Suddenly, everything has changed.
There are times when your mundane life is changed irrevocably by an unforseen circumstance. It doesn't have to good or bad. All it is is an event that changes all sorts of little things. Like love at first sight, or losing your legs in an accident.
The event has to be relatively huge to make the kind of differences I'm talking about, but it's effects will reverberate throughout your life and everything you are.
For me, my personal apocalypse was what set me on the path here. The circumstances surrounding that time are related elsewhere and don't need repeating here, but it was like a distillation of the Paths and Shrapnel discussions we've been having.
I was free falling down one of my paths, which was suddenly a dead end, and I ran right into it. The dead end was the biggest piece of shrapnel you've seen in your life, it forced me down another path. It also forced me to take some measure of control over the paths I was walking.
Others I have talked to have related some similar tales, of how some specific event that seemed huge at the time (and may still seem huge, even now) have set them on the path to PD.com.
Personal Apocalypses is something I used to talk about with LHX quite a lot (I never see him around anymore). It seemed to be an intrinsic part of who many of us are and what we're about.
Is it possible to take something from this idea, and use it to either move paths/shrapnel forward, or maybe even a new concept?
***I am aware of some of the parallels with filters and circuits and what have you, I'm looking to see if there could be something original (gasp!) in this...***
see also: Black Swan
which talks about events - even ones in your life - which are important, unpredictable, and change the future forever
the trick, says Talib, is to maximize your opportunities to be hit by Good black swans (getting your book published, finding god, whatever)
while minimizing your chances of getting hit by bad ones (losing your legs, etc)
If you walk any path long enough, you'll eventually step in some shit.
In my case it felt more like a holocaust of beliefs, rather than an apocalypse. It completely destroyed the path directly in front of me, and it would have been a helluva detour to find my way back ;-)
Mine was a doozy - reality itself actually fell to bits and my whole fucking mind caved in. Looking back I wouldn't have missed it for the world :lulz:
Rough details ITT (http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=10795.0)
Also possibly known as satori, "enlightenment", Chapel Perilous, Da'ath, or "A boot to the motherfucking head".
edit: also, some people have posited that imnetizing the eschaton is actually an internal thing.
Quote from: LMNO on June 26, 2008, 05:40:21 PM
Also possibly known as satori, "enlightenment", Chapel Perilous, Da'ath, or "A boot to the motherfucking head".
edit: also, some people have posited that imnetizing the eschaton is actually an internal thing.
I think Chapel Perilous works as a great metaphor for this sort of thing. The idea that Chapel Perilous isn't just a way point on the path, but likely something that you may revisit time and time again. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Chapel Perilous was my most favorite thing to hear RAW talk about... he could so easily talk about getting OUT (23 Skidoo) and then right back in and out again, only to discover that you weren't out yet, but just in the cloister.
I think that I entered Chapel Perilous after the holocaust of belief. When the scales fell from my eyes and I realized, for real, that almost EVERYTHING I knew was wrong... I had no idea what to do next, my entire life had been full of certainty and then, at that point, there was no certainty at all. Bob said that was sort of like getting up the stair to the front door of Chapel Perilous. Sometimes people get to that point and run screaming right back to their beliefs... for them its better to believe the lies than risk entering the Chapel.
Satori, Da'ath and Enlightenment, to me, seem to fall somewhere beyond this experience. For me, Chapel Perilous appears to link to Yesod... sort of the first point on the crazy journey ahead. The paths lie before you, the potential... but also, people can get completely turned around and spend their whole life never getting beyond that.
The Abyss though, Da'ath... for me represents a much more intentional jump. It's sort of like the final Challenge I think.
So, in my opinion, I think I've entered Chapel Perilous at least once (honestlyI think it's taken three or four trips)... but I also think I may currently be outside the chapel and wandering into another area. I don't think I've achieved Satori though, or jumped the abyss. Unless, 'enlightenment' really just boils down to "Order and Disorder are in our head, along with all those other labels and beliefs".
Part of me would like it to be so simple... but then part of me would be sad, that I don't have some grand adventures and revelations yet ahead.
I was just about to write, "I've never been through anything like this", when I remembered that actually, I have. It just wasn't quite as extreme as what you guys went through, so I forget sometime how deeply depressing it was to me to realize, at the age of 15, after never believing in god in the first place, what the absence of a omnipotent omniscient deity actually implies.
Thinking back now, that is what started me on the rather gentle slope t'hither. It was definitely a personal apocalypse, but a very small, somewhat ironic one, and, evidently, easily forgotten.
Quote from: Ratatosk on June 26, 2008, 05:57:10 PM
Part of me would like it to be so simple... but then part of me would be sad, that I don't have some grand adventures and revelations yet ahead.
They do say that the path is a spiral.
Revelation is best served when you think you got it all sussed out :D
can i get a short summary on what Chapel Perilous is?
Quote from: triple zero on June 27, 2008, 11:49:34 AM
can i get a short summary on what Chapel Perilous is?
2nded, I have a fair idea by combining Rat's post and personal experience, but haven't heard the term before now.
It's a RAW concept IIRC from "prometheus rising"?
