Judith Hill: herbs, the heart and the bones

Mars the warrior, Jupiter the liver

How a herb gets its planet

Herbalism has always looked to the sky, Judith Hill says: the ancients watched the Moon to know when to pick a herb and when to give it, and around the late first century AD Thessalus of Tralles was the first to set down which herbs belong to which planets — though the link may be far older, she adds, for the Druids gathered vervain under particular influences, with ceremony. Her own rule is to match a herb's action to a planet's. Mars heats, dries and expels — “Mars is a warrior… a killer” — so it takes cayenne, the laxatives and the herbs that kill what you don't want: garlic, tea tree oil, chaparral. Herbs have organ affinities too: Jupiter governs the liver, so dandelion root and milk thistle can go under Jupiter. The old lists also sorted herbs by colour, myth, season and looks, and are “quite confused” — which is why she has revised them, in her course Astrological Herbalism Decoded.