William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land is without a doubt one of the weirdest entries in the annals of weird fiction. Set in the earth's distant future, after the sun has gone out and the planet has been cleaved in two by an unspecified disaster, a telepathic scientist dons his armour and weapons to brave the monster-haunted yet strangely monotonous wastes that engirdle the massive pyramid in which the last humans took refuge, hundreds of thousands of years earlier. If Samuel Beckett tripped hard on ayahuasca, he might have come up with something like Hodgson's genre-defying novel, which reads more like a report to committee of 17th-century heretics than a piece of speculative fiction from the early twentieth century. MIT Press recently released a (blessedly) abridged edition of The Night Land as part of their Radium Series. Journalist, scholar, and lecturer Erik Davis, who penned a brilliant foreword for the new edition, was kind enough to join Phil and JF to discuss this underrated masterpiece. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies) and gain access to Phil's podcast on Wagner's Ring Cycle. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Download Pierre-Yves Martel's new album, Mer Bleue (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/mer-bleue). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! SHOW NOTES William Hope Hodgeson, The Night Land (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780262546423) Weird Studies, Episode 37 with Stuart Davis (https://www.weirdstudies.com/37) Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780415538381) Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780674986916) William Hope Hodgeson, House on the Borderland (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781492699774) Samuel Beckett, Molloy (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780802144478) Sumptuary Laws (https://refashioningrenaissance.eu/archival-work/sumptuary-laws/) Arcosanti (https://www.arcosanti.org/), arcology Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781618950468) Pierre Schaeffer, “Traité des objets musicaux” Schitzophonia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophonia) H.G. Wells, The Time Machine (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780141439976)

Even learned commentators on the tarot are likely to point out at the fourteenth major arcana, Temperance, is a bit of a boring card. At least, it comes off as dull until you look at it closely, as JF and Phil do in this episode. What they find is that the Temperance card is actually a diagram, a kind of blueprint for a celestial machine that underlies human technology, beckoning us to restore even the most mechanical contraption to the raw weirdness at the source of everything. Header image by Rolf Dietrich Brecher via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Olive_Oil_on_Water_%2847993245783%29.jpg) It's not too late to join JF's Nura Learning course, "Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence." (www.nuralearning.com) Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies) and gain access to Phil's podcast on Wagner's Ring Cycle. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Download Pierre-Yves Martel's new album, Mer Bleue (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/mer-bleue). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! SHOW NOTES Anonymous, Meditations on the Tarot (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781585421619) Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780877282686) Adrien Lyne, Jacob’s Ladder (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099871/) Weeping Angels (https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Weeping_Angel), Dr. Who creatures Joel Schumacher, Flatliners (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099582/) Lawrence Halprin, [The RSVP Cycles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSVPcycles)_ Gregory Bateson, Steps To an Ecology of Mind (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780226039053) Hesychasm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesychasm), monastic practice Yoav Ben-Dov, Tarot: the Open Reading (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781492248996) The Gnostic Tarot (https://chrisleech.wixsite.com/mysite) Jeffrey Kripal, Authors of the Impossible (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780226453873) Nagarjuna, Verses of the Middle Way (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C5%ABlamadhyamakak%C4%81rik%C4%81)

In this bonus episode, originally released on July 26th on the Weird Studies Patreon, Phil and JF explore a few ways in which artificial intelligence will impact the arts. The podcast returns with a new official episode on September 13th. Enjoy.

A bonus offering to break up the summer hiatus, this episode contains a conversation on the virtues of affectation originally available only to third- and fourth-tier members of the Weird Studies Patreon ("Putting on the Bow-Tie," Apr 5, 2023). The episode opens with a short piece on JF's upcoming Nura Learning course, Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, starting on September 12th. Enjoy. Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (www.nuralearning.com), a seven-week online course with JF Martel.

On the last week of July, 2023, Phil and JF were delighted to speak at Shannon Taggart's Science of Things Spiritual Symposium in Lily Dale, the nerve centre of the Spiritualist movement. As speakers, your hosts were part of an inspiring lineup of scholars, artists, and researchers committed to exploring the borderlands of art, science, religion, and the paranormal. They also had the honour of launching the symposium with a live recording held on the evening of the July 27th. The topic was Frederic W. H. Myers' autobiographical essay, "Fragments of Inner Life," first published in full in 1961, some sixty years after the author's death. Myers was one of the original members of the Society for Psychical Research in England. A poet and classicist, he remained committed to the scientific promise of paranormal investigation until the end of his life. His book Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death, also published posthumously, argues that psychical studies have confirmed, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that death is just the beginning. In this talk, JF and Phil discuss Myers' relevance to 21st-century thinking on the Weird. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies) and gain access to Phil's podcast on Wagner's Ring Cycle. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Download Pierre-Yves Martel's new album, Mer Bleue (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/mer-bleue). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REFERENCES The Science of Things Spiritual Symposium (https://www.lilydaleassembly.org/copy-of-what-s-happening): July 27-29, 2023 Frederic Myers, Fragments of Inner Life (https://www.esalen.org/ctr/fragments-of-inner-life) Alan Bennett, [History Boys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheHistoryBoys) Arthur Machen, A Fragment of Life (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781731557421) Alan Gauld, The Founders of Psychical Research (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780367182878) Donna Tartt, The Secret History (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780367182878) Arthur Machen, The Great God Pan (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781644398913) Frans de Waal, Mama’s Last Hug (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780393357837) Daniel Dennett, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dennett) American cognitive scientist Frederic Myers, Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781544632636) Gabriel Marcel, The Mystery of Being (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781015410480) Phil Ford, Dig (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780199939916) William James, Principles of Psychology (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781420973396) Akashic Record (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akashic_records), Theosophical idea Jeff Kripal, Authors of the Impossible (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780226453873)