Basically when the proverbial 'penny' drops, chapel perilous is where it lands
i read prometheus rising, but i'm going to need a littlebit less proverb and metaphore and a bit more practical example.
mostly i'm trying to figure whether i'm there now, whether i've already been there last year or if i still got some surprises waiting for me*.
and if it really is what i think it is, i've been there for the past 8-10 years or so and i think i'm staying there for the rest of my life. cause that proverbial penny, hasn't really landed on a solid surface, ever, and i'm really starting to doubt it ever will.
* edit to add: yes i'm pretty confident i still got some surprises waiting for me either way. that's not my point :)
Found these two quotes in my Googling of Chapel Perilous.
Quote"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."
QuoteThis is what the owner of this web-site had to say about Chapel Perilous.
"Matt, you have stumbled into 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. It is not abnormal. You have a
curious, intelligent mind just like me and millions of others, and you have
not been afraid to ask the right questions of yourself and your world. The
answers are admittedly confusing. Why? Because the universe isn't
simple!!!! And I'm not sure we can fully comprehend all of its workings in
this lifetime...Does any of that make sense to you? Do you see that you are perhaps more priveleged than some of the others
around you, who only see the dull drab colors of the world they live in? That's right you are an initiate in
Chapel Perilous and it is now up to you to find the strength to NOT have
your questions answered in the English language or any other. The answers
are nebulous."
Quote from: Paesior on June 27, 2008, 12:19:44 PMQuote"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 (snip)
hehehehe
i just
knew i'd still be in for some more surprises!!
.. and i was just starting to like it here ...
One of the best discussions of Chapel Perilous can be found in Antero Alli's "Angel Tech".
In I3, Chapel Perilous is where Fission Chips meets St. Toad (aka Tsathoggua)
It really boils down to the idea that mosbunal people that start exploring the mythic, the magic, the psychological... the people that start breaking out of their BiP... they all run into something bizarre and unexplainable. For RAW it was the Sirius experience, for me, I think my first weird experience was an invocation of Therion and Babylon, where the ritual went way beyond anything I had thought it would.
At the point of walking in to the chapel, you have to decide if you're gonna believe the experience was REAL, or if the experience brings all other experiences into question. If you experience something as real as your daily life... but its utterly insane/incomprehensible/flies in the face of what you KNOW, you either accept it as real, or question what Real is anyway.
So you have people like David Icke, who may have had an experience similar to RAW's, RAW decided it meant he had to question every experience, Icke seems to have decided that Aliens actually exist.
Crowley's experience with AWISS may have been similar... for him it was an experience which he found useful, but never fully claimed it was REAL, on the other hand, someone like Ramtha may have been a similar experience, except the human involved decided it was REAL.
I tend to broaden the usage to include not just the mystic, but the existential*, as well; that is, any great crisis of Universe sticking its big, ugly thumb up the ass of your preconceived notion of "reality".
It's the point when all definitions change; when having to include a new piece of information into your worldview substantially chages every other piece of information you know.
You find yourself lost; untethered; everything you know is wrong; nothing is true, everything is permitted; et al.
Also:
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on June 27, 2008, 10:55:03 AM
Quote from: Ratatosk on June 26, 2008, 05:57:10 PM
Part of me would like it to be so simple... but then part of me would be sad, that I don't have some grand adventures and revelations yet ahead.
They do say that the path is a spiral.
Revelation is best served when you think you got it all sussed out :D
"A true initiation never ends." -Uncle Al.
*"As pertaining to existence".
okay so it has to have something to do with the occult/magic/mythical/psychological?
because i thought it was kind of like the long dark teatime of the soul, you know, this difficult period you have to cross before you get to .. somewhere else or something. or is that another thing entirely? cause then i was thinking of my 8 year struggle to figure out how my mind (and body!) works and why (but most importantly HOW) it's so different from everybody else.
but if it's specifically that one thing, i know what it is for me and i'm not telling. i touched it a few times, and i will probably get the full deal some time soon. and it's going to be awesome and fucking scary at the same time (and no it's not drugs, not in that sense anyway).
also i'm not sure if i'm going to like it when all definitions change, but hey, if they must be different, then i should not fool myself by turning away.
also it's going to be awesome (http://000.blackironprison.com/orange_grin.gif)
Quote from: triple zero on June 27, 2008, 06:05:02 PM
okay so it has to have something to do with the occult/magic/mythical/psychological?
This is why I don't like Rat's explanation; it appears to put the model in front of the experience.
That is to say, I take CP as something that shakes your fundamental assumptions to the core. It doesn't take reading the Zohar while stoned to have it happen to you.
