Also called Memory.
Their story
Mnemosyne is a Titaness, daughter of Uranus and Gaia. Zeus lay with her for nine nights, and she bore the nine Muses in Pieria. At the oracle of Trophonius in Lebadeia, visitors drank first from the spring of Lethe, forgetting, and then from the spring of Mnemosyne, so that they would remember what they saw. Gold tablets from Orphic graves tell the dead to drink from the lake of Memory, not of forgetting.
Best times to give to them
- Before study or exams
- When remembering the dead
- With the Muses, before creative work
What they like being given
- Fresh spring water
- A written memory
- Incense
- Flowers
How to honour them
- Drink a glass of water before study and ask for memory to hold.
- Write down family stories so they are not lost.
- Honour her before the Muses, as their mother.
How they can help you
- Study
- Remembering the dead
- Family history
Symbols
- spring
- scroll
- hand touching the ear
Sources
- Hesiod, Theogony 53-62, 135, 915-917
- Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.39.8
More Greek goddesses
- Hera Queen of heaven and guardian of marriage
- Athena Grey-eyed goddess of wisdom and craft
- Artemis Lady of wild things and the hunt
- Aphrodite Foam-born goddess of love and beauty
- Hestia Goddess of the hearth and the home fire
- Demeter Mother of the grain and the harvest
- Persephone Queen of the underworld and the returning spring
- Hecate Keeper of crossroads and keys