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It was once almost mandatory to begin a treatise on the Art of Memory with the classical legend of its invention. This habit has something to recommend it, for the story of Simonides is more than a colorful anecdote; it also offers a good introduction to the basics of the technique.
The poet Simonides of Ceos, as the tale has it, was hired to recite an ode at a nobleman's banquet. In the fashion of the time, the poet began with a few lines in praise of divinities -- in this case, Castor and Pollux -- before going on to the serious business of talking about his host. The host, however, objected to this diversion of the flattery, deducted half of Simonides' fee, and told the poet he could seek the rest from the gods he had praised. Shortly thereafter, a message was brought to the poet that two young men had come to the door of the house and wished to speak to him. When Simonides went to see them, there was no one there -- but in his absence the banquet hall collapsed behind him, killing the impious nobleman and all the dinner guests as well. Castor and Pollux, traditionally imaged as two young men, had indeed paid their half of the fee.
Tales of this sort were a commonplace in Greek literature, but this one has an unexpected moral. When the rubble was cleared away, the victims were found to be so mangled that their own families could not identify them. Simonides, however, called to memory an image of the banqueting hall as he had last seen it, and from this was able to recall the order of the guests at the table. Pondering this, according to the legend, he proceeded to invent the first classical Art of Memory. The story is certainly apocryphal, but the key elements of the technique it describes -- the use of mental images placed in ordered, often architectural settings -- remained central to the whole tradition of the Art of Memory throughout its history, and provided the framework on which the Hermetic adaptation of the Art was built.
In Roman schools of rhetoric, this approach to memory was refined into a precise and practical system. Students were taught to memorize the insides of large buildings according to certain rules, dividing the space into specific loci or "places" and marking every fifth and tenth locus with special signs. Facts to be remembered were converted into striking visual images and placed, one after another, in these loci; when needed, the rhetorician needed only to stroll in his imagination through the same building, noticing the images in order and recalling their meanings. At a more advanced level, images could be created for individual words orsentences, so that large passages of text could be stored in the memory in the same way. Roman rhetoricians using these methods reached dizzying levels of mnemonic skill; one famous practitioner of the Art was recorded to have sat through a day-long auction and, at its end, repeated from memory the item, purchaser and price for every sale of the day.
With the disintegration of the Roman world, these same techniques became part of the classical heritage of Christianity. The Art of Memory took on a moral cast as memory itself was defined as a part of the virtue of prudence, and in this guise the Art came to be cultivated by the Dominican Order. It was from this source that the ex-Dominican Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), probably the Art's greatest exponent, drew the basis of his own techniques.
Medieval methods of the Art differed very little from those of the classical world, but certain changes in the late Middle Ages helped lay the foundations for the Hermetic Art of Memory of the Renaissance. One of the most important of these was a change in the frameworks used for memory loci. Along with the architectural settings most often used in the classical tradition, medieval mnemonists also came to make use of the whole Ptolemaic cosmos of nested spheres as a setting for memory images. Each sphere from God at the periphery through the angelic, celestial and elemental levels down to Hell at the center thus held one or more loci for memory images.
Between this system and that of the Order of Hermes there is only one significant difference, and that is a matter of interpretation, not of technique. Steeped in Neoplatonic thought, the Hermetic magus sees the universe as an image of the divine Ideas, and the individual human being as an image of the universe; they also knew Plato's claim that all "learning" is simply the recollection of things known before birth into the realm of matter. Taken together, these ideas raises the Art of Memory to a new dignity. If the human memory could be reorganized in the image of the universe, in this view, it became a reflection of the entire realm of Ideas in their fullness -- and thus the key to universal knowledge.
Most hermetics do not even bother with an Art of memory. they argue that with the Art of Mentem, such things are unneccesary. however, amongst its practicioners this system of mneomnics can be of great use.
The methods of the Order's mnemonic system are dizzyingly complex, and involve a combination of images, ideas and alphabets which require a great deal of mnemonic skill to learn in the first place! Hermetic philosophy and the traditional images of astrological magic appear constantly in his work, linking the framework of his Art to the wider framework of the magical cosmos.
Are the methods of the Art actually superior to rote memorization as a way of storing information in the human memory? Put more plainly, does the Art of Memory work?
It's fair to point out that this has been a subject of dispute since ancient times. Still, then as now, those who dispute the Art's effectiveness are generally those who have never tried it. In point of fact, the Art does work; it allows information to be memorized and recalled more reliably, and in far greater quantity, than rote-methods do. There are good reasons, founded in the nature of memory, why this should be so. The human mind recalls images more easily than ideas, and images charged with emotion more easily still; one's most intense memories, for example, are rarely abstract ideas. It uses chains of association, rather than logical order, to connect one memory with another; simple mnemonic tricks like the loop of string tied around a finger rely on this. It habitually follows rhythms and repetitive formulae; it's for this reason that poetry is often far easier to remember than prose. The Art of Memory uses all three of these factors systematically. It constructs vivid, arresting images as anchors for chains of association, and places these in the ordered and repetitive context of an imagined building or symbolic structure in which each image and each locus leads on automatically to the next. The result, given training and practice, is a memory which works in harmony with its own innate strengths to make the most of its potential.
