Podcast appearances and mentions of matt cardin

What if the source of your best writing isn't something you control — but something you learn to collaborate with? How can ancient ideas about the muse, the daimon, and creative genius transform the way you approach your work? And what might happen if you stopped fighting the silence and let it become your greatest creative ally? With Matt Cardin, author of Writing at the Wellspring. In the intro, thoughts on bookstores and Toppings; 20 ways authors can signal humanity and build reader trust [Wish I'd Known Then]; Learning from Silence – Pico Iyer; ProWritingAid spring sale; Bones of the Deep – J.F. Penn. Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, self-publishing with support, where you can get free formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Just go to www.draft2digital.com to get started. This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Matt Cardin is the multi-award-nominated author of eight books at the convergence of horror, religion, and creativity. His latest book is Writing at the Wellspring: Tapping the Source of Your Inner Genius, which is fantastic. I actually blurbed it as follows: “A guide for writers who welcome the dark and hunger for meaning. . . . If the page is a threshold, this book will show you how to cross.” You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes How Matt balances a full-time academic career with his creative writing life The ancient concept of the genius, the muse, and the daimon, and why creativity is about collaboration with something beyond yourself Why the silences that come into our creative lives, including writer's block and inertia, might actually be gifts rather than obstacles The stages of the creative process Living into the dark, and embracing uncertainty How Substack and blogging can organically grow into books You can find Matt at MattCardin.com or www.livingdark.net. Transcript of the interview with Matt Cardin Joanna: Matt Cardin is the multi-award-nominated author of eight books at the convergence of horror, religion, and creativity. His latest book is Writing at the Wellspring: Tapping the Source of Your Inner Genius, which is fantastic. I actually blurbed it as follows: “A guide for writers who welcome the dark and hunger for meaning. . . . If the page is a threshold, this book will show you how to cross.” It is a great book. So welcome to the show, Matt. Matt: Well, thank you, Jo. It's really a pleasure to be here, especially since, as you and I were briefly acknowledging before we started recording, we have overlapping interests to a great degree. So it's really great to make official contact with you. Joanna: Indeed. So, first up, before we get into the book itself— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing. Matt: Well, I'm one of those people whose story is probably typical in some ways, in that I really wanted to do it from the time I was a child. My father was a great writer, although he was an attorney. He wasn't a professional writer. Something about books and reading when I was a child really seriously enchanted me. I was very frustrated when I was so young—and I vividly remember this—that I couldn't read, because I loved the books that were read to me. I craved being able to read them for myself. So as soon as I gained that ability in school, it was off to the races, so to speak, and for some reason, a desire to tell stories myself came along with that. Being a “writer” was one of the earliest life desires, job or career desires, that I expressed. I was one of those young people really into fantasy, horror, and science fiction. So I was reading a lot of it and trying to emulate it and write a lot of it. There was a cinematic component—I was a movie fanatic as well. I won a local Authors' Guild short story writing contest when I was a senior in high school and began trying to write stories seriously in college. Then my interest in horror and religion became dominant over time, and that's what I ended up writing about. Joanna: Has your interest turned into paid work? That's the other thing, because there's an interest and then there's making writing more of your income and your business. Matt: Right. Well, actually, although I have made and do make money from my writing, it has always, always, always remained on the side. My main career, as far as my moneymaking life, first started off in video and media production, which is formally what I got my undergraduate college degree in. Then I switched into education. I taught high school for some years, and then now for the past, good Lord, 18 years, I have been in higher education. First as English faculty who also taught some religion courses, and then now for the past several years in the administration. I'm Vice President of Academic Affairs at a college. My writing has been something that I pursued as an avocation. As far as earning money from it, that didn't happen even with my first publication, which happened on the internet in 1998, I believe, with a horror story titled “Teeth.” It was just free—I didn't get paid. That led to paid publication of that story three or four years later, when it appeared as my very first print publication in a Lovecraftian horror anthology from Del Rey titled The Children of Cthulhu. It appeared as the final story, and that was the first time I had received a paycheck. It was a professional per-word rate. Since then I've had several books published and more stories and essays and that kind of thing. I've had income sometimes from writing and sometimes I haven't. My first book came out of that story. I attended the World Horror Convention in 2001, actually before that Lovecraftian anthology was published, but it had been placed. At the World Horror Convention, which was in Seattle that year, I met one of the two editors of that book, and that led to me having my first short story collection, Divinations of the Deep, which was not for much money, but it attracted a lot of good attention and some good reviews. So it's been like that all along. I mean, I've made a couple of runs at saying I would love to just be an author, as it were, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards for me. And honestly, I'm glad it's not. I have made the most money from some academic editing projects that I've done. I created and edited a two-volume encyclopedia of the history of horror literature, for instance, for a big academic publisher. Those are work-for-hire projects that I get paid for. Making money on my own creative vision and my own creative work has been intermittent. It really has proven over time that not having my primary creative, spiritual, and philosophical drive hooked to what I earn my bread by has been a blessing. I don't want to take this thing I love and make it be how I have to grind to earn my money. I want to keep it in a protected space. That has been spontaneously what's happened with my writing career. Joanna: Yes. I think as you say, there are a lot of benefits of that, especially where you are writing at this convergence of horror, religion, and creativity. Your writing is very deep. I would say it's on the edge of academic. I don't want to say it's completely academic, because a lot of people will find that difficult. But I think Writing at the Wellspring goes very deep while still being open to non-academic readers. As you say, I think if you had wanted to make a living with your books, you would've had to have gone in at a lighter level, perhaps. Do you think that makes sense? Matt: Yes, I know what you mean. I want to specify, I know that neither you nor I are saying anything about this as any kind of criticism or condescension to anyone who does make their living as a writer. I mean, I believe you do. Joanna: Yes, exactly. Matt: And that's fine. There really are people who have had significant commercial success from books or other things they've written that don't appear to be making huge concessions to being commercial. You can make a living as a writer, I think, and really follow your muse and not feel like you have to pander or cater or cheapen it. Then there are people who have perfectly happily decided to commercialise their work and tune it in whatever way is currently popular. That's fine. Every writer, every creative person should do what is right for him or her, in my opinion. In my particular case, I think what you said is right. I do think that I might have needed to change some things, to back off, to word them differently. Whenever I've tried to exert deliberate control like that, it just turns out that it's not something that my creative spirit wants to do. I don't really feel like I'm in contact with the work anymore. I'm fine with that. I don't think I'm doing a sweet lemons type thing. It really is the way it just needs to be. If it ever proves that me doing it strictly the way I want to do it, going however deep I want regardless of trying to appeal to a paying readership—if it turns out that at some point aligns with boatloads of money coming in, that's fine. That's perfectly fine. I'd be open to that. Joanna: Yes. Matt: I would be open to that. Joanna: You mentioned muse there, and with Writing at the Wellspring, the subtitle is “Tapping the Source of Your Inner Genius.” So I think this is a good place to talk about it. As you mentioned, you are leaning into your muse and your inner genius, and you use other terms—daemon or daimon. I think sometimes people find the word “genius” particularly very difficult because it has the connotation of brilliance in some form. So how can people think about this? How can we lean into this [genius] side of ourselves? Matt: Honestly, one thing that I would suggest people do is I would refer them to the TED Talk that Elizabeth Gilbert gave some years ago—was it 2009, 2010, 2011? It's one of the more popular TED Talks. Elizabeth Gilbert spoke about. I think it's sometimes given the title “Your Elusive Creative Genius” or something like that. Her whole talk is about the way in her own creative life, and as she recommends to others, it has been very important for her to seize on the older model that we're talking about. The most clear articulation of it is that it used to be the case—and we're talking about in ancient Western history, back to the Romans and even earlier to the Greeks—that genius was not something that you identified a person as being. It was something that a person had. And I would also say importantly, maybe had them too. In ancient Roman culture surrounding art and poetry and that kind of thing, the genius was the spirit that might, say, live in an artist's studio and would provide the same service to that artist as the Greek muses provided to someone who was writing epic poetry or history or something like that. That understanding of it has continued in various ways down through history. But there was a fateful transition as Western culture went through what we commonly call the Enlightenment and the Renaissance as well. This was where the term “genius,” while it didn't lose all those connotations of being an inspiring spirit—something that a person both has and maybe has hold of them—did become internalised to the point where we speak of people as being geniuses., which is exactly what you're talking about. I agree, some people listening to this probably have some reservations about this. They don't want to call themselves a genius because we tend to mean that's a super brilliant person, some kind of prodigy who is possessed of amazing artistic, creative, or intellectual skills. Again, that is the result of a cultural, philosophical, psychological, historical transition that occurred several centuries ago. And you still see the older meaning of it being attached sometimes. You think of people who we call geniuses being touched by something. Well, the older version—where you think of the genius, which in the way I use it in this book and also in my first book on creativity, A Course in Demonic Creativity—the genius is equivalent to the muse, which is equivalent to that other figure that you mentioned, the daemon or the daimon. It refers to a separate—what seems for all the world to be a separate—centre of intelligence or entity or influence. The thing that gives you both your creative drive and also your ideas, and serves as the source of what comes to you naturally to write. It's more than just ideas. When you talk about the ancient Greek daimon, there was a whole well-developed tradition of that in ancient Greek philosophy and religion. A daimon was, in one famous sense, a spirit that you were born with, that the gods had given you. It was like your double, your higher self. It was the thing that represented your character, your interests, the blueprint and the outline that your life was supposed to follow. There are great books written about that. There's a book by the psychologist James Hillman titled The Soul's Code. A lot of people have read it. It lays out the daimon theory and gives it application to modern instances. The idea is that everybody has a genius or has a muse or has a daimon. For writers, my recommendation is to say, whether you believe it or not, whether you take it as a metaphor—which is fine—or whether you want to get somewhat mystical and delve into the idea that maybe there's really a spirit or something, it doesn't matter. Productively, with practical, measurable results, you can learn to relate to your creative impulse as if you are collaborating internally with someone else. It's the centre of why you're interested in writing what you want to write, why you want to write the way you want to write, and even the types of things that unfold in the course of your career—both your creative career and the rest of your life, in the mould of the ancient daimon. I have found that to be a vein of great power and meaning in my own life. I do it exactly the way I'm describing. I don't actually believe it, but I don't disbelieve it. I find that in experience, it really doesn't matter. It works and it may as well be true. Joanna: I mean, obviously the book has a whole load of ways we can tap into that, but I did like that you talk about stillness and silence, because I feel like that is actually increasingly difficult as authors. Obviously it's noisy online and we're meant to be doing things like social media or interacting with people online. And then the world is just noisy. The news is noisy. There's lots of things. How can we use this idea of stillness and silence? Also, any other ways we can practically tap into this side? Matt: Sure. One thing that wanted to say itself in this book was some things I had been thinking and feeling about silence for a long time. As you say, it can be difficult these days to find what feels like the silence that we need to even get our work done. We're talking about the muse or the genius. How can we even hear it when it seems like the clamour of all the pulls that we have on our outward attention has become truly a cacophony? We have opted for this in many ways through our engagement with social media or other things, but in other ways seems like it's been thrust upon us. What I want to point out, that has been of extreme importance to me, is that many silences come into our lives as creatives that we resist. It's not just that we can't find the silence and the space that we feel like we need so as not to drown out our creativity. It's that we have unwanted silences come in, like writer's block. Or even if it doesn't feel like a block, just inertia. Just stasis. I don't know about you, but I have many, many times found myself grappling with what, for all the world, feels like a totally natural, organic sense of wanting to slip into complete inertia, just total stillness. And that feels like it has been in conflict with my creative drive. It's like I have this residual desire and also a sense of duty that I really should be writing. Maybe I have an idea in mind and I'm just not working on it. Or maybe I'm in the middle of a project and I feel like I'm abandoning it. Or maybe nothing's coming up, but I feel like it should be. I'm pushing myself, but there's a division in me where I also just want to leave it alone. Whether that means actually just sitting there silently at my writing table or in meditation, or maybe just going about regular daily life and forgetting about trying to fulfil this creative calling. I really think there's a vein of gold to be tapped in the silences that come to all of us. Because as I said, that can be in the middle of daily activity. We have this kind of franticness, some of us, about our creativity. We get wrapped up in it. We feel bound to it. The thing that so much of the time we want to think is a gift—we're proud of it, we cherish it, we like our writing—also becomes a burden. This fantasy of just chucking it all, of just saying, “I would love to be free of it. It's like something that's weighing me down. I'm sorry that I roped myself into it. I would love to just sink into complete silence.” This sort of meditative thing, or just muteness—hey, that is valid to hear. That's valid to heed when it comes up. I mean, sometimes we have gotten ourselves into situations where we have external responsibilities and deadlines, and it's important to try and honour those and not be a bad person on the level of just fulfilling practical obligations. It's also important to recognise you've got silence offering itself to you in all kinds of ways. The more important silence is paradoxically the one that we so often resist if we're creative people and feel like we have to be making. The more important silence is not whether or not your outward conditions seem like they're a clamour and they're chaotic and they're distracting and they're full of pressure. It's that inner silence. So I recommend paying attention to when it comes up. And for practical ways—they are endless. Take advantage of early mornings. A lot of people have found great value in getting up earlier than they are used to and making a practice of that, and either just meditating or free writing. Maybe using, for example, Julia Cameron's famous practice of morning pages, which has been valuable to me sometimes. Or doing things like—as I've said about the muse and the genius and the daimon—personify your unconscious mind and maybe write down a dialogue between yourself and your creative spirit, whether about your current project or just about your life and your creativity as a whole. There are various tricks to get in touch with this unconscious part of you, and I really am convinced out of practical personal experience that it's not necessary to have outer silence and outer spaciousness when you can find it within yourself. You can find it through some of these exercises for getting in alignment with what your creativity wants to do. You can get in touch with it if you're paying attention to what you might not recognise as a gift—offering it to yourself. If things go quiet and you think, “Oh no, I should be doing something”—why not let that be a place where things can germinate? Why not let that be the silence that you might not be able to find on the outside? Joanna: Yes, and I'm feeling guilty here because of course we are producing a podcast episode for people to listen to. I find personally that one of the places I can find silence is when I walk. It's not obviously silent outside, but I am definitely guilty of always listening to podcasts, often at very fast