A Ritual to Enter Chapel Perilous
and commit to radical agnosticism
We performed a group enactment of this ritual on the moment of the Autumn Equinox 2022. It was wild. If you would like to join us at Chapel Perilous complete this ritual and email me your sigil. I’ll put you on the guest list for the next service.
You don’t know.
And you’re sick of pretending you do. About politics. About virology. About American foreign policy. All subjects that take a lifetime of study to begin to understand that you are expected to produce ‘takes’ on that miraculously align with the mood of current year, or are just offbeat enough to be ‘hot’.
If you force honesty upon yourself, which is an unfashionable habit, there’s other stuff you don’t know too. Like whether there’s more to existence than matter, whether we are free to do otherwise than we do and whether consciousness itself is a delusion. You are profoundly ignorant and not just about the big stuff. About personal matters too: where you’re from, where you’re going, who you are.
Doubt is a state of being. Once you clear away all the fig leaves of faux certainty you are naked before the unknown.
That’s Radical Agnosticism. It goes down to the roots. It’s what Robert Anton Wilson called Chapel Perilous and I don’t think it's just you.
I think this uncertainty is our natural state.
I think we are all in Chapel Perilous, all of the time.
Every proclamation of certainty, identity or conviction rings hollow to me unless it reverberates with acknowledgement of our essential unknowing.
The acoustics in the Chapel are great.
Certainty is a drug and our culture is hooked. If we destroy ourselves I think we’ll do it in a haze of passionate, intense, conviction. But, of course, I can’t be sure.
My solution is to unpick certainty within myself and encourage you to do the same by making a commitment to Radical Agnosticism. To open your eyes and realise you are in Chapel Perilous.
You will need
To decide on a liminal place to enact the ritual (doorway, crossroads, seashore etc) at a liminal time (dusk, dawn or the moment of the equinox).
Paper and pen
A marker pen
Something to mark a line on the ground with (if enacting this ritual outdoors)
A lighter or matches (if you wish to destroy your certainties with fire)
A fire and waterproof vessel (if you are enacting this ritual inside)
A six-sided dice
A glass of fermented beverage (for the sake of these instructions, I’ll assume wine)
Preparation
During the three days prior to this ritual attempt to live haphazardly. Deliberately violate your usual habits of behaviour. Take different routes, get up at different times, eat different food. We carve grooves of habitual behaviour into ourselves everyday, sometimes good, sometimes bad. If you want to enter the Chapel you will need to invite the unpredictable into your life.
Ritual -3 days
Visualise a Red Rectangle
Three days before you plan to enact this ritual, spend some time kneeling and visualising a red rectangle. If visualisation is difficult for you, spend some time looking at the image below, then close your eyes and try to recreate it in your mind's eye.
Still not working? Imagine what it would be like if you could see that red rectangle. It is very rare to be able to ‘see’ mental imagery as if looking at a photograph or watching a film. Having a strong idea of the red rectangle will suffice.
Picture it upon waking and just before you fall asleep, these hypnagogic times are great for creating compelling mental images. If you’re lucky enough to enjoy insomnia then make the most of it and imagine your rectangle in the dead of night to stave off existential dread.
Choose a word
Choose a word that encapsulates the biggest thing you don’t know. Not just the biggest conceptually such as: I don’t know if we’re living in a simulation but the biggest for you. Choose the ignorance that has kept you up at night, that makes you feel more than intellectual curiosity. That makes you feel disoriented, exhilarated, maybe scared.
Write the word down in capital letters and put it up on your fridge or somewhere you will see it often.
Write a list
Write a list of nine things you were certain of about reality four years ago. They could be things about yourself, the world or metaphysics perhaps identity labels or beliefs you held strongly at that time. No need to journal extensively, nine short sentences will suffice.
Ritual -2 days
Imagine a Red Door
Kneel and visualise a red door. Elaborating on yesterday’s visualisation, turn that rectangle into a door. Any kind of door. If conjuring one up from nothing is too tricky here, use mine:
Dedicate some time today to work on your visualisation while kneeling. Set the red door as your brain’s screensaver, whenever you have a dull moment imagine it as vividly as possible. Remember to summon it into your mind’s eye as you drift off to sleep and when you awake.
