JMG on Magnetic Memory Method podcast

[ecosophia]

A good lively interview with JMG on Anthony Metivier's Magnetic Memory Method Podcast -- two men with long beards and long hair discussing Giordano Bruno, the art of memory, and the fine art of intellectual dumpster diving. You can check it out here. 

Comments

[jaroslaw]

I’ve been following his YouTube channel around for a while, and his videos on the power of memory are great. But never listened to his podcast before. Can’t wait to listen to this, thanks!

[ecosophia]

I wasn't familiar with Anthony's work before he contacted me about a podcast, but I plan on reading some of his books soon. We had a great conversation.

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG,

You mentioned getting through college without taking notes using the classical art of memory— could you elaborate a bit on how you applied it/what particular methods you used?

Thanks!

[ecosophia]

Sure. I used the method of places and figures, which was the only one I'd learned about in those days. I used buildings and outdoor areas on the University of Washington campus as my memory palaces, and stocked them with images in the usual way. So, for example, when I was taking a class on ancient philosophy, I turned Savery Hall into my memory palace, and stocked each hallway and public area with statues of philosophers ornamented with various things that reminded me of their teachings, and placed other images between them for similar purposes.

Here's Thales, for example; he's wearing a tee shirt to remind me of the first letter of his name, and the tee shirt has a big number 7 on it, to remind me that he was one of the Seven Sages of Greece; he's holding a watering can in one hand, to remind me that he taught that water was the first principle of all things, and a bucket of ripe olives in the other, to remind me of the famous anecdote of how he got rich by predicting a really big olive harvest and buying a bunch of oil presses, which he then rented out to oliver growers who needed extra presses in a hurry. Over his head the sun is eclipsed -- he was famous for being able to predict eclipses -- and he's got a roll of paper and some geometrical tools tucked under one arm -- he made important early contributions to geometry.

Right there, in one image, I've got enough to give a good answer to an essay question or to field any of the likely multiple choice questions on the final. Of course Plato and Aristotle got a whole series of images, but the principle is the same.

[(Anonymous)]

I’m impressed. I don’t think that, even then, I’d have remembered everything he was holding and doing. It sounds like a great method if you can make it work.

[ecosophia]

I have a fairly good natural memory, and by the time I started working on the Art of Memory I'd been doing visualization as part of my magical training for a good many years, which made it easy. Still, the Art of Memory like everything else improves with practice; start with a simple method you can use for shopping lists and so on, and work up from there, and pretty soon you'll be able to recall much more than you think you can.

[(Anonymous)]

(Tolkienguy)

Were you able to use this method when you were trying to learn, say, Latin or French vocabulary? Trying to imagine how it would work. Memorizing vocabulary words, and keeping them memorized, is the hardest part of language learning for me.

[ecosophia]

No, my approach to vocabulary is different, because my goal there is to get past conscious memorization into automatic recall as quickly as possible. What I like to do for language vocabulary is to find a text I know well in English, and read it repeatedly in the language I'm trying to learn, using the dictionary as needed until I know the meaning and grammar of every word at sight. Have you seen Hobbitvs Ille, the Latin translation of The Hobbit? Take the first sentence of that -- In foramine terrae habitabat hobbitus -- and since you know that it means "In a hole in the ground lived a hobbit," you can absorb the meaning of each word. By the time the dwarves are singing --

Frange vitra et catilla!
Cultros tunde, furcas flecte!
Bilbo Baggins odit illa --
Nunc et cortices incende!

-- you'll be well on your way to having a very solid Latin vocabulary.

[(Anonymous)]

(Tolkienguy)

Thank you, that makes a lot of sense. Now I just have to figure out how to get a Farsi translation of The Hobbit from Iran without Trump kicking me in the nuts.

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for this description! Would you construct these images piece-by-piece while reading/during a lecture? Did you get to a point where you could do it without slowing down your reading (or losing track of a speaker in the case of a lecture)?

Also, did the memory palaces you constructed then stick with you to this day? (is your Thales example one of them?)

