Almost 500 species of Artemisia (Artemisia sp.) occur worldwide, around fifty of which are native to North America. The genus was named—big surprise!—by Carl Linnaeus in 1753. Some suggest that he named the genus after Queen Artemisia II, the fourth-century BC ruler of Caria, a kingdom on the southwest coast of what is now Turkey. Later Roman writers credited her with knowledge of botany and medicinal plants, which may have led Linnaeus to name a genus after her. (She is perhaps better remembered for the monumental tomb, once considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World, that she built for her husband Mausolus. Thereafter large tombs became known as mausoleums, named after Artemisia’s husband.) Others maintain, however, that the genus was named after Artemis, the Greek goddess of the Moon, and this interpretation is now the most popular. Linnaeus himself apparently never elaborated on the source of the genus name.
One of the best known—notorious even—of the European species of Artemisia is Artemisia absinthium, or Wormwood, one of the main ingredients in the psychoactive alcoholic drink absinthe, long banned in the United States because of its alleged hallucinogenic properties but now once again legal. One of the better known native North American species, Artemisia ludoviciana, or White Sagebrush, which occurs mainly in western North America, is famous for its use in Native American smudging ceremonies and is also used in witchcraft and pagan practices. Perhaps the species now most prevalent in America is Artemisia vulgaris, a native of Eurasia and North Africa, commonly known as Mugwort. It was probably brought to the New World by early settlers who valued its medicinal properties and by practitioners of arcane arts attracted by its alleged magical attributes.
Five or six species of the genus Artemisia have been identified along the GAP. Mugwort—Artemisia vulgaris—is one of them, but GAPers are probably more likely to encounter Artemisia verlotiorum, sometimes called Chinese Mugwort or simply Artemisia. A native of China and neighboring parts of eastern Asia, it eventually spread to Europe. Originally considered a variant of Artemisia vulgaris, in 1876 the French botanist Martial Lamotte formally described it as a species distinct from Artemisia vulgaris and named it in honor of Jean-Baptiste Verlot (1816–1891), who first noted the difference, and his brother Pierre Lazare Bernard Verlot (1836–1897), both renowned French botanists. It too spread to the North American continent.
Admittedly, the identification of the Artemisia that grows along the GAP is controversial. Some authorities maintain that the Verlot brothers were full of hooey and that Artemisia verlotiorum is not a separate species but just a variant of Artemisia vulgaris. At least one authority, while acknowledging the existence of Artemisia verlotiorum, maintains that it does not occur in Pennsylvania at all. Others hedge by saying that Artemisia verlotiorum is probably a different species and probably does occur along the GAP but that further study is needed to settle the matter conclusively. There is also the possibility that the plant that occurs along the GAP is a hybrid of Artemisia verlotiorum and Artemisia vulgaris. Such hybrids have been identified in Europe, but it is not known if they occur in America. While all this uncertainty has led to a lot of head scratching, beard pulling, and gnashing of teeth on the part of professional botanists, most GAPers will probably be content with calling any member of the genus they find along the GAP simply Artemisia.
That said, taking all the available evidence into consideration, the Artemisia shown here is probably Artemisia verlotiorum. In any case, Artemisia verlotiorum and Artemisia vulgaris have much the same medicinal and magical qualities. Artemisia verlotiorum is said to be more aromatic than Artemisia vulgaris, and the Artemisia shown here is indeed very aromatic.
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| Young Artemisia with the previous years stalks |
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| Immature Artemisia |
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| A colony of Artemisia. Much of the colony has been destroyed by the lamentable practice of mowing the verges of the GAP. Artemis would not be happy. |
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Flowering panicle of putative Chinese Mugwort, Artemisia verlotiorum. The arching main axis carries many pendent, leafy branchlets crowded with small green, nodding capitula—a useful field character for separating it from Common Mugwort (A. vulgaris)
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| Artemisia |
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| Dried Artemisia |
As noted, the genus name Artemisia is widely attributed to the Greek moon goddess Artemis, who is also associated with hunting (she and her twin brother Apollo are credited in Greek legends with inventing the bow and arrow) and with wildlife and wilderness places. She is often portrayed with a deer.