speed as well. Sometimes when I go for a walk, I just deliberately do not listen to anything—don't listen to an audiobook, don't listen to a podcast—and a lot comes up there. I have my phone with me, and when I get back from those walks and jot down things that come up in my mind, I will have so many notes of things that have come up in my brain during the walk. It's really difficult, isn't it? Because I know you also love input. You do a lot of research. As I said, your books have a lot of research in them, and so we both like doing the research. But also I definitely find that has to be balanced with the time for letting it come out again in some form, with that mental silence. You also talk about being uncomfortable, and I feel like sometimes that silence can be uncomfortable as well. Matt: Yes, it can be. There's no telling what might come up when you are faced with silence. Again, it's one of those things—even the outer kind that we think we crave. Sometimes it's a bit frightening when it comes up, which is why we try to fill it with things, like this podcast episode for example. There's a threshold that you can notice you cross sometimes, where what was a natural desire to connect with something that you heard about and found interesting becomes a bit frantic. Where now, really, what might be good is if you shut off—didn't go for the next podcast episode or didn't go for the next click to the website—if you just shut the browser and just sat there and did something else. You're kind of, with a little desperateness, trying to fill the void. What you described about needing to get quiet and let things happen—yes. I love reading and research, but the classic stages of the creative process—first codified, I think, by Graham Wallas, if I remember correctly—they still work. It's really good sometimes to have a model and understand how it works. You have what's sometimes called the preparation stage. All the input, all the research, all the brainstorming, all that kind of thing. Then the incubation stage can be vastly important. That can get frightening, both because the silence seems somehow threatening, like something about you is going to be exposed. Or maybe that you're going to lose the thread of whatever it was and it's never going to come out. But really, if you just stop and let your muse, let your genius do its thing, let your unconscious do its thing, it will suggest itself again. It will come up on its own. Ideas will come back. You'll realise, “Oh, I didn't know what I was going to do with that character. I didn't know how these ideas were going to come together. I didn't even know what this idea for a story, a book, or an essay was going to be.” It comes back up, and with you working with it, it shows what it wanted to be all along. This whole thing about doing the preparation and then allowing it to incubate and germinate and then sprout when it wants to, that still works. Part of the reason that we're scared of the silence, I'm convinced, is because each of us operates in our psychological selves as a closed system. It's like we each comprise our own cosmos, so to speak. I know you know that I have worked in horror literature, the literature of cosmic fear. In cosmic horror, as laid out by the likes of Lovecraft and others, the basic effect has been analysed as constituting a disturbance of the universe. That's the horror of cosmic horror—the world is transformed into this nightmarish thing in a cosmic horror story, where there's a haunting, threatening presence that's out of the ordinary and it's somehow bound up with the narrator's interior world. Life reveals itself as supernaturally or ontologically something nightmarish—there are awful forces that are about to erupt all the time. And whether anybody's into cosmic horror or not, I think it's pretty accurate to say that we each constitute our own world, our own cosmos. A lot of the noise that we make—the mental noise and the complications we introduce into our own lives—is, usually unconsciously, trying to stave off confrontation with the otherness that is outside the barrier of our personal sense of self. The weird thing is that that otherness is actually in us, and in fact, we can approach it in the figure of the daemon or the daimon or the muse. So creativity is fraught. You're dealing with something that you might want to think, “Oh, this is great, it's going to be the source of my ideas, it's going to fulfil my creativity.” Well, yes, but it is frightening to think about the fact of something about yourself being beyond yourself and perhaps being out of your conscious control and somehow guiding your destiny. A lot of people have trouble getting along with their own unconscious, which is another way to put it. There's a horror, a fear, a dread effect that comes when we feel like we are out of control. We all face that ultimately—when it comes to our death, for example. There are some spiritual traditions that talk about dying before you die, that being basically the way to enlightenment in those traditions. Recognising and coming to terms with the fact that this thing that is you, that you call yourself, is transitory. It is only there by being enclosed within and swamped from without by this thing that is not you, which is a sort of void to which you'll return. In the book, I deal with some of that, and I talk about it from a non-dual spiritual viewpoint, because ultimately for me, these creative questions have become inseparable from spiritual questions. Joanna: Yes. And obviously people know about my book Writing the Shadow, which is how we really connected around this Jungian idea of the shadow and the darkness. I agree with you—there's some really interesting things at the juxtaposition of all of these topics, which we could talk about for a long time. I do want to ask you around your idea of “living into the dark.” Because I feel like you do take things beyond just the writing into this idea of living into it. So maybe talk a bit about that. And obviously synchronicity, which is a Jungian psychology concept. Matt: Living into the dark is the thing that forms the overarching ethos or perspective for me of all this. I got the term from “writing into the dark,” which actually comes from the American science fiction and fantasy author Dean Wesley Smith. He wrote a book titled Writing Into the Dark, subtitled “Writing Without an Outline.” It's a great book. I recommend it to anyone. It is about forsaking and foregoing the felt need to outline writing in advance and trusting your creative mind to be able to make up a story in real time. That draws on the deep nature of storytelling to come out right. Therefore you write into the dark, as if you're walking down a road where you have a lantern and you can only see one step ahead. You haven't mapped out the territory. It was a great metaphor. I had already been thinking in that direction about life and about creativity for some time when I first came across that book. I devoured it and recognised it described how I had already been writing anyway, which is one reason it was so powerful for me. Then it edged out into a broader understanding for me that I had also been coming up with, that I just ended up calling “living into the dark.” None of us knows where anything is going, that much is obvious. But living into the dark goes farther than that, to embrace this understanding. I think of this in connection with what so many people, either personally or because of jobs they have where they're required to think like this. I think of this in terms of the famous five-year plan that so many of us want to draw up. There's nothing wrong with a five-year plan or a ten-year plan or a one-year plan. You can come up with that for practical purposes and try and chart where you're going, but we too often forget that that's just a fantasy exercise. We are not actually thinking into the future, nor are we ever actually thinking into the past. Remembering the past, predicting or projecting the future—both are events that are happening right now, in this moment, which is always now. It's no less now than it was when you and I first started this conversation. Past and future are projections—mental projections right now. And everything is unfolding in the present in real time, which effectively means what's going to come next is coming out of—well, we don't know where it's coming out of. Darkness. Living into the dark is living with full-on contact with, and awareness of, and embrace of this fact that we don't know what's coming up. That encompasses all of life and all of creativity. That same darkness, if it's helpful for you to take on this emotional tenor—which it is for me—can relate to the darkness in cosmic horror fiction, or to some of the rich traditions of darkness, like in Daoism with the yin contrasted with yang. Yin is the dark, moon, feminine aspect of things—the receptive source of the universe. This idea of living into the dark, of just accepting that we're all on this journey on a path where we can only see one step ahead, even if that far, has been meaningful to me. It's been meaningful to my creativity, and I recommend it to anybody to whom it appeals. It takes a lot of pressure off. I think that's a guiding meta-theme for me—trying to take the pressure off us from trying to control things that can't be controlled, and more stepping into that flow of understanding: what's going to come to me is going to come to me, and my posture toward it, whether I align with it or not, is what's going to determine my experience of it. You mentioned synchronicity. It's interesting. It's verifiable. I know a lot of people have verified it for themselves. Maybe some people listening to this have too. It's verifiable that when you really get in tune with this present-moment thing and get in tune with your creativity—and you can tell when you're aligned and not, when you feel blocked or when you feel resistance or not—when these things align on their own sometimes, strange coincidences do happen. Jung talked about synchronicity as an acausal connecting principle. That was probably due to the fact that the psyche is not separate from the fabric of the world that gives rise to it, so that we might have subjective things—impressions, fantasies, dreams—that we rather uncannily see mirrored in objective events. Like the famous thing that clarified and coalesced that for him: a psychotherapy session with a patient who was describing a dream she'd been having about a scarab beetle. Then he heard a tapping at the window of his office and he went there and opened it, and there was a European beetle—a kind of scarab beetle, much like the Egyptian scarab—that was there. He held it up and said to the woman, “Is this your beetle? Here is your beetle.” It just blew her mind. It opened new levels of the therapy that she was receiving. Those kinds of things happen. I've had them happen. Joanna: Me too. Matt: If you're a long-time writer or reader, you're familiar with the library genie—the library daemon, we sometimes refer to it as—the book that, just at the moment you think of it and realise, “Oh yes…” You're doing your study, and it doesn't have to be a library, it could be on the web or whatever. You finally realise what it is that you need, what you've been looking for, and in some cases it literally falls off the shelf onto someone's head. What do you make of those when they happen? At the very least, it rattles your cage. You might enter a state of suspended judgement about whether we really are living in a kind of magical cosmos full of real correspondences. It's a bit like the daimon or the muse: is it a metaphor? Is it just an interpretation, or is it something real? Probably the best place is one of profoundly, actively embraced agnosticism, and just take it for what it is. Joanna: Yes, and leaning more into your intuition. I think you definitely demonstrate that in the book as well, really exploring a lot of very interesting topics. Now, we are almost out of time, but you do have a Substack, The Living Dark, where you publish essays, and you've also got all kinds of really interesting books. I want people to go have a look at some of the other stuff you've written, especially if you enjoy horror and religion and all of that kind of thing. So just to ask, how do you decide when something is an essay on The Living Dark, and how do you decide when you are going to put it in a book or in some other way? I feel like a lot of authors are thinking about Substack but don't necessarily know what to put on it. I think I first connected with you on your Substack, where I was like, “Oh, this guy's writing interesting, weird stuff.” How do you use Substack as opposed to writing for your books? Matt: Sure. Let me answer by first talking about what happened previously with that first book on creativity that I mentioned, A Course in Demonic Creativity. I had all kinds of thoughts and ideas coming up, seeded over many years of practice and reading about the daimon and the daemon and the genius and the muse. In 2009 I founded a blog—it was just a WordPress blog—and I titled it Daemon Muse. I attended to it for two to three years. A lot of people ended up reading it. I really did not have any plans, not even any back-burner plans, of taking the material that I published in posts there about this way of creativity and making it a book. I did realise about a year and a half in that essentially I had a book I had already written in those posts. So it took some work, and I spent six months making it all into a coherent book. By the way, that book was only ever published as a PDF, which is still free on my website, MattCardin.com—although plans for the first-ever print edition of it are in motion right now. That was published in 2011. When I went to Substack and started my newsletter there in 2022—and by the way, it wasn't originally called The Living Dark; my first title was “Living Into the Dark,” and then I changed it about a year, year and a half in—I kind of am doing the same thing. It's been a while since I took anything and thought, “I'm writing a book with it.” I write what comes to me to write. You know how Substack Notes is Substack's own version of social media, kind of like Twitter used to be or like X kind of is now. It happens all the time that I write things that just stay in contact with people as a Substack Note—some short thing. And then I realise I wanted to say more about that. Or you have what happened just this morning. Three or four hours before you and I were talking, I started writing a Substack Note and it got so long I realised I had something that could be a post to The Living Dark. So I switched over and finished it that way. The book Writing at the Wellspring came together after I had written things for a couple of years at The Living Dark and realised that I could trace a path through about a third of the posts that I had ever published there, and had the makings of a book. So that, plus other material from earlier in my life—there are things from my private journals from years ago in Writing at the Wellspring—plus some new material, ended up turning into that book. So I'm not thinking about the difference, is what I'm saying. I find writing at my Living Dark newsletter to be a needful and enjoyable creative outlet, partly because I have some 3,800 readers now and it feels good to be in contact with them and to have that audience and to know that there's that eye on what I'm writing. That's partly because I just have the freedom to work it out to my satisfaction and publish it there. I'm already halfway forming another book that will be of a different focus, to come from things that I have published there. So for me, there's an organic relationship between Substack writing, or any kind of blogging, and the writing of books. If people haven't thought about that, they might want to consider it. If you have one already or if you're thinking of starting a blog on Substack or anywhere else, maybe you have things that can guide you to a book that already exists and you just haven't realised it. Joanna: So where can people find you and your books and everything you do online? Matt: Well, The Living Dark that we're talking about is at www.livingdark.net—and it does require the three Ws at the beginning to get there. Then my author website is MattCardin.com, and you can go to the books page there to get a link to all the books I've published and read about them. Joanna: Great. Well, thanks so much for your time, Matt. That was fantastic. Matt: Thank you, Jo. I really appreciate the invitation.The post Writing At The Wellspring: Tapping The Source Of Your Inner Genius With Matt Cardin first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Questions? Comments? Text Us!In this special episode of The Life Wisdom Project Jerry L. Martin is joined by acclaimed horror author, essayist, and religious thinker Matt Cardin for a profound exploration of divine duality, Zoroastrian cosmology, and the moral landscape of good and evil.Together, they dive into God's revelations to the prophet Zoroaster as recounted in God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher, unpacking a worldview where life is not a passive unfolding — but an active battlefield between light and darkness, truth and illusion. Through the lens of Zoroastrianism and Manichaean thought, the conversation traces how spiritual maturity demands we choose a side — not in tribal allegiance, but in moral clarity and existential responsibility.Matt Cardin brings his unique background at the crossroads of religion, metaphysical horror, and philosophical inquiry to the fore. The episode confronts some of the most challenging spiritual insights from the book, including:“Most spiritually attuned people are not truth seekers.”“To look evil in the face is a spiritual act.”“My aspects have a life of their own and go wayward.”These statements form the foundation for a dialogue about spiritual integration, shadow work, divine self-awareness, and the lived tension between peace and calamity — as illustrated in both Zoroaster's vision and Isaiah 45, where God declares, “I form the light and create darkness.”The episode also explores how horror writing, when used with spiritual intent, can serve as a radical form of not turning away — of confronting the hidden, the repressed, the divine and monstrous within. Cardin's reflections on Jung, Freud, and the archetypal struggle for integration are especially resonant for seekers navigating complexity in both self and cosmos.Whether you're drawn to Zoroastrian theology, psychological integration, or the spiritual function of horror literature, this conversation invites you to experience divine reality with open eyes — and a willingness to face the truth, however unsettling it may be.Other Series:The podcast began with the Dramatic Adaptation of the book and now has several series:From God To Jerry To You- a brand-new series calling for the attention of spiritual seekers everywhere, featuring breakthroughs, pathways, and illuminations.Two Philosophers Wrestle With God- sit in on a dialogue between philosophers about God and the questions we all have. What's On Our Mind- Connect the dots with Jerry and Scott over the most recent series episodes. What's On Your Mind- What are readers and listeners saying? What is God sayingResources:THE LIFE WISDOM PROJECT PLAYLISTStay ConnectedShare your thoughts or questions at questions@godandautobiography.com

