The Memory Palace

The practice of creating “memory palaces” was first recorded around the time of Cicero. Remember, before printing, the primary way to remember events and to achieve learning was to use one’s memory. So, naturally, methods to enhance memory were invented.

One of the fundamental methods was, in one’s own mind, to create an imaginary structure, call a "memory palace." This could be based on a palace one had visited or which one just invented. In any case, the interior of this imaginary palace would be constructed with many rooms, each populated and decorated with scenes and objects designed to trigger certain memories. These places for memory were terms “loci”. It could be a dramatic scene in an antechamber to recall  the details involved in a case going before a high court. The more dramatic, the more the memories would be triggered. “The classical sources seem to be describing inner techniques which depend on visual impressions of almost incredible intensity.” It could be a room decorated with objects to trigger the memory of certain words in a precise order to help with a speech or the study of a detailed text. Remarkable feats of memory were recorded using this method. “The art of memory is like an inner writing...depending on inner gymnastics, invisible labours of concentration...” 

Could it be that the body itself is a memory palace? Within us live all our memories, all our learning, our whole lives in a sense. Do we not walk through this memory palace every time we lay our hands on the human body?

What do we re-member and know most deeply - in our very bones? This will be explored in my and Jeff Rockwell’s book, “The Memory Palace of Bones.”

I recommend most highly this masterpiece of alternative intellectual history and scholarship, “The Art of Memory”, by Frances Yates.

Image Source: Pieter Brueghel the Elder, The Great Tower of Babel, 1563