Episode 94: All is Mysterious: On the Moon Card in the Tarot

Weird Studies

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.8 • 688 Ratings

🗓️ 17 March 2021

⏱️ 75 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"Here is a weird, deceptive life." Thus does Aleister Crowley describe the meaning of one of the most sinister and spectral cards in the tarot. In this episode, Phil and JF continue their ongoing series on the twenty-two major trumps with a deep dive into the hopelessly enigmatic world of Arcanum XVIII: The Moon. After a brief chat about Voltron and professional wrestling, your hosts start on the lunar path beset by traps and illusions, in hopes that their half-blind perambulation will lead to startling insights. Image by Damien Deltenre via Wikimedia Commons. References Roland Barthes, Mythologies Anonymous, Meditations on the Tarot Colin Wilson, The Occult Eliphas Levi,_ French esotericist Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo Weird Studies, [Episode 86 on The Sandman](weirdstudies.com/86) Plato, Republic Antoine Faivre, scholar of esoteric studies Wouter Hanegraaff, historian of philosophy Alastair Crowley, Book of Thoth Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution Carl Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis Peter Kingsley, historian of philosophy St. John of the Cross, The Dark Night of the Soul J.R.R Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings Weird Studies, Episode 93 on Charles Taylor Algis Uždavinys, Philosophy as a Rite of Rebirth 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.
0:23.3	For more episodes or to support the podcast, go to weird'm J.F. Martell. Today we continue our sporadic series focusing on the major trumps of the
0:55.4	taro. The trump for this episode is Arcane M18, the moon. The image from the Marseille deck is
1:02.1	particularly haunting. A crayfish lurks in a stagnant pool, while two animals bay at the Earth
1:08.8	satellite, which looms ominously between desolate towers
1:12.6	and a wasteland. The moon, of course, has a human face. For some reason, no matter how hard
1:18.9	I've tried, I've never been able to see the famous face in the moon. I used to see this as a
1:25.8	personal failing. It made me wonder if I was perhaps peridoliacly challenged, if that's a thing.
1:32.8	I mean incapable of normal pattern recognition.
1:36.6	But now, having read the chapter on the moon and meditations on the tarot, a study
1:40.9	we're continually drawing upon in this series, I'm actually a bit thankful for it.
1:46.2	According to the anonymous author, that Eldridge tome, the whole problem of modernity
1:51.0	comes down to our great difficulty in unseeing the man in the moon, so to speak, after we've spotted him.
1:58.3	The reason is that having decided that intelligence exists only in human heads,
2:02.9	we end up jamming the entire universe into a human-shaped box. This is a key insight of the
2:09.5	discussion you're about to listen to, but it takes us a bit of time to get there. There are lots of
2:14.6	threads to disentangle, and there's Voltron and professional wrestling to discuss in the preamble.
2:20.1	So I hope you'll bear with us as we attempt to grasp a symbol that may really only be grasped once you've acknowledged that it's ungraspable.
2:29.4	As usual, our conversation will be punctuated with occasional music by my brother Pierre Rive Martel,
2:40.0	who recently released a full album of music composed for the podcast. You can stream the album,
2:46.1	purchase a download, or pre-order the upcoming LP on Pierre Rive's bandcamp page. Just Google a weird studies band camp and you'll be there. All three of the cues I selected for today's
	...

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