Maze of Mneme
Description: The Maze of Mneme is named for the Boeotian muse of Memory and it concerns itself with memory and the caster's strength of will. It does this through the creation of an mental construct called a Memory Palace. Memory Palaces were the focus of the Method Loci which allowed the ancient Greeks and Romans to memorize massive quantities of information without need of physical notes or books. In essence, a student of the Method Loci would choose a building that they knew particularly well and visualize that place in every detail. Then they would perform a mental walk-through of that site leaving pieces of information at likely and logical locations so that when they walked through again, all the information would be contained in neat little packets that the human mind could understand.
This rote takes that principle and turns it upside-down, reversing the purpose, making the palace into a fortress, a prison or a maze. The new purpose is not to memorize information, but rather to protect the mind from intrusion by creating mental constructs as obstacles to the reading of the mind or the influencing of the will. In combination with the Method Loci, the caster utilizes a number of the more obscure Pythagorean mathematical and ritual practices. The Maze of Mneme is a random construction based upon a mathematical seed (algorithm) known only to the caster, memories are organized like troops for battle and from particularly painful memories the mage can create traps for those who would psychically tread where they do not belong.
Origin: Ostanes
Instruments:
Casting:
System:
Sphere: (Corona •)
Paradox:
Inspiration: This simple mental ward magnifies the magician's will to resist psychic intrusion.
Source Material: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mneme / https://remembereverything.org/memory-palace-the-method-of-loci/ / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labyrinth