One debate which went on through much of the history of the Art of Memory was a quarrel over whether the mnemonist should visualize real places or imaginary ones as the setting for the mnemonic images of the Art. If the half-legendary classical accounts of the Art's early phases can be trusted, the first places used in this way were real ones; certainly the rhetors of ancient Rome, who developed the Art to a high pitch of efficacy, used the physical architecture around them as the framework for their mnemonic systems. Among the Hermetic writers on the Art, some insist that real buildings should always be used for memory work, claiming that the use of wholly imaginary structures leads to vagueness and thus a less effective system.1 On the other hand, many ancient and Hermetic writers on memory, gave the opposite advice. The whole question may, in the end, be a matter of personal needs and temperament.
The place imagery described above makes up half the structure of this memory system - the stable half, one might say, remaining unchanged so long as the system itself is kept in use. The other, changing half consists of the images which are used to store memories within the locus. These depend much more on the personal equation than the framing imagery of the garden; what remains in one memory can evaporate quickly from another, and a certain amount of experimentation may be needed to find an approach to memory images which works best for any given student.
In the classical Art of Memory, the one constant rule for these images was that they be striking -- hilarious, attractive, hideous, tragic, or simply bizarre, it made (and makes) no difference, so long as each image caught at the mind and stirred up some response beyond simple recognition. This is one useful approach. For the beginning practitioner, however, thinking of a suitably striking image for each piece of information which is to be recorded can be a difficult matter.
In this context, one of the most traditional tools, as well as one of the most effective ones, is a principle we'll call the rule of puns. Much of the memory literature throughout the history of the Art can be seen as an extended exercise in visual and verbal punning, as when a pair of buttocks appears in place of the number 8, or when a man named Domitian is used as an image for the Latin words domum itionem. An abstraction can usually be memorized most easily and effectively by making a concrete pun on it and remembering the pun, and it seems to be regrettably true that the worse the pun, the better the results in mnemonic terms.
Like any other method of Hermetic work, the Art of Memory requires exactly that -- work -- if its potentials are to be opened up. Although fairly easy to learn and use, it's not an effort-free method, and its rewards are exactly measured by the amount of time and practice put into it. Each student will need to make his or her own judgement here; still, the old manuals of the Art concur that daily practice, if only a few minutes each day, is essential if any real skill is to be developed.
A name of importance to the esoteric aspects of the Art of Memory is Metrodorus of Scepsis. Quintilian, in his text on the Art, mentioned that Metrodorus based his memory on the zodiac. Every subsequent user of a celestial memory system invokes Metrodorus of Scepsis as the classical authority for bringing the stars into memory. Who was Metrodorus of Scepsis?
He belongs to the very late period in the history of Greek rhetoric which is contemporary with the great development of Latin rhetoric. Cicero informs us that Metrodorus was still living in his time. He was one of the Greek men of letters whom Mithradites of Pontus drew to his court. In his attempt to lead the East against Rome, Mithradites affected the airs of a new Alexander and tried to give the veneer of Hellenistic culture to the mixed orientalism of his court. Metrodorus was integral to this process. He seems to have played a considerable political,as well as cultural role to the court of Mithradites with whom he was for a time in high favor, though Plutarch hints that he was eventually put out of the way by his brilliant, but cruel master.
We know from Strabo that Metrodorus was the author of a work, or works, on rhetoric. 'From Scepsis,' says Strabo, 'came Metrodorus, a man who changed from his pursuit of philosophy to political life, and taught rhetoric, for the most part, in his written works; and he used a brand new style and dazzled many.' However, it is in Quintilian's statement that Metrodorus 'found three hundred and sixty places in the twelve signs through which the sun moves' that we find the point that interests us. This would indicate that Metrodorus developed a system of memory using the signs of the Decans, which were held to be magical images.
In the certain circles of the Order of Hermes, Metrodorus is held to be a sorcerer who studied the stars and the mind. He was held to be one of the great powers behind Mithradites, and his death, or possible banishment, was one of the factors leading to Mithradites' defeat.
The Art of Memory would seem redundant at first glance to the hermetic mindset. The Art of Mentem can easily allow one to remember anything you choose, which is a truth. At second glance, one should see that the skills gained should be greatly important.
Memory serves to allow the Magus access to their mind through a system of allegory that allows one closer to the realm of forms. Thus, the practice of memory itself is an innately magical art. Not every mage would be attracted to it. Yet members of Houses Bonisagus, Criamon and Jerbiton are heavily drawn to this Art. Various of them have built up intricate systems incorporating the Hermetic Arts and the Arts of memory. Many claim that this allows them easier accessibility to their spells.
The Art of Memory gives several modifiers to a character:
For more information see Kabbalah.
Yates, Frances A., The Art Of Memory (Chicago: U. Chicago Press, 1966) remains the standard English-language work on the tradition.
Bruno, Giordano, On the Composition of Images, Signs and Ideas (NY: Willis, Locker & Owens, 1991), and Culianu, Ioan, Eros and Magic in the Renaissance (Chicago: U. Chicago Press, 1987) are other examples.
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Last modified: Fri Nov 13, 1998