Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1881
During my classical studies I picked up a mental exercise for memory from reading On Memory and Reminiscence by Aristotle. The exercise was not overly complicated as it consisted of recalling a specific or a series of events in their proper order. I typically employed this at the end of the day, with the mnemonic loci being the beginning, and in keeping with the teaching focus was placed upon movements and actions and not perceptions which lead from the time to waking to that of sleeping. Comparatively a mere stretch to the calisthenics in Giordano Bruno’s Ars Memoriae the exercise was also well suited for recalling key experiences in minutiae. Myriad university lectures and labs were memorized with this simple method; after all, unapplied knowledge has little value.
Memory was held in high regard by philosophers, being part and parcel of rhetoric and necessary for intellectual growth. It is not only a cognitive function of the mind but a faculty of the soul. So I wonder why in modern Western esotericism the importance of memory has largely gone to the wayside. At worse memory and recollection goes neglected, and at best appears as a blurb or the unrecognized handmaiden to the development of the almighty will.
But whether from the teachings of Aristotle, that of another father of philosophy, or the kabalistic model of the tree of life as representative of the body of humanity, it is evident any activity seeking to approach but one part of the soul stirs the entire being. The Aristotelian practice of daily recollection is fruitful only if one has the discipline to perform it on a regular basis, and over time serves the mutual advancement of memory and will alike.
To also treat a recollection as an exercise in visualization further stirs the soul with imagination, desire, and reason. Sessions involving the immediate and detailed recollection of ringing a small bell – the weight of it in the hand, the smell and texture of the metal, the interplay of light about the often struck surface, and the sound it creates swelling and vibrating through a room and gradually fading – more than notes a past event it fully evokes the reliving of an experience.
For me, this naturally progressed from recalling immediate motions to those of further and further past sessions, and eventually to taking curios and evoking memories of times before in which I held them. This process was also ritualized to additionally impress I was directing all the faculties of my soul into the service of this one part, or to move my memory in a specific manner. The ritual in its simplest form included an invocation of Chesed and a deliverance of the following:
Orphic Hymn to Mnemosyne
Fumigation from Frankincense
The consort I invoke of Zeus divine;
source of the holy, sweetly speaking Mousai nine;
free from the oblivion of the fallen mind,
by whom the soul with intellect is joined.
Reason’s increase and thought to thee belong,
all-powerful, pleasant, vigilant, and strong.
‘Tis thine to waken from lethargic rest
all thoughts deposited within the breast;
and nought neglecting, vigorous to excite
the mental eye from dark oblivion’s night.
Come, blessed power, thy mystics’ memory wake
to holy rites, and Lethe’s fetters break.
René Magritte, 1948
The parts of the soul mentioned in passing are easily recognizable as those of the Ruach; memory, will, imagination, desire, and reason; ascribed respectively to Chesed, Geburah, Tiphareth, Netzach, and Hod. The model of the kabalistic soul and how each and the sum of the parts relate to the tree of life is a paradigm that can be adapted symbolically to a ritual; however, my experience has been rituals of the type outlined above are successful only if the part of the soul it seeks to stimulate is properly developed. With this ritual a person unlikely to pick up a broach and have a vivid recollection of a time when they were four and being rocked in their grandmother’s arms if on a normal day they have trouble remembering their grandmother’s face. And to this person I say: start with a daily recollection.
