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, "Contingency Without Unreason" Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande H. P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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, “Guitar Queer-O” (season 11, episode 13) Wikipedia entry on art critic David Hickey Heraclitus, Fragments Martin Buber, I and Thou The concept of “substantial form” in Aristotle’s philosophy Martin Heidegger, "The Question Concerning Technology" Steven Shaviro, The Universe of Things William James, "Does ‘Consciousness’ Exist?" Andy Warhol’s minimalist films Empire and Sleep Wikipedia entry on filmmaker Terrence Malick Neil Jordan (director), The End of the Affair (based on the novel by Graham Greene) J. F. Martel, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice Gustav Klimt, The Kiss (painting) Matthew Akers (director), David Blaine: Beyond Magic The Duffer Brothers (directors), Stranger Things 2 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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/adchoices

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 & Demigods: Cyclopedia of Gods and Heroes from Myth and Legend   Article on Mazes and Monsters, a movie that came out of the D&D moral panic of the 1980s   Phil Ford, “Xenorationality”   Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element of Culture   John Sinclair, [Guitar Army: Rock and Revolution with the MC5 and the White Panther Party](https://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Army-Revolution-White-Panther/dp/1934170003) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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” Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus The Onion, “Lovecraftian School Board Member Wants Madness Added to Curriculum” Special Guest: Erik Davis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 megaphone.fm/adchoices

Author Arthur Machen, known for horror fiction, is discussed in this podcast. Topics include the essence of sin, forbidden knowledge, mystical powers, dark secrets of Lady Avalon, and the intersection of science and myth in alchemy.

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 Principle William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch Howard Phillips Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu William B. Yeats, "The Second Coming" Krzysztof Penderecki, Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima The Book of Ecclesiastes Jon H. Else, The Day After Trinity (documentary) Francisco Goya, "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters" Stanley Kubrick, Doctor Strangelove, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment Jean Beaudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle William James, A Pluralistic Universe Norman Mailer, Advertisements for Myself Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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