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These pages show how a topic, such as "fiscal policy" can be reduced for mnemonic and heuristic purposes to the Art of Blessed Raymond Lull. Almost any topic can be treated in this way, by conceptually dividing it into parts that correspond to the eighteen principles, ten rules and nine subjects of the Art. The process used in applying the Art to any topic can begin with a discourse on the topic through the sequence of the 18 principles and 10 rules.

Here, the topic is treated at an elementary level, and we have used four brief articles from Funk and Wagnalls online encyclopedia namely "Taxation", "Economics", "Treasury Department", and "Budget". There are links to the Funk and Wagnalls free online encyclopedia.

The said articles were divided into parts and the parts were copied and pasted into the notes window of a MindManager mindmap of the principles and rules of the Art, so that the different parts of the articles are located in the loci of the Art, in accordance with their affinities to these loci. For instance, the tax base is a topic dealt with under "goodness", because it consists in goods and services. Tax incidence is allocated to the principle of greatness, history and stability to duration, etc. Once the parts of the articles were copied and pasted in the loci, this html document was generated by MindManager from the mindmap and text notes.

To make any use of the Art you must know the principles by heart with their definitions as well as the rules with their species and the 9 subjects, so that they are firmly established in your mind and can serve as loci for remembering other topics. For more information on this, see the FAQ page and other pages on the web site at

http://lullianarts.narpan.net/faq.htm

Alternately read through the said articles at the Funk and Wagnalls site, and browse through these pages a few times, where the same material is arranged in the order of the memory loci, namely the principles and rules. While reading, keep in mind the questions "what", "why", "how much" and "how". (For more about the questions or rules of the Art, see the page on rules). Then mentally go over the sequence of principles from goodness through to minority and remember the things said about fiscal policy in each locus. Make and solve questions with the rules, until you are familiar with the basic knowledge of fiscal policy provided in the articles.

Much more can be said about applying the Art to different topics, but this is an introductory example that focuses mainly on the above mentioned technique of discourse with the principles and rules, as an initial interface between the Art and any topic.

This article illustrates an initial step that consists in gathering a brief compendium of authoritative information on the topic, in this case we used Funk and Wagnalls online encyclopedia but you can use any other reliable source of your choice to do the same, i.e. relate the information to the principles and rules by simply copying and pasting the gathered information in the loci of the Art,  first using the sequence of 28 principles and rules. The same sequence can be used in studying different parts of the gathered material, just as the whole compendium was divided into the 28 loci, (38 loci if you include the subjects), so you can take any part of the material, like for instance any or all of the descriptions of different schools of economic thought, and submit it to the same process, namely copy and paste the contents of the subdivision into the same loci, in a special operation within the general operation that began by simply allocating different parts of the whole compendium to the loci provided by the sequence of principles and rules and now can continue on a more detailed level, until all the material is digested. Then if you are asked to do a report on some aspect of fiscal policy, you can resort to the figures of the Art and form cameras applicable to the particular subject at hand. For example, if you want to report on the effects of fiscal policies on international trade agreements between countries that have different legal systems (such as common law, civil law amd islamic law etc.), you can form camera BEF in the fourth figure and begin your research by referring to what you find under the headings of B - tax base, E - authorities, F - economic science, TB -different systems, TE - principles, TF - budget;  and apply the rules B - whether, E - why, F - how much. As your report turns to different aspects of the problem, you can form other cameras in the figures as you please. Once you have a fair mental concept of what you want to put in your report, you can apply the methods of writing effective presentations with the help of the Art given on the web page 

http://lullianarts.narpan.net/rhet.html
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

This document was updated 5/15/99.