Reference

Mercury — essence and what was added to it

Mercury: vak — speech.

Essence: vak — speech. Stated at bphs-santhanam 3.12-13.

The three registers

One root, read at three levels. These are our derivations, not printed anywhere: each one has to follow from the root word above, and a reading that cannot be traced back to it is the fluff this method exists to remove.

Material. Commerce, contracts, skills, and every transaction that is mediated by language or numbers. Money that arrives because you explained something well.

Mental. Analysis, articulation, discrimination, nerves. The mental register is Mercury’s home ground: vak is speech, and speech is thought made checkable.

Spiritual. Discernment - viveka. Telling one thing from another, including telling a real teaching from a plausible one. The graha that makes a spiritual claim testable rather than merely felt.

What genuinely derives from it

articulation, analysis, skill, commerce, nerves, learning, discrimination

What was appended — and is not carried here

These do not follow from the essence. Where they encode a social rank or a rule about who a person may be, we do not use them.

• ‘commercial community’ as caste (BPHS 3.21)

How to use this

A claim that follows from the essence is carried. A claim that does not was appended, whenever it was written — and almost all of it turns out to concern caste, gender role or marriage eligibility.

All grahas and sources· The writing that uses them· How a reading is computed