Professor Phil Ford and writer J. F. Martel host a series of conversations on art and philosophy, dwelling on ideas that are hard to think and art that opens up rifts in what we are pleased to call "reality."

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In this episode, JF and Phil paddle into the marshlands of Algernon Blackwood’s 1907 masterpiece The Willows, a tale Lovecraft once called the finest weird story of all time. They explore how a narrative in which almost nothing happens can conjure a cosmic dread more potent than a legion of monsters, and how Blackwood’s genius lies in revealing the spiritual
horror latent in landscape itself. Topics include zones, the limits of human
reason, and the terror of brushing up against an otherworld that lies just
beyond the riverbank—near at hand, yet somehow separated from us by an
unbridgeable gulf.

Photo by Derek Dye, via Wikimedia Commons.



REFERENCES




Algernon Blackwood, “The Willows”  

Weird Studies, Episode 55 on “The Wendigo”  

SCTV 

Algernon Blackwood, “The Psychology of Places” in The Lure of the Unknown 

Weird Studies, Episodes 14 and 15 on Stalker 

Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols 

Sue Clifford and Angela King, England in Particular 

Michael Dames, Pagans Progress 

J. G. Ballard, English fiction author 


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Weird Studies

Here Be Shrubs: On Algernon Blackwood's 'The Willows'

In this episode, JF and Phil are joined by Jacob G. Foster—sociologist, physicist, and researcher at Indiana University Bloomington and the Santa Fe Institute—for a conversation about their recent collaboration in Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Their co-authored essay, “Care of the Dead,” explores how the dead continue to shape our cultures, languages, and ways of being. Together, they discuss the process of writing the piece and what it means to say that the dead are not gone—that they persist, and that they make claims on the living.

The article is available here: https://direct.mit.edu/daed/article/154/1/166/127931/Care-of-the-Dead-Ancestors-Traditions-amp-the-Life

**References**
[Peter Kingsley,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kingsley) English writer 
Weird Studies, [Episode 98 on “Taboo”]) https://www.weirdstudies.com/98) 
John Berger, “12 Theses on the Economy of the Dead” in _[Hold Everything Dear](12 Theses on the Economy of the Dead)_ 
Bernard Koch, Daniele Silvestro, and Jacob Foster, ["The Evolutionary Dynamics of Cultural Change”](https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/659bt_v1) 
Gilbert Simondon, _[Imagination and Invention](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781517914455)_ 
William Gibson, _[Neuromancer](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780441007462)_ 
[Phlogiston theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlogiston_theory) 
George Orwell, _[1984](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780451524935)_ 
HP Lovecraft, [“The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”](https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/cdw.aspx) 
Weird Studies, [Episode 187 on “Little, Big”](https://www.weirdstudies.com/187) 
[John Dee,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dee) English occultist 
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, _[The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780195320992)_ 
Robert Harrison, _[The Dominion of the Dead](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780226317939)_ 
Gilles Deleuze, _[Bergsonism](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780942299076)_ 
Elizabeth LeGuin, _[Boccherini’s Body](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780520240179)_ 
Elizabeth LeGuin, [“Cello and Bow thinking”](http://www.echo.ucla.edu/cello-and-bow-thinking-baccherinis-cello-sonata-in-eb-minor-faouri-catalogo/) 
Johannes Brahms, _Handel Variations_ 
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Care of the Dead, with Jacob G. Foster

In this continuation of their non-linear journey through the tarot, Phil and JF discuss the ninth Arcanum: the Hermit. Walking through darkness with his lantern and staff, the Hermit invites us to break from the collective and seek a direct relationship with the Real. This is the card of the seeker, the misfit, the sage, and the wanderer. As tends to happen in these tarot episodes, the hosts take the opportunity to range across many topics, connecting the Hermit to Jung’s Red Book, the Desert Fathers, angels and demons, the I Ching, contemporary politics, and more.

Support us on Patreon
Order Christian Bunyan's Weird Studies poster here.
Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 and 2, on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page.
Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast,Cosmophonia.
Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop
Find us on Discord
Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau

REFERENCES

Carl Jung, The Red Book
Stanley Kubrick, American filmmaker
Samuel Beckett, Irish writer
Emily Dickinson, American poet
Temptation of Saint Anthony
Our Known Friend, Meditations on the Tarot
Weird Studies, Episode 103 on the Tower card
The Gnostic Tarot
Nigel Richmond, Language of the Lines
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
John Minford, The I Ching: The Essential Translation of the Ancient Chinese Oracle and Book of Wisdom
William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming"
Alejandro Jodorowsky, The Way of the Tarot
Wolfgang Petersen (dir.), The Neverending Story
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Pioneers of the Untimely: On the Hermit Card in the Tarot

John Crowley’s Little, Big is, at once, a family saga, a fairy tale, an occult thriller, an idyll, a dystopia, as well as a meditation on myth and history, the real and the fantasy, memory and imagination. Little, Big is also a book that JF and Phil have been planning to discuss for as long as Weird Studies has existed. In this episode, they are joined by writer and scholar Erik Davis to explore the enduring charms and mysteries of one of the greatest—and most underrated—American novels of the late twentieth century.


Order Christian Bunyan's Weird Studies poster here.
Visit Weirdosphere for more details on Erik Davis's ongoing course, The Three Stigmata of Philip K. Dick. 


Support us on Patreon.
Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 and 2, on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page.
Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia.
Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop
Find us on Discord
Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!


REFERENCES


John Crowley, Little, Big 
Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory 
Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain 
Eric Davis, interview with Neil Gaiman and Rachel Pollack 
David Lynch (dir.), Lost Highway 
America, “The Last Unicorn” 
John Cooper Powys, A Glastonbury Romance 
J. R. R. Tolkein, The Lord of the Rings 
Patrick Harpur, Daimonic Reality 
Lord Dunsany, Irish novelist 
Special Guest: Erik Davis.

      
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