Every thing 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. - Robert Anton Wilson. Cosmic Trigger
The Grail Chapel
Chapel perilous - a chapel in the midst of a graveyard where a dead knight lies on a stone platform between two candles. Where the questing knights holds a vigil before approaching the grail
- Chapel Perilous is a term coined by Robert Anton Wilson in his book Cosmic Trigger. It refers to a psychological state in which an individual is uncertain whether some course of events was affected by a supernatural force or was a product of their own imagination. According to Wilson, being in this state leads the subject to become either paranoid or an agnostic.
- The term has been used in various contexts, including in the Grail myth, where every seeker of the Grail has to enter the Chapel Perilous, where their virtue and sanity is tested.
“Chapel Perilous is a term coined by Robert Anton Wilson. It refers to a state of mind where one’s perception of reality is severely challenged, leading to a crisis of sanity. Wilson described Chapel Perilous as a threshold that individuals must cross to gain true enlightenment, but warned that those who enter unprepared risk succumbing to madness.”
what Robert Anton Wilson calls Chapel Perilous, a psychological head-space wherein you are privy to certain clues the universe is always giving about itself.
“RAW later called this spiritual-psychotic phase of his life the ‘Chapel Perilous’ — in the Grail myth, every seeker of the Grail has to enter the Chapel Perilous, where their virtue and sanity is tested. RAW managed to come through this crisis, just about, by practicing a sort of critical agnosticism and ontological pluralism.”
"Sir Launcelot rode to the Chapel Perelous, dismounted, and tied his horse to a small gate. On the chapel wall hung many shields, upside down, and several of them Sir Launcelot recognized. Beneath the shields stood thirty knights, all in black armor and their faces distorted in horrible grimaces. Sir Launcelot raised his shield, drew his sword, and advanced, but not without fear in his heart."
— Thomas Malory, "Le Morte d'Arthur," rendered in modern idiom by Keith Baines
