Jupiter’s Lemon Balm
Lemon balm is a citrusy mint that carries with it the kindness and support of Jupiter. Lemon balm lifts our hearts, cools us off, and protects our nerves. Like its planetary ruler, lemon balm can create lightness in us and even hope.
Lemon balm is a perennial in the mint family. It thrives in moist but well-drained soil with some sunlight. It has bright green heart-shaped scalloped leaves and spreads easily, though it is not as unruly as some of its other mint cousins. While we find this plant throughout the world, lemon balm has deep ties to the peoples and lands of North Africa, South West Asia, Central Asia, and Southern Europe.
Lemon balm’s Latin name is Melissa officinalis. When we see “officinalis” we know the herb was considered essential in monastery storerooms in the Middle Ages. “Melissa” comes from the Greek word for “bee” because they love it so (plant lemon balm!). In myth, Melissa is the name of a nymph who nursed baby Jupiter with honey rather than milk.
Jupiter’s balm
Lemon balm affects the three major seats of the nervous system: the brain, heart, and guts. In all cases, lemon balm soothes and cools overactivity. This is such an important Jupiter lesson. When we feel scattered and high-strung, the answer isn’t always try harder. Jupiter isn’t about discipline; Jupiter is about encouragement and belief. We see these virtues in lemon balm. Lemon balm offers focus by relaxing us. Lemon balm won’t make you drowsy but it will calm your mental chatter, slow your heart palpitations, and settle your nervous stomach. Rather than finding focus by clamping down and forcing it, lemon balm helps us ease into a place where things come into focus of their own accord.
There are a cascade of effects when the nervous system relaxes. We might relax our muscles, which may no longer be bracing for flight-or-fight. When we relax our muscles, blood flows more easily, feeding our cells the nutrients they crave. If we have nerve pain, like tension headaches, they might cool off as the constriction is soothed.
For this reason, lemon balm offers aid with anxiety, insomnia, restlessness, inattention, and hyperactivity. I associate these symptoms with Mercury (as well as Mars, who I’ll get to in a bit). Mercury is responsible for communication in the nervous system. When we are overwhelmed by our thinking self, when we are overstimulated, when we have so much in front of us but can’t prioritize — we are often in Mercury-overdrive land. Jupiter can provide a bit of balance, and so can lemon balm.
Jupiter can help us prioritize because Jupiter cares about values and beliefs and the big picture. Jupiter looks at a too-long to-do list and says, Based on your larger vision, what comes next? If you believed you could do it, what would you do now? What would be meaningful? What matters to you? When we work with lemon balm, an emissary of Jupiter, it’s easier to evaluate our next steps based on what and who we care about, rather than scattering our energies in tension and fear. This is a Jupiter teaching and I hold it dearly.
Lemon balm can help when there’s too much Mars as well. Lemon balm is well-indicated in hot flashes, heat stroke, heat exhaustion, and hot fevers that are unrelenting. As a diaphoretic, lemon balm throws open the doors of the body to let heat out through the skin. Drinking lemon balm ice tea (or even a room temperature infusion) through hot seasons can be soothing.
Lemon balm is protective too. Earlier herbals mention lemon balm as a remedy for stings and venomous bites. For example, in his De Materia Medica, herbalist and botanist Dioscorides (40-90 CE, born in contemporary Turkey) suggests lemon balm as a remedy for scorpion stings and spider bites. Contemporary herbalist Rosalee de la Forêt writes about working with lemon balm for wasp stings to great effect. There’s a protective quality to this herb.
We’ve also seen that lemon balm is particularly skilled at combating the herpes viruses (chickenpox, shingles, oral herpes, HPV, and so on) by blocking the virus’s ability to replicate.
Building a relationship with lemon balm
If you’d like to cultivate a relationship with Jupiter, growing lemon balm is one way to do so. Tending the plant is a wonderful way to express gratitude, to be sure what you take is replenished, and to learn more about the plant itself. It also means you can sit with the plant and experience it as a being without taking anything at all.
Lemon balm is widely available and grows happily in a container or in the ground. Like the rest of the mint family, it’s pretty forgiving and will spread where it’s planted. If you run your hand through it gently, you can smell this heavenly honeyed lemon aroma for which it is named. Or just stick your head in and take a whiff (with consent, please and thank you).
