The Art of Memory

By Frances A Yates
Mt. Everest. The South Pole. Jurassic Park. Venus. Imagine the most remote, alien,
dangerous, hostile, frightening place in which to travel, and you are close to the experience of
venturing into the world described in the 400 pages of Frances. A. Yates' book, The Art of
Memory. It is not a page-turner. It is more than simply a challenge. It is a very difficult read. It
is about the history of an art which seeks to memorize through techniques of impressing 'places'
and 'images' on memory. And, it is necessary to appreciate from the beginning that such
manipulation of images in the memory always to some extent involves the human psyche as a
whole.
The Preface states that such memory techniques have usually been classed as
'mnemotechnics', or mnemonics--the science or art of improving the memory, as by certain
formulas or other aids to help in remembering. In modern times this seems a rather unimportant
branch of human activity. But, in the ages before printing--as well as in remote 'primitive'
cultures of our more modern world--a trained memory was vitally important.
Relevance to Freemasonry becomes apparent upon recognizing that this art used architecture for
its 'memory places', and that the architecture of the Renaissance and the soaring Gothic
Cathedrals which were built by our 'operative' forebears where instruments of such memory
systems. Our ancient craftsmen no doubt were aware of the significance for this memory art of
the ornate icons, statues, and indeed the very arches and spires of their construction. These
cathedrals were physical manifestations of transcendence to God. This transcendence was the
ultimate goal of practitioners of the arts of memory such as Giordano Bruno, and Camillo's
Memory Theater, and Robert Fludd's Theater system, and Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. The
theatrical expression, "places everyone, places," probably has deeper allusions than merely to
where the actors must stand.
The classically educated gentlemen who became 'accepted' freemasons in the
Seventeenth and eighteenth centuries where no doubt aware of the arts of memory, which were
emphasized by the Greeks, and were passed on to Rome, and descended in the European
tradition. Although specific reference to Freemasonry is listed in the index only on pages286 and
303-305, ideas undergirding and appearing in our craft appear more frequently throughout this
book. For example, reference to the seven liberal arts as personifications of and memory images.
Or, the personifications of the cardinal virtues and vices as memory aids. The thoughts which the
proponents of these arts of memory struggled to express and to capture are similar to those which
are central in Freemasonry--which are the unlimited potential of human imagination and its
manifold uses which includes 'science' and our 'contemplation' of God.
The Art of Memory is the classic study of how people learned to retain vast stores of
knowledge before the invention of the printed page. In it, Frances A. Yates traces the art of
memory from its treatment by Greek orators, through its Gothic transformations in the Middle
Ages, to the occult forms it took in the Renaissance, and finally to its use in the seventeenth
century. This book is the first to relate the art of memory to the history of culture as a whole, was
revolutionary when it first appeared and continues to mesmerize readers with its lucid and
revelatory insights.1

Mike Arnautov (High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire Great Britain)

The book traces the formal lineage of mnemotechnics through key figures in history such
as the ancient Greek orator Simonides to the philosopher Aristotle. In the Roman era, the author
relies almost entirely on Cicero to explain the lineage. From the Romans, we enter a very dark
period whose only bright spot is Quintillian in the first century A.D.
The Middle Ages brings the reader to Thomas Aquinas and his teacher Alberus Magnus.
From there the Arthur moves through Petrarch and into the Renaissance. Although there are
numerous figures discussed in the Renaissance, the singular characteristic of these Renaissance
thinkers is that they all appear to be alchemists of some variety or another.2
In the sixteenth century, when Giordano Bruno speaks of vicissitudes of light and
darkness and of the light now returning with him, he always means the Hermetic or 'Egyptian
philosophy and the magical religion of the Egyptians who, as described in the Hermetic
Asclepius, knew how to make statues of the gods through which to draw down celestial and
divine intelligence's.3 It is a rhapsody on the order of the universe as a revelation of God and on
the Hermetic experience in which, through contemplation of this order, God is revealed. 4
Yates' illumination of the profound relationship between the scientific method and earlier
attempts at mastering the universe by magical means, was for one commentator the most valued
aspect of the book.5
This is a very difficult book, even for those who have attempted some of our more arcane
Masonic readings. But, as one reviewer put it, no study of history and/or philosophy of science can be
complete without acknowledging and exploring the relevant insights of "The Art of memory". 6

H. G. Lee "hglee" (Avondale Estates, GA USA)

The thought -sequence through which the places and images of the Tullian and Thomist artificial memory
become a technique for imprinting the universal world order on memory is important. It is how the
techniques of artificial memory turned into the majico-religious techniques of the ocult memory.
3

4
5

Text, pages 292, 305

Mike Arnautov (High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire Great Britain)
Mike Arnautov