In this episode, I had the pleasure of interviewing Matt Cardin, an accomplished writer, editor, and higher education professional known for his profound exploration of creativity, spirituality, and the mysterious intersections of religion and horror.Matt's work delves deeply into non-duality, the paranormal, and dystopian cultural trends, offering unique perspectives on the connections between creativity, spirituality, and life purpose.I first encountered his writing and teaching, particularly through his books A Course in Demonic Creativity: A Writer's Guide to the Inner Genius and the upcoming Writing at the Wellspring: Creativity, Life Purpose, Nonduality, and the Daemon Muse. I had the privilege of participating in his Writing at the Wellspring course, which provided transformative perspectives on creative practice.Matt Cardin is an author known for delving into the realms of horror and the metaphysical. His widely acclaimed fiction books, including To Rouse Leviathan and What the Daemon Said, focus on the convergence of horror with religion and creativity.With a Ph.D. in leadership and an M.A. in religious studies, Matt brings a richly layered understanding to these topics. A native of the Missouri Ozarks, he has lived in Texas and now resides in North Arkansas with his wife, where he continues his work of thoughtful cultural and creative exploration.Connect with Matt Cardin @https://mattcardin.com/https://www.livingdark.net/Time Stamps:01:48 Introduction and Opening Remarks 01:52 Journals and Life Mission 02:48 Exploring Life Purpose and Creativity 03:34 Writing and Creativity 07:52 Rebecca West and Patterns 09:11 Understanding Non-Duality 13:21 Non-Duality and Creativity 15:42 Discovering Non-Duality 21:32 Meditative Practices and Teachers 25:26 The Monastic Option and Cultural Preservation 34:20 Tuning into the Muse 36:37 Effortless Action and Creative Quietude 37:35 Exploring Western and Eastern Perspectives on Consciousness 38:04 The Concept of God and Mental Projections 40:04 Houston Smith and the Perennial Philosophy 43:00 Horror in Religion and Spirituality 43:46 Lovecraft vs. Ligotti: External vs. Internal Horror 46:08 The Intersection of Horror and Spirituality 46:28 Religion as a Cosmic Order and Its Horrific Potential 55:50 The Wellspring Book and Future Plans 57:48 Final ThoughtsExcerpts from Interview:On Non Dual“ Where is the actual boundary between what I'm calling myself and what I'm calling everything else? When you really start to investigate that in a first person sense, that's when the magic eye picture suddenly gains that added depth. And your mind is blown.”On Religion, HorrorYou can see the horror in religion and you can see the religion in horror… You're playing with fire when you're playing with religion because it creates a world. And then there's this infinitude that it also lets in that is going to blow up that world. You might receive that as horror. You might receive that as joy… Religion is a perturbing or disturbing of the universe, including the universe that is oneself and the entire conception that goes with it that is provided by the religion to possibility to tip over from horror or to bliss or whatever is right there.”On Life Mission, Creativity Make a monastery out of your life, a monastic preservation and cultural transmission activity, the mission of your life here in the world. What seeds are you going to plant that a future civilization might find of use? What could you contribute to some future phoenix rising from the ashes of the present order?   Get full access to Leafbox at leafbox.substack.com/subscribe

