LONDON EYE, YOU SHOULD BE CAREFUL WITH HIGHTS

Today, The Morgans and The Grandma have visited London Eye, a cantilevered observation wheel on the South Bank of the River Thames and the most popular paid tourist attraction in England.

Before, they have studied some English grammar with Should/Shouldn't and Have Got.

More info: Should-Shouldn't I , II & III

More information: Have got/Haven't got

The London Eye or the Millennium Wheel, is a cantilevered observation wheel on the South Bank of the River Thames in London.

It is Europe's tallest cantilevered observation wheel, and is the most popular paid tourist attraction in the United Kingdom with over 3.75 million visitors annually, and has made many appearances in popular culture.

The structure is 135 metres tall and the wheel has a diameter of 120 metres.

When it opened to the public in 2000 it was the world's tallest Ferris wheel. Its height was surpassed by the 160-metre Star of Nanchang in 2006, the 165-metre Singapore Flyer in 2008, and the 167-metre-tall High Roller (Las Vegas) in 2014. Supported by an A-frame on one side only, unlike the taller Nanchang and Singapore wheels, the Eye is described by its operators as the world's tallest cantilevered observation wheel.

The London Eye used to offer the highest public viewing point in London until it was superseded by the 245-metre-high observation deck on the 72nd floor of The Shard, which opened to the public on 1 February 2013.

The London Eye adjoins the western end of Jubilee Gardens, previously the site of the former Dome of Discovery, on the South Bank of the River Thames between Westminster Bridge and Hungerford Bridge beside County Hall, in the London Borough of Lambeth.

The London Eye was designed by the husband-and-wife team of Julia Barfield and David Marks of Marks Barfield Architects. Mace was responsible for construction management, with Hollandia as the main steelwork contractor and Tilbury Douglas as the civil contractor. Consulting engineers Tony Gee & Partners designed the foundation works while Beckett Rankine designed the marine works.

The rim of the Eye is supported by tensioned steel cables and resembles a huge spoked bicycle wheel. The lighting was re-done with LED lighting from Color Kinetics in December 2006 to allow digital control of the lights as opposed to the manual replacement of gels over fluorescent tubes.

The wheel was constructed in sections which were floated up the Thames on barges and assembled lying flat on piled platforms in the river. Once the wheel was complete it was lifted into an upright position by a strand jack system made by Enerpac. It was first raised at 2 degrees per hour until it reached 65 degrees, then left in that position for a week while engineers prepared for the second phase of the lift.

More information: The London Eye

The project was European with major components coming from six countries: the steel was supplied from the UK and fabricated in The Netherlands by the Dutch company Hollandia, the cables came from Italy, the bearings came from Germany (FAG/Schaeffler Group), the spindle and hub were cast in the Czech Republic, the capsules were made by Poma in France and the glass for these came from Italy, and the electrical components from the UK.

The London Eye was formally opened by the Prime Minister Tony Blair on 31 December 1999, but did not open to the paying public until 9 March 2000 because of a capsule clutch problem.

The nearest London Underground station is Waterloo, although Charing Cross, Embankment, and Westminster are also within easy walking distance.

Connection with National Rail services is made at London Waterloo station and London Waterloo East station.

London River Services operated by Thames Clippers and City Cruises stop at the London Eye Pier.

More information: Visit London

 

When I was a youngster my grandparents
took me sightseeing and we went on the London Eye.

Stuart Broad

DON'T GIVE UP! VISIT UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON, UCL

Today, The Grandma has visited University College London, the public research university, that was established on a day like today in 1826. She is very interested in learning how to help The Morgans in his job search in Sant Boi de Llobregat.

That's why he's been talking about the Adult Training Centers (CFA) and the IOC, two reference centers when it comes to updating one's own training and starting a new one.

Meanwhile, The Morgans have been at the Cumberland reviewing Imperatives and Prepositions of Time.

More information: Imperative

Download Verbs 

More information: Prepositions of Time

Download Prepositions of Time

 

University College London, which operates as UCL, is a public research university in London, United Kingdom.

 

It is a member institution of the federal University of London, and is the second-largest university in the United Kingdom by total enrolment and the largest by postgraduate enrolment.

Established in 1826, as London University (though without university degree-awarding powers), by founders inspired by the radical ideas of Jeremy Bentham, UCL was the first university institution to be established in London, and the first in England to be entirely secular and to admit students regardless of their religion.

