I'm livin in the Chapel;or The US in the Chapel Perilous

Good afternoon,

Someone said in one of the threads about the Boston bomb scare that the United States is having a nervous breakdown.

Maybe.

Robert Anton Wilson(a kindof fameous philosopher who passed a few weeks ago) stated that the United States as a nation is in a state called the "Chapel Perilous". From his estimation, we were plunged into the Chapel on a nice day in Dallas in November of 1963.

Now you might be asking yourself, what is the Chapel Perilous? Below is a definition. A bit long winded, but you'll find that life in the Chapel can be that way. Oh, and it also give some hints as to how we can raise the nation out of the Chapel.

So, please. Discuss.


"In researching occult conspiracies, one eventually faces a crossroad of mythic proportions (called Chapel Perilous in the trade). You come out the other side either stone paranoid or an agnostic; there is no third way. I came out agnostic.

Chapel Perilous, like the mysterious entity called "I," cannot be located in the space-time continuum; it is weightless, odorless, tastless and undetectable by ordinary instruments. Indeed, like the Ego, it is even possible to deny that it is there. And yet, even more like the Ego, once you are inside it, there doesn't seem to be any way to ever get out again, until you suddenly discover that it has been brought into existence by thought and does not exist outside thought. Everything you fear is waiting with slavering jaws in Chapel Perilous, but if you are armed with the wand of intuition, the cup of sympathy, the sword of reason, and the pentacle of valor, you will find there (the legends say) the Medicine of Metals, the Elixir of Life, the Philosopher's Stone, True Wisdom and Perfect Happiness.

That's what the legends always say, and the language of myth is poetically precise. For instance, if you go into that realm without the sword of reason, you will lose your mind, but at the same time, if you take only the sword of reason without the cup of sympathy, you will lose your heart. Even more remarkably, if you approach without the wand of intuition, you can stand at the door for decades never realizing you have arrived. You might think you are just waiting for a bus, or wandering from room to room looking for your cigarettes, watching a TV show, or reading a cryptic and ambiguous book. Chapel Perilous is tricky that way."

i.e., "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall..."

once you look around and realize you are in the Chapel, the way out can become extremely clear.

To know it is to overcome it.

i.e., did Germans who knew the "way out" actually find it, while their country was in the throes of darkness?

I do think that it is possible for a nation to get out of the Chapel, they just have to have a core of extremely determined and highly skilled reality technicians to help them out.

But you really think we're not in the Chapel, right here, right now? With crazy bitter men rampant in the White House (yes, they're presence there absolutely connected to those events in Dallas), global warming closing in, etc.?

I think of this as my way to contribute to RAW's work.

And besides, living in a country that is collectively going through Chapel Perilous kinda blows.