Telex
External Link
Internal Link
Inventory Cache
![]() |
Mercury
This nOde
last updated June 10th, 2004 and is permanently morphing...
(8
K'an (Corn) / 7 Zots (Bat) - 164/260 -
12.19.11.6.4)

mercury
mercury (mûr´kye-rê) noun
1.Symbol Hg. A silvery-white
poisonous metallic element, liquid at room temperature and used in
thermometers, barometers, vapor lamps, and
batteries
and in the preparation of chemical pesticides. Atomic number 80;
atomic weight 200.59; melting point -38.87°C; boiling point 356.58°C;
specific
gravity 13.546 (at 20°C); valence 1, 2. Also
called quicksilver.
2.Temperature: The mercury had
fallen rapidly by morning.
3.Any of several weedy plants
of the genera Mercurialis or Acalypha.
[Middle English mercurie, from Medieval Latin mercurius, from Latin Mercurius, Mercury.]
Mercury
Mercury (mûr´kye-rê) noun
1.Roman Mythology. A god that
served as messenger to the other gods and was himself the god of
commerce, travel, and thievery.
2.The smallest of the inner
planets and the one nearest the
sun, having a sidereal
period of revolution about the sun of 88.0 days at a mean distance of
58.3 million kilometers (36.2 million miles) and a mean radius of
approximately 2,414 kilometers (1,500 miles).
mercurial (adjective)
nonuniform: inconstant,
inconsistent, fickle, mercurial, capricious
active: frisky, coltish,
dashing, sprightly, mercurial, spirited, mettlesome, live, alive and
kicking, full of beans, animated, ebullient, chipper, peppy,
vivacious, lively
Mercury (element)
Mercury (element), symbol Hg, metallic element, a liquid at room temperature, with an atomic number of 80 and an atomic weight of 200.59. Mercury is one of the transition elements of the periodic table (see Periodic Law). Mercury occurs in its pure form or combined with silver in small amounts but is found most often as the sulfide ore cinnabar.
Uses
Mercury is used in thermometers
and other scientific equipment, including vacuum pumps, barometers,
and electric rectifiers and switches. Mercury vapor is used in lamps
as a source of ultraviolet radiation and in place of steam in the
boilers of some turbine engines. Mercury combines with all the common
metals, except iron and platinum, to form alloys called amalgams.
Mercury Poisoning
Mercury vapor is acutely
hazardous. Chronic mercury poisoning, which occurs when small amounts
of the metal or its salts are repeatedly swallowed over time, causes
irreversible brain, liver, and kidney damage. Significant quantities
of mercury have been found in some species of fish, arousing concern
about uncontrolled discharge of the metal into the environment.
Mercury (planet)
Mercury (planet), planet closest to the sun, at an average distance of about 58 million km (about 36 million mi). Its diameter is 4875 km (3030 mi), and its volume and mass are about those of Earth. Mercury revolves about the sun in 88 days. Its period of rotation is 58.7 days, two-thirds of its period of revolution. The planet rotates one and a half times during each revolution. Mercury is the only planet except Earth with density and composition close to those of Earth and with a magnetic field. The planet's outer core must be a liquid iron compound that produces a magnetic field as it moves. Only an extremely thin atmosphere, containing sodium and potassium, exists on Mercury, apparently diffusing from the crust of the planet. Photographs of Mercury's surface show craters and steep cliffs. Temperatures on Mercury reach about 430° C (about 810° F) on the sunlit side and about -180° C (about -290° F) on the dark side. Radio telescopes have identified vast sheets of ice in Mercury's polar regions.
![]() |
![]() |
You all know what mercury
looks like-at room temperature it's a silvery liquid that
flows,
it's like a mirror. For the
alchemists, and
this is just a very short exercise in alchemical thinking, for the
alchemists mercury was mind itself, in a sense, and by tracing through
the steps by which they reached that conclusion you can have a taste
of what alchemical thinking was about. Mercury takes the form of its
container. If I pour mercury into a cup, it takes the shape of the
cup, if I pour it into a test tube, it takes the shape of the test
tube. This taking the shape of its container is a quality of mind and
yet here it is present in a flowing, silvery metal. The other thing
is, mercury is a reflecting surface. You never see mercury, what you
see is the world which surrounds it, which is perfectly reflected in
its surface like a moving mirror, you see. And then if you've ever, as
a child, I mean I have no idea how toxic this
process
is, but I spent a lot of
time as a child
hounding my grandfather for his hearing aid
batteries
which I would then smash with a hammer and get the mercury out and
collect it in little bottles and carry it around with me. Well, the
wonderful thing about mercury is when you pour it out on a surface and
it beads up, then each bead of mercury becomes a little microcosm of
the world. And yet the mercury flows back together into a unity. Well,
as a child I had not yet imbibed the assumptions and the ontology of
science. I was functioning as an alchemist. For me, mercury was this
fascinating
magical substance onto which I
could project the contents of my mind. And a child playing with
mercury is an alchemist hard at work, no doubt about it.
[...]
Well, what these new
technologies are doing is
dissolving
boundaries. The nation state, the monolithic party, and
the nuclear family---all boundary-defined institutions of one sort or
another---are legacies of the past; what we need is an ideology that
is mercurial, shifting, non-static. And as long as we’re talking about
mercury and mercurial things, there is in alchemy (a pre-modern form
of thinking) the idea of the Coincidencia Oppositorum, which means
that you have to have ideologies which are able to accommodate
positions which within the context of the previous ideology would’ve
appeared contradictory. The very notion of non-contradiction is a
notion that emerges out of the linear, print-created mindset; the
whole sterility of that world-view is its inability to live with the
presence of contradiction. And so it denies it, which creates the
unconscious of a society where we’ve got serial killers running
around. The world is not as simple as we desperately wish to make it
within the context of the linear world-view.
The most famous alchemist was
16th-century Philippus Paracelsus of Switzerland, who held that the
elements of compound bodies were salt, sulfur, and mercury,
representing, respectively, earth, air, and
water;
fire he regarded as nonmaterial. He believed that one undiscovered
element existed from which the other elements came. He called this
prime element alkahest, maintaining that if it were found, it would be
the
philosopher's stone.
When Hans Jenny experimented
with fluids of various kinds he produced
wave
motions, spirals, and wave-like patterns in continuous circulation. In
his research with plant spores, he found an enormous variety and
complexity, but even so, there was a unity in the shapes and dynamic
developments that arose. With the help of iron filings,
mercury,
viscous liquids, plastic-like substances and gases, he
investigated the three-dimensional aspects of the effect of vibration.
ohm (
om)
,
unit of
electrical RESISTANCE, defined as the
resistance to the
flow of a steady electric
current offered by a column of mercury 14.4521 grams in mass with a
length of 1.06300 m and with an invariant cross-sectional area, when
at a temperature of 0 degrees centigrade.
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |