☉ Sun ☌ Conjunction ☿ Mercury

0° · major aspect · neutral · default orb ±8°

Mercury never strays more than about twenty-eight degrees from the Sun, so the conjunction is the only major aspect the pair can form, and it recurs several times a year. Classical sources read the combination as speech, calculation, and commerce placed in service of vitality and authority, the herald standing beside the king. Ptolemy associates Mercury with the rational faculty, and joined to the Sun the tradition ties the pair to secretaries, envoys, scribes of rulers, and the public utterance of those who hold office, the message and the messenger identified with the source of light itself.

Traditional reading

Doctrinal attention falls almost entirely on distance. Within the beams Mercury is combust, a debility the medieval Arabic authors and Lilly treat as silencing the planet; within about seventeen minutes of the Sun's center it is cazimi, and the same sources reverse the judgment, placing the planet in the heart of the king. Mercury, the faster body, always applies. Its sect is famously variable, oriental of the Sun counted diurnal and occidental nocturnal, a distinction only the phases of this perpetual companionship can decide.

Astronomical note. Sun and Mercury never separate by more than about 28° on the ecliptic, so only the closer aspects between them can occur.

Classical reading

Ptolemy treats conjunction as bodies sharing the same degree. Nature depends on the joined planets - benefic with Jupiter, malefic with Mars or Saturn.