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

Not too long after I heard with a great amount of bewildered curiosity the Storyteller Martin Shaw describe memorizing the entire Odyssey of Homer and that it takes multiple days to retell it in its entirety. That kind of scale just boggled my imagination.

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 within 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 ways 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 the acronym (ABC_Psalms) 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.

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

Note

Having let that structure age in my mind for a few months now I can say that it is very helpful for getting a short set of psalms together in a navigable way. However the more abstract the shape/structure you use to organize things the harder it is to keep organized in the long run. I drew the eight out in nice little boxes and can still organize them like that but the stuff I put inside of them mentally are not nearly as anchored as in a traditional memory palace. This lead to the following break down of methods moving forward:

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. Attempt 1 proved that a larger structure to organize psalms together can be helpful but that will quickly get out of hand when scaled to 150. This is especially true as I start to collect bits and pieced about each psalm or think about how different psalms relate, etc. Without some kind of central reference structure things can get confusing super quickly.

Layer 1

So I decided to make a network of memory palaces that has a station for each psalm. Meaning I need 150 stations. I finished layer one clocking in at 13 palaces drawn from memorable places from my time at Concordia Seminary St. Louis. I definitely improved the flow and feel of the palaces the more I made.

I think the biggest thing I learned was not to over think things and just make palaces and try them out. If you need you can adjust things later.

Since this is an initial layer I chose to lower the mental load of trying to “get things right” by simply focusing on remembering an image, phrase or anything distinctive about each Psalm that stood out to me. I tried to choose things that were easy to visualize or imagine.

One example is Psalm 64 with people “whetting their tongues like swords.” You can very easily imagine what that might look like and it is striking making it much easier to remember.

The goal for this first pass is to just get something from the Psalm in my head associated with each Psalm’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).

After making the palace, and drawing the route through it. 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.
- Another example is psalm 37. I took the idea from the Psalm (not the exact wording yet) that the wicked wilt like flowers. I imagined 37 made out of bright white flames like the sun and see evil people kind of melting underneath. A strange and very memorable image.

I am a rather tactile person so taking time to make these kinds of tactile associations with the numbers themselves (which I usually have a harder time remembering not being a natural numbers person) has helped anchor things more.

Layer 2

Layer I will now take a pass back through all 13 palaces and add the Verbatim line associated with the image or phrase I already have on board. The overall idea of this layering system is that I will get to anchor the palaces more and more as I add rather than always creating new unrelated bits and pieces.

I plan to start this layer connecting the words of each line to an object palace and then placing that object in the larger palaces I already have formed

Pulling in a whale with one hook is hard. Pulling one in with many is easier.

Layer 3 (Unstarted)

Add object palace with a parallel or complimentary line Layer 4 One 10 station palace per psalm One line per station

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

Layer 1

Layer 2

Layer 3 (Unstarted)

Other collected Notes

Number Symbolism

Memorization Methods

Graph View

Table of Contents

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