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upas is a (fabulous?) tropical tree which yields a poisonous latex (used on arrows) that goes by the same name. M-W gives upas a second meaning, a poisonous or harmful influence or institution.
T. E. Lawrence seems to use it as an adjective [or modifying noun, if you will] in the latter sense, in Seven Pillars..:
We had been hopelessly labouring to plough waste lands; to make nationality grow in a place full of the certainty of God, that upas certainty which forbade all hope.
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Eva Hanagan, The Upas Tree, New York: Saint Martin's Press, 1979. Why do you suppose she named it that? Anybody read it?
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>Why do you suppose she named it that?
I've not read it; but I suspect this extract from the Ency. Brit. helps explain:
The tree was said to destroy all animal life within a radius of 15 m. or more. The poison was fetched by condemned malefactors, of whom scarcely two out of twenty returned. All this is pure fable, and in good part not even traditional fable, but mere invention.
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15 meters, given your British reference, tsuwm? [I hate to be dense here, but it beats being an airhead...]
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that upas certainty which forbade all hope
If T. E. Lawrence, famously known as "Lawrence of Arabia", was alive today, I think he might have amended that insight, or, at least, clarified it:
that upas certainly which postpones all hope [in expectation of the hereafter]
T. E. Lawrence also wrote:
"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.
—T. E. Lawrence from "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom"
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>>destroy all animal life within a radius of 15 m. or more >15 meters, given your British reference? meters, miles; what's a few orders of magnitude amongst fabulists? 
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meters, miles; what's a few orders of magnitude amongst fabulists?
Or, as the "fabulists" might put it:
What's a few orders of magnitude in the bosom of eternity?
And who is to say that those who disclaim "fabulists" are not themselves "fabulists" riding the crest of their hubris?
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We had been hopelessly labouring to plough waste lands; to make nationality grow in a place full of the certainty of God, that upas certainty which forbade all hope.
Good heavens, I've had it in the back of my mind to read T.E. Lawrence, but now I'm wondering if I'd get anything out of it. In the quote above, is he saying that the certainty of God is a poison against hope? Presumably, here, the hope of establishing nationality? Did he by any chance mean Allah? [wandering in the wilderness e]
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