Weird Studies - Episode 3: Ecstasy, Sin, and "The White People"

Episode 3: Ecstasy, Sin, and "The White People"

Explicit content warning

02/21/18 • 79 min

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Weird Studies

JF and Phil delve deep into Arthur Machen's fin-de-siècle masterpiece, "The White People," for insight into the nature of ecstasy, the psychology of fairies, the meaning of sin, and the challenge of living without a moral horizon.

WORKS CITED OR DISCUSSED

Arthur Machen, "The White People" - full text or Weird Stories audiobook read by Phil Ford

Arthur Machen, Hieroglyphics: A Note Upon Ecstasy

H. P. Lovecraft, "Supernatural Horror in Literature"

J.F. Martel, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice

Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell

Jack Sullivan (ed)., The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural

John Keel, The Mothman Prophecies: A True Story

Patrick Harpur, Daimonic Reality

Jacques Vallee, Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers

Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, The Morning of the Magicians

Michael Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison

J.K. Huysmans, Against Nature (À rebours)

WORKS CITED OR DISCUSSED

Arthur Machen, "The White People" - full text or Weird Stories audiobook read by Phil Ford

Arthur Machen, Hieroglyphics: A Note Upon Ecstasy

H. P. Lovecraft, "Supernatural Horror in Literature"

J.F. Martel, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice

Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell

Jack Sullivan (ed)., The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural

John Keel, The Mothman Prophecies: A True Story

Patrick Harpur, Daimonic Reality

Jacques Vallee, Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers

Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, The Morning of the Magicians

Michael Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison

J.K. Huysmans, Against Nature (À rebours)

Previous Episode

Weird Stories: Arthur Machen's "The White People"

Weird Stories is a series of readings for Weird Studies listeners who want to dig deeper into the themes and ideas discussed on the Weird Studies podcast.

In his seminal essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature," H. P. Lovecraft named Arthur Machen one of the four "modern masters" of horror fiction, alongside Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, and M. R. James. Born in 1863, Machen burst onto the London literary scene in 1890 with the controversial novella "The Great God Pan." He was briefly considered one of the luminaries of the Decadent movement before falling into obscurity and experiencing a literary rebirth toward the end of his life.

In this Weird Stories installment, Phil Ford reads the complete text of one of Machen's most famous works, "The White People" (1904).

Next Episode

Episode 4: Exploring the Weird with Erik Davis

Scholar, journalist and author Erik Davis joins Phil and JF for a freewheeling conversation on the permutations of the weird, Burning Man, speculative realism, the uncanny, the H. P. Lovecraft/Philip K. Dick syzygy, and how the world has gotten weirder (and less weird) since Erik’s groundbreaking Techgnosis was published twenty years ago.

WORKS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:

Erik Davis’s Techgnosis website

Erik Davis's podcast, Expanding Mind

Erik Davis, Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information

Erik Davis, Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica

Erik Davis, Led Zeppelin IV

Mark Fisher, The Weird and the Eerie

Philip K. Dick, Exegesis

Goop Magazine, no. 2

Hakim Bey and the Temporary Autonomous Zone

The Burning Man Festival

Ian Hacking, The Taming of Chance