Mercury & Venus - renamed

Following the indications in the collected work of Rudolf Steiner, the names of Mercury and Venus have been exchanged, swapped - but have they really been renamed, and if so, what does that mean in practice?

A simple yes would imply that everything has been renamed, everywhere, all the time. A simple no would mean that there has been no renaming at all. In both cases nothing much has happened in reality - if anything, it were only all about words.

But here, as is often the case, the starting point is wrong: the question itself cannot be put in this way. In the book, first the question is rephrased, then a method given to obtain insight into where and when there has been renaming and where not. It uses ordered groups of planets, while taking into account symbols and visual representations. This method can also be used by you, for exploring further areas of research which include Mercury and Venus.

The book continues with a discussion of the specific relations of Mercury and Venus to different topics, like metals or colours and so on. For each topic the relation is indicated and where to find the supporting quotes, either in English or in the original German. Some of the results remain in harmony with common views on such relationships of Mercury and Venus to certain themes - other results, however, are stunning.

To get the results presented here took several years - working on it at intervals, moving back and forth between coming to final conclusions and then rejecting them again. This text is therefore a well-condensed version of hundreds of pages with notes and quotes.

It contains more than 20 figures, more than 20 tables and an index of keywords.

The author is astronomer and member of the school of spiritual science and carries out research to build the bridge between the natural and spiritual sciences.

www.lanz-spaan.ch/en/spaan/