Like Mercury standing firm on the Earth and raising his wand into the sky, nature shifts our gaze from the literal world at our feet to the higher, spiritual implications of that world. This nature-rooted brand of spirituality has the advantage of not creating a dualistic way of lift where body is opposed to mind and matter separated from spirit. Classically the midrealm of Mercury was known as the domain of the soul, which has both material and spiritual elements. In recent decades we have come to think of the spiritual life in such abstract terms that it seems almost by definition to be opposed to the mundane world. Rather than an open-ended deep trust in life, we are wrapped by an intellectual attachment to certain ideas, values and opinions.
Death remains a profound and confronting mystery.
In spite of our advances in technological medicine, illness still arrives as a shock and a mystery. Even in our daily emotional lives, we are confronted by inexplicable depressions, loss of meaning, and the sense of failure. In the face of these mysteries, we tend to latch onto a comforting explanation, theory or spiritual programme and give it our loyalty. Often, it seems, the provisional answers given by science or religion serve simply as palliatives to the fundamental anxiety of human life. We hold them tightly because they are all we have in the face of threats to our safety, health, happiness, and indeed our very existence.