Mnemosyne- Greek TitanTitan"Memory"

Nine Nights in Pieria

Mnemosyne was a daughter of Gaia and Uranus, one of the twelve Titans. Her name is Memory itself. Zeus came to her in Pieria, near Mount Olympus, and lay with her for nine consecutive nights. She bore him the nine Muses: Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia, and Urania. They dwell on Helicon, where they dance around the violet-dark spring of Hippocrene. Homer invokes the Muse at the opening of both the Iliad and the Odyssey — "Sing, goddess, of the wrath of Achilles" — asking her to recall what the poet could not have witnessed, for the daughters of Memory had been present at all things and could tell what no mortal remembered.

The Pool of Memory

In the Orphic geography of the Underworld, two springs confront the arriving dead: Lethe, whose waters bring forgetfulness, and Mnemosyne, whose waters preserve memory. Those who drink from Lethe forget their past lives and are swept back into the cycle of rebirth. Those who drink from Mnemosyne remember everything and may escape reincarnation. The Orphic gold tablets, small inscribed leaves buried with initiates, instruct the soul: "You will find in the halls of Hades a spring on the left... Do not drink from this spring. Farther on you will find cool water flowing from the Lake of Memory." The soul must then declare its divine origin to Persephone.

A Titan Unbowed

Unlike many Titans cast into Tartarus after the Titanomachy, Mnemosyne was never imprisoned. Along with Themis and Oceanus, she passed into the age of the Olympians undiminished. At the oracle of Trophonius in Lebadeia, her cult had a concrete presence: before descending into the underground chamber, consultants drank from two springs — first Lethe, to forget worldly concerns, then Mnemosyne, to retain the prophetic visions they were about to receive.