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

Weird Studies

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.8 • 688 Ratings

🗓️ 18 January 2023

⏱️ 75 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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 podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Spectrevision Radio
0:03.3	Welcome to Weird Studies, an arts and philosophy podcast with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martel.
0:20.8	For more episodes or to support the podcast,
0:23.3	go to weirdst. This is Phil.
0:53.2	This week, JF and I revisit our long-running and irregularly updated series on the 22 major arcana of the taro.
1:01.7	This is the first episode of the New Year, and New Year's has long been symbolized by an old man, father time, being succeeded by Baby New Year, wearing a diaper, sash, and top hat,
1:13.9	an image of senicence and death on the one hand and of flaming youth on the other.
1:20.0	This composite image of death and birth, the old year and the new hinged together,
1:25.1	was expressed also by the Roman god Janus, who gives his name to January,
1:29.8	and faces both backward and forward. There is always a bit of ambivalence to the New Year,
1:35.4	I find, a tinge of sadness beneath the roar of New Year's partying, something of the old man
1:41.4	quietly asserting himself against the drunken baby careening around and
1:45.8	vomiting on the carpet. In the riot of new life, there is a little silent dark bit of death.
1:52.7	So it is always at the beginnings and ends of things. And so we thought it appropriate to talk
1:59.5	about the 13th card of the tarot, death.
2:03.4	But as you will hear in this episode, traditional societies respected death enough not to call his name too boldly,
2:10.4	so I will say no more about that August personage before the episode proper begins.
2:15.6	But before it does, I have a couple of announcements.
2:18.8	First of all, on January 31st, J.F. will be giving a talk as a part of the Last Tuesday
2:24.2	Society's ongoing series of online lectures.
2:27.8	The title is, towards a philosophy of magic, weird modernity and the tenacity of enchantment.
2:34.6	Learn more and purchase tickets at last Tuesday society.org, or use the link in this episode's show notes
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