Mercury IC line
A thinking home. The Mercury IC line (Imum Coeli) runs through the places where Mercury was at the bottom of its daily arc when you were born.
☿Mercury lines· Imum Coeli
What the Mercury IC line means
With Mercury beneath you, the private life fills with books, conversation, study and movement. It is a good place to learn, to write at home, to run a business from the kitchen table, and to stay in touch with family across distance. Restlessness is the other side: this is not a line for sitting still.
The Mercury IC brings Mercury's people home. A brother who drops round unannounced, a neighbour you swap keys and gossip with, a flatmate, the friend who stays a week, a study group that meets around your table. The door is rarely shut for long, and the post piles up beside it.
It works well as a base to come and go from, a town with a good station and a decent library from which the short trips go out. Family history is another use. The IC stands for the past as well as the home, and with Mercury on it the line favours the conversations a family never had, learning a grandparent's language or writing the memoir. Light sleepers should look at the street before they look at the flat.
Where it runs
The Mercury IC line runs from pole to pole too, half a world away from the Mercury MC line. Everywhere on it, Mercury was on the meridian at the bottom of its daily arc when you were born.
Distance and birth time
A line is a band, not a wall. Zenith Map's scores count a line in full on it, about 60% at 250 km, about 14% at 500 km and not at all beyond 1,000 km. Astrocartographers draw the edge in different places; the methodology page gives the reasoning for this one.
Every line in a chart moves west by a quarter of a degree of longitude for each minute later the birth: about 28 km at the equator and 14 km at 60° latitude. A time rounded to the nearest quarter hour can put your Mercury IC line up to about 200 km from where it's drawn, which is why the map draws bands when you say the time is approximate.
Questions
Can you work from home on a Mercury IC line?
Yes, and the tradition would count it among the line's strengths. Mercury beneath you puts study, writing and running things by phone and laptop at the centre of home life. The catch is interruption, since the same line brings visitors, neighbours, deliveries and a steady trickle of small errands.
What does the Mercury IC line mean for family?
A talkative family life, in most readings: more contact with siblings and cousins, more calls home if you live far from your parents, and old family stories coming out. Modern astrology gives Mercury the brothers and sisters, so sibling ties are the ones to watch on this line.
Is the Mercury IC line a restful place to live?
Not especially. Astrocartographers describe it as a lively, talkative home with plenty of coming and going, which suits curious and sociable people more than anyone hoping for quiet. For rest, the Moon IC and Venus IC lines are the more common suggestions.
Related lines
The other Mercury lines: Mercury MC, Mercury ASC, Mercury DSC.
Imum Coeli lines of the other planets: Sun IC, Moon IC, Venus IC, Mars IC, Jupiter IC, Saturn IC, Uranus IC, Neptune IC, Pluto IC.
Mercury lines are drawn with Pro; the free map shows the Sun, Moon, Venus and Jupiter.