Amend your List
Take the list you wrote yesterday and cross out every item on it with a firm decisive stroke. On the same piece of paper write a list of six things you were certain of two years ago.
Make a Sigil
Take the word you chose yesterday and create a sigil from it. If you are familiar with sigil making, use your favourite method. If not do it my way:
Write the word in all caps.
Cross out vowels and repeated letters.
Deconstruct the remaining letters into component parts (horizontal and vertical lines, curved lines, diagonal lines etc).
Using these parts as ingredients arrange them into a symbol you find pleasing. Rotate them, resize them, mirror them as you wish. You do not need to use every line or shape.
Once you have a symbol you find satisfying, draw it neatly on a fresh sheet of paper with your marker pen.
Don’t get hung up on making this sigil just right. If you suffer from perfectionism, set a timer for ten minutes and don’t allow yourself to mess with it after that time elapses.
Ritual -1 day
Imagine Your Door
Kneel and visualise your red door with your sigil carved, painted or otherwise marked upon it.
This is your door to the chapel, the one you will be stepping through in your ritual. You may wish to make it seem more real by drawing or photoshopping an image of the door.
Finalise your List
Take the list you wrote yesterday and cross out every item on it with a firm decisive stroke. On the same piece of paper write a list of three things you are certain of about reality today.
Ritual
Go to a liminal place, at a liminal time.
Traditionally the crossroads and other threshold places have been considered symbolically potent. Offerings and sacrifices are made here to ambivalent gods and spirits. Beings who unite oppositions and, like ourselves, contain multitudes. To venture to one of these places for ritual purposes is to step into a rich history of associations. This is where we might meet a devil, our daemon or ourselves.
So, choose a crossroad, a doorway or the intertidal zone where the sand is still wet from the retreating sea. Go there at dusk or dawn or better yet at the moment of the spring or autumn equinox.
Take off your shoes and consider the moment you stand in. Suspended between day and night, between night and day or between the light and the dark halves of the year. Anything is possible here, at a time and place of initiation into new ways of being.
Define a Threshold
Mark out a line on the ground that will serve as a threshold to The Chapel. Make the line as long as you imagine the door is wide. You can draw it in the sand or mark it with stones or a length of rope.
If you are conducting the ritual in a doorway then use the doorway you are standing in, no metaphorical threshold required.
Breathe in The Seeming
In the Doorway
If you are using a doorway as your liminal space sit on the threshold and breathe. As you breathe in think the word so in the pause between breaths think the word it and as you breathe out think the word seems.
The words so it seems are chosen to attune you to The Seeming. The attention to your breath should help lower you into a mild altered state. Listening to trance inducing music such as binaural beats might help.
Sit here and breathe until you start to feel strange or set a timer for twenty minutes.
Outdoors
If you are outside at a crossroads or the beach you will have defined a threshold on the ground. Slowly walk around that line. As you circumambulate your threshold, align your breath with your steps: as you step forward with your right foot breathe in and think the word so, in the pause between steps think the word it and as you breathe out and step forward with your left foot think the word seems.
The words so it seems are chosen to attune you to The Seeming. The attention to your breath should help lower you into a mild altered state. Listening to trance inducing music such as shamanic drumming might help.
Keep walking until you feel dizzy or strange or set a timer for five minutes.
Destroy your Certainties
Take the piece of paper with all your past certainties written on it.
Remind yourself of The Seeming. It’s not just a scrap of philosophical poetry. As Robert Anton Wilson says, all perception is a gamble. A guess. An imperfect model created by our senses.
Cognitive scientists argue that we didn’t evolve to perceive truth, we evolved to survive. And since we only have access to reality via our evolved senses, objective reality is always just out of reach. Absolute certainty can never be achieved. We can only know how things seem.
We live in The Seeming.
So can you be certain of these three things?
Burn, crumple or rip up the piece of paper. You cannot take it with you.
Summon Your Door
Kneel on the floor one pace in front of your threshold. Take three deep full breaths. Tilt your chin slightly up as if looking at a door several feet in front of you. Close your eyes. Imagine the red door with your sigil marked upon it.
