The externalization/disembodiment of mind is a significant cognitive perspective able to unveil some basic features of abduction and creative/hypothetical thinking, its success in explaining the semiotic interplay between internal and external representations (mimetic and creative) is evident. This is also clear at the level of some intellectual issues stressed by the role of artifacts in ritual settings, in which also interesting cases of creative meaning formation are at play. Taking advantage of the concept of manipulative abduction, I will stress the role of some external artifacts (symbols in ritual tools). I contend these artifacts, and the habits they originate, can be usefully represented as memory mediators that “mediate” and make available the story of their origin and the actions related to them, which can be learned and/or re-activated when needed. This is especially patent in an anthropological perspective. Furthermore, symbolic habits – for example in psychoanalytical frameworks - can also be seen as memory mediators which maximize abducibility, because they maximize recoverability, in so far as they are the best possible expression of something not yet grasped by consciousness.