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| Artemis with her quiver |
According to legend she never entered into any relationships with men and remained a virgin her entire life, going to great lengths to protect her chastity. Once she caught the human Actaeon spying on her while she was bathing nude in a forest pond. Outraged by this Peeping Tom behavior, she used her magical powers to turn Actaeon into a stag and then sicced his own pack of hounds on him. Not recognizing that the stag was their former master, they tore him to pieces.
As a moon goddess, Artemis is associated with all things lunar, just as her twin brother Apollo is associated with the sun and all things solar. The first NASA crewed lunar program was of course named Apollo, which offended many in the Lunar Community, who accused NASA of outright misogyny in not affording Artemis this honor. Happily this oversight has been corrected in the form of NASA’s current lunar program, Artemis, which hopes to put humans back on the Moon for the first time since Apollo 17 back in December of 1972. One of the stated goals of the Artemis program is to place the first woman on the Moon. Artemis must be pleased.
Despite her own status as a virgin and her love of hunting and wild places, Artemis was also thought to oversee childbirth and the care of children, and she was regarded as a protector of women in general. Mugwort—or Artemisia—the plant named after her, became known as the “Mother of Herbs” and was viewed as a traditional aid for women at all life stages—easing menstrual pain, aiding childbirth, and supporting menopause. The menstrual cycle’s rough correspondence to the 29.5-day length of the lunar month reinforced the perceived connection between the Moon, the Moon Goddess Artemis, and the plant’s gynecological applications. The Moon governed women’s bodies, Artemis governed the Moon, and Artemisia—Mugwort—was Artemis’s gift to women. The herb was and still is used as an emmenagogue, promoting menstrual flow and helping to regulate irregular cycles. It is believed to strengthen the uterus, stimulate blood flow to the pelvic region, and ease menstrual cramps through its antispasmodic properties. However, these same properties indicate that Mugwort should be strictly avoided during pregnancy, as it can stimulate uterine contractions and potentially cause miscarriages. Apart from strictly feminine concerns, Mugwort is known for its strong antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties and is also used to treat high blood pressure. Mugwort is widely sold in health food stores and online, including by mainstream retailers such as Amazon, in capsules, in tea bags, and in loose-leaf form. Korean skincare companies—part of the so-called K-beauty industry—market worldwide skin creams based on Mugwort said to soothe and heal sensitive, irritated, or eczema-prone skin.
Considerable research has been done by pharmaceutical companies and government agencies in attempts to isolate the compounds responsible for Artemisia’s medicinal properties, and a huge collection of scientific literature on the subject has been published. Some of the most significant research was done in China. In 2015 Chinese scientist Tu Youyou, a pharmaceutical chemist and phytochemist at the Institute of Chinese Materia Medica of the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences (formerly the Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine) in Beijing, shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for isolating artemisinin, an antimalarial compound, from Artemisia annua, an Asian species of Mugwort.
The story begins in 1967, during the height of the Vietnam War, when North Vietnamese officials asked Chinese researchers to come up with a new treatment for malaria, which was not responding to the usual drugs. Since a new treatment for malaria was seen as vital to the war effort, a top-secret military program, code-named Project 523 for its founding on May 23, 1967, was set up to investigate alternatives. In January of 1969 Tu Youyou was appointed to head the Project 523 research group at her institute. Her research into the medicinal properties of Mugwort led her to the fourth-century herbal Zhouhou Beiji Fang, roughly translated as Emergency Prescriptions Kept Up One’s Sleeve, compiled by the Daoist scholar and alchemist Ge Hong (see Dandelion, above). Using the Zhouhou Beiji Fang as her guide, in 1972 she and her colleagues were able to extract the crystalline compound known as artemisinin from Mugwort. Artemisinin eventually became a frontline treatment for malaria, credited with saving millions of lives around the world, above all in Africa. Not until 2015 was she awarded a Nobel Prize “for her discoveries concerning a novel therapy against Malaria,” in the words of the Nobel committee. Her Nobel lecture was titled “Artemisinin—A Gift from Traditional Chinese Medicine to the World.” She was the first Chinese Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine and the first female citizen of the PRC to win a Nobel in any category. She accomplished this without a doctorate, a medical degree, or any training abroad, which earned her the nickname in China of the “Three-Without Scientist.” In 2019 Tu Youyou was awarded the Medal of the Republic, the highest honorary medal given out by the People’s Republic of China. Her isolation of artemisinin is arguably the single most consequential drug discovery to come out of any plant genus named after a Greek deity.
