REALMS archive of entities

Mercurius

deity intermediate German corroborated · 3

Mercurius is one of the alchemical "deities" named in Atalanta Fugiens (1617) by German alchemist-physician Michael Maier. Mercurius corresponds symbolically to one of the four figurines in the Layer Quaternity. As an alchemical deity, Mercurius represents one aspect of the mandala's polarized symbolism.

↻ synthesized from 3 sources

When

First attested
300 BCE
Attested period
1120 – 1617
Historical notes
Named as alchemical deity in Atalanta Fugiens (1617) by Michael Maier.

Relationships

allied with
Vulcan, Apollo, Luna
co occurs with
Nature, Sol, God, the devil

Expand to full subgraph →

Mentioned by

Sources

wikipedia (2)
  1. The Layer Monument
  2. The Layer Quaternity
encyclopedia (1)
  1. Alain de l'Isle (Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)) (1913)
    peer reviewed

Source passages

“Symbolically, the Layer Quaternity correspond to the alchemical "deities" of Apollo, Luna, Mercurius and Vulcan as named in Atalanta Fugiens (1617) by the German alchemist-physician Michael Maier”

#20187 · extracted by anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5

“The Layer Quaternity also corresponds to the alchemical 'deities' Apollo, Luna, Mercurius and Vulcan as named in emblem XVII of Atalanta Fugiens (1617) by the German alchemist-physician Michael Maier.”

#20196 · extracted by google/gemini-2.0-flash-001

“He derived his Pythagoreanism from the so-called Hermetical writers, Asclepius and Mercurius.”

#44643 · extracted by openai/gpt-oss-120b:free