Pliny the Elder, apparently horny for zesty botanicals, wrote about mint extensively. He’d wax poetic about its use in soothing gastrointestinal maladies. He described its verdant abundance on the walls of wells and around fishpools. He insisted on its superb knack for halting headaches when smeared at one’s temples. 

He also just thought it was yummy in his tummy. 

“As for the garden of mint, the very smell of it alone recovers and refreshes our spirits, as the taste stirs up our appetite for meat,” he wrote. (Meat is not the first thing I think of when pondering mint. But who am I to yuck a yum?)

Pliny was not alone in his menthol mania. There is much writing of yore on the aromatic plants of the mentha genus. Mint’s use as a stomach ache remedy is named on cuneiform tablets from ancient Babylon. The ancient Greeks spelled out how they incorporate mint into hygiene. Peppermint was a go-to spadmolytic in the late 1800s. 

Did you know that, in myth, mint stems from Hades and Persephone? Minte was a nymph whom Persephone suspected was having an affair with her husband Hades. (Insert meat joke here.) “In a jealous rage, she transformed the lovely nymph into a perennial herb,” writes the New York Botanical Garden. “Hades, unable to counteract his wife’s spell, bestowed Minthe with a sweet smell so that she would continue to delight those who came in contact with her.”

This is to say: there’s a lot written about mint because there were a lot of uses for mint. So it makes sense it’s found its way into esoteric traditions and correspondences. 

Yet my favorite fact about mint as an astral correspondent doesn’t have to do with what it’s used for or how it smells. It’s about how it grows. 

Famously, mint is … shall we say, expansive. Outgoing. Extensive. Vigorous. Voluminous.

OK, it’s invasive. 

An avid gardener once told me that there are no tips for growing mint. It just does. If you don’t contain it in a pot, it will touch down on soil and you’re cooked. You now live in Mint Town. 

This is because mint doesn’t spread by seeds; its shallow roots expand outwardly like questing tendrils. They establish rhizomes quickly before shooting up a verdant little colony. It’s a process of breakneck growth that can annex a garden. According to Laura Simpson at The Seattle Times, it “requires constant vigilance because it keeps trying to escape.”

Honestly, I’d love even an iota of this herb’s tenacity.

I find it satisfying that mint corresponds to the planet Jupiter: the planet of abundance, permeation, and expansion. Overflowing fertility. The biggest planet there is.

Yes, there are also other reasons for this pairing, such as mint’s cleansing and invigorating properties and Jupiter’s characteristic optimism. But I’ve enjoyed thinking about how mint’s growth aptly mirrors Jupiter’s gift for bigifying whatever it touches. (To paraphrase how Chani Nicholas talks about it.)

The mint-Jupiter connection reminds us that astral correspondences are all about metaphor. Plant correspondences is a rich topic. For instance, black poplar’s roots reach so deep they correspond to Hecate and Persephone, goddesses of the underworld. The ash tree, which was used for making sturdy ancient Greek fighting spears, corresponds to Ares, the god of war.

If you’re starting out with correspondences, I suggest assigning various plants to each planetary body, zodiac sign, or tarot card based on your own associations. What are other plants, animals, crystals, anything, that remind you of certain characteristics?

If you’re looking at Jupiter correspondences besides mint, think about what makes you feel abundant or what you associate with expansion. Perhaps for you it’s homemade bread, its dough expanding plentifully before perfuming your entire home with its warm redolence. Or maybe it’s something more chaotic: mentos meets Diet Coke.

Whatever you write, you’ll do as mint does and lay down a few new roots.

Yes, you can ask me questions! This week’s question comes to me from my wife. She is — like mint — a plant. If you’d like to throw an unplanted question at me, just reply. :)

It flips the usual way of interacting with tarot on its head: instead of pulling a card and thinking of an association in my world, I often look at my world and ponder what archetypal energy I’m encountering. 

There’s something philosophically important in that reversal. Going backward, starting from lived experience and working toward the archetype, trains a completely different muscle. It teaches you to see the tarot in your world rather than as a lens you hold up to it. And it’s less pressure and more fun.

It also mirrors how these systems were actually built. No one sat down and invented The Moon card in the abstract. They looked at the night sky, at tides and cycles and the strange and shady behaviors of animals and humans in the dark. And then they named what they observed. The archetype came from the pattern. Not the other way around!

When you scroll past a pic of a foggy road at dusk and feel a little anxiety bubbling up in you and think “Oh shit, that’s The Moon” — you are doing exactly what the original cartographers of this system did. Check out my full Pinterest board tarot collections.

Respond to this email with a question you want me to answer in a future newsletter!

Thanks for reading,
Cristina

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