A memory palace is an artificial memory system based on the method of loci, which was a mnemonic linking technique in common use between about 500 B.C. and the mid-1600s. Developed in ancient Greece, the Ars Memoria was central to the teaching of rhetoric. Traditionally, the memory palace was used as an aid to memorization of long speeches or blocks of text. To use this architectural mind-map, the first step would be to pick a structure with which one is personally familiar, e.g. a home, market, church, public building, etc. Then, one travels through the rooms or loci in a particular order, and in each space one imagines an object or symbol—ideally, a single, vivid image that can be taken in at one glance and holds significant affective associations—and attaches a chunk of the speech to this imagene. So when delivering the speech, one revisits each of the loci in order, views each of the symbolic images in order, and thus delivers one’s speech in this order.
Most interesting, perhaps, is that the loci are palimpestic—the images specific to each locus can be reimagined or reinscribed so that the same memory palace can be traversed in potentially infinite cases of remembrance—and furthermore, that the palace can be entered and navigated from any imaginable point, in any imaginable order. Under this sort of organization, memory takes the shape of a completely non-linear narrative that one can alter the order or chronology of at will. Thus, the memory palace is a structure mapped onto our thinking that, once there, permanently alters the landscape of the mind, and yet simultaneously replicates our existing thought processes.
This is a story about memory.
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