Fairy tales are among the most familiar cultural objects, so familiar that we let our kids play with them unsupervised. At the same time, they are also the most mysterious of artifacts, their heimlich giving way to unheimlich as soon as we give them a closer look and ask ourselves what they are really about. Indeed, these imaginal nomads, which seem to evade all cultural and historical capture, existing in various forms in every time and place, can become so strange as to make us wonder if they are cultural at all, and not some unexplained force of nature — the dreaming of the world. In this episode, JF and Phil use "Rapunzel" as a case study to explore the weirdness of fairy tales, illustrating how they demand interpretation without ever allowing themselves to be explained. Sign up for the upcoming course "Writing at the Wellspring" (https://weirdosphere.mn.co/) October 22-December 1 with Dr. Matt Cardin on Weirdosphere.org Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). 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 Walter Benjamin, "The Storyteller" in Illuminations (Hannah Arendt, ed.; Harryn Zohn, trans.). Novalis, Philosophical Writings. (Margaret Mahony Stoljar, trans.). Cristina Campo, The Unforgivable and Other Writings (Alex Andriesse, trans.) William Irwin Thompson, Imaginary Landscape (https://www.amazon.com/Imaginary-Landscape-Making-Worlds-Science/dp/0312048084) Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780307739636) Marie-Louise von Franz, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie-Louise_von_Franz), Swiss Jungian psychologist Sesame Street, “Rapunzel Rescue” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-fK8rYa45Q&ab_channel=SesameStreet) Disney's Tangled (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0398286/) The Annotated Brothers Grimm (https://www.amazon.com/Annotated-Brothers-Grimm-Books/dp/0393058484) Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aarne%E2%80%93Thompson%E2%80%93Uther_Index) Marina Warner, Once Upon a Time (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780198779858) W. A. Mozart, [The Magic Flute](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheMagicFlute) Dante Alighieri, Il Convito (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12867) Panspermia hypothesis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia) Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature (https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Nature-Necessary-Advances-Complexity/dp/1572734345) John Mitchell, Confessions of a Radical Traditionalist (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781620554159) Clint Eastwood (dir.) The Unforgiven (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105695/)