Make this the most concerted effort at visualisation of the door so far. Use a visual aid if necessary. It may help to silently describe the door in words: the door is large and red it, has black iron hinges etc. Remember that if seeing the door in your mind's eye is impossible for you then conjuring the idea of the door will be enough.
Roll the dice
Once you have the door in your mind, take the dice from your pocket and roll it in front of you. Keep the idea of the door in your mind looming above you as you watch the dice fall.
When you see the number, close your eyes.
Step Forward
Stand up. Slowly take the number of steps forward indicated by the dice.
If you rolled a two or more you will cross the threshold into Chapel Perilous.
If you rolled a one, you cannot enter at this time. Step up to the threshold and pour your beverage onto the ground or into the fireproof vessel as a libation to the chapel and try again at another liminal time. You will need to repeat the three day preparation before reattempting the ritual.
Make your Vow
If you have crossed the threshold, open your eyes.
Take a few deep breaths in this space of paradox. Here you are at your most uncertain. Here you are closer to the truth than you have ever been.
Place your right hand on your heart, skin to skin. Can you feel it beating?
Raise your left palm facing forward, you are about to make an oath.
Say: ‘I will no longer pretend to certainty’ or some other phrase that captures the same meaning.
Actually, don’t just say it, mean it.
Imagine how your life would be different if you didn’t pretend to know things you don’t know. How your personal, political and metaphysical perspective might shift. This vow doesn't mean admitting when you are unsure it means embracing your uncertainty. It means becoming agnostic, right down to the roots. It will change you.
Here in the chapel, you are making a vow to live as honestly as you can in The Seeming.
Raise a Toast to the Trickster
Raise your glass of wine. Consider the alchemical process of fermentation it has been through; from fruit on the vine photosynthesising sunlight into sugar, to the dark womb of the barrel where those sugars became something else and now here in your hand ready to transform you.
Drink to the honour of the archetypal Trickster, Tyler Durden, Dionysos, Jim Morrison, Jesus. Whatever name you know him by.
Or maybe like Robert Anton Wilson and Elwood P. Dowd your ally is a 6ft tall white rabbit called Harvey.
Wilson described Chapel Perilous as The place where you realise that your map is inadequate for the territory, you’re completely lost. Then an ally comes out of the dark and leads you away from total insanity.
So, put out a call for your ally and imagine his chaotic spirit flowing through you; he is comfortable with ambiguity. He is ambiguity.
Is he real? Well, that’s the whole point isn’t it? While you're here, you really don’t know.
The Chapel is his realm, and now it’s yours too.
Afterwards
Pay attention to imagery in your dreams or synchronicities, your ally might present themselves over the next few days. After all you’ve primed yourself to look for him.
If you took part in the first enactment of this ritual on the Autumn Equinox 2022 come along to the group call the following day to seal the deal and witness the mysteries of The Chapel. If you’ve emailed me your sigil you will have the link, I’d love to see you there.
If you have conducted this ritual and crossed the threshold you are entitled to witness the mysteries of Chapel Perilous. Email me (hello@rebeccaonpaper) and I’ll put you on the guest list for the next service.
Ritual Recap
Preparation
Ritual -3 days
Live haphazardly.
Visualise a red rectangle while kneeling.
Choose a word that captures your greatest uncertainty.
Write a list of nine things you were sure of four years ago.
Ritual -2 days
Imagine a red door while kneeling.
Amend your list, cross out the first nine certainties and add six things you were sure of two years ago.
Make a sigil
Ritual -1 days
Imagine your door, marked with your sigil while kneeling.
Finalise your list, cross out the six items on your paper and add three things you are certain of today.
The Ritual
Go to a liminal place, at a liminal time.
Define a threshold
Breathe in The Seeming
Destroy your certainties
Summon your door, while kneeling one pace away from the threshold imagine your door marked with your sigil.
Roll the dice
Step forward up to or through the door. If you do not cross the threshold pour out your wine as an offering and try another day.
Make your vow
Raise a toast to the trickster.
