercury were between the Sun and the Earth, or if Mercury were on the opposite side of the Sun from the Earth, then we would draw a straight line through the Earth, Mercury, and the Sun and into the constellation, so Mercury would be in the same constellation as the Sun.

Mercury is very close to the Sun, so its orbit always stays close to the Sun. Say that the Sun is in Aries, and if we look directly at the Sun, Mercury is at the rightmost point of the Sun in its orbit. Then if we drew our line from Earth to Mercury to constellation, that constellation would be Pisces.¹ If it were on the left most side, then the constellation would be Taurus.

If the Sun is in Aries, can Mercury be in Libra? For that to happen, we would have to face Mercury and then draw a line straight through the Earth and Mercury that gets to Libra. But, if the Sun is Aries, then Libra is behind us, so then Mercury could not possibly be in Libra, or any constellation we can’t see when facing Mercury.

I understand now why Mercury is never far from the sign in the zodiac: the primary reason is because where Mercury is in the zodiac is referenced from where we are on Earth; Mercury is always in front of us, therefore it can never be in a sign that is “behind” us. The same goes for Venus.

Mars, however, is further out than Earth’s orbit. So if Mars is in the same sign as the Sun, it is on the opposite side of the Sun from the Earth. If Mars is in the opposite sign of the Sun, the Earth is between Mars and the Sun, i.e., Mars is “behind” the Earth, if we are looking at the Sun.

I sort of left us in the sidereal realm, thinking about constellations. Tropically, we can think of the signs as divisions of the Earth’s path around the Sun. So the process is essentially the same. We simply divide the Earth’s orbit around the Sun into 12 equal parts and label them such that when the Sun is in Aries, the part of the orbit labelled Aries is on the opposite side of the Sun from the Earth…so, yes, in fact, the Earth is then in the part of orbit labelled Libra. We can then work out the planetary positions just as with the constellations.

This is a heliocentric model, as my reference was the Sun. I thought that I was going to have to refer to a certain video on YouTube which I watched a while ago. I didn’t have to in order to come to my understanding here, but I do want to mention it because I think it is a really awesome video.

It is called The Very Real Astronomy of the Tropical Zodiac by Gemini Brett. When I watched it I was very struck by one animation…and I was actually watching the video on 1.75x speed because that’s what I was doing, so I didn’t really get the whole animation, but it stuck in my mind. It is a masterful animation and demonstrates very well why Mercury is never far from the Sun in the zodiac. Gemini Brett, however, shows the zodiac originating in the Earth, which he explains earlier in the video. I need to go back and study this to understand it in depth, but I know it is accurate, so if my written explanation didn’t make sense, please watch this animation; actually, I highly encourage you to watch it anyway. Here is a link to the video queued up to the proper time (2:06:20). Seriously, please watch this masterful animation. Also, if you want to know why planets go retrograde, the animation has a visual demonstration of Mars being retrograde.

Wonderful, how cathartic. Let me know if you have questions, comments, rebuttals. Did I misunderstand something? Have something interesting I should on this topic?

1. I think…if not Pisces, then Taurus…that’s just my intuition, not sure why I think this…too much to handle right now…let me know if you think this is wrong