“Woods and groves are the sacred repositories; and the spot being consecrated to those
pious uses, they give to that sacred recess the name of the divinity that fills the place,
which is never profaned by the steps of man. The gloom fills every mind with awe;
revered at a distance and never seen but with the eye of contemplation.”
Tacitus
All art by Charles Collins
Perhaps Tacitus was referring to memory groves of the mind when he spoke about the Druids’ sacred groves? I doubt that he ever set foot in one and was probably going on what the Druids told him. I would not put it past them to have played a royal punning practical joke on him and their classical historians.
Each of us contains many, many memory groves of information within our own personal
memories. We can each visit and recite from these memory groves over and over, perfectly
without failing (even though this ability may not be obvious to us, since we take it for granted). We’ve naturally created memory groves for ourselves as we’ve experienced life and engaged in discourse with other people. We probably could have created more such memory groves, but the modern educational system did not properly train us for or instruct us in this technique. This lack of proper memory training is primarily due to the use of books, libraries and files as aids to memory and the retrieval of knowledge. That is how we are educated today. We are taught to use books as references rather than to rely upon our own memories. Such was not the case among the ancients and the Druids in particular. They were taught techniques that allowed them to remember the histories, laws, lore and traditions of their people.
Subscribe to get access – $5 a month