When are negative emotions enjoyable? Are we all a little masochistic? And do pigs like hot sauce? SOURCES:Carol Dweck, professor of psychology at Stanford University.Sigmund Freud, neurologist and father of psychoanalysis.Paul Rozin, professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.Robert Sapolsky, professor of biology, neurology, and neurosurgery at Stanford University.George Vaillant, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Mass General Research Institute. RESOURCES:"The 10 Scariest Horror Movies Ever," by RT Staff (Rotten Tomatoes, 2022)."Box Office History for Horror," (The Numbers, 2022)."Around the World, Adolescence Is a Time of Heightened Sensation Seeking and Immature Self-Regulation," by Laurence Steinberg, Grace Icenogle, Hanan M. S. Takash, et al. (Developmental Science, 2018)."Why Taste Buds Dull As We Age," by Natalie Jacewicz (The Salt, 2017).Horror Literature Through History, edited by Matt Cardin (2017)."Why We Love the Pain of Spicy Food," by John McQuaid (The Wall Street Journal, 2014)."Glad to Be Sad, and Other Examples of Benign Masochism," by Paul Rozin, Lily Guillot, Katrina Fincher, Alexander Rozin, and Eli Tsukayama (Judgment and Decision Making, 2013)."The Ignorant and the Furious: Video and Catharsis," by the Association for Psychological Science (2010).Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, by Carol S. Dweck (2006)."Adaptive Mental Mechanisms: Their Role in a Positive Psychology," by George E. Vaillant (American Psychologist, 2000). EXTRAS:Terrifier 2, film (2022)."How to Change Your Mind (Update)," by Freakonomics Radio (2022)."Why Is U.S. Media So Negative?" by Freakonomics Radio (2021)."Why Is Academic Writing So Bad?" by No Stupid Questions (2021).Han Dynasty restaurant.

Comics, like cinema, is an eminently modern medium. And as with cinema, looking closely at it can swiftly acquaint us with the profound weirdness of modernity. Do that in the context of a discussion on Charles Burns' comic masterpiece Black Hole, and you're guaranteed a memorable Weird Studies episode. Black Hole was serialized over ten years beginning in 1995, and first released as a single volume by Pantheon Books in 2005. Like all masterpieces, it shines both inside and out: it tells a captivating story, a "weirding" of the teenage romance genre, while also revealing something of the inner workings of comics as such. In this episode, Phil and JF explore the singular wonders of a medium that, thanks to artists like Burns, has rightfully ascended from the trash stratum (https://www.weirdstudies.com/20) to the coveted empyrean of artistic respectability—without losing its edge. BIG NEWS: • If you're planning to be in Bloomington, Indiana on October 9th, 2024, click here (https://cinema.indiana.edu/upcoming-films/screening/2024-fall-wednesday-october-9-700pm) to purchase tickets to IU Cinema's screening of John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness, featuring a live Weird Studies recording with JF and Phil. • Go to Weirdosphere (http://www.weirdosphere.org) to sign up for Matt Cardin's upcoming course, MC101: Writing at the Wellspring, starting on 22 October 2024. • Visit https://www.shannontaggart.com/events and follow the links to learn more about Shannon's (online) Fall Symposium at the Last Tuesday Society. Featured speakers include Steven Intermill & Toni Rotonda, Shannon Taggart, JF Martel, Charles and Penelope Emmons, Doug Skinner, Michael W. Homer, Maria Molteni, and Emily Hauver. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). 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 Charles Burns, Black Hole (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780375714726) Clement Greenberg's concept of “medium specificity” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_specificity#cite_note-2) Terry Gilliam (dir.), The Fisher King (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101889/) Seth (https://drawnandquarterly.com/author/seth/), comic artist Chris Ware, Building Stories (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780375424335) “Graphic Novel Forms Today” (https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/677339) in Critical Inquiry Raymond Knapp, The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780691141053) Vilhelm Hammershoi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilhelm_Hammersh%C3%B8i), Danish painter Ramsey Dukes, Words Made Flesh (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780904311112) G. Spencer-Brown, [Laws of Form](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LawsofForm) Dave Hickey, “Formalism” (https://approachestopainting.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/19135319-hickey-7-formalism-036.pdf) Nelson Goodman, [Languages of Art](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LanguagesofArt) Chrysippus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysippus), Stoic philosopher Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780060976255)

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-His daughter texted the following: -"It's a shock to us all. My mom had checked in on him at 2AM and he was his usual self, then he wasn't responsive a few hours later. I'm glad to hear that he was able to be with you guys recently--I know that brought him so much joy." -More information here, below my video on the website page: https://lovecraftzine.com/2024/04/30/our-dear-friend-rick-lai-passed-away-in-his-sleep-last-night/ -This is the audio version of the YouTube video from earlier this week (Tuesday, April 30, 2024).  -If you want to leave a comment for us or for Rick's family, please go to the YouTube video: https://youtu.be/3gcdetneeiM -Rick's final episode: https://www.youtube.com/live/vgm8bkS58oA —————

In culture and the arts, labeling something you don't like (or don't understand) "pretentious" is the easy way out. It's a conversation killer, implying that any dialogue is pointless, and those who disagree are merely duped by what you've cleverly discerned as a charade. It's akin to cynically revealing that a magic show is all smoke and mirrors—as if creative vision doesn't necessitate a leap of faith. In this episode, Phil and JF explore the nuances of pretentiousness, distinguishing between its fruitful and hollow forms. They argue that the real gamble, and inherent value, of daring to pretend lies in recognizing that imagination is an active contributor to, rather than a detractor from, reality. Pierre-Yves Martel's EPHEMERA (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/ephemera) project It isn't too late to join JF's upcoming course (https://mutations.blog/kubrick)on the films of Stanley Kubrick, which goes until the end of April, 2024. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). 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 Brian Eno, A Year with Swollen Appendices (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780571374625) Dan Fox, Pretentiousness: Why it Matters (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781566894289) Ramsay Dukes, How to See Fairies (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781904658375) Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781621389996) Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780231081597) Weird Studies, Episode 49 on Nietzsche's idea of “untimely” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/49) Sokal Affair (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair), scholarly hoax Weird Studies, Episode 75 on ‘2001: A Space Odyssey' (https://www.weirdstudies.com/75) Stanley Kubrick, “Notes on Film” (http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0076.html#:~:text=A%20truly%20original%20person%20with,plot%20is%20no%20apparent%20plot.) Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Uses and Abuses of History (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781596054660) Vladimir Nabokov, Think, Write, Speak (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781101873700) Mary Shelley, “Introduction to Frankenstein” (https://www.frankenbook.org/pub/ai6okwlz/release/1) Matt Cardin, A Course in Demonic Creativity (https://mattcardin.com/a-course-in-demonic-creativity/) Playboy interview with Stanley Kubrick (https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/movies/playboy-interview-stanley-kubrick/)