It was also among the first university colleges to admit women alongside men in 1878, two years after University College, Bristol. Intended by its founders to be England's third university, politics forced it to accept the status of a college in 1836, when it received a royal charter and became one of the two founding colleges of the University of London, although it achieved de facto recognition as a university in the 1990s.

It has grown through mergers, including with the Institute of Ophthalmology (in 1995), the Institute of Neurology (in 1997), the Royal Free Hospital Medical School (in 1998), the Eastman Dental Institute (in 1999), the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (in 1999), the School of Pharmacy (in 2012) and the Institute of Education (in 2014).

More information: UCL

UCL has its main campus in the Bloomsbury area of central London, with a number of institutes and teaching hospitals elsewhere in central London and has a second campus, UCL East, at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, East London. 

UCL is organised into 11 constituent faculties, within which there are over 100 departments, institutes and research centres.

UCL operates several museums and collections in a wide range of fields, including the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology and the Grant Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy, and administers the annual Orwell Prize in political writing.

In 2021/22, UCL had a total income of £1.75 billion, of which £525 million was from research grants and contracts. The university generates around £10 billion annually for the UK economy, primarily through the spread of its research and knowledge (£4 billion) and the impact of its own spending (£3 billion).

UCL is a member of numerous academic organisations, including the Russell Group and the League of European Research Universities, and is part of UCL Partners, the world's largest academic health science centre. It is considered part of the golden triangle of research-intensive universities in southeast England.

UCL has publishing and commercial activities including UCL Press, UCL Business and UCL Consultants.

UCL has many notable alumni, including the founder of Mauritius, the first Prime Minister of Japan, and one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA.  

UCL academics discovered five of the naturally occurring noble gases, discovered hormones, invented the vacuum tube, and made several foundational advances in modern statistics. 

As of 2022, 30 Nobel Prize winners and three Fields medallists have been affiliated with UCL as alumni or academic staff.

UCL was founded on 11 February 1826 as an alternative to the Anglican universities of Oxford and Cambridge. 

It took the form of a joint stock company, with shares sold for £100 (equivalent to $8,900 in 2021) to proprietors, under the name of London University, although without legal recognition as a university or the associated right to award degrees. London University's first warden was Leonard Horner, who was the first scientist to head a British university.

UCL is primarily based in the Bloomsbury area of the London Borough of Camden, in Central London. 

The main campus is located around Gower Street and includes the UCL Faculty of Engineering Sciences, economics, geography, history, languages, mathematics, management, philosophy and physics departments, the preclinical facilities of the UCL Medical School, the London Centre for Nanotechnology, the Slade School of Fine Art, the UCL Union, the main UCL Library, the UCL Science Library, the Bloomsbury Theatre, the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, the Grant Museum of Zoology and the affiliated University College Hospital.

Close by in Bloomsbury are the UCL Cancer Institute, the UCL Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences, the UCL Faculty of the Built Environment (The Bartlett), the UCL Faculty of Laws, the UCL Institute of Archaeology, the UCL Institute of Education, the UCL School of Pharmacy, the UCL School of Public Policy and the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies.

In 2014, it was announced that UCL would be building an additional campus at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, referred to as UCL East, as part of the development of the so-called Olympicopolis site at the southern edge of the park. UCL master planners were appointed in spring 2015, and the first University building was, at that time, estimated to be completed in time for academic year 2019/20.

Elsewhere in Central London are the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology adjacent to Moorfields Eye Hospital in Clerkenwell, the UCL Institute of Child Health adjacent to Great Ormond Street Hospital, the Royal Free Hospital and the Whittington Hospital campuses of the UCL Medical School, and a number of other associated teaching hospitals.

The UCL School of Management is on levels 38 and 50 (penthouse) of One Canada Square in the financial district of Canary Wharf. The UCL Observatory is in Mill Hill and the Mullard Space Science Laboratory is based in Holmbury St Mary, Surrey. The UCL Athletics Ground is in Shenley, Hertfordshire.

More information: University of London

 

A man who has never gone to school
may steal from a freight car;
but if he has a university education,
he may steal the whole railroad.

Theodore Roosevelt

THE MORGANS CELEBRATE EASTER MONDAY IN CAMELOT

Today, The Morgans and The Grandma say goodbye to Arthur, Guinevere, Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table while celebrating Easter Monday, a festival that unites Carolingian peoples, from Iceland to the Valencian Country, passing through the fantastic world of Camelot.

Tomorrow, the family will return to London where they will continue their English training over the next few weeks.

It is been a few relaxing days, but also an intense literary lesson about one of the most wonderful and popular sagas in Europe, a saga which The Grandma loves and admires with all her heart.

