DREAM: ANCIENT MERCURY APPEARS...feb 22, 2011(edited august 24,2011)

During a morning nap I had a very strong dream image. At first there were cars going at high speed on a modern wide highway. Then an animated figure was suddenly running ahead of and faster than the cars. The figure was a black and slim male. He was dressed in sort of a uniform. The top was a white shirt with black vertical pinstripes about an inch apart. He wore knee length shorts of the same material. He was a strangely ancient yet modernly animated figure. He carried a kind of metallic scepter in his right hand as he ran with such inhuman swiftness.

Two Depictions of  Mercury, god of commerce

REFLECTION: Again a dream that was to me stranger than strange. Such a mixture of something so ancient and yet so modern. I had no idea what sense this image could carry for me. Only a while ago did it occur to me that this figure had all the indications of a god. Having some awareness of the Greek and Roman gods and their myths it struck me this may be generated by the same archetype that generated the famous Greek god Mercury. This supports the idea that our modern psyche is built on the same foundation of the Collective Unconscious that the ancient cultures were. And so from out of the blue comes this modern day version of Mercury. Why would this image pop up to consciousness in a modern dream? Mercury was primarily considered the god of commerce and trade. The English name comes from a Latin word that gave rise to our 'merchandise and merchant.' Today he would be the god of business. Today's MBA would seek to be in harmony with the forces of Mercury.  He was called the Messenger god so was involved in the back and forth , the bartering and trading that make commerce and exchange of goods , money and services run smoothly and efficiency for the social order. The silvery liquid at room temperature metallic element was given the name of this god. This is because of the element mercury's properties of being erratic and slippery, are like the god's ability to move swiftly and to change quickly in appearances as it shapes the life of commerce and trade in the culture.

But why the appearance of this spin of the archetype to me? Less important is my personal experience of 'business, money etc.' Not until mid life did I begin to give any serious honor to the meaning of money, business and commerce. Yet Jesus often speaks of the dangers of not honoring the meaning of money else one come under its negative power. In the past two decades I began to increase my knowledge of this strange part of life to me. I began to use mutual funds to help grow  retirement savings . Just a few weeks ago I decided for no strong rational reasons to put a larger portion of my savings back into more risky stock funds, thus placing them at risk with the wish that they could grow significantly. I plan after another year to pull whatever I have accumulated from such investments back into more secure investments. This kind of risk taking is part of the mystique of the god Mercury. A large drop in the stock market, like we've had recently, makes me aware of just how much risk I am taking. It can be appropriate for me to be aware of the Mercury aspect of the Sacred as I deal with such matters. Of course my traditional Christian teaching does not permit or support using such representations of God to be taken seriously. But this dreams comes with an authority that allows and encourages me to be in touch with the archetypal  energy and reality of Mercury.  I am more consciously allowing myself to be drawn into his area of risky enterprise.

More importantly is how our and many other world  cultures are in serious disarray regarding this domain of the god Mercury. Our monetary systems of exchange and commerce are at great risk of failing us and  causing great human suffering and anguish. Part of the problem is the nearly beyond human comprehension of the complexities of the world of post modern trade and finance. And the area has already been the scene of massive corruption and greed. How Commerce and Finance goes in the world determines how the resources of the earth are made available in fair and just ways to all the humans and other creatures of the earth. So the dream seeks to give some balance and hope to the realities of this complicated network of interactions, tools and regulations. It shows that the archetype of the god Mercury(as part of the ultimate Sacred) is still very much alive and can be counted on to lead sincere humans to new levels of trust, efficiency and fairness in this area that determines so much the quality of human life over the entire globe. The dream image shows Mercury (the archetype that spins this god) very alive , still fast and feisty and very capable of the quickness(quicksilver is another name for the element mercury) and magical like changes that are needed to create the needed systems of Commerce and trade for this new age which we find ourselves quickly entering. I found the images of mercury above  on Wikipedia. The figure in my dream had short tightly curled hair like the sculptured image. But my dream image was somewhat modernized by being a semi cartoon animated type image dressed in modern  fabrics. Jim