The Big Idea

An Experiment: Memorizing the Psalter

I has been my experience that the more I am in the word the more easily things bubble up in my memory.

I have decided to work toward memorizing the whole book of Psalms. But not just as rote memorization, actually having it functionally memorized for meditation and retelling. So that I can use what is memorized and not just have it recitable. I want to be able to access each psalm from many angles. Rote memorization has only one starting point and the rest is all just recited after so while it is a tool. I do not want to use it as the primary form of memorization I am after.

As I have started this journey I have been surprised how the Psalms feel like they are literally designed to be memorized. The more I spend time with them the more their flow and continuity begins to be something that impresses itself on my memory and consciousness.

For example, time and time again I have started to see echoes of the psalms in Jesus teaching or the rest of the new testament has started to put things in a much more comprehensive context than I have ever thought about Scripture before.

Note

This idea started to form in me after reading/listening through the whole Bible in 40 days. My journal of that is here: Shredding Spiritual Muscles

In order to try to get my head around such a large memorization project I first did some smaller scale memorization projects. You can find my notes on these projects here:
Memorizing the Lords Prayer
Memorizing the Ten Commandments

Info

Also I find it interesting that the Second Council of Nicaea 787 A.C. made it a requirement to become Bishop to memorize the whole Psalter.

Companion Project: Inhabiting the Place Where Heaven and Earth Meet

Attempt 1

My first attempt was to learn the overall structure of each book withing the Psalter so that I have a basic roadmap for navigating the psalter in my mind. My overall hermeneutic for finding this structure has been to focus on the structural elements that are physically in the psalms themselves as the basic way to divide things. Therefore superscriptions and repeated word and similar start and end phrases are the clues I am looking for to see how the psalms hold together with each other.

This approach has been edifying in noticing many patterns and things that hold together but it has become very unwieldy as an actual memorization method. I feel like I could get lost forever trying to drill down the “structure” that I want to use for memorization.

This was not all for nothing however. It is amazing how even having some rudimentary structure memorized has started to facilitate my ability to look at psalms next to each other and in the context of one another in was that are impossible with out holding things together in your mind.

Attempt 2

In response to this, I have zeroed in on Athanasius’s letter to Marcellinus as a wise laying out of the Psalter from many different angles. Here is a first dive into how I am using that to memorize the core 8 psalms he outlines for personal formation: The Pattern to Manage Souls

Using that acronym I now have that set of 8 Psalms clearly organized in my mind and can walk through them. It will be fascinating to see how learning the text of the Psalms next fit into that.

At this point I have fully memorized the text of Psalm 1, 2, 3, 12, and a portion of 17. I iterated through a number of strategies and have settled on the following break down for now:

Create a memory palace with a station for each line of the Psalm.
Use an object or body palace for the individual words of the line. And place it at the appropriate station in the larger memory palace.
1. Example, In Psalm 17 the line: “Wondrously show Your steadfast love.” I used a lamp as the object palace. Assigning each word to a part of the lamp such as imagining the prongs of the plug making a w for wondrously and the lamp shade covered in fuzzy hearts for love. I can quickly walk through the parts of the lamp and recall the line.
  This method seems to hold a lot of promise but have felt myself getting bogged down in the weeds of the task. So I decided to back up and try a slightly different approach.

Attempt 3

Because I want to memorize the whole Psalter and not just selected Psalms I realized that I needed a way to get around the psalms as a whole especially as I start to collect bits and pieced about each psalm or think about how different psalms relate, etc.

So I decided to make a network of memory palaces that has a station for each psalm. Meaning I need 150 stations. I am just about finished with this sitting at 135 stations broken into 11 individual palaces.

I chose to use Seminary campus because it was a big collection of buildings I was familiar with.

For each Psalm I just chose something that stood out to me or was easy to visualize. Be that a phrase, image, description, etc. The goal for this first pass is to just get something from the Psalm in my head associated with it’s number. Not to be hard on exact working but instead use this as more imagination training (next pass I will zero in on specific wording). I then would place the thing from the Psalm at the station and imagine the number with it.
Example: for psalm 49 the image that I chose was “their graves will be their home.” So I imagined the number 49 made out of crow feathers hanging over a set of open graves. The image locks in a kind of Edger Allen Poe/Macbeth feel which is very memorable.

Also here are more extended notes on the Letter to Marcellinus: Memorizing the Psalter with Athanasius
Also the full text of the letter:
Letter to Marcellinus

Other collected Notes

As my work and study in this area has continued I have started to split the content of this note into smaller more manageable sections:

Useful Texts about the Psalms

Seeking Overall Shape and Structure of the Book of Psalms

Thematic Phrases and Words in the Psalms

Number Symbolism

Numbers are everywhere in the Psalms from the given number of a psalm to the grouping of psalms in specific sets (songs of accent being in 15, etc.). I want to look at the coherence and picture these numbers can help teach and the memory aid they can be

Memorization Methods

Overall notes on memory as I have been thinking about things: Memory, the Things We Keep with Us

Heavenly Temple Memory Palace

(I do not think that I will pursue this method very far or at least not using it alone)
Peg Method for Psalms

The Aspen Grove

Explorer

Memorizing the Psalms

An Experiment: Memorizing the Psalter

Attempt 1

Attempt 2

Attempt 3

Other collected Notes

Number Symbolism

Memorization Methods

Graph View

Table of Contents

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