Long live Camelot! Long live literature! Long live Easter Monday!

Easter Monday is the second day of Eastertide and a public holiday in more than 50 predominantly Christian countries. In Western Christianity it marks the second day of the Octave of Easter; in Eastern Christianity it marks the second day of Bright Week.

In the Eastern Orthodox Church and Byzantine Rite Catholic Churches, this day is called Bright Monday or Renewal Monday. The services, as in the rest of Bright Week, are quite different from during the rest of the year and are similar to the services on Pascha (Easter Sunday) and include an outdoor procession after the Divine Liturgy. While this is prescribed for all days of Bright Week, often they are only celebrated on Monday and maybe a couple of other days in parish churches, especially in non-Orthodox countries.

Should the calendar date for the feast day of a major saint (e.g. Saint George on April 23, or the patron saint of a church) or one's name day fall within Holy Week and Pascha itself, the feast is transferred to Easter Monday.

In Western Christianity, Easter Monday is the second day of Eastertide, as well as the second day in the Octave of Easter.

In the Lutheran Churches, the Gospel for Easter Monday concerns the Road to Emmaus appearance.

Easter Monday is an official public holiday in Catalonia, the Land of Valencia, the Balearic Islands, Navarre, the Basque Country, Cantabria, the village of Galvez, and La Rioja. In Catalonia, the Land of Valencia, and Murcia a feature of this day is a pastry called Easter mona. It is usually given by godparents to their godchildren, and it is traditional for families or groups of friends to gather for a trip somewhere, like the countryside, to eat the mona. Traditionally, the age of the children was reflected in the number of eggs in the mona, until they were 12 years old. Currently, it is common for godparents to give the mona to their godchildren throughout their lives.

The Easter mona tradition is tied to that of bakers, who make works of art with pastry and chocolate, and since the mid-nineteenth century, mones have lost their initial simplicity, making their presentation more complex, for they must be elaborated with caramelized sugar, sugar almonds, jams, crunchy toppings, or silver anise, before being decorated with painted Easter eggs or figures made from porcelain, wood, cardboard or fabric.

More information: English Heritage

Easter is meant to be a symbol of hope,

renewal, and new life.

Janine di Giovanni

THE PASSING OF KING ARTHUR, THE MYTH WAS BORN

Today, The Grandma has been reading Le Morte d'Arthur.

The Arthurian Cycle is a wonderful compilation of stories around the main figure of King Arthur and it's a must in the universal literature, especially Middle Age one. 

The Arthurian Cycle is a masterpiece from the point of view of Literature but it's also a masterpiece in Philosophy and History. 

The thoughts of King Arthur cross over cultures and languages and they become in ethical and moral guides in our 21st century because his knowledge is timeless and eternal.

Le Morte d'Arthur, originally spelled Le Morte Darthur, Middle French for The death of Arthur, is a reworking of existing tales by Sir Thomas Malory about the legendary King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin, and the Knights of the Round Table. Malory interpreted existing French and English stories about these figures and adds original material.

Malory's actual title for the work was The Whole Book of King Arthur and His Noble Knights of the Round Table, but after Malory's death the publisher changed the title to what is commonly known today. The Death of King Arthur originally only referred to the final volume in the complete work.

Le Morte d'Arthur was first published in 1485 by William Caxton and is today one of the best-known works of Arthurian literature in English. Until the discovery of the Winchester Manuscript in 1934, the 1485 edition was considered the earliest known text of Le Morte d'Arthur and that closest to Malory's translation and compilation. Various modern editions are inevitably variable, changing a variety of spelling, grammar, and/or pronouns for the convenience of readers of modern English. Many modern Arthurian writers have used Malory as their principal source.

Sir Thomas Malory retold the story of Arthur's birth, his conquests, his friendship with Merlin, and his death. To this day, Malory's work is considered by many to be the most authoritative telling of the Arthurian Legend. Malory titled his work Le Morte d'Arthur. Translated into English, this means The Death of King Arthur.

 

More information: The Medieval World 

Arthur immediately began pursuit of Lancelot and Guinevere, and they were quickly found at Lancelot's castle in Wales. For months, Arthur and his men laid siege to it. Finally, an agreement was reached whereby Guinevere was returned to Arthur, and Lancelot was sent to France in exile.

