Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0485: More on memorizing topics of the Bible

Episode Date: January 15, 2016

Eamon asks about memorizing topics of chapters of the Bible. I build on the tactics that I’ve mentioned in previous episodes and describe a method for becoming a “walking reference” of the entire Bible, plus I share resources for implementing this method. What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String […]

Master of Memory 485 Welcome to Master of Memory. I'm Timothy and I'm here to answer your accelerated learning questions every day and to inspire and empower you to learn anything you want to learn faster than ever. Iman submitted a written question at masterofmemory.com slash question. Iman says, I've been learning about memory from your site and I found it to be pretty amazing so far. I'm really interested in learning all the topics and sections of the Bible, and I've listened to all of your podcasts about this subject. I'm not looking to learn the Bible word for word, but I would like to be able to jump to parts of the Bible when something comes up in

class or in conversation. Basically a walking reference. Have you done any work on setting up the topics already, or do you know of a good resource where I can get the topics? I've looked around on Google, but it doesn't seem to be as thorough as it should be. Thanks again. So yes, Iman, the short answer is we have done quite a bit of work on the topics of the Bible. And in fact, that's a major project this year for me, a personal project and a project that about 30 others are going through in a sort of email study where we're just learning four chapters, you know, the topics of about two to four chapters of the Bible a day from the beginning of the year to the end of the year until we've learned all the topics

of all the chapters of the Bible by the end of this year. Now, I would refer you to episode 423, but I know that you've already listened to that. So for other listeners, episode 423, I would refer you to episode 423, but I know that you've already listened to that. So for other listeners, episode 423, I've talked about this a bit. But just as another detail for some of the techniques before I talk about where to find the resources for those specific books, as you're asking for, I'd like to talk about a new technique that I've been using a lot for basically enhancing the mnemonics that I use for memorizing the topics and for making it really easy to create mnemonics in a quickly constructed memory palace that you're using to memorize these long term. So basically, besides just breaking down each chapter into a few topics that you want to associate with that chapter and using some sort of number mnemonic

to remember the chapter and associate that with the topics. The number mnemonic that I'm actually using for these chapters now is not one of my PAO objects or characters, but rather it's an environment that I'm applying to my memory palace. So let's say you have 10 rooms in a house. You have room 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. The last digit of each of those numbers is going to be one of those digits. And then if the palace goes any further, it'll repeat. You have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on again. Now, if you've created your palace and reviewed it a few times, you might have memorized which number of room goes with each chapter of the Bible when you're storing a different chapter in each of those rooms. But of course, this isn't just as a parenthesis here. This isn't to learn all the verses and to

learn the whole Bible. It's to give us the capacity to learn verses wherever we want and to let them integrate. So that's why we're actually creating palaces. But basically, you'll create a palace with as many locations as you have chapters of the Bible. And then when you have those numbers associated with those rooms, you sharpen that association by associating one of 10 environments with each of those last digits. So room number one, and also rooms 11, 21, 31, and so on, will always be in the dark. So it's going to be very dark. And the reason for dark is the number one in the major system is a d or t sound. So that represents dark. Then number four, we're skipping to number four,

and of course, numbers 14, 24, and so on, you'll imagine that that room or that location in the memory palace has pouring rain. So it's raining. Despite the fact that it may be indoors or outdoors, it doesn't matter. Just imagine that it's pouring rain. And that's because the major system, you know, four is er. So er is for rain. And then let's skip to number eight. Number eight is fire. It's on fire. So everything is on fire in any room where the last digit is eight, whether that be 8, 18, 118, and so on. And then going to zero for 10, 20, 30, and so on, the kind of characteristic of the environment is snow. And snow starts with S for, you know, the number zero. Now let's go between 1, 4, 8, and 0,

and just add what seems to be naturally occurring around those things. So after the snow, we have the darkness, so that's zero and then one. What happens after darkness? Well, the natural thing is to have light shining in. So we'll have light blasting in the window, or a very bright light from the ceiling, or something like that. have light blasting in the window or a very bright light from the ceiling or something like that. The primary characteristic of the environment of a chapter that ends with two is bright light. And then the characteristic of a room that ends with three is, well, the bright light might be too hot. So we introduce a chilling cold wind. Now, the numbers two and three have nothing to do with light and wind in the major system, although if you take the number 3 and turn it upside down from what it would be in the major system, instead of M, you make it W, that means wind.

