Drawing 5: Caduceus of Mercury

Philaletheians UK · Planetary Rounds and Globes Series · 1 page

*A single-page drawing, the fifth of the seven, of the caduceus of Mercury, made after The Secret Doctrine* volume I, page 550 and following. The sheet carries no explanation of its own; for analysis and commentary it points to "Keys to the Mystery Language" in the site's Theosophy and Theosophists Series.

The figure is drawn plain and large against a pale golden ground, and it repays looking at closely because the detail is exact. A slender staff rises up the middle, topped by a serpent's head shown from the front rather than by the usual knob, and flanked by a pair of broad grey wings with every feather drawn. Around the staff two serpents are twined in three crossings — one dark and scaled, one white — rising from a knot at the foot where their tails cross, each with its head turned inward and its tongue extended towards the other. The two are deliberately distinguished by colour rather than merely doubled, which is the point the accompanying series makes of the symbol: the staff as the axis, and the two serpents as the opposed and complementary currents wound about it. This drawing is the plain form; Drawing 6 is the same figure with the spheres added.

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