If growing the plant isn’t available to you, you might consider working with lemon balm as a tea or tincture, and then make an offering of your attention and presence. Try not to rush off and do something else but be with your cup of tea. Feel the whole experience of the drops of tincture. Offer your thanks. Think about what had to happen for this lemon balm to arrive here with you.
If available to you, you can also taking care of the land around you as a thank you note. Land need not be a woods or meadow. It can be a sidewalk. It can be a parking lot. Recently Amaya Rourke, an animist astrologer and mage (and teacher, writer, herbalist — Amaya contains multitudes), posted a challenge to pick up trash in your local area once a day. It was inspiring to see not only the before and after photos of folks’ neighborhoods but to hear the stories of what this small act did for them too. Because truly reciprocal relationships loop like that.
I participated in the challenge and got so much from it. Picking up trash is a simple, unsexy act of repair that taught me — in tangible, smelly, sticky ways — about humans and the more-than-human world. Simple caretaking can create profound connection. And it is a way to say thank you for the bounty this planet provides us.
Lemon balm is certainly part of that bounty. For a long time, lemon balm has been a “food herb.” It isn’t something you have to dose very carefully but rather you can incorporate it into your diet like broccoli or garlic. You can put lemon balm in a salad. You can make lemon balm pesto. It is safe for children, elders, and even dogs. Lemon balm has no known drug interactions.
My only word of caution is about thyroid conditions. Lemon balm can assist in hyperthyroidism. If you are taking medications for hyperthyroidism, you may want to speak to your health practitioner in case you end up needing to adjust your dose. On the flip side, some animal and in vitro studies indicate that lemon balm may adversely affect hypothyroidism, but there are no known cases of this issue occurring in human bodies.
You can work with lemon balm topically or internally. Fresh plant is best for tinctures and for vinegar or wine extracts. Fresh lemon balm in honey truest to the plant’s lore. I also love lemon balm as tea, fresh or dried. Steep for at least 15 minutes, covered. As I mentioned earlier, it makes a wonderful iced tea.
It’s not always easy to feel Jupiter — their hope, belief, abundance, vision, and general hype-energy. Personally, I struggle with Jupiter but my relationship with lemon balm has offered a jovial touchstone.
Lemon balm also smells and tastes good and that’s no small thing. Lemon balm makes me feel grateful, even for just a moment, which then brings in a little hope. So often, it’s hard to reach for Jupiter because it feels like change is impossible. That tiny shift lemon balm offers is a reminder that’s not true. If anything, change is the most possible thing there is.
So I invite you to bask in lemon balm’s honeyed kindness, and then thank this green one and Jupiter with your whole heart — however you can.
Sources
Bakhshaei, Sarah. “Phyto-Pharmacological Effect of Nine Medicinal Plants as Traditional Treatment of Depression.” IIOAB Journal. 2017; 8 (2): 76-81. https://www.iioab.org/IIOABJ_8.S2_76-81.pdf.
de la Forêt, Rosalee. “The Lemon Balm Plant.” HerbalRemediesAdvice.org, www.herbalremediesadvice.org/lemon-balm-plant.html.
Dioscorides. (2000). Dioscorides: De materia medica (T. Osbaldeston, Trans.). Johannesburg, South Africa: Ibidis. (Original work published 70 CE)
Gardner, Z. E., & McGuffin, M. (2013). American Herbal Products Association's Botanical Safety Handbook (2nd ed.). American Herbal Products Association, CRC Press.
Grieve, Maud (1971). A modern herbal. New York, NY: Dover Publications.
Groves, Maria Noel (2019). Grow Your Own Home Remedies. North Adams, MA: Storey Publishing.
Hazard, Sara (2017). “Lemon Balm (Melissa officinalis).” HerbRally.com, https://www.herbrally.com/monographs/lemon-balm.
Popham, Sajah. “Volume #11: Lemon Balm (Melissa officinalis).” Materia Medica Monthly.
Notes from my studies at The Commonwealth Center for Holistic Herbalism as well as The School of Evolutionary Herbalism.
