Phonetic System² (squared), and Feinaigle's Artificial Memory Palace

General Memory Chat
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Have you ever wondered how you might increase your 99 word pegs (not for memorizing numbers, but for attaching knowledge to them - like some kind of phonetic memory journey), for the Phonetic “Major” System? Simple, you just think up a separate list of 99 phonetic words that represent the hundreds place for each image, and combine it with the original singles digit system. I’ll show you below.

Was anyone else baffled as to why Mr. Tony Buzan used mostly random words for his Self-Enhancing Master Memory Matrix in his book Master your Memory? Well I have a faster, more practical way to do it.

Let’s say your singles digit number 25 is nail, but you have already memorized 624 world geography facts and now you get to 625, well that image, like the one before and after it and up until you read 699 is going to be something like a cow (7) and a nail (25) doing something memorable. You will continue to see a cow in every single image until you reach 700, in which case it will switch to ivy (8) or wife, or eve, or whatever you choose for 8, because then you will be memorizing things up to 800. You see we have one set of mnemonic phonetic words we always use for numbers up to 99, and another separate set up to 99 that we assign a 100’s place to each. So for single’s digit 1 it is tie, but for hundreds digit 1 it is an image of a toe, or tea, or whatever you chose. Once you get past 1,000 then you are at 11 on your hundreds digit mnemonic phonetic list. So it will be an image of a tide/toad/teeth, etc., all through the 1,099 images with each single’s digit image with it. This will lead to a 10,000% increase in peg storage capacity for the phonetic system. (Follow more of the replies and comments to this post below for more on how to use this in conjunction with an old, yet easy, system for making a memory palace - see info on Feinaigle below - Slate drew a nice sketch for us on how Feinaigle’s system works, and slate came up with an idea of expanding further the system described).

Does that make sense, ladies and gents? Let me know in the comments below. I’ve also provided a link to the artofmemory.com list of separate phonetic words for this system, below. Please feel free to modify or improve on my suggestions in any way. We grow as a community by communication and feedback. And one last thing. I highly recommend you use this technique in conjunction with the Artificial Memory Palace System developed by M. Gregor von Feinaigle in the first chapter (Principles, page 31) of his book The New Art of Memory, published in 1813. I’ve provided the link to that book below. The chapter is not very long, and it is very explanatory. I just started using his technique with the more advanced phonetic system I described above, and it seems to be a very effective way of mentally filing knowledge away in a reliable and easily stored memory space, without having to walk all over your neighborhood staring at peoples’ houses, trying to remember them for memory journeys.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10nAevKhSRahfjLSxmCFdjtDLfBE-FRaSBNKT_GApFe0/edit?pref=2&pli=1#gid=0

http://www.phoneticmnemonic.com/

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Very interesting, I will have to spend some time
To see if it works for me

The fourth link you listed has one image for each of the
1000 three digit numbers

Do you know of a list that has multiple images for each 3 digit number

Thanks

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Thanks iceman2017. I do not know of a list with multiple images for each three digit number, but I did find this website http://www.phoneticmnemonic.com/ You can type any number into it and it sometimes gives you multiple keyword mnemonics. Hope that helps!

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Thanks for the information and links, they are very interesting. I read through some of Feineigle’s explanation of his artificial memory palace but I don’t think I quite understand it yet. The concept is intriguing…

For me I have no lack of available memory journeys in various real-world places. So I’m wondering if it’s worth investing time into creating an artificial memory palace if I already have lots of memory palaces at my disposal. It sounds like his rooms are all very similar with numbers in identical places, which seems useful for retrieval of numbers yet makes me wonder if rooms so identical could start being confused with each other. Have you used the artificial palace enough yet to see its strength and weaknesses?

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Slate, thanks for your reply and questions. I have just started using his memory palace in conjunction with the Phonetic System² (squared) as I posted about recently. By combining two different phonetic “major” system word images - one for singles digits up to 99, and another for hundreds digits, totaling 10,000 almost, I cannot lose track of which room I am in. The question then arises: “why use a location at all then?” To that obviously I say that locality in memory is an extraordinary aid to memory retention. You will see, however, that Feineigle assigned random images to each slot in each room. You can find the picture drawings of those near the end of his chapter one, on Principles. It seems he would just choose images to associate with each room for each slot, and perhaps it was up to the mnemonist to choose any future images. Good thing we have a system for numbers already though.

