The Method Of Loci

Posted by Brent On June - 17 - 2009

The Method of Loci (plural of the Latin word “locus” meaning “place”) is one of, if not the oldest forms of mnemonic enhancement out there. It was used by ancient Greek scholars to memorize 10,000 word poems and narratives and such.

*The Method Of Loci, picture credit in top right of image.*

Basically it works like this; You imagine as vividly as you can, a place or route to a place that you’re very familiar with. The hallway of your house, or the road to school or something else that’s very familiar to you. While mentally visiting this place or route, you identify a series of landmarks.

If your target is your bedroom, landmarks you might identify are your computer, your bed, your pillows, your dresser, or your mirror etc.

Then you can come up with a vivid and concrete list of things you want to remember. Names of world leaders for example, or a grocery list. Once you’ve completed this, you then associate each item on the list with a landmark in your place.

For example if you wanted to remember to buy coffee from the store, you might see the image of your brand of coffee reflected in your bedroom mirror. Or your pillows stuffed with coffee if that’s the way you wanted to go. These extremely vivid associations serve to greatly enhance your memory regarding these things.

To practice this skill, and learn to do it quickly, build your mental loci map and then have a friend read you a short (10 or so) list of random words. As quickly as you can, associate each word to a landmark in your mental map. Then check and see how you did. Practicing in this way can allow you to become very quick at memorizing large amounts of information.

*Cicero.*

Marcus Tullius Cicero, one of the greatest minds Rome ever produced, claimed that the Method of Loci was developed by accident by a poet called Simonides of Ceos. Simonides was the sole survivor of the collapse of a dining hall where he was attending dinner. Everyone there who died had been horrible mangled, crushed beyond recognition. This method allowed Simonides to remember everyone who was attending and where they were seated so that their grateful families could properly lay them to rest.

*I couldn’t find any images of Simonides, so here’s The Hulk instead.*

His ability to do this led him to realize that anything could be remembered in a similar fashion. From that point on, the Method of Loci was used by many Greek and Roman orators to give long speeches or recite long verses of poetry without having to read from notes. This method dates back to circa 500 b.c. and was the most popular memory system until circa 1650 when other mnemonic systems, such as the peg system, came into popular use.

So to conclude, the Method of Loci is EXCEEDINGLY powerful, but takes practice, practice, practice! Also remember to make all of your visualizations as completely ridiculous as you can so you have an easier time remembering them.

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