QUICKSILVER – Mercury’s Liquid Metal
On every level it is Mercury’s nature to associate, to bring together other metals and chemicals, eager to form alloys and amalgams. We are all familiar with amalgam dental fillings (containing over 50% mercury!) used in allopathic dentistry since the 1800s. Only now is the dangerous toxicity of these mercury amalgams coming into public awareness. Hopefully we will soon follow the lead of the more enlightened Swedish authorities who will ban the use of all mercury in amalgam fillings by 1991.3
This power to combine diverse substances has also led to the use of Mercury in explosives, where it holds a tense balance between highly explosive elements. An example is mercury combined with nitric acid and alcohol to form mercuric fulminate, a highly unstable explosive and an essential element in detonating dynamite. The brilliant explosives expert Jack Parsons, a member of our early space program and also a well known occultist, was killed by an explosion of mercury fulminate. (Curiously, Mercury is said to rule over both travel and magical operations).
Just as easily as mercury combines with other elements, so is it freed from these combinations. It dissolves and amalgamates, catalyses and separates with equal ease. It is the solve et coagula, the basis and key symbol of the alchemical work.
The chemical activity of mercury is not limited to its liquid state, even the light of a mercury arc lamp has a strong chemical effect, radiating its metallic properties in vapor-light form. Wilhelm Pelikan mentions that ergosterol when irradiated with this light, can be transformed into a substance resembling Vitamin D. Whereas the ore of mercury is a deep warm red, mercury vapor gives off a cold, intense green-blue light giving the flesh a corpse-like pallor. This light, high in violet and ultra-violet rays, is reminiscent of the light in high mountains and is used in artificial ‘alpine sun’ lamps.
Returning for a moment to the contrasting properties of iron and mercury, we find that while iron oxidizes easily and rusts in contact with air, mercury remains unaffected. But a relationship between mercury and oxygen is formed when the metal is heated almost to boiling point, where it sucks in the oxygen to form a yellowish-red oxide. On further heating mercury expels this oxygen and is said to breathe “like a small metallic lung.” It was this curious breathing action which led to the discovery of oxygen. The oxides form two series of salts, the univalent mercurous salts (HgjO) and the bivalent mercuric oxide (HgO).
MERCURIAL FORCES IN THE BODY
“The essential nature of Mercury is to unite. “
We can live only because our bodies are able to take in external substances and change or transmute them into nourishment. It is the mercury force which makes this amalgamation of the external and internal possible, and this is most obvious in the breathing and digestive processes.
All living breathing beings share the same outer atmosphere, the same air space, which is brought into each individual through the lungs where oxygen is absorbed into the blood to become a part of the living organism. Rudolf Hauschka writes: “Even the build of the lungs is mercurial. They are like little trees made of tiny hollow drops. Innumerable spherical spaces thus form a common breathing surface.”
This union of the outer with the inner to nourish and regenerate the body is also evident in the digestive system where food is taken in from the outside to be dissolved by the digestive secretions and absorbed through the intestinal walls into the streams of lymph and blood.
Following this process deeper into the metabolic system we find the forces of mercury ruling even over the cellular life, keeping a state of order and balance between the organism as a whole and its individual cells. When this equilibrium is disturbed the cellular order breaks down and individual cells assume an anarchistic life of their own, proliferating out of control and in extreme cases destroying the system itself.
Here the value of mercury as a medicinal remedy excels, working to stop the independent action of cells which have detached themselves, rounding up the separatist ‘guerrilla units’ and reabsorbing them into the body as a whole.
MERCURY AS ‘A REMEDY FOR ALL ILLS’
At the turn of the century the British Pharmacopeia contained some 25 mercurial preparations including pills and powerfully antiseptic ointments, and up until recently you could still buy mercurial antiseptics over the counter. This antibacterial quality of mercury is today exploited, for example, in anti-fungus baths for seeds, a practice responsible for major outbreaks of mercury poisoning in Iraq, where hundreds have died from eating seed grain treated with methyl mercury fungicide.
Mercury was once even administered pure and the old medicinals describe as much as a pound of pure mercury given in cases of intestinal obstruction, hoping to relieve the problem by its sheer weight!
But mercury was most valuable as a remedy against syphilis, that scourge of the 13th century up until recent history, (and including the connection of syphilis with AIDS). The only problem was that mercury, being so highly toxic, cured the disease but tended to poison the patient!
Even the smallest traces of mercury can cause dangerous effects. In the Middle Ages mirrors were commonly made by coating glass with a mercury-tin amalgam, and objects were gilded with a combination of mercury and gold. In these industries, and in the mercury mines, poisoning was an occupational hazard with the metal being absorbed so easily through the skin or lungs of the workers.
Like arsenic and digitalis, mercury is a cumulative drug and once it has been absorbed by organic tissue it is held fast there and only with great difficulty escapes to be excreted from the system. It causes damage to the brain and nervous system, overstimulates the glandular system which produces hormones, and suppresses the entire immune system.
But despite being such an insidious poison, the use of mercury in homeopathic form is a highly effective and invaluable remedy for many problems. It is one of the prime remedies for syphilis and AIDS, for the whole progression of symptoms, in combination with other remedies including certain snake venoms (a connection with the serpents of Mercury’s caduceus). It is sympathetic to the lymphatic and central nervous system and works towards restoring the marrow of the spinal bone.