Weird Studies - Episodes Tagged with “Evil”

Episode 182: Providence of Evil: On Robert Eggers' 'Nosferatu'

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 08 Jan 2025 10:30:00 -0500

In this episode, JF and Phil examine the myth of the vampire through the lens of Robert Eggers' latest film, Nosferatu, a reimagining of F. W. Murnau's German Expressionist masterpiece. Topics covered include the nature of vampires, the symbolism of evil, the implicit theology of Eggers' film (compared with that of Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula), the need for shadow work, as well as the power of real introspection and self-sacrifice.

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REFERENCES

Robert Eggers (dir.), Nosferatu
F. W. Murnau (dir.), Nosferatu
Mel Brooks (dir.), Dracula: Dead and Loving It
Francis Ford Coppola (dir.), Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Bram Stoker, Dracula
Richard Wagner, Tristan und Isolde
David James Smith, “The Archaeologist Couple who Unearthed a Field Full of Vampires”
Robert Eggers, The Witch
Richard Strauss, Salome
Weird Studies, Episode 156 on “The Secret History”
Rudolf Steiner, “Lucifer and Ahriman”
Richard Wagner, Ring Cycle

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 43: On Shirley Jackson

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 27 Mar 2019 11:00:00 -0400

Shirley Jackson's stories and novels rank among the greatest weird works produced in America during the 20th century. However, unlike authors such as Philip K. Dick and H.P. Lovecraft, Jackson didn't cut her teeth in the pulps but among the slick pages of such illustrious publications as The New Yorker. On the other hand, whether because her most famous novel uses the traditional ghost story form or because she was a woman, Jackson only rarely appears in the litanies of weird literature, where she most definitely belongs. In this episode, Phil and JF discuss two of Jackson's short works, "The Lottery" and "The Summer People." The conversation touches on such cheerful topics as human sacrifice, the use of tradition to license evil, and the alienness that can infect even the most familiar things ... when the stars are right.

Header image by Hussein Twabi, Wikimedia Commons

REFERENCES

The Weird Studies Patreon
Shirley Jackson
Zoë Heller, “The Haunted Mind of Shirley Jackson,” review of Ruth Franklin, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life
American writer Mitch Horowitz
Rhonda Byrne, The Secret
Stuart Wilde, The Trick to Money is Having Some
Seymour Ginsburg, Gurdjieff Unveiled
Randall Collins, Violence: A Microsociological Theory
James Hillman, A Terrible Love of War
Homer, The Iliad
Phil & JF at Octopus Books in Ottawa, 2015
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations “Whatever happens to you has been waiting to happen since the beginning of time. The twining strands of fate wove both of them together: your own existence and the things that happen to you.”
David Lynch, Blue Velvet