☿ Mercury in the Third House
Mercury
Rules – Gemini/Virgo
Detriment – Sagittarius/Pisces
Exaltation – Aquarius
Fall – Leo
Represents – intellect, expression
Keyword reasoning – ability
Mercury in 3rd House Meaning – The Mind is Focused on Communication
The third house is associated with how we think. Planetary energies here will stimulate mental activity and tell us about a person’s aptitude for learning or reasoning. Gemini is the natural sign of the third house, so conditions here will also reflect our ability to communicate.
Other third-house matters include short journeys; relationships with neighbors and siblings and other close relatives, excluding parents and commerce in general.
The Third House is Mercury‘s natural placement, since it rules that house. This suggests that you have strong and active mental and communication faculties.
Mentally, you are oriented to receive sensory information from your immediate environment. You are often eager to learn about things and curious about your world. (Gargatholil)
Mercury in the 3rd House: Positive Traits
The Third House is Mercury’s natural placement, since it rules that house. This suggests that you have strong and active mental and communication faculties. Mentally, you are oriented to receive sensory information from your immediate environment. You are often eager to learn about things and curious about your world.
When Mercury is posited in the third, it is considered a strong placement and referred to as accidentally dignified; as the natural sign for the third house is Gemini, and this is one of the signs ruled by this planet. This can make for a person that is curious and tends to stimulate the intellect. They may be very observant and rather adept at languages and communication in general. They should endeavor to focus their mental gifts or the restlessness of Mercury could scatter the energy and though they may know a little about a lot, they may lack depth in what they learn.
A 3rd house Mercury indicates that mentality is agile, quick, and very well-stuited to the manipulation of data. These people can be computerlike in their approach to thought, juggling huge amounts of information in a perpetually ongoing search-and-sort operation aimed at the creation of new insights. Pure rationality is emphasized, and must be maintained for clarity. The pitfall is loss of overall meaning in the endless pursuit of new data; and the challenge is to experience an ever-changing kaleidoscope of information relationships.
The child with Mercury in 3rd house often has a natural facility for learning. Communication skills can develop earlier than usual, although interest must be kept high through a diversity of stimuli. All the skills of understanding can be successfully emphasized. Later in life, there are likely to be wide-reaching interests – ‘jack of all trades, master of none’ – for there is at least a little to be learned in everything.
Mercury in the 3rd house is usually presumed to indicate an individual who is very talkative, even verbose. This may or may not be the case, for with Mercury, as ith all other planets, the sign position and interplanetary associations can substantially modify the symbolic patterns. What is safe to say, however, is that you are ususally processing information. When it is expressed, what is most important is the information itself, not stylistic concerns such as tone of voice. In communicating with them, others should listen carefully to the words themselves. They hold the key. (Bill Herbst)
When Mercury is in the third house, people are likely to spend much of their time involved with learning experiences of various kinds. These will not necessarily be the kinds of learning which come with a more mature consideration, but can occur where it is necessary to make an initial and energetic push at the beginning of a learning process. People with Mercury in the 3rd house may be actively involved with thier environment and immediate familes, particularly with siblings who stimulate their ever-questing minds.
Those with Mercury in the Third House are basically a person of ideas, which they express fluently and effortlessly. Life is fascinating to them, and they never tire of pursuing knowledge about every possible subject. Their friends support them in their endeavors, knowing that they will not give up. They like them because they never threaten them with their superior knowledge, allowing their egos to remain intact. They bring sparkle and wit to any gathering, though they are serious when necessary. Their greatest assets are their insatiable thirst for knowledge and their ability to dramatize their ideas. (Robert Pelletier)
A 3rd house Mercury is an excellent position for a writer or communicator of any kind: filmmaker, photographer, graphic artist, secretary, lecturer, teacher. The mind is open and flexible, and keeps a youthful and eager approach to life, or at least to those areas of life on which it has decided to concentrate. There is a great interest in animals, children, and nature. There is an ability to move easily from one idea or field to another. With Mercury in Fire or Air, they are inclined to move too rapidly or easily, picking up nothing as they go, remembering little, and leaving no trace of having been there.
