The Temple of Madness: A Chapel Perilous Journey
This is totally out of order
This was one of my last posts before caving in and deleting my blog, Hermekate, for the 4th and final time. Rose wants me to publish it now while the other stories I just posted are fresh, because there is a connection from this story to Institutionalized.
This story unfolded the same night I last re-posted Institutionalized, which was on Walpurgisnacht of…I think it was 2021 even though elsewhere, I said it was last year. I was on the psych ward at MacNeal within a couple of hours of posting it. So I am a little nervous and shaken right now. Let’s hope this is the last time, huh?
I have come to pray and take Initiation at The Temple of Madness, wherein the Mysteries of Delirium, Divine Melancholy, and Mania are communicated. During my time here, I reside in Ziggurat Two of many. A central glass pyramid of 20 panes allows sunlight to fill this space, the pyramid in turn situated above a pit, like a kiva for the conference of the confused. Four small staircases descend into this space in the symmetry of a swastika from the raised dais that surrounds it. Upon this dais sit tables for meals and crafting. All throughout the day, the Temple's Acolytes circumambulate the pit—typically walking widdershins—to while away their time here, a ceremony that, it is hoped, will bring favor from the Gods of Balance for our swift release.
In the true spirit of Madness, the rules of this place are countless and arbitrary, and even more arbitrarily enforced. Those brought here for Initiation are instructed and set upon their ways, each to navigate their own appeasement of the Gods Who set them on this path. Most work together to find our salvation. Some make things harder on themselves by going it alone. Others still make it harder on everyone by kicking up dust and defying the Gods openly.
Some do all three, and without lengthening their stay.
Sleeping quarters and administrative chambers comprise the periphery, along with the occasional bathhouse. While Acolytes are free throughout the day to make use of their quarters, it is widely believed to be frowned upon by the Gods of Balance, who wish to see us work by day and sleep only at night. Nonetheless, when Divine Law is shirked, it is to these quarters that Acolytes are confined en masse until the source of the disruption has been quelled.
We Acolytes who find ourselves here were self-chosen through our past actions, and yet not a single one among us ever wanted to end up here. A veritable "labyrinth of liberation," into which we've been abducted, this liminal space is a puzzle of decisions; once here, our every action decides whether we may leave for greener pastures, remain indefinitely—or go somewhere worse.
During our time here, all is visible to The Gods and Those who serve them, but weighed more heavily is the testimony of the Priest class, who dwell with the Acolytes even as they hold special stations within the Zigurrat. The best chances for a timely release from this Initiation seem to center upon maintaining good relations with this Priestly class while never forgetting to pay respect to their authority within this domain.
The length of Initiation averages 5-7 days, though no Acolyte knows the time of their passage from this place until it comes, and some have undertaken Initiations of great length, stretching into multiple weeks.
The uncertain length of these Initiations seems to be the essence of this Mystery Tradition: We Acolytes pass by learning patience, discipline, and the sacred art of tending our flames in the midst of darkness.
None who leave here are ever the same again.
The above words were written in a composition notebook that I was given last year for personal use at John Madden Mental Health Center, a state-run mental hospital in Hines, IL. The featured image for this post is taken from a crypt at Forest Home Cemetery in Forest Park, just a stone's throw from the hospital. According to local urban legend, a teenage boy entered this crypt from behind, performed a "Satanic ritual," went insane, and wound up in Riveredge Hospital, a privately run psychiatric hospital that is also in the area (in my own teenage years, I did visit to note that the heavy iron doors had been thrown aside like a toy, and there was indeed a pentagram spraypainted onto the walls inside the crypt). The hypnotic, swirling eyes of the lions guarding the entrance now seem, in retrospect, to have been prophetic (and those who are familiar with my encounter with the demon Vine will understand why)—for this post is, in one sense, the tale of what can happen when you play with magic(k) and then magic(k) begins to play back—and for keeps.
