“Persons desiring to train this faculty (of memory) must select places
and form mental images of the things they wish to remember and store
those images in the places, so that the order of the places will preserve the order of things, and the images of the things will denote the things themselves, and we shall employ the places and images respectively as a wax writing tablet and the letters written on it.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (circa 106-42 BCE) in regard to Simonides in De Oratore, II, lxxxvi, 351-4 as provided in The Art of Memory by Frances A. Yates

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All art by Christian Jank

Many debates occur about whether oral memory techniques are reliable and accurate. Many scholars would have us believe that the memories of the Draoithe and Filidh were no better than a party of youths playing the game of “Post Office.” In this game, a phrase is passed around a circle of people, repeated in whispers from one to another until it returns to the original sender. In the process of its transmission of information, the tale or phrase is changed until it becomes completely different and unrecognizable to its author. While this phenomena is observably true among untrained and casual memories at parties, I maintain that it is far from the truth when considering the trained minds and memories of the Druids and other ancient scholars.

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