No Unhallow'd Fire

No Unhallow’d Fire

On Breathing
"Not in the ideal dreams of wild desire
Have I beheld a rapture wakening form
My bosom burns with no unhallow'd fire
Yet my eyes with sparkling lustre fill'd
Yet my mouth replete with murmuring sound
Yet my limbs with inward transports thrill'd"
[H. Davy (edited)]

Naughtopoesis
"There exists..."
Stranger than factition
A noetic form
Sakkharon psychotechne
Essential aphrodesia
No time, like the present.

Paradisiacal Hydraulicks
A silken womb
Enveloped, folding space
A moment with the Arbiter
As the wheel spins
Nitromorphosis of Susurrus
Phlogical voidening
Poetique objectif actualite.

Occultural Appropriation
Existence foreshadowed
WePhoria
Nature denaturing
Eminence disseminating
Immanents trespassing
Eschetricksters beyond the veil
Out of sight
Sleight of mind.

Nitura Nitrans
A pneu world second order
Negative paramagneticks
An institute in the clouds
Nonlinear phenomenologies
To comprehend, the unbelievable
To recall, the improbable
To describe, the impossible
Vapor dei intellectualis.

No Unhallow'd Fire: succinct noetic poetics, published today on the vernal equinox. This text came about in the early days of the 0xSalon as we were considering a topic on 'altered consciousness'. It never happened, but "No Unhallow'd Fire" was the title we had in mind. The poem fell out of my head, unasked for and almost fully formed, in the space of about 30 minutes one pandemic afternoon in early 2021. It was then mostly forgotten about. A few weeks ago, I received an email soliciting submissions to the "Drops and Buds" journal, run in the memory of 'Holotropic Breathwork' pioneer Stanislav Grof, with a heavy nod to Alfred North Whitehead.

I should probably explain this one a bit :) it begins with a quote from fellow chemist Humphry Davy, who was appointed at the tender age of 19 by polymath Thomas Beddoes to be the superintendent of his new Pneumatic Institution in 1798. Their goal was to find a cure for "consumption" (tuberculosis) which was rife in the cities amidst open fires in homes, and coal powered factories everywhere. At this time, chemistry was utmost political, with practitioners such as Joseph Priestley being known revolutionary dissenters (see, for example, the Priestley Riots).

They turned their attention to "factitious air", which we would call nitrous oxide today. After developing improved approaches to its production and purification, therapeutic experiments began in Bristol, but were not particularly successful. However, Beddoes, Davy and their friends including Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge embarked upon "inner experiments" of their own, and the results are well known. Coincidentally, currents of German idealism were arriving in England at this time, and their friend William Wordsworth returned from the continent inspired by the ideas of Kant and Schelling.

I think that should just about be enough context, apart from the Spinozist final stanza, which also contains within it a characterisation of the mode of action of nitrous oxide on the human brain, which to date has not been published in the scientific literature. Don't ask me how I know: my official answer would be three chemistry degrees.