The classic memory game, in the language of stars and old gods. Flip a card, flip another, a matching pair stays open. You choose the deck and the mode.
How to play
Flip one, flip another. A matching pair stays open.
Choose a deck and a mode, then begin.
Tap a card and it opens. Tap a second one and it opens too.
If the two match, they stay open. If not, they flip back.
In Duet and Oracle modes, finding a pair lets you play again; a miss passes the turn.
The clock starts on your first flip and stops when every pair is found.
Deck
The sacred animals of old myth. Eagle, owl, raven, serpent, lion, phoenix. Six pairs, a quick round.
Mode
On your own, find every pair, the clock runs.
The origin of the game
Memory match, the patience of pairs
The game of turning face-down cards to find their pairs goes by many names: Concentration, Pelmanism, or simply the memory game. The name Pelmanism comes from the Pelman Institute of the early twentieth century, which promised mental training, for the game exercises memory above all. Cards are laid face down, two are turned, and if they do not match they are turned back. The whole skill lies in recalling where you saw what. It is one of those rare games a child and an adult can play on equal terms.
The idea of matching reaches into the roots of card games, but this face-down form turned it into a memory exercise. Its simplicity made it a teaching tool in classrooms, a family pastime at home, even an instrument in memory research. It is a pure test of visual memory, attention and patience. Needing no technology at all, just a deck of cards, it passed from one generation to the next.
At House of Zij the game is played with decks full of sacred animals, mythological figures and zodiac symbols. You turn one card, then another, and as the matches come a whole pantheon slowly opens before you. In one language of astrology, everything too is thought in pairs and opposites: day and night, ruler and fall, the mirrored faces of opposing signs. The memory game lets you play the seeing of those pairs, the meeting of two faces that seek each other.
In astrology too everything is thought in pairs and opposites: day and night, the mirrored faces of opposing signs.