The way Mr. Feineigle’s memory rooms work is like this: The first “wall” is actually the floor. It has 9 slots for storing knowledge, and the 10th one, which actually represents 50, is on the ceiling. on your left is the second wall, which has 9 pigeonholes also, and one extra slot above it with 10, kind of like an extra slot carved out on the ceiling. The second wall also has 9 slots with a 20 above it, and so on until you get to the wall behind you which has 9 and a 40 above it. So every room adds up to 50 places. That ceiling is a bridge to another room, I believe. I’m still working out the details, but it seems that is the method, and I can picture in my mind the rooms and I open these little doors which represent each pigeonhole slot where I keep my Phonetic “major” system word-images, that I then mnemonically attach to anything I’m trying to memorize.

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I experimented with this technique recently to memorise the countries of Africa. So far it has worked well. I had 5 “leftover” countries (55 in total) so set up a virtual table and chairs for those images/countries.

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Haha. dremorris, Nice! I strongly encourage you to post your experience and how you did it in the Memory Challenges section of this Forum. It is excellent for us all to show how we have used these techniques for practical purposes, such as memorizing geography, like you did. Keep up the good work!

By the way, did you use Feinaigles’ artificial room in combination with the Phonetic “Major” system? I just used that to memorize five more elements from the periodic table. I imagine images that remind me of everything about each element flying out of little doors from each slot, and when I am done interacting with all the mnemonic images they fly right back in and I open the next pigeonhole door, much like a pandora mnemonic box. Haha!

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Hi again Mnemon, On my travels today I reread the Principles section of Feinagile’s book and between that and your further explanation I think I understand the layout of the room now. I didn’t understand at first that the only boxes on the ceilings are the 10s or decimals as he calls them (e.g. 10, 20, 30, 40). Next question then is, do these rooms just stack infinitely in the vertical direction only?

Regarding your proposed method of increasing the number of pegs by adding a modifier, I was thinking of such a thing about a year and half ago and posted about it here. I wrote This option could use a unique set of objects 0-9 that appear anywhere in the image and always indicate the corresponding multiple of 100. I didn’t think of using another set of 10 numbers for the 1000s place and beyond but that makes sense as well. I also wasn’t thinking in terms of a peg system, just an easier way to make unique images for the numbers beyond 99.

On another subject you mentioned learning the Periodic Table. I would like to do this sometime but I wonder why use a memory palace when the data is already organized into a sort of palace of boxes? There’s more order to the layout of the Periodic Table as it was made than just numbers as the layout assists with knowing numbers of electrons, types of elements, etc. When I commence this task I plan to use this very visually appealing Periodic Table!

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Slate, thank you for your thorough and thoughtful reply, once more. On your first question “do these rooms just stack infinitely in the vertical direction?” To that I am not certain, but if they do then the good news is we will reach space in no time and can then use the constellations as memory palaces! Haha. I can easily see these as extending indefinitely though.

I am happy to hear you also had the same or similar idea over a year ago. I was surprised that no one had ever mentioned it in any books on memory training that I had read. I got the idea while reading Master your Memory by Tony Buzan, coming across his Self-Enhancing Master Memory Matrix, and wondered why he didn’t just use a separate list of phonetic words to represent the 100’s place up to 10,000 as a kind of large peg system for storing knowledge. Instead, he seems to have used a random list of words that do extend it to 10,000, but the words do not relate to any number system. Instead, they seem to be based on animals and senses.

On your last point about why use a memory palace, I think that Mr. Feinaigle stated is nicely at the beginning of his first chapter pages 32 and 33, where he says on page 33 that “Indeed it will be found upon investigation, that locality is the most efficacious medium of reminiscence.” This is probably due to the fact that our spatial memory is critical for mnemonics training. I find that if I do not have a specific place in mind while using a peg system to memorize knowledge, that I end up seeing the images in places I have been anyways, and they seem to be all over the place. You could use a journey you know well already, but the point is that you can also use a very methodical artificial memory palace in combination with the phonetic “major” system to randomize and systematize the knowledge you memorize.

