The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

A few days ago there was a fascinating story on the radio. An idea that makes so much sense and seems so blindingly obvious once some one else has thought about it.


Once we were Google

Years ago in my flobberworm days well before the World Wide Web, I had to resort to old fashioned libraries to find out stuff. Obsessed with brain training the way most folks my age were obsessed with music, beauty, sport or fitness, I used to borrow books about creativity, tricks for doing mental maths or how to develop a super power memory.
Most useful were the techniques for memorizing the calendar for any year this and last century which consisted basically of 2 sets of numbers and the rules for manipulating them and a phonetic system which made remembering those lists very easy.

But the one technique that appeared over and over again was the construction of a Memory Palace.
This involves a place or path that you are familiar with. Your house is a pretty good starting point. You pick locations such as doors, windows, tables and go from room to room in your mind always in the same order and link each place with one item from the list to be remembered. The more exaggerated and outrageous the connections are, the more easy it is to remember them.
The guest on the show has an example on her blog using this technique to remember the the Periodic Table

She then goes on to explain that this technique goes back a long way (50,000 years and still counting) and has been experimenting with it herself to see how much information she can store in her assortment of memory palaces. A lot more than she ever expected.
It is the first time that I have ever come across an explanation of Aboriginal song lines from a westerner that was not full of new age waffle. It was sensible and down to earth and definitely very deja vu.

Ancient Memories

I was particularly intrigued with how Lynne Kelly uses tarot cards. After all there is no need to stick to houses, rooms and roads to make memory maps. They can be portable too and decks of cards are perfect for this purpose since they have an inbuilt structure. There are so many symbols lurking on a single tarot card that it is likely that this is precisely one of the functions they were used for in the way that stained glass in churches illustrated the Bible stories before the days of mass literacy.

Of course in these days of Google and other distractions, it is that much harder to devote time to the dark art of memory making.