Weird Studies - Episodes Tagged with “Divination”

Episode 180: The Player: On the Magician Card in the Tarot

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 20 Nov 2024 11:15:00 -0500

The Magician card likely graces more front covers of books on the tarot than any of the other major arcana. In many ways, it symbolizes the tarot itself, or the individual who has mastered the art of manipulating the cards to divine their meanings. Yet, the Magician is a profoundly ambiguous figure. From one perspective, he is the Magus, piercing through the illusions of ceaseless becoming to glimpse the hidden depths of reality. From another, he is all surface without depth, a carnival huckster ready to empty your coin purse while you’re transfixed by his crystal ball. In this episode, JF and Phil continue their on-again, off-again journey through the major trumps with a discussion of the card that—deservedly or not—proudly calls itself Number One.

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REFERENCES
Our Known Friend, Meditations on the Tarot
Weird Studies, Episode 24 on “The Charlatan and the Magus”
Weird Studies, Episode 109 and Episode 110 on The Glass Bead Game
Weird Studies, Episode 179 with Lionel Snell
Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Geneology of Morals
Louis Sass, Modernism and Madness
Gilles Deleuze, Pure Immanence
Richard Wagner, Parsifal
William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light
Participation mystique
Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth
Leigh Mccloskey, Tarot Re-visioned

Episode 163: The Source of All Abysses: On the Devil Card in the Tarot

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 10:30:00 -0500

"The Devil's finest ruse," Baudelaire wrote, "is to persuade you that he doesn't exist." In this episode, JF and Phil peer through a buzzing haze of lies, illusions, and mirages, in hopes of catching a glimpse, however brief, of the figure standing at its center. With a focus on the fifteenth major arcanum of the tarot, they try to make sense of this archetype which feels, at once, remotely distant and uncomfortably close to us, all while heeding the warning from the anonymous author of Meditations on the Tarot that one ought not look too deeply into the nature of evil, which is "unknowable in its essence."

REFERENCES
Our Known Friend, Meditations on the Tarot
The Gnostic Tarot
Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Faust, Part 1
Ramsey Dukes, SSOTBME
Edgar Allan Poe, The Imp of the Perverse
Aleister Crowley, Magic, Book 4
Leigh McCloskey, Tarot Re-Visioned
Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth
The Library of Esoterica, Tarot
Federico Campagna, Technic and Magic

Episode 114: On the Wheel of Fortune, the Tenth Card of the Tarot

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 19 Jan 2022 10:30:00 -0500

Season five kicks off with a new installment in the ongoing series on the Tarot's twenty-two major arcana. This time, your hosts overcome the trials that fortune has dealt them -- a hangover in the case of Phil, a sleepless night for JF -- to discuss the Wheel of Fortune. Not surprisingly, the conversation is a mess, albeit a beautiful one that comes full circle in the end, tying up all its loose ends in something like a bow (or a coiled serpent). Topics include the challenges of improvised philosophical discussion, the importance of exposing oneself to difficult ideas, the serpentine nature of immanentist discourse, and the doctrine of the Fall. As usual, the anomymously-authored Meditations on the Tarot gets pride of place, although occult luminaries such as Alejandro Jodorowsky, Aleister Crowley, and Pat Sajak make notable appearances.

Support us on Patreon
Find us on Discord
Get the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
Get your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop
Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack

REFERENCES

Our Known Friend, Meditations on the Tarot
Pints with Aquinas
Jaroslav Hašek, Czech author
Lon Milo Duquette, Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot
True Detective, tv show
Thomas Ligotti, Conspiracy Against the Human Race
Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
Alexander Jodorowsky, The Way of Tarot
Jessica Hundley et. al., Tarot. Library of Esoterica
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, French priest and scientist
Herman Hesse, The Glass Bead Game
Bruno Latour, French philosopher
David Bentley Hart interview

Episode 84: Mona Lisa Smile: On the Empress, the Third Card in the Tarot

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 10:30:00 -0400

This second instalment in our series on the major trumps of the traditional tarot deck features the Empress. As Aleister Crowley writes in The Book of Thoth, this card is probably the most difficult to decipher, since it is inherently "omniform," changing shapes continuously. In a sense, the Empress is variation itself. Her card becomes the occasion for a conversation about the less knowable side of reality, the one that tradition associates with the Yin, nature, potential, and -- controversially -- the feminine. This in turn leads to a discussion of white versus black magic, and how the two may not always be as diametrically opposed as we might believe.