I just memorized five more elements today using this system. I imagine little doors opening in each slot and all the memory images flying out and doing things, then they get sucked back in when I’m done; then on to the next little door, and so on. I would strongly advice you to also peruse more of Mr. Feinaigles old book. Some other authors on mnemonics have cited him as being a pioneer in it’s further development. The second half of his book has tons of other authors on mnemonics telling their ideas about the art. It is a really fascinating book.

By the way, that visually appealing periodic table is awesome! It’s helpful to have little pictures of what these elements are used for in our own human world.

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Glad you like the Periodic Table. I still think there is a way to use the Periodic Table itself as an artificial memory palace, like walking around on it and going from one box/room/element to the next. Wouldn’t be much different than building an artificial palace yet still retaining the organizational benefits of the way the Periodic Table is layed out.

I’m not an artist but I was thinking more about the Feinaigle artificial memory palace and did a quick drawing for the benefit of my visualizing it. I’m not sure my ceiling is as Feinaigle intended but seems it would work.

feinaigle_artificial_memory_palace_room_or_box_with_axis_directions.png
feinaigle_artificial_memory_palace_room_or_box_with_axis_directions.png600×600 144 KB

As for my previous question about the orientation of these boxes, I decided that they really could be placed in any orientation relative to each other. For me, if using them to memorize the contents of books for example, I would place them horizontally next to each other like a street of houses on the x-axis or due East in cardinal directions. For additional chapters of a book I would go horizontally back in the negative z-axis direction or due North as I would visualize in cardinal directions. Then when more than 50 pieces of information are needed per chapter ascend vertically into additional rooms in the positive y-axis direction. How does that sound?

What I really like about these artificial rooms is that the numbers are consistently in the same places which should make for much easier retrieval. I would differentiate the rooms by having my person for each chapter number in the middle of the room interacting with some object or person that represents the particular book I’m working with. What I’m still unsure about is whether the rooms will still look too similar or if there is risk in having rooms in such close proximity to each other.

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Here are a few forum topics (one, two, three) discussing real vs. artificial vs. imagined memory palaces. It seems that most folks prefer using real places, some use artificial places such as from video games, but not much in favor of totally imagined palaces such as being suggested here.

For now I will continue using my real memory palaces (of which I have many as I mentioned before) until I have opportunity to practice with or hear more positive results regarding use of totally imagined memory palaces like the Feinaigle one.

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Hey excellent little sketch there to demonstrate this idea, Slate. I think other people reading this post will also find that very helpful in understanding Feinaigle’s Memory rooms. I like your idea of moving from room to room in different directions, depending on the purpose for memorizing books chapters and overview content. I also like your idea of using the periodic table of elements as a kind of palace itself. It is as if we are looking at a building from the top down, up high, and seeing all 118 elements (rooms) and walking around between artificial rooms, using some number memory system as a guide, and connecting each element to those, then “walking” into the next room, and so on.

Indeed the rooms will look exactly the same, but the numbers, remember, for each slot on the floor, walls, and ceiling, represent the phonetic “major” system. Since that does not extend beyond 99, we use a separate phonetic “major” system list, that represents 100’s place for each number, to multiply it to 10,000. For example, your singles digit number for 55 might be lolly, but your hundreds digit number for 55 might be lily. So you would see a lily in every image throughout your 99 images and two rooms, for numbers 5,500 to 5,600. So number 5,555 would be a lily and a lolly doing something memorable with whatever you are memorizing. You could also just use a Number-Shape system as the hundreds digits in combination with the phonetic “major” system to only have 1,000 places for mental filing, and just use another list of number-shapes or number-rhymes for each additional thousand. For example, number 471 would be a sailboat (4) and cat (71) flying out of a little slot in one of Feinaigles’ rooms, interacting with the memory images you invented as substitute reminders for what you are learning. Number 472 would be a sailboat again (4) and a can (72) flying out of the next slot over, and so on and so forth.

