MAU MAGAZINE

The Memory Palace as a Divining Tool            07-16-2025

The memory palace, or method of loci, is traditionally understood as a technique for remembering. It allows one to store vast amounts of information by mentally placing it within an imagined architectural space, a palace, a path, a series of rooms, or landmarks. These places serve as containers, and through repeated journeys, the memory becomes fixed and recallable.

I first came across the idea of a memory palace when I was looking into the original meanings of each of the original Phoenician letters (A=oxhead, B=house, etc). I read Brian R. Pellar’s papers, which show that the 22-letter alphabet lines up with the zodiac, two letters per constellation, skipping Aquarius, the god-boat which carries the other constellations through the waters of heaven. What is compelling about Pellar’s model is that in the alphabet, Pisces, Aries, and Taurus are in a loop which reverses them together as one group. Gemini is not rotated, and all the other constellations of Cancer through Capricorn are each rotated individually. These rotations create loops in an imaginary alphabet that create rooms in a memory palace. 7 individually rotated rooms for Cancer through Capricorn. Three rooms that rotate together, one that does not, and another sign of the 12 that is the silent underlying waters.

Pellar also shows how the 22 Phoenician letters fit snuggly into an ancient Chinese lunar zodiac of the 28 mansions of the moon, each mansion is marked on the zodiac with it’s own sign or letter. This lunar zodiac contains two letters for Aquarius, and two letters for every other sign, as it takes the moon about two days to pass through a sign, and also a sign from the inner 10 constellations not on the ecliptic to mark each of the four colures, or seasons, of the year. 22+2+4=28 mansions of the moon.

As I reconstructed Pellar’s theories in my mind, I built a memory palace that lined up with so many ancient symbols from Pythagoras onward that it blew my mind. Pellar shows in his papers how the alphabet lines up with the stars. But it also lines up with the circle of fifths. Pellar shows how the alphabet encodes Pi structurally, but it also encodes the Fine Number Construct in it’s structure. It uses the planets as seven hands on a celestial clock who act as the actors on a stage whose bones are the stars. It was a memory palace whose positions lines up with the stars and the planets danced as you fed it memories and the planets would encode my memories into the stars with their dancing through the stars.

the alphabet’s connection to the Circle of Fifths is structural. I compared the shape of the alphabet as it is wrapped around the stars to other known shapes and saw that it lined up perfectly with the structure of the Circle of Fithfs in music theory. The 5+7=12 structure of the circle of fifths.

It was odd to me that a memory palace should reveal information to me.

The Fine Number Construct is 1 over 137. The Alphazodiac is an esoteric inversion of this fraction, a mirror image of it. Instead of having 1`over 137, the alhpazodiac has one constellation that is UNDER the eleven others, who are grouped as 1 constellation (Gemini) that does not move, 3 (Pisces, Aries, Taurus) that rotate together, and 7 (Cancer through Capricorn) that rotate individually. 1 under 1 3 7. Interesting synchronicity.

There are ways in which this memory palace can be manipulated like the “linguistic faberge eggs” Terrance Mkenna says the machine elves revealed to him on DMT trips. McKenna described experiences under the influence of DMT where he encountered self-transforming, hyperdimensional entities that communicated in a language of visual poetry—a kind of linguistic light-show.

By writing the 22 letters of the alphabet on the points of a stack of 4 triangles for the four elements and 3 squares for the three forces, in a stack 3 4 3 4 3 4 3 and then connect it telemeric ends as in a toroid to make the order 3 3 4 3 4 3 4, and then rolling out the points of this stack of triangles and squares into clay, like an old cylinder seal, the points in the clay, when reversed as in a mirror, will write out the four letters of the tetragrammaton, one letter per season of the year.

And yet, this arrangement is not sacred, as in, just because it writes the name of God doesn’t mean it is the only arrangement the letters can fit. This stack of 3 3 4 3 4 3 4 is one viewpoint of the Faberge egg. Writing all 28 letters onto the corners of a stack 7 squares 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 reveals the connection of the planets to music and the days of the week.

So the alphabet memory palace can be rotated and manipulated to reveal new information, like DMT elves would rotate glowing basketball shaped orbs at Mkenna to reveal puns to him that showed how language is like a three-dimensional, glowing, morphing geometric structures that embodies layered meanings.

Mkenna said things like:

“They speak in a visible language. They use sound to make objects—linguistic objects—jokes, puns, visual metaphors that unfold in front of you.”

“They are made of intentionality. They are made of language. They are, in fact, the language. They come bounding out of the space and they offer you these linguistic Fabergé eggs that are like visual puns.”