But Arthur was still angry. Lancelot had betrayed him, and he wanted revenge. He followed Lancelot into France, leaving Mordred in charge. Then Arthur received the news he dreaded worst: in his absence, Mordred had declared himself King, and had taken Guinevere as his queen. Now, Arthur had no choice but to return to Camelot to defend his kingdom.

In a dream, Arthur was warned not to fight Mordred right away, so he sent messengers into his camp to try and negotiate. During their talks, one of Mordred's men was bitten by an adder. 

As he drew his sword to kill it, the sun glinted off his blade. Both armies mistook this as a sign that someone had drawn his sword to fight, and a great battle began. The battle raged on all day, and by nightfall, it was down to every last man to fight. In the commotion, Arthur had dropped Excalibur and its scabbard. Seeing Mordred, he picked up a spear, and charged at him. Mordred charged back with his sword. The sword came forward and cleaved Arthur's skull just as he drove his spear through his son's hateful heart.

As Arthur lay dying, his last request was that the sword Excalibur and the scabbard be thrown back into the lake from whence they came.

Out of the mists of the lake, three Fairy Queens appeared. They placed Arthur's body on a barge, and sailed off with him to the mystical island of Avalon to cure him of his wounds. And some say he still lays there, sleeping in a hollow hill, and that he will awaken one day to defend Britain, when Britain has need of him.

Download Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory

 I found Him in the shining of the stars,
I marked Him in the flowering of His fields,
But in His ways with men I find Him not.
I waged His wars, and now I pass and die.

Idylls of the King (1856–1885) by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Passing of Arthur

THE KNIGHTS' MISSION, THE QUEST FOR THE HOLY GRAIL

Today, The Grandma has been reading about the quest for the Holy Grail, one of the most incredible and mystery legends. The Holy Grail is a vessel that serves as an important motif in Arthurian literature.

Different traditions describe it as a cup, dish or stone with miraculous powers that provide happiness, eternal youth or sustenance in infinite abundance, often in the custody of the Fisher King. The term holy grail is often used to denote an elusive object or goal that is sought after for its great significance.

A grail, wondrous but not explicitly holy, first appears in Perceval, le Conte du Graal, an unfinished romance written by Chrétien de Troyes around 1190. Here, Chrétien's story attracted many continuators, translators and interpreters in the later 12th and early 13th centuries, including Wolfram von Eschenbach, who perceived the Grail as a stone. 

In the late 12th century, Robert de Boron wrote in Joseph d'Arimathie that the Grail was Jesus's vessel from the Last Supper, which Joseph of Arimathea used to catch Christ's blood at the Crucifixion. Thereafter, the Holy Grail became interwoven with the legend of the Holy Chalice, the Last Supper cup, a theme continued in works such as the Vulgate Cycle, the Post-Vulgate Cycle, and Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.

The word graal, as it is earliest spelled, comes from Old French graal or greal, cognate with Old Provençal grazal and Old Catalan gresal, meaning a cup or bowl of earth, wood, or metal, or other various types of vessels in different Occitan dialects. The most commonly accepted etymology derives it from Latin gradalis or gradale via an earlier form, cratalis, a derivative of crater or cratus, which was, in turn, borrowed from Greek krate, κρατήρ, a large wine-mixing vessel.

Alternative suggestions include a derivative of cratis, a name for a type of woven basket that came to refer to a dish, or a derivative of Latin gradus meaning by degree, by stages, applied to a dish brought to the table in different stages or services during a meal".

In the 15th century, English writer John Hardyng invented a fanciful new etymology for Old French san-graal or san-gréal, meaning Holy Grail, by parsing it as sang real, meaning royal blood. This etymology was used by some later British writers such as Thomas Malory, and became prominent in the conspiracy theory developed in the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail, in which sang real refers to the Jesus bloodline.

The Grail is first featured in Perceval, le Conte du Graal, The Story of the Grail by Chrétien de Troyes, who claims he was working from a source book given to him by his patron, Count Philip of Flanders. In this incomplete poem, dated sometime between 1180 and 1191, the object has not yet acquired the implications of holiness it would have in later works.

While dining in the magical abode of the Fisher King, Perceval witnesses a wondrous procession in which youths carry magnificent objects from one chamber to another, passing before him at each course of the meal. First comes a young man carrying a bleeding lance, then two boys carrying candelabras. Finally, a beautiful young girl emerges bearing an elaborately decorated graal, or grail.

Chrétien refers to this object not as The Grail but as a grail, un graal, showing the word was used, in its earliest literary context, as a common noun. For Chrétien a grail was a wide, somewhat deep dish or bowl, interesting because it contained not a pike, salmon, or lamprey, as the audience may have expected for such a container, but a single Mass wafer which provided sustenance for the Fisher King's crippled father.  