Those with Mercury in the 3rd House usually have great stories about people they have known and places they have been. There is a great incoming stream of information about the world; but without aspects of crystallization these will form no philosophy or concepts, and will be put to no other use than amusing conversation with whoever is around. There is a great feel for the true sound and tempo of everyday life, that is good for playwrights, novelists, comedians, etc.. It makes a person capable of being a very witty and entertaining companion. They usually have a wide circle of amusing acquaintances, although deep friendships must be shown by other factors.
The people with Mercury in the Third House tend to engage easily with short-term activities and journeys. They are at home with initiating communications and new learning situations. They are often seen as rational and curious, but restless and easily bored, unless other chart factors mitigate the effects of Mercury here.
Mercury is strongly placed in the 3rd house, since in the natural zodiac this is one of its own houses. The sign placement and aspects to it will describe the way a person thinks, learns and digests experience. A 3rd house Mercury in Fire or Air or in aspect to Mars, Jupiter or Uranus indicates a more extroverted and speedy mind than when Mercury is placed in an Earth sign or in aspect to Saturn, which slows down and deepends the thought processes. Mercury in Water or aspected to the Moon or Neptune leans more through osmosis, absorption and aesthetic and emotional appreciation than in an analytic, step-by-step mode. A ‘good mind’ is normally defined as one that can think rationally and logically; but an examination of the 3rd house may reveal other kinds of minds – just as good – which operate differently from the standards of traditional educational systems. (Howard Sasportas)
The cusp sign of Mercury in the third house may show, for example, something of the way people with this placement initially approach their surroundings and the beginnings of relationships with others. Mercury in Pisces in the 3rd house people have minds which can easily pick up on the moods and attitudes of the people around them; those with Mercury in Leo may have much self-confidence in their own mental abilities and be strong-willed enough to express these well. Planetary aspects, too, might help to develop or prevent certain characterisitcs of mind when this placement is prominent. (Freda Edis)
Mercury in the Third House: Negative Traits
If you are inwardly insecure, your need for constant sensory stimulation in order to feel mentally alive will be almost obsessive. Your ego is firmly attached to the objects of sense, which you consider yours (if not in possession, then as your experience). To admit that there may be something behind the immediately observable is an admission that the premise on which your ego-esteem is based may not be valid. This is tantamount to admitting that your ego-self may actually not exist, although you would probably never verbalize this thought. This is a thought that is unbearable and, so, you cling desperately to your sensory experiences. You deny whatever cannot be objectively confirmed and you become defensive when confronted by the prospect of the unknown or the complex. (Gargatholil)
The danger is that some third house Mercury people may occasionally feel themselves to be eternal students and forever on the move mentally; at times, it can pall.
This restlessness could make for much moving about and someone that cannot seem to sit still. Where communication is concerned, although they usually communicate well, they may be too talkative or say things better left unsaid. They can be clever communicators and may exhibit a talent for writing or public speaking or use these skills in some other form of commerce. Conditions of the third, such as sign placement and aspects, will tell how this person tends to think and learn as well as the style of communication.
As they are an insatiably curious person, the process of mentality is more pronounced than the pursuit of any particular information. Knowing is not an end per se, but rather a continuing means of stroking their nervous system. The pitfall surrounds not focusing long enough to ever really learn anything, creating a perpetual state of nervous aggravation, an ‘itch you can’t scratch’. The challenge is to enjoy the desire to know rather than the knowing itself. (Bill Herbst)
Difficulties with any third-house issues will be denoted by inharmonious aspects to it in the third house. These may relate to any third-house issue, be it sibling rivalry, learning difficulties or problems with close relatives. The nature and sign of the aspecting planet should be scrutinized for indications of what these problems might be. Harmonious aspects will reflect information in a similar manner and indicate planetary energies that will more easily be assimilated and aid in third-house affairs.
Learning difficulties may be shown by aspects of Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto to a 3rd house Mercury, and often stem from the fact that this person’s mind is not the type that is favoured by conventional teaching techniques. (Howard Sasportas)
With Mercury in the 3rd house these people will gladly take the other side of the argument for the sheer pleasure of it and to keep up the ecvitement of a conversation, though they actually feel committed to no one position, which can be aggravating to those around them, who may feel that there is simply nothing there. They are better at providing a forum forothers, recording others, helping others to bring forth their ideas, than they are at presenting their own, for often they have no real viewpoint, since they see so clearly all sides of a question. (Stephanie Camilleri)
Mercury in the Houses
Last updated on August 30, 2017 at 1:39 am. Word Count: 1825