Magenta Magic
Wednesday, Quicksilver, Mercury
The Mage Entangled Wednesday in Quicksilver Bright;
Mercury is both Lord of Dance and Word of Light.
Magenta
A most deceptive, foxy (and so entirely apt) name, this term for the light secondary twixt red and blue, for Magenta true is a brilliant red - though of a slightly purplish hue. It is a dye, synthetic - artifical, a derivative of coal-tar -, named for the Battle of Magenta (1859) in which, just prior to the dye's discovery, the North Italian town had been washed in crimson life: such was the slaughter.They die and die and die in vain:But magenta has other names: the scientific rosaniline (it is one of the synthetic aniline dyes); and yet a third, fuchsine, so called because of the similarity of colour to the pendant flowers of the fuchsia, and thereby hangs an enigma quite worthy of that old fox, Mercury...
Magenta has them dye again!
The fuchsia, and by association fuchsine, was named after the German botanist, Leonhard Fuchs, (1501-66). In solution, fuchsine is a purplish-red but as a solid, it is green - the light complement of magenta (i.e. green light mixed with magenta light will produce white light). Another green solid, with a name that differs only by a single letter, is the chromium mica, fuchsite, named not after Leonhard Fuchs but by another German, the mineralogist, J. N. von Fuchs, (1774-1856).
Before Magenta spilled its colour into our souls, Mercury was Purple. Not just any purple but the Imperial Purple of the Roman Emperors: another dye; and more death. The Crimson dye of Tyre coloured a royal robe with the life juices from tens of thousands of tiny shellfish.
And beyond dyes, beyond death, Mercury is the non-spectral purples unseen by humans at wavelengths longer than the deep reds, and shorter than violet. Some pollinating insects see these colours, including the honey-bees. As Mercury is both messenger to the gods and the humans' psychopomp (the guide of dead souls), so the honey-bees in the orchard must be told of a death in the household. Sanskrit madhu ('sweet') not only gave us our fermented honey 'mead' but also provided the Greeks with methy ('wine') from which they created the word amethystos ('not drunk or inebriated'). The Greeks then applied that word to a semi-precious stone popularly supposed to prevent drunkenness - the amethyst - Mercury's stone.
If the colour of Mercury is impossible to pin down, so is its metal. Quicksilver, or mercury, Atomic Number 80, is as lively as either its planetary namesake or the god. At normal temperatures it is a liquid with the amazing property of combining with other pure metals upon contact to form an amalgam; but let there be the slightest patina of impurity and mercury will roll itself into a little ball and go skidding off. Quicksilver, however, is not the first nor the only metal inhabited by Mercury. When magic requires a solid metal for Mercury, as in the creation of talismans, it uses an alloy of tin and silver - perhaps a more effective metal since it represents the principal deity in his abode. Anciently, long before the liquid quicksilver was known, Mercury's metal was electron, also known as electrum, a naturally formed alloy of gold and silver.
Magic
Square of Mercury | |||||||
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Angel Michael |
Bird stork, crane |
Creation Kosmos |
Deity Nabu, Hermes, Mercury, Woden | ||||
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Infernal Perdition |
Member left hand |
Metal electron, mercury, tinned silver |
Numbers 8, 64, 260, 2080 | ||||
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Orifice mouth |
Planet Mercury |
Stone agate, amethyst |
Weekday Wednesday | ||||
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Ink Amera |
(C) David 1/9/2007 |
Contact |