"Chapel Perilous" is a term used by Robert Anton Wilson in his book Cosmic Trigger to describe an Initiatory experience that, apparently, a lot more people go through than is readily apparent and, having been through it myself, I can understand why (it takes both courage and considerable skill with words to even attempt to describe it without simply coming off as a lunatic). In his words:
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, tasteless 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.
Robert Anton Wilson, "Cosmic Trigger"
Of course, I had heard of Robert Anton Wilson, but I haven't read much of his work. When my journey into Chapel Perilous began, I had never heard of "Chapel Perilous" at all; I didn't learn about it until near the tail-end of my journey. For this reason, I find the excerpt from my journal above interesting for how well it dovetails with the Chapel Perilous concept. Understand that when I wrote the words above, it was an exercise in satire, and I was literally just describing the mental hospital I was stuck in. In the weeks after my stay, however, I would come to view the words as also being an apt metaphorical description for the process of insanity that I was going through; what Robert Anton Wilson called "Chapel Perilous," I called "The Temple of Madness." It's the same thing. Thus, as I now sit and re-read those words as a general description of the Chapel Perilous experience, every single word seems to apply. It sends chills up my spine, and it means those words are probably the best indicator from my story of just what Chapel Perilous is (not that I claim to know for certain).
I still haven't read Cosmic Trigger, and it almost seems pointless to do so now that I'm out of the Chapel proper, but I probably will; learning about Wilson's experience and the fact that he wrote an entire book about it was, in fact, one of the Chapel's final lessons to me, along the lines of, "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." Were I a more responsible student and practitioner of the occult, I'd have been better armed to face the Chapel's perils; however, I take a certain amount of pride as a "pure psychonaut" in the fact that, however ironic the fact may be, I had largely come to the same conclusions about what I was going through that Robert Anton Wilson had come to himself. In other words, I think I did alright, and stand in good company. Thus, although I came out of the Chapel with a bit of egg on my face, I wouldn't change a goddamn thing. I will, in fact, give myself a pat on the back. This Aries is suitably proud of himself.
The Chapel
In this section, I'll talk a bit about my experiences, but I won't get too specific in terms of details, for a few reasons:
I can't remember or keep track of them all anyway.
To do so would spoil the experience for others (I debated writing about this at all, and have delayed doing so for months), because working one's way through the details is an essential part of the experience; getting too wrapped up in them is the primary peril that I faced myself.
The details are not really the point.
I will say that, in retrospect, I think the experiences I describe in the post The Weighing of the Heart were my entryway into the Chapel; whatever Anubis did to me on the night of the Rose Moon eclipse, I connect that experience with the opening of the gates. Some of the paranormal weirdness that I describe in that post (the song spontaneously playing on my phone) were the initial phenomena that I experienced.
Most people who practice magic(k) for long enough are familiar with "synchronicity slipstreams," where events line up in meaningful ways, even for fairly long stretches. We may never really understand or figure out what they mean, though they do often seem to point the way for us. When I first entered the Chapel, I was very familiar with the phenomenon. Synchronicity was a simple fact of life that I had long since mastered, especially with the help of my spirit guides. After a while, you learn that it's just part of the scenery, and you develop a state of equipoise wherein you can experience even some really odd and unsettlingly "on-the-nose" synchs, but not get too caught up in them. You learn to sort of sniff around them for ready applications, and if you find something useful in them, great; if you don't, oh well...you can just move on. Easy come, easy go, right?
Well, that's nothing.
When I entered Chapel Perilous, the synchronicity was turned up to 11. There were firstly a few short bursts of it that were even noticeable to friends of mine, who, even from their outside vantage point, could see that synchronicity seemed to mysteriously surround me. Those were the opening volleys in what would become an epic battle on the Seas of High Weirdness.
