What is the color of Mercury?

[Image descriptions: A iridescent cloud above the ocean, as seen from an airplane window. Source: openfotos.com]

The assigment of colours to planets, signs and houses is one of my favorite subjects in astrology! 

Every planet has a color associated with it. The assignment comes directly from how the planet appears in the sky. The Sun symbolizes colors like yellow, orange and red, for obvious reasons. Mars appears red in the sky, so Mars rules everything red. The other planets have more than one color, depending on the astronomical weather, which makes their assigments of color a bit more blurry. 

When do these color assignments come in handy? Knowing the color of something makes it easier to find the right descriptor in a horary chart, for example.  

There is only one problem: people find it difficult to come to an agreement regarding the subject of colors. One author will say 'purple' while the other says 'yellow'. This is because astrology is old, and colors tend to get different names and categories in different parts of history and the world. What for our modern eyes appears blue, would be called a shade green in early Medieval times. 

I made a tabel with the mention of colours linked to planets as mentioned by traditional authors. 

Linsie-wooley Mercury

I love the way ancient authors like Lilly describe colors, because it is so entwined with  a time, place and language. My favorite descriptions are the ones about Mercury. 

[Image descriptions: Two pidgeons cuddling. The iridescent colors of the feathers on their neck are very vividly green and purple. Source: allcreatures.org. End of image description]

Mercury is an ambivalent planet, ruling ambivalent colors. 'A colours like the neck of a stockdove' is Lilly's way to describe iridescent, complex and metallic colors. The other strange wording, 'Linsie-woolsie colors', points to a fabric which is a mix of linen an wool that was often worn at the time (mainly by working class people).The fabric is a patchwork of different hues and colors.  It's a fabric that is neither one thing nor another. That's why at the end of the sixteenth century, the time when Lilly lived, the word 'linsie-wooley' meant 'nonsense'. The word means 'a thing that is made of different parts'. It therefor became a synonym for messy, confusing, unsuitably mixed, ill-assorted, nonsensical. Perfectly suitable for the unpredictable and tricky planet Mercury!

Shakespeare writes in In All’s Well That Ends Well: “But what linsey-woolsey hast thou to speak to us again?” 

If you hear in these descriptions of the word 'linsie-wooley' a slight disdain for the planet Mercury, you are not wrong. The preacher Henry Smith wrote in a 1591 sermon: 

"God forbad the people to weare linsey wolsey, because it was a signe of inconstancie.” 

This is a reference to the Old Testament (Leviticus 19:19 and Deuteronomy 22:11), which prohibits wearing wool and linen fabrics in one garment. In the same vain it was also forbidden to crossbreed different species of animals, and to plant together different kinds of seeds.

Fear of Mercury

There is a fear for what Mercury represents, because the planet symbolizes things that are not one thing, but multiple things. Like non-binary people. Scary!!!! Mercury represents the fact that there is not one 'Truth', but just like Mercurial colours, things exists in different shades, blends and spectra. 

Isn't it wonderful that when we look closer into a color and all its cultural meanings, we can learn more about the meaning of a planet?