Episode 138: Yours and Yours Alone: On the Death Card in the Tarot

Episode 138: Yours and Yours Alone: On the Death Card in the Tarot

Author: SpectreVision Radio January 18, 2023 Duration: 1:15:47
What better way to ring in the New Year than with a freeranging discussion of the dreaded thirteenth arcanum of the tarot? Of all topics, surely death needs the least introduction. Or does it? To those of us who inhabit the castellated compounds of post-industrial privilege, it is perhaps too easy to forget the uninvited guest who skulks in the shadows, touching each of us in turn as he sidles past. "Nothing is certain except death and taxes," Benjamin Franklin once wrote. He was joking, of course. The truth is that death is the only certainty. Click here for information about JF's upcoming talk at the Last Tuesday Society. Header image: Detail from Harry Clarke's illustration for "The Masque of the Red Death," from the 1919 edition of Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination. SHOW NOTES Brian George, Masks of Origin Chris Leech, The Gnostic Tarot Our Known Friend, Meditations on the Tarot Rachel Pollack, Tarot Wisdom Rachel Pollack, 78 Degrees of Wisdom Edgar Allen Poe, “The Masque of the Red Death” Weird Studies, Episode 2 on Garmonbozia Steven Spielberg (dir.), Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark Weird Studies, Episode 137 on Sunn O)))’s “Life Metal” Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth Thomas Browne, “Urn Burial” Federico Campagna, Technic and Magic Alejandro Jodorowsky, The Way of Tarot Sallie Nichols, Tarot and the Archetypal Journey Clive Barker, Hellraiser Weird Studies, Episode 116 on “Blade Runner” George Gurdjieff, Armenian mystic Body without organs, philosophical concept Elizabeth Le Guin, Boccherini’s Body G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy Weird Studies, Episode 126 with Matt Cardin Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At the heart of Weird Studies, a podcast from SpectreVision Radio, you’ll find long-form conversations between Professor Phil Ford and writer J. F. Martel. Their discussions aren’t simple reviews or straightforward analyses; instead, they wander through the tangled undergrowth where art and philosophy meet, giving generous time to concepts that resist easy understanding and to creative works that fracture our ordinary sense of the world. This podcast deliberately lingers in that ambiguous space, treating the “weird” not as a genre but as a particular mode of experience-one that reveals the cracks in what we comfortably assume is real. Each episode feels like joining a deep, meandering dialogue between two friends who are both deeply knowledgeable and endlessly curious, covering a vast terrain that includes literature, film, music, and esoteric thought. It’s a show for anyone who suspects that the most profound truths are often found in the shadows, the anomalies, and the strangely beautiful. As part of the SpectreVision Radio network, which specializes in content that explores the uncanny edges of creativity, Weird Studies builds a unique community of listeners who are eager to think differently. You won’t find pat answers here, but you will encounter compelling questions and a shared sense of exploration that makes each installment a distinctive journey.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 100

Weird Studies
Podcast Episodes
Episode 212 – Beyond Music and Back Again: On Glenn Gould [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:24:25
The pianist, composer and sound artist Glenn Gould once wrote: "Art on its loftiest mission is scarcely human at all." What becomes of art and humanity when they are allowed to vary independently of one another? Which se…
Episode 210  – Angels & Daimons, with Cristina Campo and M.C. Richards [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:33:25
In this episode, JF and Phil bring together two visionary essays on the daimonic and the imaginal: Cristina Campo’s “On Fairy Tales” and M.C. Richards’s “Wrestling with the Daimonic.” What emerges is a conversation about…
Episode 209 – At Home in the Labyrinth, with Murakami and Borges [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:33:25
In this episode, Phil and JF discuss Haruki Murakami’s “Cream,” from First Person Singular, alongside Jorge Luis Borges’s classic tale, “The Garden of Forking Paths.” Together, these two stories occasion a meditation on…