Qabalah - Art of memory noxlux - Aug 06, 2008 - 10:35 AM Post subject: Art of memory
Howdy
I am presently engaged in learning a couple of different mnemo-systems. While doing this I am STRUCK by the similarities with my previous work with qabalah.
Is this just something that is ridiculusly obvious to everyone else - or has the qabalah nothing to do with the art of memory?
NoxluxnewneubergOuch - Aug 06, 2008 - 11:11 AM Post subject: RE: Art of memory
ridiculously obvious, but always good to discover things on your own:)Iskandar - Aug 06, 2008 - 04:27 PM Post subject: RE: Art of memory
Both kabbalah and the art of memory are, among other things, attempts at classifying the universe on the principle of sympathetic analogies (correspondences). Keep in mind that Jewish mysticism is historically intertwined with Neoplatonism, hermeticism, magic and such and that all these influences (or currents) had their great flowering during the Renaissance. Historical links and ideological connections between kabbalah and the art of memory are explored in the classic study by Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory, as you probably know.gmugmble - Aug 06, 2008 - 07:54 PM Post subject: RE: Art of memory
A key point that I think is easy to miss in Yates's Art of Memory is that the art was originally purely a mnemonic system, and was re-interpreted (or misinterpreted if you like) by the Neoplatonists as a magical system.James - Aug 07, 2008 - 02:24 PM Post subject:
Interesting to note too that memory was an art or skill that our ancestors cultivated and turned into a science. Not only classical speakers but bards and round the campfire story tellers also practiced this skill. Most folktales and many religious texts were first transmitted orally before being written down. It was quite the norm. To many of us now it would seem impossible to memorise say the whole of Homer's Illiad or other comparable length narratives.
The memory trick of learning a building inside out and then using artifacts within the building as anchors for points in your talk is to make a list of correspondences. So it is not hard to see why this practice of devising a unity among a multiplicity of items or diverse objects should stir the platonic minded.anpi - Aug 07, 2008 - 03:01 PM Post subject:
I had started to practice a mnemonic system where I would insert gods or other characters with accessories in the Tree of Life. For instance, if I wanted to buy pie and milk in shop, I would put Mars (=Pe) holding a pie in Kether and Hanged Man (=Mem) holding cans of milk in Chokmah. I thought that this way I would also learn the attributions faster.
When I heard of the Art of Memory, I was quite impressed by the fact that it seemed to employ very similar techniques.
However, I've been a bit lazy with it lately and I think I should perhaps start to practice it daily again.
By the way, check out chapter IV of Magick without Tears which is entitled "The Qabalah: The Best Training for Memory".Iskandar - Aug 07, 2008 - 03:07 PM Post subject:
Memorization of lengthy texts is not exclusive to oral cultures. In India (and Tibet, a culture very much influenced by India), it was customary to memorize texts in studying any religious-philosophical discipline, and this was done by people who were literate. This is still true for India to a significant degree. People sometimes refer to their traditional scholars as 'carrying libraries in their heads.' There is a saying there that knowledge kept on the bookshelf (i.e. not in one's own head) and the money kept in the pocket of another are equally valueless.
Interesting thesis, developed by Ioan Couliano in Eros and Magic in the Renaissance links the decline of the art of memory and related (magical) disciplines to the rejection of imagination by both Church (for who knows where the images come from: maybe from the Devil !!!) and Science (imagination not conducive to experimental method, not measurable, too 'irrational'). Historically this was supposed to happen in the aftermath of Reformation, concurrent with the Dawn of the Age of Reason. The same process was chartered - from a slightly different perspective: how one episteme replaces another based on the knowledge = power formula - by Michele Foucault in the Order of Things. Couliano's thesis was closest in his formulation (Church's rejection of images and imagination) to James Hillman's. Hillman pursues this idea consistently in his (brilliant) books, but perhaps the best places to look at is his Dream and the Underworld.
To my mind, the value of the above lies in the notion that Art of Memory or the system of correspondences should not be a mechanical thing; in other words, it is imagination that makes the system alive. Crowley and Grant are good examples of using numerology and correspondences in a creative way (whatever we might think of either of them).