But the idea of these is just to associate them with the numbers around them that we have associated with the major system, 1, 4, 8, and 0. So now we have the wind for number three, and the natural thing to come after wind is rain. And then after rain, we have underwater. So anything that has a five at the end, you'll make that whole room underwater. And all the mnemonics in there are underwater as well. And then the number six is fog. So the water clears up and evaporates and turns into fog. So imagine that everything is in a sort of white steamy fog. And then number seven, that fog is converted to smoke. You might argue that those two could get mixed up, but you kind of have to think about the different ways that your characters will respond in that environment

to those two different things. Fog is very peaceful and quiet, and smoke is very stirring. It smells bad, or it smells distressing, and it gets people riled up, and it's black rather than white. Then, of course, number eight is fire, as we've said before. And then number nine is the only thing left, and that's the thing that brings us back to Doe, so to speak, and that is to turn everything upside down. So imagine that the entire environment has reversed gravity. So everybody who's in that room or outside, wherever it is, they're walking around on the ceiling or on the undersides of branches, or the things that you've set in that environment are falling up instead of falling down and are resting on the undersides of things. So those are the 10 different environments.

Now, how do you apply those to the topics of the Bible? Right now, I'm working specifically only on learning topics of the Bible, not actually learning text and verses. So I only want to become that walking reference that you're mentioning, Iman. But the way that I'm doing that is with these environments and with memory palaces. So for example, I've turned Broadway in New York into a giant memory palace for the 50 chapters of Genesis. And I'm just placing the topics along that palace and associating different environments with the different parts of Broadway. For example, Columbus Circle is dark for chapter one.

The traffic light off of Columbus Circle is very bright with light shining. And then if you go south from there, the next area with the pots on the ground is really windy. And then the next part is rainy. Now I associate that with the topics by putting those events in that palace with those environments. For example, where it's rainy in chapter four, Cain kills Abel. So he kills Abel in the rain. It's a very sad day. With number three, there's some wind blowing through these potted plants

and those potted plants are being blown and it's showing the fruit. So that represents the fall. In number two, we have the wind blowing against the traffic lights. And I've created an image to represent resting on the second day and then something representing the creation of man. And then going back to number one on Columbus Circle, I'm not entirely sure why I'm going backwards instead of forwards. But anyone who works with memory palaces knows that it works just as well both ways. But anyway, going back to Columbus Circle for chapter one, we have the creation story at Columbus Circle,

where it's really dark and, you know, you just associate creation with Columbus's head, the statue, and then you have the creation mandate in verse 28 happening in the fountain around the statue, proceeding from the statue, if you're going in that direction, you have, what I've done is I've put a knife in the water of the fountain to represent that that's, you know, verse 28. So I actually am creating some verse mnemonics, although I'm not memorizing the verses, just the references for them. And that actually, believe it or not, helps me to create my topic references, because I'm not just visualizing Cain and Abel. I actually visualize an object that represents the main verse of that story,

but also helps me to create something tangible to represent the murder of Abel with. So yeah, that's just an update on my tactics for learning the topics of the Bible. And I'd encourage anyone to come and follow along with our project. We're working on, as I said, memorizing all the topics of the Bible, and I'd encourage anyone to come and follow along with our project. We're working on, as I said, memorizing all the topics of the Bible, but we've already started. You can still follow along, just kind of pick up where we are right now at masterofmemory.com

slash Bible, and I'll keep you updated on future things that we do of this nature as well. Meanwhile, as I mentioned in the previous episode, we have a new format for the show starting in episode 491. So we'll be prioritizing any questions that come in on the subjects of history, geography, language learning, and passage memorization, such as poetry or scripture memory. Just leave a question as you've always done at masterofmemory.com slash question, but include something on one of these topics for priority. And then if you just have a general question about mnemonics or social skills or, you know, whatever you want to include for accelerated learning, that's not one of those four topics. I'll include that on a Friday or I'll see if I can fit it into the show on a Friday.

So what do you want to learn? The world's knowledge can be yours. Leave your learning request at master ofmemory.com slash question, and I'll talk to you again soon.