At the time, much of this began to manifest via interactions on social media; I'd be having conversations with my partner, and people we knew would post stuff later that day which seemed to directly reference the thing we'd been talking about; content from one conversation I had with a friend would constellate outward and seem to be reflected back at me from all directions, becoming a chorus carried on by every person and page that I followed. For a while, I could blame the algorithm and tell myself that I needed to get more sleep. But it would still be unsettling to me how frequently it seemed to occur, and if I paid attention, I would notice that one synchronicity led into the next, which led into the next, which led into the next; in other words, although I never really could discern the entire pattern, it seemed clear that there was one.
As I look back on it all, I realize that I had the answer and the solution from the very beginning: These synchronicities needed to be treated just like any others I had experienced; in other words, lightly sniffed at, taken with a grain of salt. The problem was that they began to come in so fast and so often that it strained all credulity. There came a point where it got harder and harder to keep telling myself, "This is just more synchronicity; you know the Universe is a vast, interconnected tapestry and this shit does happen." It got to be too specific. It got to be too reliable, and in fact, too predictable; part of the madness, after a certain point, was that I was literally able to guess what was coming next and I started to experiment with it: "I bet, if I do x, this person will say or do something along the lines of y," and it would pan out just like I expected.
The process showed signs of a higher-order intelligence at play. Once it reached that point, I began to doubt that synchronicity could suffice to explain it. It was at this point that it started to feel more like a conspiracy. "These people are fucking with me." It all began to center around a handful of specific people, and once you're swimming in synchronicity for long enough, your mind starts to seek desperately for rational explanations for how and why all of it could be happening; but the problem is, the only way to rationally explain it all would require a level of coordination that sounds even more insane than, "The space-time continuum is trying to have an ongoing conversation with me." And besides, things were happening off social media, in the real world, as well.
At this point, my behavior became very erratic as I attempted to keep "them" guessing ("them" being either the people I knew who were part of the conspiracy, or the universe itself—whichever case happened to be true). I also did stuff like shutting down my social media accounts, wiping my computer and scanning repeatedly for viruses and keyloggers (because my conversations with several people began to synch up so strongly that I thought for sure they must be hacking me and spying on me as part of coordinating the whole thing). I checked my phone in case it was bugged. I knew, even as my mind went to those places, that those ideas were inadequate to explain what was going on because, again, it was just too uncanny; the synchronicities spread to television, such that every clue on every episode of Jeopardy fit into the overall picture almost as if the clues had been written specifically to fuck with my head, and segments on WGN seemed to be direct nods to conversations I'd had earlier in the day. To make a long story short, in order for there to be a mundane explanation for it all, I would have to have been at the center of a vast conspiracy in which all of my friends and all of the people on TV had nothing better to do all day long but participate in this big, huge prank against me. So I knew, "No, that can't be it." But when you've been going through this for months on end, your brain just gets tired. Your natural, hardwired, neurological need to make sense of it all gets triggered over and over, and even though I knew it was just not feasible at all, I couldn't stop my mind from weaving these tales to explain it all. It was absolutely exhausting.
Looking back, I think it's likely that a vast number of the world's kooky conspiracy theories are the result of people wandering into Chapel Perilous, but never realizing (because they simply weren't equipped with adequate preparation, spiritual experience, or even basic exposure to certain concepts) what is really happening.
I'd had years of study and working with spirit guides, to such an extent that, as noted, my earliest intuitions about it all proved more or less workable—but, one more time, it was just coming on so fast and thick that I doubted myself over and over and over again. Synchronicity was one thing, all well and good, but this was just nuts. It was also terrifying and unnerving at times. Either I was at the center of an absolutely immense conspiracy, or—in order for everything to hold true—I was somehow at the center of my own universe, because if it wasn't a conspiracy run by people, then the universe itself was apparently putting an inordinate amount of effort to arrange itself around whatever was going on in my head. The key question in either case was, "Why me? WHY ME? How and why would I so 'important' that people/the universe would bother messing this hard with me?"
