Triad 30 of 32 · 2026-10-23 · Difficulty 4 · Shared figure or motif, Same period, Conflict
The thread
Three books about the interval in which someone lies still and waits for something they cannot make arrive. Kingsley reconstructs incubation as practice (Phōlarchos, ‘lords of the lair’, lying in caves in hesychia until a vision came) and reads Parmenides’ poem as its record. Wallas (1926) takes the same word for the second of his four stages of thought (Preparation, Incubation, Illumination, Verification) and makes it mental hygiene. Benjamin (1927–34) lies on a hotel bed in Marseilles or a sofa in Berlin while a physician keeps the protocol, and seeks a ‘profane illumination’. Wallas borrowed two stage-names from religious vocabulary; Kingsley restores the sacred sense of the first; Benjamin keeps the second without the sacred. Less obvious: all three hit the moment the subject cannot observe — Wallas’s corona visible only in eclipse; Fränkel forbidden to take notes at the deepest point; Kingsley’s priests ‘in charge of the place’. Each needs a second party or stage (Verification, protocol-keeper, priest) to bring back what the first could not hold.
The three books
- In the Dark Places of Wisdom, Peter Kingsley; 1999. Anchor: the sacred, literal sense of incubation and the supervisor figure
- The Art of Thought, Graham Wallas; 1926. Hinge: secularizes incubation and illumination as stages of thought; states the observation problem (corona/eclipse)
- On Hashish, Walter Benjamin, Howard Eiland (translator), Marcus Boon (contributor); 1972. Counter-voice: keeps the posture and the word illumination, makes it profane; the protocol with a hole in it
Notebook
- Kingsley ‘do absolutely nothing’ (p. 80) vs Wallas on industry as ‘the worst temptation of the devil’ (PDF p. 104): write the rules for an incubation you’d actually keep — where, how long, who is in charge of the place, what may not be written down.
- Wallas’s corona (PDF pp. 111–112) beside the gap in Fränkel’s protocol (p. 77): describe a thought whose arrival you can’t reconstruct; what eclipse would show its fringe? Is Verification (‘reduced to exact form’, PDF p. 96) rescue or loss?
- Benjamin ‘the person who waits’ among the illuminati (p. 134) vs Kingsley’s stillness as ‘already the end itself’ (p. 186): a taxonomy of people who wait, each marked means or end.
Rabbit holes
Links as checked on the day of the reading.
- Wallas, The Art of Thought (1926), Internet Archive — https://archive.org/stream/theartofthought/The%20art%20of%20thought_djvu.txt
- Poincaré, The Foundations of Science (incl. Science and Method), Gutenberg — https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/39713
- William James, Principles ch. IX ‘The Stream of Thought’ — https://www.yorku.ca/pclassic/James/Principles/prin9.htm
- Varendonck, The Psychology of Day-Dreams (1921), Wellcome — https://wellcomecollection.org/works/bc9ucv55
- Renberg, Where Dreams May Come (Brill 2017; not OA) — https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/isbn/9789004330238/html
- BMCR 2004.07.43 review of Kingsley’s Reality — https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/?p=23840
To carry
“The reader, the thinker, the person who waits, the flaneur, are types of illuminati—just as much as the opium eater, the dreamer, the ecstatic. And more profane.” — Walter Benjamin, ‘Surrealism’ (1929), in On Hashish, trans. Edmund Jephcott, p. 134
Themes
Ameinias · Apollo Oulios · Charonium · corona · drug experiments · eclipse · flaneur · fringe consciousness · Fränkel · hashish · Helmholtz · hesychia · iatromantis · illumination · incubation · industry · Intimation · Joël · lair · mental relaxation · note-taking · observer · Parmenides · Phōlarchos · phōleos · Plutonium · Poincaré · Preparation/Incubation/Illumination/Verification · profane illumination · protocols · stillness · supervisor · temple sleep · the person who waits · Varendonck · Velia · waking and sleeping · William James · Wissing
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