Memory

Norse tradition

• Memory is sacred to Odin.

  Snorri names one of Odin’s ravens Muninn, Memory. The memory is a scout that might not return, not a modern psychology.

  from Snorri Sturluson · Gylfaginning, c. 1220

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• Memory is associated with Raven.

  Huginn and Muninn are ravens with jobs in thought and memory. The bird is the vehicle of that Norse household, not a folk omen of death.

  from Snorri Sturluson · Gylfaginning, c. 1220

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• Memory is connected to Knowledge.

  What is remembered can be used as knowledge. Forgetting is the risk Snorri’s Odin names when he worries Muninn might not come back.

  from Snorri Sturluson · Gylfaginning, c. 1220

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• Memory appears in Norse tradition.

  Grímnismál in the Poetic Edda names Muninn among Odin’s ravens; the Atlas memory node already notes that Norse household. A named memory craft in that poem-neighborhood, not a psychology dump and not raven alone.

  from Anonymous (Eddic poems); Carolyne Larrington (translation) · Poetic Edda, medieval Icelandic compilation; Larrington trans. 1996/2014

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• Odin is associated with Memory.

  Muninn is Memory in Snorri’s household of ravens. The memory is a scout.

  from Snorri Sturluson · Gylfaginning, c. 1220

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• Knowledge is connected to Memory.

  What cannot be remembered cannot be used as knowledge. Snorri’s worry about Muninn is one local picture of that risk.

  from Snorri Sturluson · Gylfaginning, c. 1220

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Hellenic religion

• Memory appears in Hellenic religion.

  Hesiod’s Theogony names Mnemosyne as the mother of the Muses who teach song. A named Hellenic Memory in that cosmogony, not Odin’s Muninn already walked and not a generic faculty dump.

  from Hesiod · Theogony, c. 700 BCE

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Roman religion

• Memory appears in Roman religion.

  Virgil’s Aeneid seats memory as Trojan recollection, Anchises’ recognition, and commemorative funeral games. Memory as published concept in that epic, not Norse/Hesiod memory walks restated.

  from Virgil · Aeneid, 19 BCE (unfinished at the poet’s death)

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• Purim is used in Memory.

  In the Jewish Encyclopedia, the Fast of Esther is kept in memory of Esther’s fast as the preparatory day to Purim — memory of that fast seats the Purim eve.

  from Isidore Singer et al. · The Jewish Encyclopedia, 1901–1906

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• Sage is used in Memory.

  In Culpeper’s English Physician, Sage is of excellent use to help the memory, warming and quickening the senses, and the conserve of the flowers is used to the same purpose — sage is taken for that memory help.

  from Nicholas Culpeper · The English Physician, 1652 (and later PD editions)

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• Rosemary is associated with Memory.

  In Culpeper’s English Physician, Rosemary helps a weak memory and quickens the senses, and its oil is for the diseases of the head and brain — rosemary serves that memory.

  from Nicholas Culpeper · The English Physician, 1652 (and later PD editions)

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