Introduction
Learning tarot should be an enjoyable and imaginative experience that allows you to connect with and uncover the meanings of the cards. However, sometimes memorisation can often feel tedious and uninteresting, so one way to make memorisation more engaging is by using the Memory Palace technique.
Keep in mind that using the imagination is not only for children but also a valuable tool for everyone to use, no matter what age. Your imagination is an evolutionary gift passed down from your ancestors that can be used to improve memory and help connect you to your intuition. By tapping into your creativity, you can access the spiritual power within.
But what is the Memory Palace technique?
The Memory Palace technique, also known as the "method of loci," is a powerful mnemonic strategy that uses familiar locations to help you associate and remember information. This technique involves mental visualisation and coming up with creative stories and is an overall fun way to enhance your learning experience.
For example:
1. Choose a familiar location that you can easily visualise, such as your home. This is going to be called a Palace.
2. Next, break down the Palace into specific areas or rooms. Example: the lounge room, the kitchen, the bedroom, the office, etc. These will be called stations.
3. Now, each station is going to be assigned to a different tarot suit: cups, wands, swords, pentacles & major arcana. For example, you might use the lounge room for the suit of cups, the kitchen for the suit of wands, the bedroom for the suit of swords, and the office for the suit of pentacles.
Alternatively, you could use multiple locations (Palaces) and assign the Major Arcana and the suits to each of the different Palaces. So, your house could be associated with the Major Arcana, your mother’s house could be for the cups suit, your work could represent the wands, etc. This means you will need to come up with five different Palaces that you are familiar with. This is the preferred method that I will be going through in the course.
4. Next, to memorise the card, you are going to form mental images that depict their meaning and place them in the corresponding location. For instance, the Three of Cups card represents celebration, friendship, and joy, so you could imagine three women celebrating in your living room.
To make the image more memorable, you could envision them jumping on the couch and spilling wine everywhere. You can take it even further and assign those three women to people you know or characters from movies/shows that you enjoy watching.
5. Now, to lock this memory in place, create a story as to why these three women are celebrating. It could be that they’re celebrating the fact that one of the women is finally an owner of a cup store, or perhaps something a little more exciting than that.
6. Repeat this process for each card in each suit until you have a complete Memory Palace filled with tarot card associations.
7. To recall a tarot card, you can visualise yourself walking through your Memory Palace and finding the card in the correct location.
It's important to note that this is a technique that takes time to master, and it's important to practice it regularly. Also, it's good to use images that are vivid, emotional, and easy to visualise, as these are the ones that are more likely to be remembered. But making them a little weird or chaotic can be a big help too! Get creative with it.
Here is another example of what a Memory Palace is:
Let’s say you want to remember six of your friend's zodiac signs. To do this, you can associate each friend with a specific location in a familiar place, such as a friend's house.
For example, you can assign your friend Jen to station one, which is the entrance of the Palace (the front door).
Now imagine you enter the first station, and Jen, who is a Scorpio, is fighting with a massive scorpion.
As you move to the next station, (the dining area) your friend Alice, who is a Leo, is having a cup of tea with Leonardo DiCaprio and his pet lion named Leo.
The next station (the kitchen) is where your friend, Dave is; he is an Aries which is represented by a ram, so he is battling it out with a ram, and there is broken glass everywhere.
In the next station, (the lounge) your friend Liam, who is a Gemini, is holding hands with another version of himself; they each have a gem in their eye… gem-in-eye.
Your friend Kate is in the next station, (the bathroom) and she is a Libra, so she could be holding scales; on one side of the scales, there are dozens of spiders, and on the other side of the scales, there are maggots – (making the story a little grotesque and chaotic can make it memorable).
And your friend Julien is in the next station, (the bedroom), and Julien is a Taurus, which is represented by a bull, so Julien could be cleaning up after the bull took a huge dump in the room.
The brain is meant to be used creatively, so have fun with the stories and images you create in your imagination, and you will be able to memorise a lot of information without much effort.
SIDE NOTE: If you have aphantasia or you struggle to visualise - this technique is still possible for you to use. The goal is to find alternative methods that work for you and align with your strengths whether that be visual, auditory, emotional, etc. If you can understand how you process information, then you will be able to create your own technique to memorise tarot card meanings.
It's about using your spatial memory - Spatial memory is the way our brain remembers where things are in the world and how they're related to each other - So you can use objects instead of locations to link information.
So, if from memory you can navigate items in your house in a certain order, then you are going to be able to use this method. While the traditional visualisation aspect of the memory palace technique might not be possible for some of you, adapting the technique to your unique cognitive style can still provide valuable memory aids and help you master tarot card meanings.