In this episode of God: An Autobiography, The Podcast, join host Scott Langdon and Dr. Jerry L. Martin as they revisit the first communication from previous special guest and renowned author Matt Cardin.As Jerry shares his unexpected dialogues with God, Matt Cardin is inspired to recount his equally mesmerizing encounters with a muse or demon. Jerry and Matt offer insights into their profound philosophical quests and the challenges a reality rooted in scientific materialism poses. This episode explores divine communication and existential realities. Touching on themes of good versus evil, the ego, and the interplay between chaos and order, the discussion expands on the perspectives of William James and Carl Jung, as well as concepts of shadow selves and achieving wholeness.Don't miss this introspective dialogue sharing new perspectives on the nature of existence and the mysteries of the universe. Whether you're a seeker of spiritual wisdom or a curious mind exploring life's deeper questions, this episode offers profound insights, thought-provoking discourse, and an exploration of the interplay between light and dark within us all as we reflect on the timeless wisdom of ancient tales and the profound impact on our understanding of human nature.Relevant Episodes:  Matt Cardin Interviews Jerry Martin on The Living Dark Podcast Other Series:Life Wisdom Project- How to live a wiser, happier, and more meaningful life with special guests.From God To Jerry To You- A series calling for the attention of spiritual seekers everywhere, featuring breakthroughs, pathways, and illuminations.Two Philosophers Wrestle With God- Sit in on a dialogue between philosophers about God and the questions we all have.What's On Our Mind- Connect the dots with Jerry and Scott over the most recent series of episodes.What's On Your Mind- What are readers and listeners saying? What is God saying?Resources:READ: "Pure being is not an abstraction but a living force."WATCH: What's Wrong with Ego?WATCH: What's Your Spiritual Autobiography with Matt CardinWHAT'S ON YOUR MIND PLAYLIST Hashtags: #whatsonyourmind #godanautobiography #experiencegodWould you like to be featured on the show or have questions about spirituality or divine communication? Share your story or experience with God! We'd love to hear from you!

Rebecca and Tori chat Inca Mummy Girl. Tori brings in some archaeological deets. Rebecca decides "Peru Man," played by Gil Birmingham, will simply be referred to as Thomas Rainwater for the entirety of the episode (IYKYK). Yeah, we get into cultural appropriation a bit.Restricted Access ResourceCampbell, Roselyn. "Juanita, the Inca Ice Maiden." In Mummies Around the World: An Encyclopedia of Mummies in History, Religion, and Popular Culture, edited by Matt Cardin, 190-193. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2015. Gale eBooks (accessed February 14, 2024). https://link-gale-com.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/apps/doc/CX6175800070/GVRL?u=wash_main&sid=bookmark-GVRL&xid=ac76dd38.A Summer Place Theme | Percy Faith VersionThe 40-Year-Old VirginSound Effect from Pixabay

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⚡️ A horror podcast that feels like hanging around with friends! A few quotes from listeners:

Kicking off a series of episodes on horror, I talk with cosmic horror writer and scholar Matt Cardin!

⚡️Join my Patreon for patreon-only episodes and other benefits! For example: ✔️ Laird Barron talks about his strange, chilling, but TRUE life experiences ✔️ A print book in the mail to you monthly ✔️ My "Deep Background" interviews with Ramsey Campbell, Matt Cardin, Livia Llewellyn, and others ✔️ Hang out with the Podcast panelists on Zoom ✔️ King in Yellow discussion and story recommendations ✔️ Audio readings of Thomas Ligotti stories ✔️ ...and much more. Join here -- it starts at $5 a month: https://www.patreon.com/lovecraftezine ——————————

“Waking up at the numinous intersection of religion, horror, creativity, apocalypse, and the unknown.” --The Living Dark PodcastMatt Cardin's new podcast, The Living Dark, opens with an investigation of the “remarkable story of God's autobiography,” in an interview with Dr. Jerry L. Martin.Matt is the author and editor of several widely acclaimed books and proves to be a skillful and dynamic interviewer - asking familiar, burning questions while bringing new light to Jerry's engaging answers.What did people say when Jerry said he had conversations with God?FIND THE SITES- The Living Dark Podcast | Matt Cardin | Theology Without Walls  BUY THE BOOKS- God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher | A Course in Demonic Creativity | More Books By Matt Cardin | Theology Without Walls: The Transreligious ImperativeWATCH- What's your Spiritual Autobiography with Jerry L. Martin and Matt Cardin READ- Matt Cardin's Review of God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher | Think in a Different WayDo you hear or speak to God? Share your story or experience here.God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher, is written by Dr. Jerry L. Martin, an agnostic philosopher who heard the voice of God and recorded their conversations. The podcast began with the Dramatic Adaptation of the book and now has several series:Life Wisdom Project-How to live a wiser, happier, and more meaningful life with special guests.From God To Jerry To You- a brand-new series calling for the attention of spiritual seekers everywhere, featuring breakthroughs, pathways, and illuminations.Two Philosophers Wrestle With God- sit in on a dialogue between philosophers about God and the questions we all have.What's On Our Mind- Connect the dots with Jerry and Scott over the most recent series episodesWhat's On Your Mind- What are readers and listeners saying? What is God saying?#godanautobiography, #experiencegod, #thelivingdarkShare Your Story | Site | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube |

In this episode, I have a conversation with Dr. Matt Cardin. Matt Cardin is a writer and freelance editor living in North Central Arkansas. With a Ph.D. in leadership and a master's degree in religious studies, he writes frequently about the intersection of religion, horror, art, and creativity. He is also Vice President of Academic Affairs at North Arkansas College. Episode Highlights: Sleep paralysis The Paranormal Christianity Dreams The daemon muse Robert Anton Wilson Lovecraft Jeffrey Kripal Erik Davis Much more! Matt's website: https://mattcardin.com Matt's Substack: Living Into The Dark A Course in Demonic Creativity

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 (https://www.thelasttuesdaysociety.org/event/towards-a-philosophy-of-magic-by-j-f-martel/) 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 (https://untimelybooks.com/book/masks-of-origin/) Chris Leech, The Gnostic Tarot (https://www.welkintarot.com) Our Known Friend, Meditations on the Tarot (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781585421619) Rachel Pollock, Tarot Wisdom (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780738713090) Rachel Pollock, 78 Degrees of Wisdom (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781578636655) Edgar Allen Poe, “The Masque of the Red Death” (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781537015934) Weird Studies, Episode 2 on Garmonbozia (https://www.weirdstudies.com/2) Steven Spielberg (dir.), Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082971/) Weird Studies, Episode 137 on Sunn O)))'s “Life Metal” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/137) Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780877282686) Thomas Browne, “Urn Burial” (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781420948509) Federico Campagna, Technic and Magic (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781350044029) Alejandro Jodorowsky, The Way of Tarot (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781594772634) Sallie Nichols, Tarot and the Archetypal Journey (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781578636594) Clive Barker, Hellraiser (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093177/) Weird Studies, Episode 116 on “Blade Runner” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/116) George Gurdjieff (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gurdjieff), Armenian mystic Body without organs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_without_organs), philosophical concept Elizabeth Le Guin, Boccherini's Body (https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520240179/boccherinis-body) G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781952410482) Weird Studies, Episode 126 with Matt Cardin (https://www.weirdstudies.com/126)

