Weird Studies - Episodes Tagged with “Meditation”

Episode 124: Dark Night Radio of the Soul, with Duncan Barford

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 25 May 2022 10:15:00 -0400

For several episodes now, Phil and JF have been circling what St. John of the Cross called the Dark Night of the Soul, that moment in the spiritual journey where all falls a way and an abyss seems to crack open beneath our feet. When it came time to go there in earnest, they could think of no better guide than Duncan Barford, host of the excellent Occult Experiments in the Home podcast. As a master magician, long-time meditator, psychotherapeutic counsellor and writer on spirituality and the occult, Barford is uniquely endowed with the tools, experience, and language to discuss even the most difficult spiritual topics with wisdom and warmth. A Virgil for any Inferno.

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SHOW NOTES

Occult Experiments in the Home, Duncan Barford's excellent solo podcast
Duncan's other website, focusing on his work as a psychotherapeutic counselor
Duncan's books on Amazon US

Weird Studies, Episode 67 on Hellier
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Judgement
Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
Dogen’s Bendowa
Tibetan Book of the Dead
Daniel Ingram, Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha
St. John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel
Spinoza, Ethics
Lionel Snell, My Years of Magical Thinking

Special Guest: Duncan Barford.

Episode 120: On Radical Mystery

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 10:30:00 -0400

Though it is seldom acknowledged in the weirdosphere, there is a difference between weirdness and mystery. Most of the time, the Weird confronts us with a problem, an impersonal epistemic obstacle which we can always believe would go away if we just closed our eyes and whistled past it with our hands in our pockets. Mystery, however, is always personal. It envelops us; it addresses us as persons. Mystery is as present within us as it is out there. It is there when you open your eyes, and even more so when you shut them tight. Maybe it had us in its grip before we were even born. In this episode, JF and Phil make radical mystery the focus of a discussion ranging over everything from unique kinds of tea and spelunking mishaps to antisonic demon pipes and malevolent radiators.

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

For information on JF's new course, Groundwork for a Philosophy of Magic, go to [Nura Learning](www.nuralearning.com).

Phil Ford, “Radical Mystery: A Preliminary Account”
J.F. Martel, “Reality is analog”
John Keel, The Mothman Prophecies
Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
Eugene Paul Wigner, “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics”
Louis Sass, Madness and Modernism
Peter Kingsley, Catafalque
Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy
Steven Spielberg (dir.), Raiders of the Lost Ark
Dogen, “Instructions for the Cook”
Alan Watts, The Way of Zen
Weird Studies, Episode 56 with Jeremy Johnson

Episode 42: On Pauline Oliveros, with Kerry O'Brien

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 13 Mar 2019 00:00:00 -0400

In the mid-1960s, Pauline Oliveros was a composer of experimental electronic music. But at the end of the 1960s, shocked by the political violence around her, she turned away from electronic technology and towards to a different kind of experimentation, which Dr. Kerry O'Brien calls "experimentalisms of the self." The immediate result of this turn was Oliveros's Sonic Meditations, a series of instructions for group bodymind practice. This work became the seed of Deep Listening, a sort of musical yoga Oliveros developed throughout the rest of her long career. Dr. O'Brien joins JF and Phil for a conversation on practice, "gaining mind," the ritual value of art, the wisdom of the body, and whether Deep Listening is really best understood as art at all.

REFERENCES

Kerry O'Brien, "Listening as Activism: The 'Sonic Meditations' of Pauline Oliveros"
Pauline Oliveros, American composer
John Cage, 4'33"
Dead Territory performing Cage's 4'33"
Alvin Lucier, "Music for a Solo Performer"
Peter Sloterdijk, You Must Change Your Life
Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"
Lawrence Weschler, Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees Special Guest: Kerry O'Brien.