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| Tu Youyou |
The occult and magical lore surrounding Artemisia equals, and perhaps even surpasses, its renown as a medicinal plant. The association goes back to Artemis, the Goddess of the Moon. In Greek mythology her first cousin was Hecate, the Greek goddess associated with the night, magic, ghosts, and the dead, and the haunter of crossroads and liminal spaces between the worlds, areas which would often become associated with witchcraft. Indeed some scholars have opined that Hecate was originally just a manifestation of Artemis’s dark side, and only later became a goddess in her own right. In any case, Artemis’s association with the Moon would eventually resonate with witches, who often based their ceremonies on phases of the Moon.
Artemis and Hecate, either conflated into a single entity or separately, soon fell afoul of the new religion of Christianity. One of the main temples devoted to Artemis was located at Ephesus, on the western coast of what is now Turkey. A silversmith named Demetrius had established a lucrative business making miniature silver shrines of Artemis and selling them to pilgrims who had come to worship the Moon Goddess. Then, according to the New Testament (Acts 19:23–41), the Apostle Paul—he of the Road to Damascus fame—arrived on the scene and began preaching that “gods made by human hands” were not truly gods. The silversmiths of Ephesus and the pilgrims who had come to worship Artemis were deeply offended. The crowd that assembled shouted, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” and a riot broke out.
Passions eventually cooled and order was restored to Ephesus, but the rift between Artemis and the burgeoning religion of Christianity only deepened. The 2nd-century Christian writer, teacher, and apologist Tatian (d. c. 180 A.D.), a fierce critic of Greek religion and philosophy, denounced Artemis as a “pharmakis,” a poisoner or sorceress, which was a serious accusation. The Old Testament (Exodus 22:18) states flatly: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (King James Version). The Hebrew word translated as “witch” in the King James Bible refers to someone who practices sorcery, enchantment, or magical arts. An alternative translation would be “sorceress,” or a “woman who practices sorcery or evil magic.” From this point on Artemis and Hecate—perhaps Artemis’s alter ego—became indelibly connected with witchcraft and the Dark Arts, and the malignant seeds which later led to witchcraft trials and executions of witches were sown.
Artemis was the Greek name of the Moon Goddess. In the Roman world she became known as Diana, who, like Artemis, was associated with the wilderness, wild animals—especially deer—hunting, and also female fertility, childbirth, and protection of women in general. She was also known for her chastity and independent nature. Her connection with witchcraft and sorcery simmered for centuries and finally came to a full boil in the 10th century, when an influential Christian text entitled Canon Episcopi described “wicked women” who believed they rode through the night sky on beasts in the retinue of “Diana, goddess of the pagans.” Curiously, the document itself argued that such sightings were a demonic illusion, not literal reality, but many came to believe in “Diana’s night ride,” which became a recurring folklore motif across medieval Europe, eventually leading to the idea that Diana led a nighttime gathering of witches known as a Sabbath where the Devil was worshipped and black magic practiced.
During the witchcraft trials in Scotland from the late 16th century to the mid-17th century, witnesses denounced women who they claimed had “dealings with Diana, queen of the fairies.” Roughly 3,800–4,000 people, about 84 percent of them women, were accused of practicing witchcraft, and from 1,500 to 2,500 received the death penalty and were executed, usually by strangulation, and their bodies were burned. For example, Elspeth Reoch, tried in Orkney in 1616, said she had second sight and encounters with fairies from childhood (she was also accused of using Yarrow in a healing charm). She was convicted and executed. Issobell Haldane, tried in Perth in 1623, confessed to consorting with fairies and was convicted and executed. As Queen of the Fairies, Diana was certainly suspect, but admittedly it is not clear how many, if any, of the accused witches were executed because of their direct association with Diana/Artemis.