Bar Talk (our recommendations):Xavi is watching Wreck (2022; TV series); drinking Teeling single malt whiskeyJessica is watching Barbarian (2022, dir Zach Cregger); drinking Roknar rye whiskey with warm apple cider.Damien is watching Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities; drinking Hibiki 12 year.Ryan is reading "What the Daemon Said: Essays on Horror Fiction, Film, and Philosophy" by Matt Cardin; drinking Bunnahabhain 12 yr old.If you liked this volume, check out the six other anthologies and collections edited by Xavier Aldana Reyes.Special thank you to Dr Blake Brandes for our Whiskey and the Weird music! Like, rate, and follow! Check us out on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and at whiskeyandtheweird.com

⚡️ A horror podcast that feels like hanging around with friends! A few quotes from listeners:

⚡️ A horror podcast that feels like hanging around with friends! A few quotes from listeners:

In this episode, I have a conversation with Matt Cardin. We discuss Alan Watts's book Beyond Theology: The Art of Godmanship. We explore various themes including: the Creator/creature distinction, the philosophy of nonduality, "scientism", and spiritual disciplines that help us become more "accident prone" to receiving divine grace.  Matt Cardin is a writer and freelance editor living in North Central Arkansas. With a Ph.D. in leadership and a master's degree in religious studies, he writes frequently about the intersection of religion, horror, art, and creativity. He is also Vice President of Academic Affairs at North Arkansas College. His books include the weird and cosmic horror fiction collection “To Rouse Leviathan” and the nonfiction collection “What the Daemon Said: Essays on Horror Fiction, Film, and Philosophy.” He has been a panelist, panel chair, and reader at The World Fantasy Convention, The World Horror Convention, MythosCon, and more. In 2014 he was an invited panelist at Baylor University's Faith and Film symposium. He has been a guest on Expanding Mind, Weird Studies, Darkness Radio, the Mancow Muller Show, This Is Horror, and many other radio shows and podcasts. He is also a longtime pianist with an especially extensive background in church music. Former careers include professor of English and religion, dissertation editor for doctoral students, high school teacher, piano salesman, college writing center instructor, corporate communications specialist, media producer for a large state university, and video director for country and pop music legend Glen Campbell. Website: https://mattcardin.com Blog: https://www.teemingbrain.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/_MattCardin

Returning guest Matt Cardin is a writer of fiction and nonfiction whose focus on numinous horror place him in the literary lineage as Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood. His new book, What the Daemon Said, collects two decades' worth of meditations on literature, cinema, mysticism, philosophy, and the weird. He joins Phil and JF to talk about a range of topics including dark enlightenment, the idea that fear and trembling are the only sensible reactions to direct exposure to cosmic truth. Header image: detail of cover design for What the Daemon Said, by Dan Sauer Design. Listen to volume 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and volume 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2) of the Weird Studies soundtrack by Pierre-Yves Martel (https://www.pymartel.com) Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! Get your Weird Studies merchandise (https://www.redbubble.com/people/Weird-Studies/shop?asc=u) (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.) Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) REREFENCES Matt Cardin's website (https://mattcardin.com) Matt Cardin, What the Daemon Said: Essays on Horror, Fiction, Film and Philosophy (https://www.hippocampuspress.com/other-authors/nonfiction/what-the-daemon-said-by-matt-cardin?zenid=eb4sec67t2m8frhke9kamt2qd6) Matt Cardin, Dark Awakenings (https://mattcardin.com/fiction/dark-awakenings/) Weird Studies ep. 124 (https://www.weirdstudies.com/124): Dark Night Radio of the Soul, with Duncan Barford Theodore Roszak (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roszak_(scholar)), American scholar M. C. Richards, Centering (https://www.amazon.com/Centering-M-C-Richards/dp/B000M18R20) Frierich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/52263/52263-h/52263-h.htm) Huston Smith (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huston_Smithhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huston_Smith), American religious scholar Martin Buber, [I and Thou](https://archive.org/stream/IAndThou572/BuberMartin-i-and-thoudjvu.txt) John Lee Hancock (dir.), The Rookie (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0265662/) (2002) Eckart Tolle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eckhart_Tolle), German spiritual teacher Richard Wagner, Parsifal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsifal) Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Canopy-Elements-Sociological-Religion-ebook/dp/B004X3789G) Alan Watts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Watts), English writer and teacher Richard Rose, After the Absolute: The Inner Teachings of Richard Rose (https://www.amazon.com/After-Absolute-Inner-Teachings-Richard-ebook/dp/B07PMN1GFRhttps://www.amazon.com/After-Absolute-Inner-Teachings-Richard-ebook/dp/B07PMN1GFR) Special Guest: Matt Cardin.

Howdy folks! The Abyss gang decided they needed another visit to Dr. Fawning's office, so they took a trip back to the woods and the farm with Sarah Tantlinger's To Be Devoured. Before that they discussed The Boys, Stranger Things, Sonora Taylor's Little Paranoias, Matt Cardin's What the Daemon Said: Essays on Horror Fiction, Film, and Philosophy, Dread Nation by Justina Ireland, and L. Marie Wood's Telecommuting. Now go catch some moths and enjoy!

This week, we discuss some recent streaming horror releases and deliver our thoughts on the Hulu original series Monsterland, the Shudder exclusive movie Scare Me, Amazon's Utopia, and Netflix's The Babysitter. Plus, find out what Mike and Rich did to end up in Twitter jail! Then, it's onto our spoiler-filled discussion of this week's story, Matt Cardin's religiously-fueled cosmic horror tale, "Teeth." (Recorded Oct. 4, 2020) You can read "Teeth" in Matt Cardin's collection, To Rouse Leviathan, or listen to it in a two-part episode narrated by Jon Padgett on PseudoPod. The theme music, "Insidious," was created by Purple Planet Music and is used here under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0. Music: https://www.purple-planet.com Follow Staring Into The Abyss on Twitter: @intostaring 

Matt Cardin is a writer, editor, musician, as well as college professor and administrator. In this interview, Matt and I discuss the relationship between religion and horror, what inspired him to approach these subjects as a scholar, and horror authors who use religious elements intentionally as opposed to those who just use it as window dressing.

Scott Kemper, Michael Patrick Hicks, and Matt Brandenburg discuss some recent horror releases, like Gary Bastianelli's Snowball, The Lantern Man by Jon Bassoff, and To Rouse Leviathan by Matt Cardin. Then they dig deep into Livia Llewellyn's short story, "It Feels Better Biting Down," for this week's spoiler-filled discussion, where they ponder biting off fingers and whether or not your toes can spontaneously fall off. You can read "It Feels Better Biting Down" in Llewellyn's short story collection, Furnace. The theme music, "Insidious," was created by Purple Planet Music and is used here under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0. Music: https://www.purple-planet.com Follow Staring Into The Abyss on Twitter: @intostaring 

Welcome back class, hope your summer was good! No rest for the wicked here, we have to keep deep-diving into horror and today it's the super unique brand of Corporate Horror brought to you by none other than Thomas Ligotti. We look at what defines corporate horror and try to apply it to a recent movie, "The Belko Experiment." Connect with Tyler and Mike at: The Horror Pod Class Facebook Group Signal Horizon on Facebook and Twitter Mike D on Goodreads The Signal Horizon Patreon Page Zombie Public Service Announcements! Go buy Matt Cardin's new book! Interview with Mayhem's Joe Lynch Massive Corporate Social Media Horror Stories Dark Arts Journal Volume 2 Issue 1