At the zenith of the experience, everything seemed to collapse and "the universe split in two." This is the part that is the most difficult to explain, but basically, my mind had broken the scenario down into an "either/or" framework, and I was living in two different worlds at the same time. During this period, the synchronicities followed so quickly on the heels of whatever was going on inside my head that I basically came to the conclusion that my kundalini channels had been thrown open and I was creating the world around me in real-time. Every thought I had found some strange outer reflection that would manifest within minutes. I felt physically dizzy for months.
In one world, there was a mundane, but very dark and sinister, explanation for it all; there was a conspiracy against me and no one in my life was who they really seemed to be, or who they said they were. Everyone was a part of it, and no one could be trusted. Connecting many dots, I formed this picture into one narrative where I had basically figured out how and why it was all connected.
In the other world, there was no conspiracy at all, everyone I knew was in fact going about their own lives and was more or less oblivious to my unfolding drama (I had learned by then to shut the fuck up, but it didn't seem to stop the synchronicities), and all of these connections were an ongoing, private joke between the universe and I. The idea in this scenario would be to keep the whole thing under my hat and just get through it.
Whichever scenario I focused on, my experiences seemed to confirm. I remember entire conversations with my partner in which every word that came out of her mouth could be interpreted in ways that made the "dark conspiracy" storyline deepen all the more. Her job wasn't what she said it was, she worked somewhere else, where she was consorting with the other people involved in the conspiracy. If I gave that storyline any attention, it just looked more and more credible as a greater number of details (and subsequent synchronicities) seemed to crystallize around that narrative. It was during this peak that I wound up at Madden. As I look back, the journey through Chapel Perilous is very much like a labyrinth where things get weirder and weirder as one journeys toward the center, where it's all so intense that one runs a real risk of losing one's mind completely; then we have to wind our way out, with the only sense of hope deriving from the fact that the weirdness starts to settle down gradually (although you still feel very lost and wonder when—and if—the madness will ever end).
Madden
So far, my descriptions have still been vague, but some details regarding my time at Madden will help show what I was dealing with; for reasons that will make sense soon, my time at Madden and the directions in which it steered me eventually became the "anchor" that helped me find my way back to stability.
In order to best understand this section of the story, you will need to have read and be familiar with the events I describe in the post Institutionalized, and in particular, the Near Death Experience that I describe there.
I don't think it's possible to go through Chapel Perilous and maintain a stable life routine. To a large extent, I think one of the reasons Chapel Perilous exists is precisely to disturb normal life so thoroughly that we find our way to a higher calling, entering a higher order of conscious participation in the unfolding narrative of our lives, and the life of the universe itself (which largely merge and become one)—that is, if we make it out of the Chapel at all. Some people simply don't, and that's part of the mystery. Some people are destined to find their way out, vindicating the experience, but the fact that some don't emerge is what provides fuel for the darker version of the story; that is the essential peril that we face within the Chapel: The peril of getting stuck there. The unnerving conclusion, from the viewpoint of someone within the Chapel, is that either the universe cares just enough to bring us to the Chapel, but not enough to guarantee anyone safe passage...or, even worse, that some people are literally destined to go there and stay there, that for such unfortunate souls, no other result was ever possible, in which case, the very "function" or "role" of such people is to be the warning about how serious the stakes of this universal game really are. Such people would be, in essence, martyrs. I am still unsure, from this vantage point, which of those two possibilities is more likely.
At any rate, in early March of 2021, everything had come to such a head that I no longer knew which way was up; although I had valiantly narrowed the possibilities down to the two main scenarios I described in the section above, even that picture eventually broke down as a third possibility entered my mind: "Maybe you're just plain insane. Maybe you are schizophrenic, and will never again be able to trust your own mind. Maybe you need serious help."
At the time, I had no health insurance, and although I was eligible for Medicaid, I didn't know I was, so I didn't even have that. Nonetheless, after a bout of some heavy drinking, I was finally desperate enough to surrender. I walked to MacNeal Hospital's Emergency Room to get checked out for a psych admission. It's always a lengthy process. I remember distinctly, however, that I happened to be placed in the same ER bed that I was in when my Near Death Experience occurred (how could I ever forget the room where I died?).
