Mercury Combust Dates

Mercury is combust more often than any other graha, several times a year and usually for about three weeks at a stretch. Parashara and Surya Siddhanta give the orb as fourteen degrees, or twelve when Mercury is retrograde, and because Mercury never moves far from the Sun, it spends much of the year in the glare.

The Sun is neutral toward Mercury in Parashara's table, and Mercury counts the Sun a friend. Combustion is a familiar condition for Mercury, and the texts treat it more lightly than for other grahas. Its significations still dim for those weeks: speech, intellect, trade, writing, travel and the nervous system. Judgement clouds over. People tend to speak from ego.

The combustion at the inferior conjunction, when Mercury is also retrograde, is the shorter one, often under a fortnight, and it needs more care. The one at the superior conjunction, with Mercury moving direct, lasts longer and passes more quietly. Both call for a second look at every message and every contract.

The house where the combustion falls, counted from the Moon and from the lagna, names the field. Phaladeepika lists the second, fourth, sixth, eighth, tenth and eleventh as Mercury's favourable transit houses, and a combustion there is a short pause in a productive stretch. In the third, seventh or twelfth, misunderstandings multiply.

These weeks expose the habit of speaking for effect, since the Sun's pride is the louder voice while they last. Saying less helps.

• Read every message twice and sign nothing that can wait three weeks.
• Worship Vishnu and give green cloth or moong on Wednesday, the dana Parashara names for Mercury.
• Recite Om Budhaya Namah, and offer water to the Sun at dawn.