Diana’s connection with witchcraft reached perhaps its apogee in Charles Godfrey Leland’s 1899 book Aradia: or, the Gospel of the Witches. Here Leland claimed that Diana was not merely a Roman huntress or moon-goddess, but the supreme deity known as the “Queen of Witches” who “was the first created before all creation.” Diana mated with Lucifer, resulting in a human daughter by the name of Aradia, who was tasked with teaching witchcraft to other women and men, especially the poor, the outcast, and others on the fringes of society. She instructed witches to meet monthly on the night of a full moon and worship in the nude “the potent spirit” of Diana. During these meetings the deeper, still-unknown secrets of sorcery would be revealed to Diana’s followers and their own power would be increased. Understandably, Leland’s book was controversial and its authenticity was questioned. One scholar has dismissed Leland’s account of Diana and Aradia as a “myth found nowhere else,” but the mythologem he propounded in Aradia: or, the Gospel of the Witches took on a life of its own and has helped shape contemporary ideas about witchcraft and pagan practices. Diana remains the central goddess in many occult traditions. (The goddess is also connected with the late Diana, Princess of Wales. In the eulogy at her funeral her brother Charles Spencer noted: “A girl given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting was, in the end, the most hunted person of the modern age.”)
Artemisia, or Mugwort, the plant associated with Artemis/Diana, is still known as the “witch’s herb” and has been called the “single most iconic plant in the Western witchcraft tradition.” (Most sources refer to Artemisia vulgaris and do not mention Artemisia verlotiorum, mainly because, as noted earlier, not everyone recognizes that they are different species; however, as far as witchcraft is concerned they have the same properties.) Mugwort is considered a staple in the cabinet of any witchcraft practitioner and is reportedly one of the best-selling herbs in stores selling witchcraft-related items. Witches stuff dried Artemisia into “dream pillows” or place it under their pillows, drink an infusion before bed, or rub the leaves on the forehead (the “Third Eye”) to induce prophetic dreams, facilitate lucid dreaming, and enable the recall of dreams. Artemisia is also burned as incense to sharpen intuitive perception during readings with crystal balls, scrying mirrors, and tarot cards, to aid in astral projection and spirit travel, and to purify spaces of negative energy. Bundles of Artemisia are also hung above doorways and in windows to prevent evil spirits and malevolent influences from entering a home.
Thujone, a chemical compound found in Artemisia, is believed to be responsible for many of the plant’s psychoactive properties. As with artemisinin, the compound in Artemisia used to treat malaria, an enormous amount of research has been done on thujone. In small doses it has traditionally been credited with elevating moods, enhancing alertness and awareness, and reducing anxiety, although modern research has found little evidence that it is actually a hallucinogen. In large doses its use can result in seizures and convulsions, vomiting, kidney failure, and in extreme cases, death. Thujone is a perfect example of Paracelsus’s Principle—“The dose makes the poison”—formulated by Swiss physician, theologian, alchemist, and herbalist Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim, a.k.a. Paracelsus (c. 1493–1541). In the right amount the thujone found in Artemisia can be a stimulating, possibly therapeutic compound. At excessive doses, it’s a convulsant neurotoxin. The trick, presumably practiced by witches, is understanding that narrow therapeutic window.
Artemisia is one plant GAPers can collect without qualms. It is not found everywhere along the GAP, but where it does occur it grows in large colonies. An army of Artemisia gatherers would hardly put a dent in the population. In any case, Artemisia is considered by many to be an obnoxious, invasive weed, and some states take active measures, up to and including the use of herbicides, to eradicate it. The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture has Artemisia vulgaris (no mention is made of Artemisia verlotiorum, the Verlot brothers notwithstanding) on its list of Class B noxious weeds, which means that while it is considered an undesirable invasive plant it too widespread to be feasibly eradicated. Noxious weed restrictions in the state of Pennsylvania do prohibit the planting and propagation of Mugwort. GAPers considering collecting Artemisia seeds along the GAP and planting them in their gardens might want to take this into consideration.
