Aontacht - Volume 7 Issue 3

Construct your own toassist you in your exploration of the innerplanes of dreams, ideas, consciousness andimagination.Many means and methods exist allowing oneto explore and tap the inner realm in acquiringinspiration, clarity, ideas and insight.Irrespective of the channel used for access,whether through crystalline or scrying surfaces,entering the trance state or dreaming lucidly,the experience requires tremendousconcentration and energy. For some, suchinterior travels come easily and can result infascinating voyages of discovery into the realmof the mind and spirit. For others, it is moredifficult and can turn out to be a fruitless questor a daunting ordeal in the dark and wild forestof sub-conscious emotion and imagery.In either event, one of the most intriguing,powerful and open-ended tools to add to one’srepertoire, is the construction of a MemoryPalace.The Memory Palace Technique, also knownas the “Method of Loci” ( > Latin ="places"), is a mnemonic device elucidated inancient Roman and Greek rhetorical texts,such as the anonymous, Cicero's , andQuintilian's. Essentially,it is a method of memory enhancement whichuses visualization to organize and recallinformation, using regions of the brain thathave to do with spatial learning andmovement. However it may assist in recall,the practitioner may find it additionallyuseful to have a familiar inner fortress orinstallation enabling the unlimited (only bythe elaboration of the structure of the innermental edifice one creates) storage ofdiscoveries; a location for an inner grimoire,or place to receive audience with the muses,familiars, or one’s oracular or guiding being(s).As described by Yates (1966) in her bookto use the technique, onememorizes the layout of some building, or thearrangement of shops on a street, or anygeographical entity (real or imagined) whichis composed of a number of discrete locationsor “loci”. When desiring to remember a set ofitems or deposit contents, the subject 'walks'through these locations in the inner realm ofimagination and inner vision, committingitems to each place by forming an imagebetween the item and a distinguishing featureof that location.For example, to access the contents of mymemory palace once composed and ready tojourney, I might recite “…my Book ofShadows lays on a Doric style, white marblepedestal in front of the painting of the“Slaughter of the Innocents” in the main floorThomson gallery annex of thein Toronto, Ontario – which is alocation in real space and time that I knowwell. I might continue “… in the samelocation in front of the fabulous collection ofChinese snuff bottles my spirit guide andAontacht • 13