mnemotechnic

“The only mnemotechnic device which ever worked with me did so by virtue of its superb and flagrant inconsequence.”

Try Anything Twice

“Firstly, in order to exercise mnemotechnic: secondly, because after an interval of amnesia, when, seated at the central table, about to consult the work in question, he remembered by mnemotechnic the name of the military engagement, Plevna.”

Ulysses

“For greater clearness, they took as their mnemotechnic basis their own house, their domicile, associating a distinct fact with each part of it; and the courtyard, the garden, the outskirts, the entire country, had for them no meaning any longer except as objects for facilitating memory.”

Bouvard and Pécuchet A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life

“Now, remember that this worship is daily, that these formulas must be pronounced, these movements of the hands made with mechanical precision; that if the worshipper forgets one of the incarnations of Vishnu which he is to figure with his fingers, if he stop his left nostril when it should be the right, the entire ceremony loses its efficacy; that, not to go astray amid this multitude of words and gestures required for each rite, he is obliged to use mnemotechnic methods; that there are five of these for each series of formulas; that his attention always strained and always directed toward the externals of the cult, does not leave his mind a moment in which to reflect upon the profound meaning of some of these prayers, and you will comprehend the extraordinary scene that the banks of the Ganges at”

The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India Volume II