Wow, I’m somewhat of a neophyte at this. I think I’ll review what you’ve written and see if I can apply some of it. I’m not sure about the maximum commandments as I haven’t reviewed all of them - I was referencing the first book only (based on an earlier post I saw in this forum from bk1037 and Rambam a few posts up). I recently reread Memory Craft and was inspired to make a go of it but wanted to structure it right.
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Hi Dovi613,
Sorry about the delay in replying. Life got a tad busy!
I would structure around the 90 chapters. The unevenness doesn’t matter. I have 214 locations for my Chinese vocabulary palace. Some have lots of entries, and a few still have none. It doesn’t matter. Your brain just needs the physical locations.
I would suggest a much larger palace than rooms, especially for the chapters which have lots of commandments. I use the street and walk around each house / shop … being one location. 90 will not take you too far if you are happy to walk. A full house gives you at least 56 locations on it. You will be amazed how many you can find when you start observing closely and looking for a window, door, tree, roof corner … which suits what you are trying to memorise.
Photos of the houses will help you if you don’t like walking, but I find physically going to the location works better.
Good luck with it!
Lynne
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@LynneKelly Thank you for your response! I really enjoyed your book.
From my understanding, your book suggests that each room should contain no more than five memory objects to avoid confusion during recall. Based on your current suggestion, would the approach be as follows-
For example, if I were memorizing the chapter on idolatry, which includes 51 commandments, I might place an image of Zeus and his lightning bolt at my front door to represent the overall theme of the chapter. Would the next step then be to attach small images of the 51 commandments to the Zeus image?
If so, wouldn’t this conflict with the “rule of five” mentioned in the book, potentially leading to confusion during recall?
I appreciate your clarification!
Hey Dovid,
Haven’t been on here in years.
From my experience, you do not need to ‘label’ your places. You will automatically remember where you put every Mitzva. That’s the whole beauty of the Loci.
And No, I did not finish memorizing the entire Mishne Torah. Got through קרבנות and עבודה. Have you started doing the Taryag yet?
@Rambam Hey, thanks for replying. I started with Pesach and Korbon Pesach. Looking up techniques on how to layer on the specific halochos, the Rambam elaborates in the parakim to the mitzvah in the loci. For example, let’s say you have the mitzvah of Shaboos at your kitchen table how do you layer on the 39 melochos, or lets say you have Tashbisu at the front door; how would you layer on halochos of bedikas chometz?
@Dovi613
Funny I started with Korbanos as well.
For Mitzvos that had lots of detail I used “Teleporting”.
Meaning I would create a new palace and link it to the Loci of the Mitzva.
So for 39 Melachos, do not try to cram them all in on the table. Link them to a new palace. You can also use the link method.
I will note, that when memorizing lots of halachos, I implemented the Power of Simanim as well ‘Ein Hatorah niknais elah Besimanim’..
I would learn the halacha well then create some sort of Siman that would trigger the memory of the Halacha. I would then Place that Siman on a loci.
Just thinking about the Siman allows you to access the entire halacha.
Kind of hard to explain..
What you do have to be careful with though, is memorizing without understanding. It’s very easy to fall into the trap of knowing lots of facts on an extremely superficial Level.
Make sure you focus on Havanah as well.
I put the project on hold for a while.
So you finished all the Mitzvos?
I would do them all first then move on to the details.
I did not. I thought I would do Pesach sugyos now and go back to rest later. You suggest that’s not a good idea rather do all taryag first?
If I was setting up a palace where so many items were needed in a single location, I would not put 5 locations in a room. I would only put one. I would still mark every 5th location if you want to recall everything in order.
For my Chinese vocabulary palace, I don’t care about the order but just visit the location with the particular radical (the way Chinese characters are organised). I use the rooms in the house with 5 per room for countries of the world, the periodic table, characters for the Dominic system for numbers (all stacked on the same palace). But when I am going to be adding a lot of complexity and possibly hundreds of words, then I use a much bigger palace - one house or shop per location.
Lynne
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