So even if all the rooms look the same, you are merely seeing those images flying out of the little doors in one of the places in Feinaigles’ rooms, interacting in various ways with what you are memorizing, and then flying back in when done. It seems to be working great for me so far, because I just see this four walled room with floor and ceiling. It is like opening all these little pandora boxes, unleashing hell, and then watching them fly back in. You certainly can’t forget that! Hahahahaha. I think most people have trouble with artificial memory palaces because they don’t know a very methodical number system to use and they think they need to imagine all kinds of new furniture, plants, doors, windows, architecture, etc. I think those kind of artificial memory palaces can be made later on a more advanced level, but not when first constructing and using your first artificial rooms - simple first is best.

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Thanks! Maybe you would consider updating the thread title (first post title) to include something about Feinaigle Artificial Memory Palace/Rooms for the benefit of others interested in this discussion.

Exactly! You may be able quickly memorize the numbers faster using the Feinaigle rooms, but I think for long-term use of the Periodic Table it would be of benefit to preserve its format, in fact even use its expanded form like this since there’s no need to preserve space in the infinite landscape of the mind :slight_smile:

Okay, this Feinaigle method has really gotten my mind whirring, and I simply couldn’t walk away from it since I last posted. So I was visualizing this box and thinking about how to arrange the boxes/rooms in a logical fashion to keep my stuff in order. Then I realized, why not have nested Feinaigle rooms?? I don’t know if he discusses this in his book because I don’t have the patience right now to read his whole book…

My main interest right now is in learning the content of the Bible books. So I’ve conjured up an image in my mind of two mega Feinaigle buildings, one for Old Testament on the left and one for New Testament on the right. Since I’m starting with New Testament I enter that building first. It’s a grand building of marble and I can hear echoes because it’s so large. I walk over to the far left corner whereupon that square section of floor opens up for me to descend into Book 1, Matthew. Here is another spacious empty Feinaigle room, not as large as the one above me but equally barren except for the man in the middle, Matthew. I have a specific image in my mind for him, and he sits at his table of stacks of coins since he was originally a tax collector. He’s the keeper of his room, he’ll let me into any one of the 28 chapters that I choose. We walk together over to the near right corner and descend again, this time into the room of Chapter 9.

This entire time I am keeping in continual awareness of where I am relative to the 2 great buildings. So now I’ve descended a second time, this time with my friend Matt, who has added something to his table of coins–a fish bowl. The Cat in the Hat is my number 9 (cats have 9 lives), and his object is the fishbowl. As I walk around in Matthew 9, I am maintaining continual awareness of my spatial location as well as the presence of Matt and the fishbowl. We walk to the near-right corner again, where we see something familiar–Matthew sitting at a table counting his coins–because this is where that exact event took place, in Matthew 9:9.

With little effort I was able to mentally label most of the squares inside the 2 great buildings, and from there it’s all systematic. Which is the real beauty of this system, because I can file away any verse of any book without having to do much up-front organization. Just good visualization and a number system which I have here.

This is interesting to read how you do your visualization. So far I’m having good luck with just zooming way in and seeing the events happen in real time on the specific square.

This is a very good point. As I experiment with using the loci in consistent places I see that the time-savings is huge. I think the main key is going to be maintaining spatial awareness and the person/object combo that’s acting as the peg as you described. Since I have a person for each of my numbers as well I am thinking of redecorating each room with their environment, e.g. a boxing ring for #1 Muhammad Ali, a baseball field for #3 Babe Ruth, a basketball court for #23 Michael Jordan.

Something else about the Feinaigle rooms that I like is the use of space. In my experimentation with the method of loci over the past year and a half I’ve found that 3 is a good number for breaking down a locus: left, middle and right. When I try to go beyond 3 and get 4 or 5 or more out of one locus I have to do more linking which is susceptible to problems. I also like to work clockwise through a room, and top to bottom when needed. Feinaigle’s rooms do all of this because everything is in rows and columns of 3, and after the floor the order is clockwise around the room. I’m actually still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that there’s 50 loci in the room because it doesn’t feel overwhelming at all. Thanks Mnemon I’m excited about where this is going.

