Mercury sign meaning: how you think

Your Mercury sign is the zodiac sign Mercury stood in at the moment you were born. It describes how your mind works: how you think, learn, talk and come to a decision. Mercury never moves far from the Sun, so your Mercury sign is always your Sun sign or one of the two signs next to it.

What your Mercury sign describes

In a birth chart, each planet stands for one part of you. Mercury is the part that takes the world in and gives it back in words. Astrologers read four things from it.

• How you think. Step by step or in leaps, starting from the facts or from the feel of a thing.
• How you learn. By reading, by listening, by trying it with your hands, or by talking it through with someone.
• How you talk. Fast or measured, blunt or tactful, in stories or in bullet points.
• How you decide. Quickly and out loud, or slowly and in private, after a night's sleep.

The sign Mercury stands in colors all four. It does not measure how intelligent you are: Mercury can be sharp in any sign. The sign describes the style of a mind, not its power.

Your Mercury sign is often not your Sun sign, the sign people mean when they ask what your sign is. That solves a common puzzle: the Taurus who talks fast and changes the subject in mid-sentence may well have Mercury in Gemini.

Why Mercury is always in your Sun sign or next to it

Mercury is the planet closest to the Sun and needs only 88 days for one orbit. Seen from Earth, it never moves more than about 28 degrees away from the Sun. That is why you only ever see it low in the twilight, after sunset or before sunrise.

Each sign covers 30 degrees of the zodiac circle. A planet that stays within 28 degrees of the Sun cannot get more than one sign away from it. So there are three possibilities: your Sun sign, the sign before it or the sign after it.

If your Sun is in Leo, your Mercury is in Cancer, Leo or Virgo. A Leo with Mercury in Aries does not exist.

To find your Mercury sign you need your date of birth. On a day when Mercury changes signs, the birth time decides.

The twelve Mercury signs at a glance

Read these as tendencies, not as rules. How your Mercury plays out depends on the rest of your chart.

When your Mercury sign differs from your Sun sign

If Mercury stands in your Sun sign, what you want and how you put it tend to point the same way. You sound like your sign.

Mercury in the sign next door

Neighboring signs are never alike. Each sign belongs to one of four elements, fire, earth, air or water, and two signs side by side always belong to different ones. So a Mercury in the next sign thinks in a different key than the Sun.

Take a Leo Sun, a fire sign. With Mercury in Virgo, an earth sign, the person may love the stage and still check every detail before stepping onto it. With Mercury in Cancer, a water sign, the same Leo thinks in feelings and memories and tends to take words personally.

Your Mercury sign does not say how clever you are. It says which language your mind thinks in.

Born with Mercury retrograde

About three times a year, for about three weeks, Mercury appears to move backward, seen from Earth. This is called retrograde. No planet really moves backward: it is an effect of the view from Earth. About every fifth or sixth person is born with Mercury retrograde.

Astrologers read this as a mind that turns inward first: you think a thing through before you say it. It is not a flaw. What a retrograde planet in your birth chart means

What the house of Mercury adds

The sign shows how you think. The house shows what your thoughts keep returning to. Houses are the twelve sections of a chart, each linked to an area of life. They begin at the Rising point, the degree of your Rising sign (also called the Ascendant), so they depend on your birth time and place. Three examples:

• Third house (communication, learning, siblings): talking, reading and writing are a daily need.
• Sixth house (daily work, routines): the mind goes into how things are done, into methods and craft.
• Ninth house (travel, study, beliefs): thinking is drawn to big questions and long study.

What the twelve houses mean

Without a birth time, your Mercury sign is usually still clear. Only the house is missing.

What to do with your Mercury sign

1. Find your Mercury sign and read its line in the table. Ask where you recognize your own way of learning and explaining.
2. Compare it with your Sun sign. If the two differ, notice where what you want and how you say it part ways.
3. Think of someone you often misunderstand. One of you may need time while the other thinks out loud. Neither way is wrong.

If you would rather have it read for you, a Birth Chart Reading is calculated from your exact birth data and written for your chart, in twelve chapters.