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 88: On Neil Gaiman & Dave McKean's 'Mr Punch'

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 09:45:00 -0500

Before Coraline, before American Gods, in the early days of the Sandman series, Neil Gaiman collaborated with Dave McKean on some truly groundbreaking graphic novels: Violent Cases (1987), Signal to Noise (1989), and the work discussed in this Weird Studies episode. The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr Punch (1994) is the story of a boy whose initiation into the dark realities of life, death, and family plays out in the shadow of the (in)famous Punch & Judy puppet show. Unlike some of Gaiman's more overtly marvellous offerings, Mr Punch is a subtle fantasy whose weirdness hides in the gaps and folds of lost time. It is in Dave McKean's brilliant art that the magic shines through, letting us know that the narrative is only part of a vaster, hidden thing. In this episode, Phil and JF discuss the themes, ideas, and mysteries of an unparalleled piece of comics art.

REFERENCES

Watch Aaron Poole's 9-minute short film "Oracle"

Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, _The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch

"That's the Way to Do It! A History of Punch and Judy", Victoria Albert Museum
_

Ronald Briggs, Father Christmas
Clement Greenberg, American art critic
Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics
J. F. Martel, Patreon Post on The Untimely
Weird Studies, Episodes 20 and 21 on the Trash Stratum
Weird Studies, Episode 72 on the Castrati
Samuel Pepys, English administrator and diarist
Nick Lowe, The Beast in Me

Weird Studies - Episodes Tagged with “Trickster”

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

Episode 88: On Neil Gaiman & Dave McKean's 'Mr Punch'