And so, when I was merely looking into the original meanings of the letters, I stumbled upon an ancient memory palace of the sky encoded in the alphabet. Not only could it hold all my memories, but it could also speak back to me things I didn’t know. It blew my mind like I was a monkey looking at a space tablet. It turns out the sky’s arch-of-type is the ark of archetype. Cool!

Now, it has been well known that a memory palace can be used not only for recollection but also for divination because the zodiac wheel used in horoscopes and other divinatory practices is a memory palace. A diviner is one who practices the art of accessing hidden knowledge, symbolic insight, or revelation from a symbolic structure.

In geometric terms, the alphabet becomes a “Library of Babel”. This is a library that contains every book that can be written, and for this reason, contains a lot of books that are full of undecodable strings of letters that make no sense in any known language. That is the cure of having an infinite number of books in one library.

The alphabet is lined up with the stars and wrapped in structured loops of letters creating a symbolic structure that can encode all information and thus also reveal all information, through lumashi, or divine revelation of puns from the stars. The puns come to the reader like ghosts in the library of Babel pointing you to books that contain readable information.

Memory and Revelation

Memory and divination are often considered opposites. Memory retrieves what was once known; divination seeks what is not yet known. But both share a common structure: they rely on symbols, internal imagery, and a process of navigation through mental space. Just as one “walks” through a memory palace to retrieve encoded information, so too can one journey through a palace to receive symbolic impressions, synchronicities, or revelations.

The Sumerians had a word for such revelation: lumashi. It referred to the arrangement of stars and signs in the sky, used by priests and astronomer-diviners to interpret the will of the gods. The sky was their memory palace, and the constellations were loci filled not with facts, but with archetypal meaning. When an unusual alignment occurred, it was read as a sign, a moment of insight. A lumashi.

Similarly, in a symbolic memory palace, one can embed mythic symbols, letters, constellations, deities, or planetary powers. The structure becomes not just a cognitive map, but a symbolic cosmos. A personal sky. Walking through it becomes a kind of inner astrology walk.

In the Alpha Zodiac, the letters of the alphabet are mapped onto the zodiac and used as both a memory device and symbolic structure. In this model, each letter represents a sign, a place, a principle.

One example: N and M (nun & mem) are the two letters for Virgo in the sky. The letter Nun is associated with water, fish, fall, serpent and is linked with Mem (water, womb, depth). In Psalm 145, an acrostic poem, the verse corresponding to Nun is mysteriously absent. The ancient rabbis explained this absence by quoting Amos 5:2: “Fallen is the virgin Israel.”

The virgin (Virgo) has fallen. The serpent (Nun) has disappeared into the waters (Mem). The seed star of Virgo, Spica, is lost. In this absence lies a story: a fall from grace, a hidden truth. And in the Alpha Zodiac, that gap can become a place of revelation.

By standing in your memory palace at the room or locus of Virgo, and contemplating the missing letter, you do not just recall a fact. You enter a myth. You receive a symbolic charge. You may see images, patterns, or sudden intuitive insights—what Jung might call active imagination, or what the ancients might call an oracle.

When you construct a memory palace of symbolic content, you create a field for synchronicity. The mind will begin to reflect, project, and connect beyond the merely rational. A question asked within the palace is answered not with logic, but with symbolic resonance. A particular image may shine brighter. A long-forgotten association may surface. An unexpected pattern may emerge.

This is not hallucination. It is structured intuition.

The palace becomes an interface—a divinatory engine. You place your attention on a locus, and it speaks back. It is not random; it is structured by the logic of memory, symbol, and correspondence. As in Tarot, astrology, or the I Ching, the structure is what enables the insight.

One Palace, Many Worlds

A key insight is that all memory can be stored in one palace because the palace is infinitely expandable. Likewise, all symbols can be revealed from one palace because the symbols are fractal, interconnected, and alive. Whether you are recalling the periodic table or seeking an omen, the same architecture can serve.

In this way, the memory palace becomes not just a personal tool, but a ritual space. It is a theater of consciousness where memory, imagination, and revelation meet. You can encode your learning there. You can explore your dreams there. You can pose questions to the unknown there.

And it seems as though our alphabet encodes this most ancient and sacred of memory palaces, based on the stars and planets, which mirrors us so well, for as above so below, that it can hold all our memories and tell us all that can be known as well.

The memory palace is a tool of vast power. When used for recollection, it strengthens the mind. When opened to divination, it becomes a mirror of the cosmos.

Through symbolic navigation, active imagination, and the conscious use of archetypal structures, the palace transforms into a space where memory and prophecy meet. It becomes a modern lumashi, a constellation of meanings inside the mind revealed by the stars.