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Hhahahaha! This artificial memory palace of Feinaigle’s is really something!

Indeed I did update the title name, and added something to the main body text of my first original post, directing readers to scroll down for more information about our further advancement and discussion about the Feinaigle Memory Palace and it’s applications.

The whole reason it works is precisely as you said -

Also, your creative insight about jumping into one of the pigeonholes to find another room inside totally blew my mind. Whereas I was seeing all my mnemonic ideas and phonetic “major” system peg words flying out of each slot on my walls (the 9 places on the walls and floor, and the extra 10’s places on the ceilings), but you saw yourself actually going inside those pigeonhole pandora boxes to find another room inside! Each one is like it’s own Russian Matryoshka (nesting) doll.

You just multiplied the power of one 50 peg room by another 50, because when you step inside one of those first pegs in a room, there is another room with it’s own 50 peg pigeonhole slots - that makes it 2,500 combined total (50 X 50 = 2,500). Holy cow! That one idea of yours opened up a whole new perspective of expansion with this system.

I also really liked your idea of when you jump into one of the rooms that contain your key memory image for that number, seeing the entire room as being a kind of shrine dedicated to that number-image. I think that makes it much more memorable for attaching other ideas to it.

This discussion got me thinking about using even more advanced rooms. Of course, for this to work, we would still have to keep the clockwise - or counter-clockwise, depending on a persons’ preference - structure always the same. For example, instead of just using a cube room for each and every one (which will probably get very boring after a while), we could think of a very systematic, exact methodical approach to using polyhedron rooms for different memory purposes. Even if you use a pyramid polyhedron room, you could still keep the order of the left to right, top to bottom row and column structure of using your phonetic number memory system - the shape of the pigeonholes for each number would look slightly different though, maybe smaller or bigger, depending on the room. So you wouldn’t have 50 places only for each room, you might have 250 for a single room. You might start with a cubed, 50 peg room, but decide you want to expand it - simply morph it in your imagination into a pentagon shape, by adding one more wall, or add two more walls and make a hexagon room (six sides), and so on faces edges and vertices in polyhedrons - Google Search

And a short YouTube clip on that as well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LODv5lVKFlM
Even the entire wall can act as one large door for an extra peg, if you open it to find that peg number image. That would add even more. Just some extra ideas on how to be even more creative with this system, and creativity is what makes it feel like we are stepping into some Alice in Wonderland world, some Labyrinth where we know our way around and can change and modify everything like some lucid dream. Consider it lucid daydreaming.

Further ideas about using larger sections of squares as their own magical doors can also work on one square wall, to keep it simple at first. Check out this video to illustrate what I mean. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZGYDwjUwBI

This will significantly enhance our spatial memory abilities even more. The important thing is just knowing how many edges, faces, and vertices each polyhedron used, has, and possibly assigning some number places even to the edges and corners as well. You can find on the wikipedia page, on the right side just below the photo of each polyhedron, the exact number of faces, edges, and vertices each one has. For example, here is some ideas on many different polyhedrons Platonic solid - Wikipedia and Archimedean solid - Wikipedia The key is to look for where it says the numbers for their F, E, and V, which stands for “face, edge, and vertice.” Using a similar color coding system in the imagination as the one we see in the wikipedia photos, a room like those polyhedrons might be just as easy to use as a cube. All it takes is knowing the number of faces, edges, and vertices for each; of course we need to keep things organized though. Maybe each new room will expand in complexity of polyhedron. I think that is what makes the Feinaigle idea also very powerful. Having a sequential number system to place on the walls, and using a clockwise order, from top to bottom, following the rows and columns of numbers - that is what makes them stick in our brains and legitimize the power of this artificial palace method!

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Thanks for the additional thoughts… I’m off and running on creating my new Feinaigle mega-complex! In order to visualize it better I’ve decided to model it in 3D, which means that I’m finally learning how to use SketchUp! So a few tutorials later I’m starting to get a hang of it.