[ecosophia]

I find lectures somewhat trying because the pace of information is so slow. (I read very, very fast.) So I had no trouble at all constructing memory images while the professor was slogging through his prepared points. Reading is another matter; typically I read anything from a paragraph to a page, depending on how dense the writing is, and then pause, sit back, make the image, put it in its place, and go on. In both cases, once the lecture or the study session is over, I walk back through the memory palace and make sure that everything is where I put it.

That repetition is essential, btw, and it has to be done regularly -- as in every couple of days -- to keep the imagery fresh. I can call to mind some of the images from those days, such as Thales, but not many.

[yuccaglauca]

Do you fill a building with images exactly one time, or do you fill the same building multiple times?

[ecosophia]

It depends on whether I plan on keeping the same material in memory for the long term. If it was for a class I needed solely to meet requirements, and I had no interest in keeping the information for the longer term, I'd go back through the same building and clear out all the images, walk through it in my imagination a few times and see it empty, and then restock it with something different.

[(Anonymous)]

Looking forward to listening to this one, as I'm a big fan of Bruno (and just got done with the Yates book of late). Will also have to check out your translation.

Fra' Lupo

[ecosophia]

Enjoy!

[(Anonymous)]

A good listen, and glad to hear the comment about mythology. I've often believed that stories--whether it be the Classical myths or even the usual scriptures--work at least in part as mnemonic devices, although often to convey and inculcate culture, ethics, and worldviews rather than specific pieces of more mundane information.

Also good comments on Renaissance thought, the planetary forces, Picatrix, et al. Along those lines: have you done anything (or can you make any recommendations on) some of the classical elements that are manifest in Dante? Some of his imagery is, despite avowals otherwise, straight up "pagan" and wondering if that tracks back to any occult influences of those times.

[ecosophia]

I've read Dante but never seriously studied him. Those are intriguing issues, though.

[(Anonymous)]

I mean, when a guy kicks off a book about (evidently) Christian heaven with an invocation to Apollo...funny stuff.

[(Anonymous)]

Do you or your publisher have plans for Kindle Amazon version?

-changeling

[ecosophia]

It's up to my publisher. I'll see what he says.

Bruno

[(Anonymous)]

I enjoyed the interview and now I want to read the book. What did you translate it from, an original or a copy?

Kind regards,

Vardaman

Re: Bruno

[ecosophia]

I used scanned copies of a 19th century Latin edition of Bruno's collected works. You can read quite a decent edition online here.

Some other sources...

[alacrates]

Very much enjoyed discussion, I've listened to it twice. I'm trying to make some sense of the importance of Giordano Bruno and his memory system. Over a the coronavirus layoff I finished Ingrid Rowland's biography of Bruno and also C.S.Lewis' The Discarded Image, as you'd recommended to grasp the philosophical background to Bruno's work. I've got F.C. Copelston's History of Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy up next.

I've followed Anthony Metivier for a long time, though I haven't taken his memory course... for anyone who already has something of an art of memory practice, his videos and podcasts contain a lot of tips and ideas that are pretty easy to take up and apply to your own practice.

For anyone looking for more books on the subject, I would highly recommend Lynne Kelly's new book, Memory Craft.

She is an Australian science writer and former physics teacher, who became interested in how oral cultures employed images, myths, landscapes, dances and stories to memorize vast amounts of information about the the natural world, survival, mythology and culture.

She lays out her original work in The Memory Code, but has distilled her techniques into more of an instructional manual in Memory Craft. It standard instructions on peg-lists, memory palaces, but also techniques like devising a bestiary to aid your memory, using things like beads and shells attached to a board to memorize information, among many others. I think it's a really unique addition to the crowded field of manuals on the art of memory.

The incantation and the eclipse?

[(Anonymous)]

If any working in the shadow of the New Moon and the eclipse can only be evil, is it safe to do the incantation for Johnny Appleseed this coming Friday?

The Grey Badger

Re: The incantation and the eclipse?

[ecosophia]

Yes. This is a different kind of working, and it neither begins nor ends at that time.