Weird Studies - Episodes Tagged with “Mysticism”

Episode 146: An Air of Great Power: On the Chariot in the Tarot

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 10 May 2023 10:30:00 -0400

Of the twenty-two figures that make up the major arcana of the tarot, the Chariot is probably the most commonplace. While the tenth arcanum is a wheel, it's The Wheel of Fortune, not just any old wagon wheel. But arcanum VII is neither the Chariot of Fire or the Chariot of the Gods – just the plain old chariot. Usually, it is interpreted as a symbol of the will in its lower and higher aspects. In this episode, Phil notes that the Chariot can also symbolize something as ordinary as new car. Of course, here on Weird Studies, no car is just a car, and we like to think that Youngblood Priest, the protagonist of the 1972 film Super Fly, would agree. A car also a tool, a medium, a token of mastery, an atmospheric disturbance, a means of manifestation, a spaceship...

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REFERENCES

Rachel Pollack, Tarot Wisdom
Jordan Parks Jr., Super Fly
Our Known Friend, Meditations on the Tarot
Weird Studies, Episode 144 on “Hellraiser”
Plato, Phaedrus
Vanessa Onwuemezi, Dark Neighborhood
J. G. Ballard, Crash
Paul Virilio, War and Cinema
Karl Marx, Grundrisse
Weird Studies, Episode 26 with Michael Garfield

Episode 126: The Daemon Speaks, with Matt Cardin

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 22 Jun 2022 11:00:00 -0400

Returning guest Matt Cardin is a writer of fiction and nonfiction whose focus on numinous horror places him in the literary lineage as Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood. His new book, What the Daemon Said, collects two decades' worth of meditations on literature, cinema, mysticism, philosophy, and the weird. He joins Phil and JF to talk about a range of topics including dark enlightenment, the idea that fear and trembling are the only sensible reactions to direct exposure to cosmic truth.

Header image: detail of cover design for What the Daemon Said, by Dan Sauer Design.

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REFERENCES

Matt Cardin's website
Matt Cardin, What the Daemon Said: Essays on Horror, Fiction, Film and Philosophy
Matt Cardin, Dark Awakenings
Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way Morning Pages Journal
Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones
The Gospel of Thomas
Matt Cardin, Dark Awakenings
Robert Frost, “The Figure a Poem Makes”
John Horgen, Rational Mysticism
Weird Studies, Episode 41 with Matt Cardin
Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for his Highest
Weird Studies ep. 124: Dark Night Radio of the Soul, with Duncan Barford
Theodore Roszak, American scholar
M. C. Richards, Centering
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
Huston Smith, American religious scholar
Martin Buber, I and Thou
John Lee Hancock (dir.), The Rookie (2002)
Eckart Tolle, German spiritual teacher
Richard Wagner, Parsifal
Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion
Alan Watts, English writer and teacher
Richard Rose, After the Absolute: The Inner Teachings of Richard Rose

Special Guest: Matt Cardin.

Episode 65: Touched by that Fire: On Visionary Literature, with B. W. Powe

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 05 Feb 2020 10:30:00 -0500

B. W. Powe is a Canadian poet, novelist, essayist and professor at York University, in Toronto. His work, though it covers an immense range of topics from politics and poetics to magic and technology, proceeds from a mystical apprehension of the universe as the locus of magical operations, the site of experiments in cosmic becoming. In his various books and essays, Powe continues a uniquely Canadian form of the visionary tradition whose luminaries include his former teachers Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye. In this episode, he joins JF and Phil for an exploration of the meaning, potency, and danger of the visionary in art and literature.

Header image: Detail of "Green Color" by Gausanchennai (Wikimedia Commons).

REFERENCES

B. W. Powe's website
B. W. Powe, The Charge in the Global Membrane
B. W. Powe, Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye: Apocalypse and Alchemy

Frank Lentricchia, "Last Will and Testament of an Ex-Literary Critic"
Lorca's concept of duende
Hildegard of Bingen's concept of viriditas
Gilles Deleuze, Cinema II
Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media
Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy
Marshall McLuhan, "Notes on William Burroughs"
Phil Ford, Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture
John Clellon Holmes, beatnik
Northrop Frye, Canadian literary critic
Hildegard von Bingen, Ordo Virtutum
Joni Mitchell, "Woodstock"
Genesis 32, Jacob and the Angel
R. D. Laing, Scottish psychologist
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
Sylvia Plath, "Lady Lazarus"
Sylvia Plath, "Daddy"
Jack Kerouac, American writer
Allen Ginsberg, American poet
Lionel Snell, British philosopher and magician Special Guest: B. W. Powe.

Episode 37: Entities, with Stuart Davis

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 10:00:00 -0500

Several years ago, on New Year’s Eve, a tall, purple-robed praying mantis appeared to multidisciplinary artist Stuart Evan Davis as he meditated while running a fever. “Remember who you work for,” the entity said after beaming a zettabyte of information into Stuart’s febrile mind. Though it lasted less than a minute, the encounter sparked a series of life-changing -- and hair-raising -- events worthy of a Philip K. Dick novel.

JF and Phil talk to Stuart Davis to get his thoughts on nonhuman intelligences, the artistic cosmos, a movie trilogy the Mantis commissioned, and Stuart’s brilliant audio documentary, Man Meets Mantis.

Header image by OLJA, Wikimedia Commons

Stuart Davis Official Website
Stuart Davis, Man Meets Mantis
Stuart Davis, “Something from Nothing” course
Jasmine Karimova, singer-songwriter
Ramsey Dukes, The Good, The Bad, and the Funny
John Mack, psychiatrist and abduction phenomenon researcher
Jacques Vallee, ufologist
John Keel, paranormal researcher
Weird Studies episode 2, “Garmonbozia”
Norman McLaren, Spheres
Remedios Varo, artist
Leonora Carrington, artist
JF Martel, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice
Special Guest: Stuart Evan Davis.