Because I was uninsured, MacNeal couldn't really keep me; they put me on the third floor, their acute psych ward, which was a place of "holding" either for people who couldn't stay and had to be transferred elsewhere, or people who could stay, but weren't really lucid enough to take an active role in their treatment (since coming under the ownership of Loyola, the psych department had set up a bit of a "tier" system where patients who were active in their own treatment were sent up to the fifth floor and given more resources to work with).
I stayed there for a couple days before I was sent to Madden.
Since I had been on psych wards more than once, I was familiar with Madden from stories; its reputation preceded it. I knew it was a place I didn't really want to be, but until I actually went there, I didn't really know the half of it. When they wheeled me in, I was scared shitless. The place looked like a real dump; I have never been to prison, but have met people who have been to prison and to Madden, and they say Madden is about a half-step above prison—not quite as bad, but not much better. As I went there during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the place was swamped (along with the entire mental health system in my state). I remember being wheeled in and seeing the place, then going through intake, where I was strip-searched, then being let out onto the floor. The other patients seemed rough around the edges, looking more like prisoners than patients, and I was worried I'd have to literally fight them for survival. However, my fears were allayed when one of them smiled at me, looking up from his table, and invited me join in and color with him. During my time there, coloring would become a lifesaver.
The unit was a square-shaped building, with sleeping rooms and offices on the outer edges, a middle floor housing the tables where we would color or eat our meals during the day, and a sunken, recessed central "pit" with a television and a group of chairs. "The pit" served the dual functions of being the unit's "day room" during off hours, and the place where we would gather for formal group therapy sessions. Above our heads, the beams supporting the roof were arranged in such a way that they looked almost like a swastika (from that darker, more paranoid perspective I described above) or, from a more benevolent viewpoint, a Brighid's Cross (which you can make out from Google Maps images of the place as seen below). In the "dark" scenario, Madden was a place of eugenics that was inimical to the mentally ill, a place where we went to disappear. In the lighter scenario, it was just another mental hospital—although one that says a lot about how far society needs to go to regard and care for the mentally ill, one that showed a vast need for improvement.
Patients at Madden are assigned a social worker, and when I met mine, there was something notable about her that I just couldn't put my finger on. She seemed familiar, and there was something about the way she looked at me which suggested she felt it, too. I'll call her Magda (name changed to protect her identity). When we first met, she told me, as she gazed at me with a look of familiar concern, "You don't belong here."
During the day and in between groups, the patients would pace in circles around the central pit as a way of getting some exercise and passing the time. I remember noticing, upon arriving, that they were pacing anti-clockwise and as a former Freemason, well, that "rubbed me the wrong way."
The "conspiracy" version of my Chapel Perilous story didn't let up while I was in there; I met two or three people there who became friends, and who each seemed to "correspond" with a different person I knew from outside the place; my conversations and dialogue with each of them seemed to uncannily mirror recent conversations and dialogues with the person outside that they corresponded with. It all seemed to line up so neatly that I honestly and seriously entertained speculation that these people were "agents" who voluntarily got themselves committed specifically to be in there with me and further the conspiracy. You had to be there to understand how and why it would have seemed even halfway feasible (or, rather, you had to be me).
In one or two of these conversations, I got to talking about the direction everyone was walking in; didn't it seem somehow "off?" Maybe we could "turn things around" and start walking "deosil" instead of "widdershins?" We did so, and pretty soon, my friends were going out onto the floor and talking to "widdershins walkers" about going the other way instead; and some of them would talk to others still. By the time I left the place, I had started a "deosil tradition" that was still ongoing when I left. This became part of a larger metaphor about "turning things around" that would carry on, expressed through later synchronicites until the end of my journey through Chapel Perilous, and beyond. Once in a while, it still echoes today.