Perceval, who had been warned against talking too much, remains silent through all of this and wakes up the next morning alone. He later learns that if he had asked the appropriate questions about what he saw, he would have healed his maimed host, much to his honour. The story of the Wounded King's mystical fasting is not unique; several saints were said to have lived without food besides communion, for instance Saint Catherine of Genoa. This may imply that Chrétien intended the Mass wafer to be the significant part of the ritual, and the Grail to be a mere prop.

In the modern era, a number of places have become associated with the Holy Grail. One of the most prominent is Glastonbury in Somerset, England. Glastonbury was associated with King Arthur and his resting place of Avalon by the 12th century. 

In the 13th century, a legend arose that Joseph of Arimathea was the founder of Glastonbury Abbey. Early accounts of Joseph at Glastonbury focus on his role as the evangelist of Britain rather than as the custodian of the Holy Grail, but from the 15th century, the Grail became a more prominent part of the legends surrounding Glastonbury. Interest in Glastonbury resurged in the late 19th century along, inspired by renewed interest in the Arthurian legend and contemporary spiritual movements centered on ancient sacred sites. 

Montségur, a medieval castle in Occitania, has become identified as the Grail castle in modern Grail lore. In 1906, French writer Joséphin Péladan identified Montségur as Munsalväsche or Montsalvat, the Grail castle in Wolfram's Parzival. 

Montségur was a fortress of the Cathars, a heretical Christian community in Occitania from the 11th-14th centuries. This identification has inspired a wider legend asserting that the Cathars possessed the Holy Grail. Similarly, the 14th-century Rosslyn Chapel in Midlothian, Scotland, became attached to the Grail legend in the 20th century. This idea began in the 1950s, but took new prominence in the 1980s when a succession of conspiracy books identified it as a secret hiding place of the Grail.

 

More information: History Cooperative 

Just because you can't understand something, 

it doesn't mean it's wrong!

King Arthur

THE SIEGE PERILOUS, A RESERVED SEAT FOR A HOLY CAUSE

Today, The Grandma has been reading an interesting chapter about the Siege Perilous, a special seat which only can be occupied by a special knight who had accomplished a special and sacred mission. 

In Arthurian legend, the Siege Perilous, also known as The Perilous Seat, is a vacant seat at the Round Table reserved by Merlin for the knight who would one day be successful in the quest for the Holy Grail. The English word siege originally meant seat or throne, coming from the Old French sege, modern French siège; the modern military sense of a prolonged assault comes from the conception of an army sitting down before a fortress.

In Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, in an account taken from the Vulgate Queste del Saint Graal, the newly knighted Sir Galahad takes the seat in Camelot on Whitsunday, 454 years after the death of Jesus. 

The Siege Perilous is so strictly reserved that it is fatal to anyone else who sits in it. Another version of this story is related in Alfred Tennyson's Idylls of the King.

Originally, this motif about the seat and the grail belonged to Perceval, but the Lancelot-Grail Cycle transferred it to the new Cistercian-based hero Galahad. It appears, for example, in the earlier De Boron Didot Perceval, where Perceval occupies the seat at Arthur's court at Carduel.

According to many scholars, the motif of the dangerous seat can be further traced to Welsh, Cornish, and Breton mythology, where the bulk of the Arthurian legend was derived from. According to this theory, the Siege Perilous was a half-remembered version of a Celtic kingship ritual that has parallels in the Irish Lia Fáil.

The Siege, from the French siège, seat, Perilous is the seat at Arthur's Round Table in which only the chosen knight can sit. In the prose rendition of Robert de Boron's Merlin, the empty seat is reminiscent of the seat that Judas vacated.

There is also an empty seat at Joseph of Arimathea's Grail Table which destroys anyone unworthy of sitting there. In his Continuation to Chrétien's Perceval, Gerbert de Montreuil says that it was sent to Arthur by the fairy of Roche Menor.

Six knights tried to sit in it and were swallowed by the earth before Perceval sits it in and completes the adventure. When he does, the six are restored to Arthur's court.

In the thirteenth-century Vulgate Cycle, Merlin instructs Uther to build a table in commemoration of the Grail Table; at the table, there is an empty seat reserved for the Grail knight. 

In the Queste del Saint Graal, the Siege Perilous is said to parallel the seat of Christ at the Last Supper and the seat occupied by Josephus at the Grail Table. Two brothers, jealous of Josephus, objected to his having a special place, and one of them sat in it, only to be destroyed; so it came to be called the Feared Seat. 

