Peter Kingsley · 1999 · PDF · Calibre ID 11256
Resurfaced in The Person Who Waits (2026-10-23).
Role in the triad
Anchor: the sacred, literal sense of incubation and the supervisor figure
Why this book
Supplies the older sense of ‘incubation’ (lying down in a lair, waiting without effort) and the priest ‘in charge of the place’; without it Wallas’s word reads as neutral metaphor.
Quotations
Verified against the book’s own text on the day of the reading.
- “What’s important is that you would do absolutely nothing. The point came when you wouldn’t struggle or make an effort. You’d just have to surrender to your condition.” (p. 80)
- “It’s all tied up with that clumsy word: incubation.” (p. 101)
- “Usually you’d lie down in a special place where you wouldn’t be disturbed.” (p. 101)
- “It used to mean giving a voice to what doesn’t have a voice, meant acting as a mouthpiece for the divine.” (p. 108)
- “Really it was already the end itself, the ultimate paradox of the end that’s present at the beginning.” (p. 186)
Themes
Apollo · hesychia · iatromantis · incubation · lair · Parmenides · Phōlarchos · phōleos · stillness · Velia