REFERENCES

P.D. Ouspensky, The Symbolism of the Tarot
Anonymous, Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism
Weird Studies episode 82 on the I Ching
Patrick Harper, The Secret Tradition of the Soul
Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth
Simon Magus, religious figure
Henri Gamache, The Mystery of the Long Lost 8th, 9th, and 10th Books of Moses
Solomon grimoires
Lionel Snell/Ramsay Dukes, English magician
Weird Studies episode 3 on Arthur Machen's "The White People"
Joséphin Péladan, French magician
Susanna Clarke Piranesi
Shawshank Redemption, film
Franz Liszt, musician
Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces

Episode 82: On The I Ching

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 16 Sep 2020 10:00:00 -0400

The Book of Changes, or I Ching, is more than an ancient text. It's a metaphysical guide, a fun game, and -- to your hosts at least -- a lifelong, steadfast friend. The I Ching has come up more than once on the show, and now is the time for JF and Phil to face it head on, discussing the role it has played in their lives while delving into some of its mysteries.

REFERENCES

I Ching, Wilhelm-Baynes translation
I Ching, Stephen Karcher translation
Game of Thrones, HBO series
George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire
George R. R. Martin, “Sandkings” in: Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories
H. P. Lovecraft, American writer
Graham Harman, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy
Aleister Crowley, “777”
Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Cannibal Metaphysics
Joel Biroco, Calling Crane in the Shade (website)
Philip K. Dick, American novelist
Lionel Snell, a.k.a. Ramsey Dukes, British occultist
Richard Rutt, _Zhouyi: A New Translation with Commentary _
Mervyn Peake, Gormenghast
Redmond and Hon, Teaching the I Ching
Weird Studies, episode 72, On the castrati
Weird Studies, episode 77, On the fool tarot card
Anonymous, Meditations on the Tarot
The Usual Suspects (movie)
Colin Wilson, The Occult

Episode 66: On Diviner's Time

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 19 Feb 2020 10:30:00 -0500

In the paper discussed in this episode, Phil Ford coins the term "diviner's time" to denote a particular feeling that will be familiar to anyone who has engaged in divinatory or magical practice, namely the feeling that it all means something, that the universe, with all its chaos and randomness, nevertheless contains -- or is itself -- a kind of music. This episode goes deep down the rabbit hole as Phil and JF try to wrap their heads around conceptions of time, causality, and meaning that are very different from our usual understanding of those terms.

REFERENCES

Phil Ford, "Diviner’s Time" (Patreon exclusive)

Karl Pfeifer (director), Hellier
Joshua Ramey, "Contingency Without Unreason: Speculation After Meillassoux"
E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande
Jung, "On Synchronicity"
Jung, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle
Bruno Latour, An Inquiry Into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns
Grant Morrison on chaos magic, the occult, and sigil creation
Austin Osman Spare's sigil theory
Eric Wargo, Time Loops: Precognition, Retrocausation, and the Unconscious
Alan Chapman, Advanced Magick for Beginners
William James's essays in psychical research: bibliography
Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency
Toronto World Youth Day 2002
Crowley, Magick Without Tears
Leibniz's concept of pre-established harmony
Matthew Segall on the Greek concepts of time, "Minding Time: Chronos, Kairos and Aion in an Archetypal Cosmos"
Richard Lester (director), Hard Day's Night
Freud, "The Uncanny"
Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy
Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics: An Introduction
Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, or, Cosmos and History
Charles Taylor, A Secular Age