To retell Mnemosyne’s story, which is in itself about retelling, we have to start near the beginning of Creation itself, in the time when Ouranos – the Greek God of the Heavens, and Gaia, the Greek Goddess of the Earth, bore a child name Mnemosyne, a Titaness due to her lineage.

During the Titanomachy, a great war between the titans and the Olympians, many of the Titans were killed or sent to Tartarus (the place of suffering contained within the bowels of the Underworld; separate from, and considerably worse, than Hades). Yet not all the titans suffered this fate, Zeus spared many of his aunts and uncles during the war. However, He also engaged in sexual congress with many of those aunts, as he did with his sisters, and many a mortal female.

Mnemosyne fared much the same fate as any woman the King of Olympus set his eyes on.

To Quote Hesiod:

For nine nights did wise Zeus lie with her, entering her holy bed remote from the immortals. And when a year was passed and the seasons came round as the months waned, and many days were accomplished, she bare nine daughters, all of one mind, whose hearts are set upon song and their spirit free from care, a little way from the topmost peak of snowy Olympos (Olympus).

Hesiod, Theogony

These nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne are collectively known as the Muses, the goddesses of art. Each one played a specific role, and pertained to a specific style, they were:

• Calliope (epic poetry)
• Clio (history)
• Euterpe (music)
• Erato (lyric poetry)
• Melpomene (tragedy)
• Polyhymnia (hymns)
• Terpsichore (dance)
• Thalia (comedy)
• Urania (astronomy)

Plato also quietly suggested that the poet Sappho of Lesbos be considered the tenth muse, high praise from the philosopher indeed.

But the connection here is that somehow, Mnemosyne (and therefore memory), was related to the arts by the ancient Greeks. Which begs the question, what is the connection between Mnemosyne and the arts?

If you’ve ever heard of or used a mnemonic device to memorize things – like using the name “Roy G. Biv” to remember colors of visible spectrum/rainbow (Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet) – you’ve understood the mythic function of the Titaness. She is memory, especially oral memory, and Her cult far predates writing in the Greek World. Mnemosyne represents memory based on repetition, which in an oral culture is absolutely imperative to their preservation of traditions.

It should be remembered that Homer, the creator of both the Iliad and the Odyssey, claimed to be blind; his tales were performed long before they were transcribed. So how did he remember such a vast, sprawling epic?

Mnemosyne.

When I was a teacher, one mantra I used to hammer into my students’ heads was “Mastery is equal to Repetition multiplied by Time, M=R*T”. My knowledge of mythology was still nascent at that point in my academic life; otherwise, I would have just taught them about Mnemosyne.

It’s worth noting, that while reviewing this post, my amazing editor admonished me with a comment which simply said: “Dear Former College Professor. May I dare suggest that M=R*T ensures rote learning but achieves little in terms of understanding.”

While he has a point, I will respond with this observation – Before you think outside the box, you need to know the nature of the box; and if you’re really clever, you might actually figure out what could be in the box, though that will always be the great mystery.

Rote learning is where you learn the nature of the box.

Understanding follows.

Mnemosyne hides in the box.

Some people are gifted in certain areas; they don’t have to worship as much as the rest of us at the altar of the Titaness. I have to, and that’s okay, because at least I know the secret.

Mnemosyne hides in the box.

This secret has been repackaged in a more contemporaneous manner by author/speaker Malcolm Gladwell in his book ‘Outliers’, where he frequently quotes his now famous 10,000 hours rule, which is a way of saying that mastery of any subject takes about 10,000 hours of practice. That’s what inspired my M=R*T simplification.

I sincerely doubt that Mnemosyne or her daughters, the patron Goddesses of the arts, would take umbrage to those observations.

So how do we remember the Goddess of Memory? Her mythic tales are scant; like many of the Gods of the Titan era, modern scholarship believes that She was relegated to the status of an Oracular Goddess. However, She lives on in Hades as well.

As an Oracular Goddess, Mnemosyne had worship sites in the Athenian shrine of Dionysus (Pausanias, 2nd century Common Era, Description of Greece 1. 2. 5), in the Arcadian town of Tegea (ibid, 8. 46. 3), the Helicon Mountain sanctuary, (ibid, 9.29.1), and most importantly, in Lebadeia, in Boeoeotia. Here Pausanias goes into notable detail:

He [the supplicant] is taken by the priests, not at once to the oracle, but to fountains of water very near to each other. Here he must drink water called the water of Lethe [Forgetfulness], that he may forget all that he has been thinking of hitherto, and afterwards he drinks of another water, the water of Mnemosyne (Memory), which causes him to remember what he sees after his descent . . . After his ascent from Trophonios the inquirer is again taken in hand by the priests, who set him upon a chair called the chair of Mnemosyne [Memory], which stands not far from the shrine, and they ask of him, when seated there, all he has seen or learned. After gaining this information they then entrust him to his relatives. These lift him, paralysed with terror and unconscious both of himself and of his surroundings, and carry him to the building where he lodged before with Tykhe [Fortune] and the Daimon Agathon [Good Spirit]. Afterwards, however, he will recover all his faculties, and the power to laugh will return to him.

Pausanias, Description of Greece (Trans Jones)

This idea is paralleled in descriptions of her role in Hades; in the Underworld there is a both a river of forgetfulness (Lethe), and a pool of remembrance (Mnemosyne) which can be traced back to 4th-century BCE funerary writings. When reincarnating, the souls of the previously departed would drink from river Lethe, so as to forget their past lives before they started their new ones. Part of the instructions given within the Orphic mysteries were to forsake the river Lethe and drink from the pool of Mnemosyne instead. This act would allow inductees to remember their previous incarnation(s) and prevent the transmigration of their souls.

So yes, Mnemosyne matters.

According to Philostratus, a Greek biographer who was active in the 1st and 2nd century AD, memory is the only thing that is immortal:

When he [Apollonios of Tyana, pagan prophet C1st A.D.] reached the age of a hundred, he still surpassed Simonides in point of memory, and he used to chant a hymn addressed to Mnemosyne (Memory), in which it is said that everything is worn and withered away by time, whereas time itself never ages, but remains immortal because of memory.

Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana (trans. Conybeare)

So, what’s the take-away here?

In both art and in life,

Never forget to remember.

You can’t think outside the box until you know the box.

Mnemosyne hides in the box.

Perhaps, Mnemosyne is the Box.

Know the Box.

And then dare to dream beyond it…