Soon came a patient who was "different" from the others, even by the relatively unreliable standards of a bunch of mental patients. He was a big guy, and his behavior intimidated others, who very quickly singled him out for ridicule. He would do things like standing in people's doorways at night, which creeped them out, but for whatever reason, these people seemed to fail to put into context the fact that all of us were locked up in an asylum. The more they mocked this guy, the more he played into their mockery, throwing occasional fits and winding up on the floor, wailing and pounding it with his fist. I'll call him "Mike."
One afternoon, all of the patients met in a conference room on the periphery of the building for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy group, led by one of the unit's psychiatrists. Soon, she began to lecture us all about the importance of essentially shutting up and taking our meds. There was something in the way she was talking down to us that rubbed me the wrong way, that seemed to dehumanize us and strip us of the legitimacy of our experiences. I remember beginning to object and argue with her about it, pointing out to her that many of us have legitimate reasons for resisting our medications; the side effects were sometimes even worse than the symptoms for which they were prescribed, and in a similar situation, almost anyone would rebel if the meds were involuntary. I railed at her about how in some ways, our brains were being played with; that as much as we thought we knew about psychopharmacology, there was still a lot more that science still doesn't know, that brains are extremely complex systems and that we still don't really understand how or why many of these drugs work, how we were essentially throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks, and that, in light of that, maybe we patients should be treated with a little more dignity. I remember beginning to feel as though the Goddess Kali were standing behind me, with her tongue lolling out of her head, egging me on, encouraging me to press my verbal attack. Before long, the doctor had to end the session, excusing the group and breaking down; after the session was interrupted, a couple of the patients there had to stay behind and give the doctor some mental health support! For the rest of my time there, she was relegated to a quieter, secondary role and didn't lead any more groups.
After we were let out, Mike came up to me, put out his fist, and quietly said, "Fist bump." He was one of a few people who thanked me for doing what I did. Later, he folded me a paper crane that I still keep to this day. All he really wanted was to feel understood. While everyone else was still afraid of him and he still played up his "insane villain" role in their presence, with me, he was rather chill and opened himself up to conversation.
It was only after I was released from Madden that the strange way Magda had looked at me, the sense of familiarity with her, and her comment about my "not belonging there" all made sense. She'd spoken to my mother as part of my release planning, and my mother recognized her. This ties back to the fact that my journey to Madden began with a night in the same ER bed where I'd died and gone to heaven and hell so many years before.
Once upon a time, Magda had been a nurse at MacNeal; and on the same visit to the hospital when I had the NDE, between the ER and eventually being admitted to the psych ward, I was put in a regular hospital room until my health stabilized. I was also put on a suicide watch, and Magda was one of the nurses who watched over me. We would sit together and watch Jeopardy and she would comment to my mother at how I knew so many of the answers.
Then, years later, in the depths of my journey through Chapel Perilous, she was there, like a guardian angel; given my unruly behavior, it is likely only thanks to Magda that I was let out at all, rather than being transferred to one of the other wards for a longer-term stay, as were some of the friends I made there.
There was a lot to learn from my time at Madden, and although it only marked about the halfway point of my trip through Chapel Perilous, some of the main lessons that carried me through the rest of the journey came through my experiences there. It was a time of deep doubt—as a Counseling Psychology student and someone who has felt a spiritual calling for most of my life, Madden was a decided "low point" on my journey, when my self-doubt was at its height. If I am here to help other people, why am I so helpless myself? How could I end up in a place like that?
However, in the depths of my madness and despair, I reconnected with my ability to connect with and uplift others. I inspired a small group of people to start a "revolution" reflected in the way we convinced a group of mental patients to start walking in a different direction. I broke through another patient's defense mechanisms, and I stood up for my comrades against the more oppressive and dystopian aspects of a system that should really be there to help us. I reconnected with my inner purpose and got back in touch with my power as a healer. I learned that I am wiser than I give myself credit for.
And I am just getting started.
All of this is prelude to that which is yet to come.
