Mercury in Libra: Words that Close the Distance
Rudolf Bonvie, Dialog, 1973
“Choosing to be honest is the first step in the process of love. There is no practitioner of love who deceives. Once the choice has been made to be honest, then the next step on love's path is communication.”
— bell hooks (Libra sun, Mercury, Venus, Saturn, Neptune), All About Love
Libra Mercury is about connection. Bridging the gap between ourselves and others, creating bonds through the honest expression of self and being open to taking in another person’s experience. Mercury in Libra is communicative, empathetic, and genuinely interested in understanding others and being understood in return.
For Mercury in Libra, words are connective tissue. Libra Mercury people understand that words were quite literally invented to connect us. Words connect our inner world with other people, so that what is mine can become yours too, and vice versa. Words were invented to help us share what we see with others and to benefit from what others see too.
Libra is a sign of connection and creativity. People with Mercury in Libra are adept at poetic, metaphorical language, and for people with this placement, conversation is a loom that brings different fibers together, creating one beautiful textile.
In honor of this sign’s propensity for poetics, let’s start with the poetics:
not just a mouth full of flowers
(but isn’t that what this is?)
not just an iron tongue inside of velvet lips
(but that’s exactly what your mouth felt like on me)
not just knowing precisely what to say
(but didn’t we wear out our winged shoes for them?)
not just every side at once
(but that’s only because there are no sides in a loop)
not just rosy naivety
but seeing the light and basking in it
instead of shielding
our eyes.
asking questions over making statements.
words draw us together
words were created(!) for one reason only:
to connect us.
we find the right words for the right conditions, different soils require different pours
and I wanna really, really know.
please know me too. let’s put each other inside of our stories. find the common experiences and let that make them more real.
tell me inside and out. make it yours.
I want your history. here’s mine. tell me what it means
to be an avalanche. tell me what it felt like
when you were denied your humanity.
who didn’t hear you? who told you to be quiet? who told you you weren’t real?
let my love remind you that you’re real again.
don’t tone it down;
I’m the one who wants
to hear it.
What does Mercury represent in astrology?
Mythologically, Mercury was the god that brought souls to the underworld and could still return to the visible world unscathed. Mercury was, among other things, a transporter and a navigator of boundaries. In astrology, Mercury acts as a bridge between our inner world (the underworld) and the outer world/other people (the world above ground) and between the unconscious mind (the underworld) and the conscious mind (the visible world).
Mercury in Libra
In water signs, Mercury often takes a more internal approach to ‘navigating worlds', exploring the boundaries between the conscious and unconscious minds, and tuning into subtle currents between us. In earth signs, Mercury becomes an alchemizer, taking great pleasure in making an idea into something tangible in the actual, physical world. In fire signs, the powers of Mercury are used to shine light on one’s inner world, making that inner world quite visible. In air signs, Mercury is concerned with bridging the gap between self and other. Libra is an air sign, and Mercury in Libra in particular uses words as a way to connect.
Mercury in Libra speaks an infinite number of languages. One of the most notable and unique parts of this placement is their ability to speak the language of whoever they are talking to. They will instantly scan the people they meet (often unconsciously!) to figure out the most effective way of communicating with them, easily and seemingly effortlessly tweaking their language, expressions, and mannerisms to get the point across in a way that their conversational partner will best understand. Mercury in Libra also likes to take the mirror of Venus and show the other person that they are really, really listening by taking whatever the other person says and mirroring it back to them.
Libra Mercury is generally a talker (though they may not recognize this about themselves, especially earlier on in life!), because Libra is a sign that likes to connect and desperately wants to feel understood. People with Mercury in Libra are naturally oriented toward creating balance in conversation and tend to struggle greatly with anyone who does not understand the balance of talking and listening, anyone who hijacks the conversation and speaks without listening and vice versa. Unbalanced conversational partners may never know that they are struggling with this, though, because Mercury in Libra is such a graceful, composed placement that is really fucking good at making everything they do appear completely effortless while they’re actually putting in a ton of effort. They put a lot of energy into making conversations flow smoothly without interruptions, they hate awkwardness, and want everyone they speak to to feel comfortable and heard.
People with Mercury in Libra know how to use words to make others feel good. They can really see what other people need to hear and what they value about themselves and they give compliments freely, making sure that everyone around them knows that they are seen and loved. For this reason, they can be very skilled at manipulation if they want to be, though Libra’s reputation for being inherently manipulative is not entirely deserved. Generally, Libra Mercuries only use their linguistic charm for manipulation if they have other placements that are more into manipulation. For the most part, Libra’s ability to compliment and validating other people is a beautiful character trait, but it’s important to keep the desire to make everyone feel good grounded in reality and truth.
Air signs in general can be overly agreeable, becoming endlessly-nodding bobble heads in conversation when they’re not feeling very comfortable, and this is especially true of Libra. But at their best, people with Mercury in Libra are very good at finding common ground between any two people and naturally look for the ways that we are similar rather than different. They love to see things from the other person’s point of view, believe deeply in subjectivity, and they enjoy finding the ways that we can all agree.
Libra is a very creative sign, and many people with Mercury in Libra are gifted writers, and especially poets. They are able to weave words together in creative ways that electrify the senses, using the kinds of words that we can feel in our bodies and souls, words that create genuine emotional experiences. With great ease, they write about universal experiences and tap into different perspectives. People with Libra placements in general can be very wordy and are almost obsessively focused on finding the exact right words to communicate a thought, feeling or universal experience. As they write, they often create the feeling of a spiral, like we are beginning at the edge of an idea and circling inward until we arrive at its core together. Sometimes people with Mercury in Libra desperately search and search for the perfect phrasing to the point of anxiety, but they are very effective writers and communicators when this is tempered with an almost spiritual trust in the power of language to reach out across the distances between people and bring us together.