Regarding room layout, I’ve been thinking about how to make them more unique. I think think for specific purposes such as a calendar or something, a different amount of sides could be helpful for sure. For my Bible project I’m planning to leave the general layout of all the numbers the same, but to erase any unused portions of wall, floor and ceiling. Besides redecorating the room with unique coloring and objects, the absence of certain walls will give each room some differentiation without abandoning the general concept of the number layout. For my purposes I want to keep all the numbers in the same places so that after a while my brain will subconsciously place things in their appropriate place without much effort.

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Brilliant idea Slate! I haven’t used SketchUp before, but it sounds like an excellent way to get a better feel for your artificial memory rooms. Erasing any unused portions of wall, floor and ceiling sounds like a good idea as well - there is no need in keeping that which takes up valuable mental space and time. As for my part, I have decided instead to assign the first wall as the one on the left - instead of the floor, as Feinaigle suggests. So the left wall is numbers 1 to 10, the front is 11 to 20, right wall 21 to 30, back wall 31 to 40, then floor is 41 to 49 and I place 50 directly above me on the ceiling. If I want to add more walls, I simply use my 3D mind to rearrange walls/floors and turn it into a pentagon, hexagon, and so on. Keep me updated! I’ve already stored a bunch of information on over a dozen elements from the periodic table, in my Feinaigle palace.

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Nice work on the Periodic Table.

I can understand why you would choose this as I considered this option too.

At this point I’m inclined to retain Feinaigle’s number order for the following reasons: I think the ‘front’ wall or the wall behind a person who just entered the room can be hardest to visualize because you have to ‘turn around’ mentally. Not that it’s hard to turn around in this imaginary room, but facing ‘forward’ I can ‘see’ 3 walls and the floor pretty well. Maybe I’m limiting myself with the physical senses. Anyway since only some of my rooms will need numbers beyond 40 I’d rather reserve this more difficult wall (in my opinion) for the higher numbers only when required.

Also, as much as I like the symmetry and flow of starting the numbering on the left wall, that would mean 41-49 would be on the floor which is a very ‘central’ part of the room to me, in that when I walk in a room my eyes are drawn to what’s in the middle of the room and what’s on the floor. I would rather this be the first part of my memory journey than the last part of my memory journey for that room.

Lastly, for making these physical (imaginary) rooms that I also plan to model in 3D, I feel like even if there aren’t walls there should at least be a floor. The floor gives a room foundation and layout. So by starting the numbering in the far-left corner as Feinaigle suggests, my room will always have at least one tile for a floor.

Ultimately these rooms could be laid out in any multitude of fashions. I just like the round 50 loci per room and the layout, a setup to which I’m sure Feinaigle himself gave no small amount of thought.

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Slate, those are all excellent and admirable points you make. I think the key ideas are that we maintain adaptability, flexibility, foundation/organization, fluency, and pegs. Boredom is the great enemy of memory training, so we must find ways to make it a constant challenge. I might not even use the floor as a peg itself, since I can just create new walls and ceilings at will, transforming the platonic cube with four walls into a room with five, six, or seven walls - or even a pentagonal polyhedron - depending on my purpose. Multidimensional rooms like this act also as a kind of meditative device for deep focus. I love the challenge of mentally navigating and manipulating polyhedron peg rooms with an ordered mnemonic system in rows and columns for each wall/face. The beauty of this system that we are experimenting with is the infinite levels of creative complexity that we can use. I’ve noticed my night dreams becoming increasingly more creative, navigable, and memorable, the more I practice. As I told my seminar attendees recently for a free educational overview of mnemonic systems “the art of memory is like lucid dreaming, but since you are not asleep, it is lucid daydreaming.”

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A similar method, much simpler, is the Vaughn Cube method. It puts ten loci in a room: back left corner, left wall, front left corner, etc. Uses floor and ceiling as 9 and 10/0. You trade “density” of information for a larger number of rooms.

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jmsmall, thanks again for your insight and replies. I do use a similar technique to the Vaughn Cube method, although this is the first time I’ve heard it called that - but I only use it when I enter sub-categorical rooms from my main artificial memory rooms. I will “jump through” one of my ten memory peg images on a wall, as if it were a gateway or door into a larger room with that theme. The Vaughn Cube is not necessarily “simpler”, it is just less pegs per room, with a different sequence.