David Breeden is speaking all week about the psychological images that become embedded in talking about how the mind works..

Transcription:

Hello, I’m David Breeden, I’m the senior minister, First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis, and this is Coffee and Wisdom. This week we’ve been looking at a literary trope that has become kind of a spiritual journey trope, and that is the chapel perilous and I’m calling it this week, dancing in the chapel, perilous and tracing how this idea really has developed from something in French literature. Probably it probably originates in France and the romances. It comes into the English language and understanding with a trope from L’Amour Dorotka by Thomas Mallery and fourteen eighty five. He was very open about the fact that he was compiling old Autherine stories from both England and France, and he was translating many of those out of French at the time. How does that then go to a more shamanism? Getting into American movies, books, et cetera, et cetera, is a bit of a journey here. Little reminder that this is the round table from a 14th century painting. And here on the middle of the round table of the Austrian Knights is this glowing chalice. So this is part of this idea of search. It’s part of the idea of of spiritual journey. And that’s part of what’s going on here, is it’s kind of getting a little bit confused as to what we’re talking about. Are we talking about a story or are we talking about spirituality? What what are we talking about? And now it is a meme that’s tied to conspiracy theories, the occult and neo shamanism.And that’s what we’ve been looking at. What is happening with that? And as you can see from this particular one. Yeah. Is the is are we now trapped in the idea of the chapel? Perilous in general? That’s the claim of Eric Davis, who is a cultural critic and does look at as sort of fringe religions across across the US culture, especially California. Yes. Well, part of the idea of how this gets into the popular imagination is through Joseph Campbell. And something from the nineteen forties and fifties called The Hero’s Journey. It becomes well known as a literary trope. Hero ventures forth from a world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder. Fabulous forces are encountered in a decisive victory is one. The hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man. And from that comes all kinds of plot devices in American movies trying to be mythological in character. And also you do see a region of supernatural wonder. I mentioned that Joseph Campbell was hired for the original trilogy of Star Wars. And so this has become very much a part of Hollywood in developing these kinds of ideas as we go along. Also, then, from the Hero’s Journey, we go into Robert Anton Wilson, who says in researching occult conspiracies, one eventually faces a crossroad of mythic proportions called Chapel Perilous in the trade. There we have chapel perilous appearing in the occult. You come out the other side of this this interaction with this idea, either stoned, paranoid or an agnostic.There is no third way, he said. And I came out and agnostic. So here we get the idea from the Illuminatus trilogy, which is very upfront about being science fiction. Or is it? It’s also talking about various American conspiracy theories based on a parody religion that I’ve talked about before called a discordant ism. You see how all of these things are getting a bit jumbled over time. So how are we working through this? Well, the hero’s journey is a description of plot, not human lives, which have no plot. Of course, if you start thinking your life should have a plot,