Revelation is like the bit in Jacobs ladder where Jake's chiropractor is going on about angels and demons, cant find the quote but it goes along the lines of - if you're not ready, you see demons trying to kill you but if you are ready you see angels helping you loose the shit that's holding you back. Also hellraiser "Angels to some, demons to others"
Just make sure you're ready to cross the sword bridge is all I'm saying, cos the abyss is deep. :evil:
Quote from: triple zero on June 27, 2008, 06:05:02 PM
okay so it has to have something to do with the occult/magic/mythical/psychological?
because i thought it was kind of like the long dark teatime of the soul, you know, this difficult period you have to cross before you get to .. somewhere else or something. or is that another thing entirely? cause then i was thinking of my 8 year struggle to figure out how my mind (and body!) works and why (but most importantly HOW) it's so different from everybody else.
but if it's specifically that one thing, i know what it is for me and i'm not telling. i touched it a few times, and i will probably get the full deal some time soon. and it's going to be awesome and fucking scary at the same time (and no it's not drugs, not in that sense anyway).
also i'm not sure if i'm going to like it when all definitions change, but hey, if they must be different, then i should not fool myself by turning away.
also it's going to be awesome (http://000.blackironprison.com/orange_grin.gif)
Well, its not specifically Occult... that particular paradigm just tends to be an easy one to describe in the context of CP.
Maybe we could say that Chapel Perilous might be like the parole option of the BiP. Once you're in there, you have to decide if you're gonna brave the world outside of your BiP, or if the BiP is all that exists (and whatever strangeness just smacked you becomes yet another bar)...
CP seems like Crowley's view of the abyss, in that you might not make it out, you might get washed up on the shore you started from, or you might get past it and into something new. It seems unlike it, in that Crowley tended to see the Abyss as a point in the linear path, whereas Bob tended to see CP as somewhere you may visit again and again, each time coming out a different door into a different perspective of reality.
My first trip to Chapel Perilous, seems to have started with my personal apocalypse and rejection of the the BS I believed my whole life. It seems to have climaxed with the Therion Ritual and I exited the Chapel after that point with the view that really weird stuff might be going on. I think I entered my second time after a insane argument/fight at 23ae.com with a guy named Cardinal Machine, a Discordian spouting conservative views. Around that time I experienced a crazy evening wherein I saw Eris, she came into my room and talked to me and I woke up with a bunch of stuff written in my journal about our conversation.
The Eris I talked to was not a happy hippy, but kept saying that we could effect change if we "poisoned the money supply". I still don't know what the hell that meant, but it was not a nice and friendly sort of discussion. After that, I think I left the Chapel with an agnostic view of Eris as Hippy or Eris as Bitch. But after my last experience with Therion, I didn't consider Eris as Real, but rather both experiences as interesting and useful, but maybe just my own subconscious.
I may be in the chapel again now... it seems that I never realize I'm there, until I've left.
There is no 'real'
Or rather there is, but I am never going to get near it.
Just like the guys onscreen in the computer game never get near the install CD.
I might get a glimpse of it, or an inkling of what it is, but I'll never go there.
This is the conclusion that I arrived at, all the imaginary shit I'd been obsessed with collecting just melted away and I felt lighter. There was a brief feeling that resembled fear or loss but the unexplored was beckoning and that drew my attention away, almost immediately.
I lost my mind sometime shortly afterwards, just another meaningless trinket I'd clung to for so long. It came back, eventually, but it seemed to be new and somehow improved so I let it in, on the proviso that it didn't try to pull the wool over my eyes ever again.
Ratatosk, have you ever chronicled the whole story of leaving the JWs and 'joining' with discordians? I'd love to hear it.
there is ONLY 'real' :)
the guys onscreen are real, the install disk is real, you and i are real, 'real' as a concept is real.
I was having BS tremors for a few years.. Raised atheist, almost getting into Richard Dawkins and debating many a Christian led me to believe that absolutely any argument for/against the existence of God could be used just as well by the opposition, or by any religious group specifically. The burden of proof gets passed back and forth by whoever happens to be arguing at the time and it gets us nowhere.
I never believed in any occult/spirituality/myth but I did always think these things were really awesome. Beautiful even.
Then, I dunno, 18 months ago (?) I found an ebook of the PD, and somewhere around then I got 'Maybe Logic' and it all slotted perfectly into place. It was all true. I don't particularly remember going through the Chapel, could it be that it simply wasn't that earth-shattering for me, or so stressful/painful/frightening I erased the memory? Or perhaps I've never been? It was my vague idea that to gain a fuller understanding of discord you would have to have had those teeth kicked in.
Chapel Perilous IS the Personal Apocalypse. A metaphor, but i don't think it needs to be described in such metaphorical terms. I prefer to think of it as simply when you realize everything else is a metaphor too, even the reality in front of your eyes is just an image in your brain. You can pass through with thought alone, maybe a few debates with fundies on all sides and a few acid trips will zip you through faster, but i dont think you need to do any mahjgickque.
Or perhaps I haven't had my apocalypse yet.
I would also love to hear about any experiences with eris. eg, she said to 'poison the money supply'?.. I'll be thinking about that one for a while. My first thought is that money IS poison, but that doesn't seem to help decipher.
Ratatosk, anything from your journal about your conversation you wouldn't mind sharing?
Quote from: Requiem on June 30, 2008, 03:31:56 AM
Ratatosk, have you ever chronicled the whole story of leaving the JWs and 'joining' with discordians? I'd love to hear it.
I haven't, but maybe I should. It might provide me with some introspective insight... :fap: