Understanding and using Fludd’s Round Art

[Bsaturday]

I mentioned the initiation rite of the Oracle at Trophonius would be the first scene I’m going to use in a theater. In the “Orphic Hymns Grimoire” Sara Mastros writes,

Mnemosyne is the goddess who inspired the oracle of Trophonius in Lebadeia, Boeotia.

I didn’t know that when I selected the initiation rite from JSK’s Geosophia! Happy coincidence! Speaking of that rite, I’ve started developing the scene in a Square Art room. I described before the division of each wall and floor of a Square Art room into 5 parts. For this Hymn and the initiation scene, I’ll use 4 parts, each with 3 doors and meadows:

1.1: a bed
1.2: a bath
1.3: an altar for giving sacrifices and offerings

2.1: the river Lethe
2.2: the river Mnemosyne
2.3: getting dressed in ritual clothes

I’ve filled these with the main participant (Saturn, who has ram-horns, dressed and acting like a grumpy downtrodden merchant) and other characters to remind me of the actual lines of the Hymn. In the first instance, I did not fully succeed in following Fludd’s rules & method:

1.1
An eye of the beholder holds a phone near where its ear should be. The phone is shaped like the cartoon fish Nemo. The beholder is in bed with Zeus who looks really uncomfortable. (Since I assume this is a family friendly forum, I won’t give more detail!)

Corresponds to “I call upon Mnemosyne, sharing a bed with Zeus” (Here I break the rules numerous times!)

2.2
Two boys lead the merchant to a slow, gentle river. A Walrus bathes in the water. The merchant gets in the water with Walter White, holding a brain. A crowd of onlookers suddenly die."

Corresponds to “Within the whole mind of mortals”. (Here I used his rules quite strictly!)

[Bsaturday]

I’ve encountered some difficulties in Chapter IV, where Fludd discusses parts of speech and which alphabet represents them.

First, I notice that if I follow his allocation completely, my scenes will be much more populated by men than women! Men are allocated substantives (nouns, verbs), adjectives and particles while women are allocated “non signifying words.” I think I’ll just flip them going forward! I think it will be wise to go back through my scenes so far and redo them.

Second the writing is simply obscure at times.

I can definitely say that practicing slowly, one verse at a time, and cross referencing every word to the table in chapter 1, is necessary.

Nevertheless I’m making progress.

[Bsaturday]

In the Square art, Fludd nominates Birds to represent pronouns. I’m glad he did, as there are relatively few pronouns to memorize. I don’t know the names of very many birds. Imagine if birds were to represent a larger category, like adjectives! I would find that.p very hard.

[Bsaturday]

Wahoo! I did it. I’ve used the Square Art to memorize the Orphic Poem to Mnemosyne.

I have not followed the method to the “t” and will now go back through and correct all my mistakes. These are mistakes like using animals instead of birds for pronouns once or twice, and using human men instead of animals for prepositions.

Nevertheless, it’s quite exciting to use 4 theatres on one wall to encompass this twelve line poem. I’ve gained a lot of insight into the system and look forward to more practice. I read Yates’ section about his Round and Square Arts this week as well. I think I got a couple good clues about the round art, but will noodle on them a little longer before discussing here.

It took a boatload of work to get here, and it was fun!

[Magno]

Implementing the round art as fludd details it is not very easy to do, as you have to be versed in astrology.

But you could create your own theater from other things in memory.

You can also look at bruno for creating atriums from memory, in image composition he has one of the easiest methods for developing atriums or places.

The round art is not totally round, it needs the square art, what makes it round art is the movement of the decanates, gods or demons… You could also learn from giulio camillo (La idea del teatro) where all these methods come from and also Ramon Lllull and his (ars magna y brevis).

These ideas probably come from the prodigious memory of metrodoro de escepcis since he used the decanates as places.

From Quintilian we learn that the techniques employed in the art of memory, developed by Metrodorus, included the use of a memorized scheme based on 360 places in twelve zodiacal signs.

Ref: Metrodorus of Scepsis - Wikipedia

I suspect that Metrodorus was versed in astrology, since astrologers divided the zodiac not only into 12 signs, but also into 36 decanates, each encompassing ten degrees; for each decanate there was an associated decanate figure. Metrodorus probably grouped ten artificial backgrounds (loci) under each decanate figure. In this way he would have a series of loci numbered from 1 to 360, which he could use in his operations. With a little calculation he could find any background (locus) by its number, and he was insured against losing a background, since they were all arranged in numerical order. Thus, his system was well designed to perform amazing feats of memory.

Ref: LA Post, Ancient Memory Systems, Classical Weekly, New York, XV (1932), p109; quoted in The Art of Memory, Frances A. Yates, 1966, p40.

With giulio camillo you will understand completely the round art and if you want you can also read ovidio another very good book.

The more you think about how you could implement and use the art the more things you can think of and much more if you read these great characters, their arts difficult for many but undoubtedly effective.

[Magno]

The imagined places should be reviewed, so you should write them down or add key words that trigger them, for example prison, bank, school, church, farm, etc… You can add fantasy to the imaginary places and exaggerate their parts just as you do with images to retain them, also give them contexts, etc… For example the prison can have prisoners, banditry objects like a brush with a sharp handle, a toilet in bad condition, another prison for rich people with more comforts, another one can be futuristic, etc… A place, context, quality, color, smell, etc… You must go through them as if it were a real place, notice every detail and use characters and objects to retain them more easily, an ogre who battles with a celestial elf, in front of the door of a castle, the elf hits the ogre so hard that the door opens when he falls on top, where he falls is very rustic and gray (the floor), etc… Use this to enlarge places, it is always good to locate a center and from there expand from cardinal points, remember the process of creating an imaginary place must have a certain level of detail because you will use all the senses and this is very necessary to retain them quickly and not visualize them quickly as if it were a competition.

You can also use references to create your places like the lord of the rings for example.

[Bsaturday]

I haven’t updated this in a while, but I have been doing the work! I start with the Prayer to Mnemosyne then move to whatever my current topic is.

I thought about an organizing scheme for the round art. I was struggling with the question, how many ideas will fit into the Round Art? I released that I didn’t need to worry too much! I consider it now like Bruno’s wheels: each wheel has a central symbol that denotes the entire subject. Thereafter I began memorizing a body of knowledge called “system of correspondence,” an occult device. The first set of correspondences are herbs associated with each planet.

For this purpose I chose a different “play” that drives each theater. I took Tam Lin, which is an English ballad about a man who’s stuck in the Otherworld and the woman who saves him. I’m not sure if I’ll continue using that ballad for all topics in this wheel—I mean, beyond herb lists. There are minerals, colors, etc to memorize.

It took a while to come up with the characters and images to use that make sense given the astrological arrangement in Fludd. He gives some examples but not the complete combination of zodiac + planet.

[Bsaturday]

Thank you again. I really like the notion of not being in a hurry. I’m not in a card memorization competition!

I suspect for one of my theaters, maybe in the Square Art, I would use some fantasy scenes. Fludd’s method really seems to depend on coherent scenes to drive remembering. After playing through the “pure” scene repeatedly, I’ve then started adapting it to specific goals.

I’m concerned about triggering the sequence in the future. I feel some anxiety—how will I remember the first part of the sequence for each of the plays? I haven written the scenes down in a memory journal. I think I’ll have to come up with some condensed organizing scheme for it though; it may well turn into a mess if I’m not careful!

[Magno]

That’s something that happens to all of us when we’re testing and adjusting… Adapt to your needs and not fludd’s.

I always memorize names and faces in numerical-alphabetical order, at the beginning I created a template in excel but then I had to create improvements and eliminate sections that did not interest me, and an endless number of things that in practice I was improving and adjusting to the way I felt more comfortable and how I could improve even more, a list of common names, eliminate sections in excel, learn about the symmetry of the body for example is a square face, triangular, inverse triangle, etc. … all that you are taking into account and that will happen to you, do not avoid it, do not avoid it, it will happen to you. … all that you take into account and that will happen to you, don’t avoid ideas, write them down and then review and analyze them with critical thinking so you improve what you do, I always create lists of things I could improve during my sessions.

[Bsaturday]

Aha! The columns and chains make a little more sense now:

you can also attach to these columns certain rings and chains of a fantastic design, to which can be attached certain animals signifying Adverbs, Conjunctions, Prepositions and Interjections, just as one might use in whole sentences

Words acting as signifiers must however be denoted by the principal image of the idea and not otherwise

Sometimes an animal may be the best image for an idea. For example, I use a fish (sole) to represent “soul”, following his “similarity” rule. (He doesn’t write of homonyms specifically but I figure it’s fine). However we encounter a problem: if animals are used for those parts of speech (a fish for “finally”), how will they be distinguished from the principal image (the sole)? The column and chain is his solution. If an image is chained to the column it is a part of speech. Otherwise it is a principal image.

[Magno]

The methods of Bruno and Fludd have to do more with the sounds that can bring the word, there is another book that has very clear these methods in a more modern way.

[Bsaturday]

Thanks! I am attempting to stick to his particular method for the sake of understanding it.

How do those abbreviations help? I don’t imagine words or letter sequences in my palaces. Is that what’s suggested here, to see “NVM”?

[Bsaturday]

I have not stopped the experiment; I have just stopped posting!

In the last months I’ve memorized herb lists for 2 planets using the round art. I find it interesting that the recall activity is not the struggle, but rather the planning!

The thing I’m stumbling on, though, are the theatres themselves. There are two issues,

• I haven’t visited very many theaters, so I end up just creating them in my mind, violating one of Fludd’s rules
• I have to rely on decoration, since it’s the same theater over and over again. Actually it’s also the same play over and over again, at least for this herb sequence.

[Bsaturday]

The funky thing about the Round Art is, what exactly is Fludd memorizing with the method? After enough practice, it’s clear enough how to use the Square Art to memorize things. The method works pretty much the same in the Round Art—the organizing scheme is different, though, and the alphabet lists are very different.

I’m still puzzling over this. I sense the answer will only come in a mystical sense, as a result of practicing, meditating and praying.

[Bsaturday]

I’ve temporarily abandoned the round Art and now focus on the square. Thinking and meditating on it, I believe it’s best reserved for use later.

In the meantime I’m going back through some of the scenes I set up earlier and am tidying them up. I’ve put together a scheme to organize the images so I can retrieve the information.

My new organization amounts to this: first I look at what each character is wearing, then what they’re doing, then an object.

The reason I’m doing this is that in a recent review I noticed my images were too random; sometimes I keyed off the character’s clothes, sometimes it was the scenery. This made it pretty difficult to recall.