Galahad is the knight for whom the Siege Perilous at Arthur's table is destined. In the Lancelot, a knight named Brumand, trying to perform an act that Lancelot never dared to do, sits in it and is burned to a crisp. Malory says that Merlin made the Siege Perilous for the greatest Grail knight. When Galahad arrives at Camelot, his name appears on the seat destined for him.

More information: King Arthur's Knights

 

 

No man could sit but he should lose himself...

Merlin

CHAPEL PERILOUS, LITERATURE BECOMES PSYCHOLOGY

Today, The Grandma is reading about the Chapel Perilous, an element very important in the Arthurian Cycle and in Psychology.

The term chapel perilous first appeared in Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur (1485) as the setting for an adventure in which sorceress Hellawes unsuccessfully attempts to seduce Sir Lancelot. T. S. Eliot used it symbolically in The Waste Land (1922).

Students of the Grail romances will remember that in many of the versions the hero, sometimes it is a heroine, meets with a strange and terrifying adventure in a mysterious Chapel, an adventure which, we are given to understand, is fraught with extreme peril to life. The details vary: sometimes there is a Dead Body laid on the altar; sometimes a Black Hand extinguishes the tapers; there are strange and threatening voices, and the general impression is that this is an adventure in which supernatural, and evil, forces are engaged.

Such an adventure befalls Gawain on his way to the Grail Castle. He is overtaken by a terrible storm, and coming to a Chapel, standing at a crossways in the middle of a forest, enters for shelter.

The altar is bare, with no cloth, or covering, nothing is thereon but a great golden candlestick with a tall taper burning within it.

Behind the altar is a window, and as Gawain looks a Hand, black and hideous, comes through the window, and extinguishes the taper, while a voice makes lamentation loud and dire, beneath which the very building rocks. Gawain's horse shies for terror, and the knight, making the sign of the Cross, rides out of the Chapel, to find the storm abated, and the great wind fallen. Thereafter the night was calm and clear.

In the Perceval section of Wauchier and Manessier we find the same adventure in a dislocated form.

The earliest mention of a Perilous Cemetery, as distinct from a Chapel, appears to be in the Chastel Orguellous section of the Perceval, a section probably derived from a very early stratum of Arthurian romantic tradition.

The metaphorical Chapel Perilous traces back to the story, Le Morte d’Arthur, written by Sir Thomas Malory and published in 1485. In the dimly-lit chape, named Chapel Perilous by Malory, Sir Lancelot du Lake takes the liberty of purloining a sword and a scrap of shroud-silk from a dead knight, Sir Gilbert the Bastard, before encountering a beautiful sorceress, Hellawes, Lady of the Castle Nigramous. Refusing to kiss her, Lancelot avoids her seductive efforts and moves onward to the disastrous climax of his love for Queen Guinevere. Having loved Lancelot, Hellawes dies, broken-hearted. But had he given the sword to Hellawes, he would never have seen Guinevere again.

Chapel perilous is also a term referring to a psychological state in which an individual cannot be certain whether they have been aided or hindered by some force outside the realm of the natural world, or whether what appeared to be supernatural interference was a product of their own imagination.

It was used by the late writer and philosopher Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) in his book Cosmic Trigger (1977). According to Wilson, being in this state leads the subject to become either paranoid or an agnostic. In his opinion there is no third way.

Did Lancelot choose wisely? Was the fair damsel and sorceress, who loved him, truly evil? Was he a loyal Knight of the Round Table or a betrayer of his friend and King? Was he a bastard or a fool, or a bastard, hero, and fool, or something else, a lost soul? Did Guinevere invite Lancelot into coital shelter from the storms of life or a carnal version of Chapel Perilous? The sword and silk are obvious sexual symbols, and precursors but, all decoding aside, the questions cannot be answered in simple terms of yea and nay.

Chapel Perilous denotes a state of consciousness wherein a person seems to encounter a supernatural magnetic force, the sense of which defies classification in terms of good and evil. In any case, ordinary faith in dogma is made impossible by inescapable recognition of the infinite kaleidoscope-like processing of multidimensional Omniverse. Neither running nor hiding is an option.

More information: Heritage History

Knights! The gift of freedom is yours by right. 

But the home we seek resides not in some distant land. 

It's in us! And in our actions on this day! 

If this be our destiny, then so be it. 

But let history remember that as free men, 

we chose to make it so.
 

King Arthur