Neil Gaiman wrote, "If literature is the world, then fantasy and horror are twin cities, divided by a river of black water." Flame Tree Publishing underwrites this claim with their recent publication, The Astounding Illustrated History of Fantasy and Horror. The book is a veritable gazetteer of these two cities in the heartland of the imaginal world. Writer and scholar Matt Cardin, founding editor of the marvellous Teeming Brain (www.teemingbrain.com), wrote a chapter for the book focusing on the books and films of the Sixties and Seventies. In this episode, he joins JF and Phil to discuss the kinship of horror and fantasy, the modern ghettoization of mythopoeic art, the prophetic reach of speculative fiction, and the "cauldron of cultural transformation" that was the Sixties and Seventies. Header Image by Moralist, Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Two_Candles.jpg) REFERENCES The Astounding Illustrated History of Fantasy and Horror (https://www.flametreepublishing.com/The-Astounding-Illustrated-History-of-Fantasy-&-Horror-ISBN-9781786648037.html) Matt Cardin's website (http://www.mattcardin.com) The Teeming Brain (http://www.teemingbrain.com) American literary critic S. T. Joshi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._T._Joshi) British writer and scholar Roger Luckhurst (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Luckhurst) Neil Gaiman, introduction to The Dream Cycle of H. P. Lovecraft: Dreams of Terror and Death (https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Cycle-H-P-Lovecraft/dp/0345384210) The concept of "folk psychology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_psychology)" H. P. Lovecraft, "The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath" (http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/dq.aspx) H. P. Lovecraft, "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" (http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/tgsk.aspx) James Curcio, Masks: Bowie and the Artists of Artifice (http://www.jamescurcio.com/post/182128171068/masks-bowie-and-artists-of-artifice-modern) (forthcoming) American author Thomas Ligotti (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Ligotti) British author Arthur Machen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Machen) Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein) Ian McEwen, Enduring Love (https://www.amazon.com/Enduring-Love-Novel-Ian-McEwan/dp/0385494149) Weird Studies, Episode 36: On Hyperstition (https://www.weirdstudies.com/36) J. R. R. Tolkien, [The Silmarillion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheSilmarillion)_ Terry Brooks, [The Sword of Shannara](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheSwordofShannara)_ Stephen R. Donaldson, [The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheChroniclesofThomasCovenant) [Night of the Living Dead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NightoftheLivingDead) (George A. Romero, 1968) The Lord of the Rings animated film (Ralph Bakshi, 1978) Lloyd Alexander, [The Chronicles of Prydain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheChroniclesofPrydain)_ Madeleine L'Engle, [A Wrinkle in Time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AWrinkleinTime)_ The Call of Cthulhu Role-Playing Game (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Cthulhu_(role-playing_game)) (Chaosium) Ray Bradbury, [Something Wicked This Way Comes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SomethingWickedThisWayComes) Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Philip Kaufman, 1978) William Irwin Thompson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Irwin_Thompson), At the Edge of History Interview (https://interviews.televisionacademy.com/interviews/george-clayton-johnson) with Twilight Zone luminary George Clayton Johnson [The Wicker Man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheWickerMan) (Robin Hardy, 1973) [The Omen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheOmen)_ (Richard Donner, 1976) Stephen King, [Salem's Lot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27Salem%27sLot)_ Special Guest: Matt Cardin.

Matt Cardin har skrivit boken "A course in demonic creativity". Finns det en musa, en demon som driver konstnären att skapa? Detta ämne går vi till botten med i detta avsnitt.

Class is back in session and this time we are going to try to talk smart about a dumb movie!  Truth or Dare made a whole bunch of money, but it wasn't exactly a deep film.  It did use a very interesting motif in horror called "the liminal space" and today we are going to discuss how that space works and why it made Truth or Dare an engaging movie. Show Notes: 2:20- Tyler just watched the new Blumhouse movie Unfriended: Dark Web, head on over to Signal Horizon and read his review. 3:00- If you haven't heard of author Robert Aickman he comes very highly recommended.  Tyler really liked his short story: Mark Ingestre: The Customer's Tale.  It has been reprinted quite a bit, most recently in The Late Breakfaster's and Other Strange Stories by Robert Aickman. 3:50- Mike really likes a Brian Evenson story you can find in Aickman's Hiers.   4:10- Mike is reading a new collection that is on Kindle Unlimited called Lost Highways, but it had to take a back burner when get got Vastarien Issue #2 in the mail.  He is always excited to talk about Ligotti and Vastarien, so check out why he thinks the Vastarien Literary Journal is the most exciting thing in horror literature right now. 5:30-  Orrin Grey is an author that both Mike and Tyler really like right now, you can check out the short story "The Granfalloon" in The Best Horror of the Year Volume 10. 6:45-  Dark Corners of the Web: Some free short fiction that goes along with Truth or Dare is the excellent episode of PseudoPod that just came out, The Fainting Game by Nino Cipri. 13:15  Jeff Wadlow was also involved in Kickass 2 and The Strain.  How did he get mixed up in Truth or Dare?  Most likely money. 17:45- The Canadian Journal of Career Development has a great article about liminal spaces entitled Constructing the Future in the Liminal Spaces Between Adolescence and Adulthood: Responsibilities, Careers, and Social Contexts by Amanda Benjamin, José Domene, and Kim Landine.   26:30- Tyler drops his "unified theory of Truth or Dare" at this point.  It is super interesting and believe it or not he did come up with it off the cuff. 35:15-  Yes, there is a periodical named Slayage that is put out by the Whedon Studies Association.  Michael Starr's excellent article about liminality and The Cabin in the Woods can be found here to prove it. 38:00-  Tyler references the Stephen King short story, "The Jaunt" which is easily one of King's greatest short works.  It was written all the way back in 1981 and it is still fresh today, you can find it in his collection Skeleton Crew which is probably on your bookshelf right now.  If it is not, buy a copy over on Amazon. 41:00-  Not going to link to anything by John Edward because he is a fraud.  Don't give him any of your money, but if you would like to support The Horror Pod Class and SignalHorizon.com that would be super cool and you can do it over on Patreon.   44:30-  Mike talks about Ligotti (of course) and Matt Cardin's excellent analysis of "The Shadow at the Bottom of the World."   55:15-  Wan't to give us a shout out?  Maybe a shout down?  You can connect with us over at the Horror Pod Class Facebook group!    

In this first part of their discussion of William James' classic essay in radical empiricism, "Does 'Consciousness' Exist?", Phil and JF talk about the various ways we use the slippery C-word in contemporary culture. The episode touches on the political charge of the concept of consciousness, the unholy marriage of materialism and idealism ("Kant is the ultimate hipster"), the role of consciousness in the workings of the weird -- basically, anything but the essay in question. That will come in part two. Header image by Miguel Bolacha (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:MiguelBolacha), Wikimedia Commons REFERENCES William James, "Does 'Consciousness' Exist?" (http://fair-use.org/william-james/essays-in-radical-empiricism/does-consciousness-exist) Daniel Dennett, [Consciousness Explained](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ConsciousnessExplained)_ Daniel Pinchbeck (http://www.pinchbeck.io/), author and founder of Reality Sandwich (http://realitysandwich.com/) Phil Ford, Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture (https://global.oup.com/academic/product/dig-9780199939916?cc=ca&lang=en&) Scott Saul, Freedom Is, Freedom Ain't: Jazz and the Making of the Sixties (http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674018532&content=reviews) Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency (https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/after-finitude-9781441173836/) Matt Cardin (http://www.mattcardin.com/) - author and editor, creator of The Teeming Brain (http://www.teemingbrain.com/)

In this podcast Scott Nicolay interviews Jon Padgett, author of The Secret of Ventriloqusim and co-editor of Vastarien: A Literary Journal. Plus co-editor Matt Cardin,  an update on The Outer Dark Symposium on the Greater Weird 2018 and the Annihilation movie reviewed by Eric Schaller and Matthew Cheney. The Outer Dark Symposium on the Greater Weird is a unique immersive … Continue reading

In this podcast Jon Padgett and Matt Cardin talk about Vastarien, Thomas Ligotti, The Creative Self, and much more. About Vastarien Vastarien is a source of critical study and creative response to the corpus of Thomas Ligotti as well as associated authors and ideas. Support Vastarien on Kickstarter Show notes [03:30] Vastarien origin story [08:40] Why Vastarien … Continue reading

In this podcast Matt Cardin talks about Horror Literature through History: An Encyclopedia of the Stories That Speak to Our Deepest Fears, social media addiction, demonic creativity, and much more. About Matt Cardin Matt Cardin is a writer, editor, musician, and college professor and administrator living in North Texas. He is the author of the supernatural … Continue reading

In this podcast Matt Cardin talks about horror and spirituality, Thomas Ligotti, Alan Watts, and much more. About Matt Cardin Matt Cardin is a writer, editor, musician, and college professor and administrator living in North Texas. He is the author of the supernatural horror fiction collections Divinations of the Deep (2002) and Dark Awakenings (2010). He is also the … Continue reading