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.

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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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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.

Support us on Patreon.

REFERENCES

John Crowley, Little, Big

Special Guest: Erik Davis.

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In this episode, JF and Phil continue their conversation on the wedge, their figure for the epistemological divide between approaching reality from the heart and exploring it with the mind. As the discussion unfolds, the wedge begins to reveal itself not as a rigid binary but as a spectrum—one that stretches from ultimate thickness to ultimate thinness. Could thinking, then, may be the art of navigating this epistemic gradient, seeking the sweet spot where the self meets the world, each on the other's terms?

Visit Weirdosphere for more details on Erik Davis's upcoming course, The Three Stigmata of Philip K. Dick.

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REFERENCES

Weird Studies, Episode 155 on ‘The Unbinding’

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"The Wedge" is a key concept for Phil and JF. When exploring weird phenomena—from artworks to ghosts, and everything in between—one tends to emphasize one or the other "end" of the event. At the thin end of the Wedge, the focus is on subjective experience: how it felt, what it was like, and its personal significance. At the thick end, the emphasis shifts to what actually happened, independent of how it was experienced. Though their roles sometimes switch, Phil generally thinks from the thin end, while JF approaches things from the thick. In this episode, they begin unpacking the implications of the Wedge for making sense of reality’s stranger aspects.

Header image by SavidgeMichael via Wikimedia Commons.

REFERENCES

Weird Studies, Episode 184 on David Lynch

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Due to scheduling conflicts and a series of unforeseen events, JF and Phil have had to push the release of the next official episode of Weird Studies back by one week. To tide you over, we're unlocking a bonus episode previously available only to our Patreon supporters. It serves as the perfect preface to Episode 184, which will be released on February 26, 2025. Apologies for the delay, and thanks for your patience.

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David Lynch passed away on January 15th, 2025, leaving behind a body of work that reshaped the landscape of cinema and television. Few artists have delved as deeply into the strange, the beautiful, and the terrifying as Lynch, and few have had as profound an influence on Weird Studies. His films have long been a touchstone for JF and Phil's discussions on art, philosophy, and the nature of the weird. To honor his memory, they decided to devote an episode to Lynch's work as a whole, with special attention paid to Eraserhead—the nightmarish debut that announced his singular vision to the world. A study in dread, desire, and the uncanny, Eraserhead remains one of the most disturbing and mysterious works of American cinema. In this episode, we explore what makes it so powerful and how it connects to Lynch’s larger artistic project.

To enroll in JF's new Weirdosphere course, It's All Real: An Inquiry Into the Reality of the Supernatural, please visit www.weirdosphere.org. The course starts on Thursday, Feb 6, at 8 pm Eastern.

A video for the piece For David Lynch is available on Pierre-Yves Martel's YouTube channel.

REFERENCES

David Lynch, Eraserhead

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Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha is one of the great novels of the twentieth century and a prime example of literature that transforms the deeply personal into something universal. For Phil and JF in this episode, the novel serves as the foundation for a discussion on spiritual journeying, the ideal of enlightenment, and the challenge of living in an ensouled universe.

Sign up for JF's new Weirdosphere course on the supernatural, starting on February 6th, 2025.

Purchase tickets to the Weirdosphere screening of Aaron Poole's Dada on February 1st, 2025.

Support us on Patreon.

REFERENCES

Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

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In this episode, JF and Phil examine the myth of the vampire through the lens of Robert Eggers' latest film, Nosferatu, a reimagining of F. W. Murnau's German Expressionist masterpiece. Topics covered include the nature of vampires, the symbolism of evil, the implicit theology of Eggers' film (compared with that of Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula), the need for shadow work, as well as the power of real introspection and self-sacrifice.

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REFERENCES

Robert Eggers (dir.), Nosferatu

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With the next flagship show set to drop on January 8, 2025, we thought we'd tide you over with this conversation on the art and craft and writing, originally recorded for Listener's Tier patrons on the Weird Studies Patreon.

To join our Patreon community, please visit www.patreon.com/weirdstudies.

To purchase tickets to Phil and JF's winter solstice celebration, happening on Weirdosphere on Thursday, December 19, at 8 pm Eastern, please visit www.weirdosphere.org.

We wish you a happy and safe holiday season! The journey continues in 2025.

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Chris Carter's The X-Files is weird on its face: a dramatic series that, from the start, presented itself as more than drama, an exploration of the reality of the paranormal using the tools of fiction, a fantasy posing as reality (or is it the other way around?). Strangely prescient, undeniably zany, and truly "hyperstitious," the series is likely to strike contemporary viewers as equal parts naive and prophetic. In this episode, music scholar and Weird Studies assistant Meredith Michael joins Phil and JF for a deep dive into the archival sublime of the filing cabinet marked "X."

To purchase tickets to JF and Phil's December 19th solstice event on Weirdosphere, with live music by Pierre-Yves Martel, to to weirdosphere.org.

Support us on Patreon.

REFERENCES

Cut-up technique

Special Guest: Meredith Michael.

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