Weird Studies

The plan was to discuss the introduction to Aleister Crowley's classic work, Magick in Theory and Practice (1924), a powerful text on the nature and purpose of magical practice. JF and Phil stick to the plan for the first part of the show, and then veer off into a dialogue on the basic idea of magic. Along the way, they share some of the intriguing results of their own occult experiments. REFERENCES Photo of JF's "large sum" cheque Aleister Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice The Gospel According to Thomas James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion Erik Davis, "Weird Shit" I Ching, The Book of Changes Joshua Gunn, Modern Occult Rhetoric: Mass Media and the Drama of Secrecy in the Twentieth Century The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage The Shackleton Expedition Grant Morrison on how to do sigil magic Alan Chapman, Advanced Magick for Beginners David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Human Understanding Joshua Ramey, "Conti

JF and Phil discuss Graham Harman's "The Third Table," a short and accessible introduction to "object-oriented ontology." Phil takes us on a tour of his closet, we discover that JF's kids are better at this weird studies stuff than their old man, and the conversation veers through Harman's Lovecraftian "weird realism," Zen's "just sit" meditation, panpsychism, Martin Buber's I and Thou, experimental filmmaking, and more. WORKS AND IDEAS CITED IN THIS EPISODE Graham Harman, "The Third Table" Graham Harman, Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects Martin Heidegger, Being in Time J. F. Martel, "Ramble on the Real" Graham Harman, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy H. P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu" Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World Graham Harman, "Objects and the Arts" (lecture) Bernardo Kastrup, Why Materialism is Baloney Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained Walden, A Game – A computer game based on Heny David Thoreau’s classic work, Walden South Park, “Guita

For as long as they've been pounding the crap out of each other for good reasons, humans have also been pounding the crap out of each other for fun. Everywhere, in ever age, elaborate systems, rituals, and traditions have arisen to ring in the practice of violence and thereby offer the rough beast that lurks in every soul a chance to come out for a stretch in the sun. In this episode, Phil and JF delve into one of the most scandalous affairs of all: the illicit dalliance of Aphrodite and Ares, beauty and violence. WORKS & IDEAS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE: Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon James Hillman, A Terrible Love of War Homer, The Odyssey Joyce Carol Oates, On Boxing La fosse aux tigres (documentary directed by Jason Brennan and JF Martel; Nish Media) Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Richard Strauss's opera Salome Gur Hirshberg, "Burke, Kant, and the Sublime" Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/ad

The Dutch historian Johan Huizinga was one of the first thinkers to define games as exercises in world-making. Every game, he wrote, occurs within a magic circle where the rules of ordinary life are suspended and new laws come into play. No game illustrates this better than Gary Gygax's tabletop RPG, Dungeons & Dragons. In this episode, Phil and JF use D&D as the focus of a conversation about the weird interdependence of reality and fantasy. Header image: Gaetan Bahl (Wikimedia Commons) WORKS CITED OR DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE Official homepage of the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game Critical Role web series   Another RPG podcast JF failed to mention: The HowWeRoll Podcast Demetrious Johnson’s Twitch site Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine (documentary)   Chessboxing!   Jackson Lears, Something for Nothing: Luck in America   Peter Fischli, The Way Things Go   Jon Cogburn and Mark Silcox, Dungeons & Dragons and Philosophy: Raiding the Temple of Wisdom   Lawrence Schick, ed., Deities & Demi

Phil and JF discuss Lisa Ruddick's "When Nothing is Cool," an essay on the postmodern humanities and its allergy to essences -- especially that personal essence we call soul. Maybe the soul is a heap of miscellaneous notions and influences that I paint a face onto and then call "me." Or maybe there is something under that painted effigy of the self. If so, what? And if there's nothing under there, could it be a nothing that delivers? WORKS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE Lisa Ruddick, "When Nothing is Cool" Elizabeth Gilbert, "Your Elusive Creative Genius" Judith Halberstam, "Skinflick: Posthuman Gender in Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs" Daniel Chua (the musicologist whose name Phil couldn't remember) Brett Easton Ellis, American Psycho Mary Harron, American Psycho (film) David Lynch, Twin Peaks: The Return Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scholar, journalist and author Erik Davis joins Phil and JF for a freewheeling conversation on the permutations of the weird, Burning Man, speculative realism, the uncanny, the H. P. Lovecraft/Philip K. Dick syzygy, and how the world has gotten weirder (and less weird) since Erik’s groundbreaking Techgnosis was published twenty years ago. WORKS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE: Erik Davis’s Techgnosis website Erik Davis's podcast, Expanding Mind Erik Davis, Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information Erik Davis, Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica Erik Davis, Led Zeppelin IV Mark Fisher, The Weird and the Eerie Philip K. Dick, Exegesis Goop Magazine, no. 2 Hakim Bey and the Temporary Autonomous Zone The Burning Man Festival Ian Hacking, The Taming of Chance Erik Davis, “Weird Shit” JF Martel, “How Symbols Matter” Henri Bergson, Introduction to Metaphysics Charles Baudelaire, “Correspondances” from Fleurs du mal Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny”

JF and Phil delve deep into Arthur Machen's fin-de-siècle masterpiece, "The White People," for insight into the nature of ecstasy, the psychology of fairies, the meaning of sin, and the challenge of living without a moral horizon. WORKS CITED OR DISCUSSED Arthur Machen, "The White People" - full text or Weird Stories audiobook read by Phil Ford Arthur Machen, Hieroglyphics: A Note Upon Ecstasy H. P. Lovecraft, "Supernatural Horror in Literature" J.F. Martel, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell Jack Sullivan (ed)., The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural John Keel, The Mothman Prophecies: A True Story Patrick Harpur, Daimonic Reality Jacques Vallee, Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, The Morning of the Magicians Michael Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison J.K. Huysmans, Against Nature (À rebours) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit me

Weird Stories is a series of readings for Weird Studies listeners who want to dig deeper into the themes and ideas discussed on the Weird Studies podcast. In his seminal essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature," H. P. Lovecraft named Arthur Machen one of the four "modern masters" of horror fiction, alongside Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, and M. R. James. Born in 1863, Machen burst onto the London literary scene in 1890 with the controversial novella "The Great God Pan." He was briefly considered one of the luminaries of the Decadent movement before falling into obscurity and experiencing a literary rebirth toward the end of his life. In this Weird Stories installment, Phil Ford reads the complete text of one of Machen's most famous works, "The White People" (1904). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Phil and JF use a word from the Twin Peaks mythos, "garmonbozia," to try to understand what it was that the detonation of atomic bomb brought into the world. We use the fictional world of Twin Peaks as a map to the (so-called) real world and take Philip K. Dick, Krzysztof Penderecki, Norman Mailer, William S. Burroughs, Theodor Adorno, and H.P. Lovecraft as our landmarks. Warning: some spoilers of Twin Peaks season 3. Works Cited or Discussed: Phil Ford, "The Cold War Never Ended", Dial M for Musicology (1) (2) (3) (4) Twin Peaks: The Return — Official Site Philip K. Dick, “The Empire Never Ended,” treated in R. Crumb’s “The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick” and the “Tractate” from Dick’s Exegesis: http://www.tekgnostics.com/PDK.HTM Norman Mailer, “The White Negro” Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion Arthur Machen, The White People Robert Oppenheimer, “I am become death” C.G. Jung, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Pr

Phil and J.F. share stories of sleep paralysis and talk about Charles Fort's sympathy for the damned, Jeff Kripal's phenomenological approach to Fortean weirdness, Dave Hickey's notion of beauty as democracy, and Timothy Morton's hyperobjects. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices