1 hr 10 min

The Source of All Abysses: On the Devil Card in the Tarot Weird Studies

    • Arts

"The Devil's finest ruse," Baudelaire wrote, "is to persuade you that he doesn't exist." In this episode, JF and Phil peer through a buzzing haze of lies, illusions, and mirages, in hopes of catching a glimpse, however brief, of the figure standing at its center. With a focus on the fifteenth major arcanum of the tarot, they try to make sense of this archetype which feels, at once, remotely distant and uncomfortably close to us, all while heeding the warning from the anonymous author of Meditations on the Tarot that one ought not look too deeply into the nature of evil, which is "unknowable in its essence."


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
Our Known Friend, Meditations on the Tarot
The Gnostic Tarot
Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Faust, Part 1
Ramsey Dukes, SSOTBME
Edgar Allan Poe, The Imp of the Perverse
Aleister Crowley, Magic, Book 4
Leigh McCloskey, Tarot Re-Visioned
Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth
The Library of Esoterica, Tarot
Federico Campagna, Technic and Magic

"The Devil's finest ruse," Baudelaire wrote, "is to persuade you that he doesn't exist." In this episode, JF and Phil peer through a buzzing haze of lies, illusions, and mirages, in hopes of catching a glimpse, however brief, of the figure standing at its center. With a focus on the fifteenth major arcanum of the tarot, they try to make sense of this archetype which feels, at once, remotely distant and uncomfortably close to us, all while heeding the warning from the anonymous author of Meditations on the Tarot that one ought not look too deeply into the nature of evil, which is "unknowable in its essence."


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
Our Known Friend, Meditations on the Tarot
The Gnostic Tarot
Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Faust, Part 1
Ramsey Dukes, SSOTBME
Edgar Allan Poe, The Imp of the Perverse
Aleister Crowley, Magic, Book 4
Leigh McCloskey, Tarot Re-Visioned
Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth
The Library of Esoterica, Tarot
Federico Campagna, Technic and Magic

1 hr 10 min

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