Invoking Mercury for ebook marketing!

Hermes

You have the power, with self-publishing and ebook publishing, to pretty much choose the date for when your book comes out. What therefore do you do? Time it for the Summer market? Time it for the Christmas market? I recently asked myself this question when it came to selecting the date to announce my new Fantasy novel, This Is Not A Fairy Story. My solution, as it happened, consisted of selecting the precise date using Electional Astrology.

Electional Astrology, as I understand it, essentially consists of deciding in advance the ideal criteria for a desired day, and then searching for a date which matches that criteria. Fortunately, modern astrology software and even free services such as www.astro.com nowadays make this easy. In my case, I reasoned that because the planet Mercury is associated with business, communication and writing, the best day for the launch of my novel would that on which it would be ideal to invoke Mercury.

This by itself told me that it ought to be during the “planetary hour” of Mercury. Fortunately, by sticking to Wednesday at sunrise, this would save me the bother of having to work out all the planetary hours! However: there is more to it than this. To find a more specific date in electional astrology, one works by the rule of thumb “always pay attention to the position of the Moon.” Hence, I reasoned, my ideal date should also be one between the New Moon and Full Moon – because the Waxing Moon is traditionally a time for increasing or attracting towards, just as the Waning Moon is a time for banishing. Also, it should be on a day when Mercury formed a harmonious angle to the Moon, such as a trine, sextile, or conjunction.

Furthermore, I reasoned, it ought not to be when Mercury is Retrograde – as this is traditionally a bad time for starting new ventures. Finally, it ought to be when Mercury forms harmonious angles to other key planets such as Jupiter and the Sun, and does not form inharmonious angles with any of the other planets.

By now I had come up with a very specific list of criteria. I proceeded to take a calendar for the forthcoming twelve months, and strike through every Wednesday during waning-moons. Instantly I had reduced fifty-two possible dates to twenty-six. Checking the dates for when Mercury was retrograde eliminated approximately six-more dates. I also thought that if I were going to attach importance to Jupiter in my calculations, I ought to eliminate dates when Jupiter is retrograde as well. This basically removed all of from November 2012 to January 2013. Having now a list of approximately fourteen dates, I proceeded to use www.astro.com to check each one by one. All but seven dates I eliminated as being either obviously bad, or just unremarkable.

Dates for Invoking Mercury during the next twelve months

So here is the list which I finished with. You can if you want make use of this information yourself, if you feel like invoking Mercury, or making a talisman, or indeed releasing your own best-seller.

Being an impatient fellow, I chose the first suitable date that was coming up: 22nd August 2012 (i.e. yesterday). I don’t think I’ll be ready with another full-length novel by 26th September, so that gives me plenty of time until next year.