Recently I was interviewed for the podcast Therapy for Guys, created and hosted by Quique Autrey, a teen and family therapist in Katy, Texas. The podcast’s tagline is, “A psychotherapist explores men’s issues relating to mental health, science, philosophy and spirituality.” Here’s the link: Beyond Theology: Christianity, Nonduality, and the Play of Existence And here’s…
Category: Religion & Philosophy
Weird Studies podcast: “The Daemon Speaks, with Matt Cardin”
I was recently interviewed by Phil Ford and JF Martel for their Weird Studies podcast. The episode dropped today: The Daemon Speaks, with Matt Cardin Episode description: Returning guest Matt Cardin is a writer of fiction and nonfiction whose focus on numinous horror places him in the literary lineage of Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood….
We’re All Possessed: A Demonology of Social Media Madness
Here’s Baylor University humanities professor Alan Jacobs, in a remarkable essay for The New Atlantis, referencing a variety of literary and real-world instances of the “madness of crowds” (as in the January 6 U.S. Capitol riot) to offer a demonic account of what’s happening to us in this age of digitally distributed memes and thought…
Authors move in an entire universe of their own creation
This lovely authorial vision from Flaubert is also applicable to life as lived within the nondual understanding of self and world (which is where I myself live): It is a delicious thing to write, to be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating. Today, for instance, as man…
WHAT THE DAEMON SAID: Cover, TOC, and Publication Date
Today I received word from Hippocampus Press that my nonfiction collection What the Daemon Said: Essays on Weird Fiction, Film, and Philosophy is scheduled for publication on April 26. Preorders are available now. The beautiful cover is by Dan Sauer. Click to order. BLURBS: “For my money, Matt Cardin is the most interesting voice in…
Dreams and Demons in Modern Horror Fiction
The quoted text below appears in the 2002 book Demons of the Modern World by Malcolm McGrath, who was a doctoral candidate in political philosophy at Oxford University when he wrote it. The publisher’s marketing copy lays out the book’s thrust: This fascinating discussion of modern demonology focuses on our ability to differentiate the physical…
My January 2022 interview on the Lovecraft eZine podcast
Early last month I was the featured guest on an episode of the Lovecraft eZine podcast. Here’s the conversation, in which the free-flowing topics included include Ligotti, Lovecraft, Jon Padgett, weird fiction, religion, Leviathan, Behemoth, sleep paralysis, and belief vs. spiritual awakening. You can also listen to the audio podcast version, where my audio levels…
Horror Fiction and the Awakening and Evolution of Consciousness
In the introduction to The Weiser Book of Horror and the Occult — an anthology of classic horror stories that deal in one way or another with the named subjects — Lon Milo DuQuette, who also edited the book, relates his boyhood experience of awakening for the first time to both a love of richly…
Dreams, Waking Reality, and the Purpose of Your Life
In A Course in Demonic Creativity, I recommend reading your life like a dream or a creative narrative (a novel, a movie) to discern symbols and themes that can serve as clues to your overall life pattern, your purpose, your creative calling, your destiny and life mission as embodied in the concept of the daemon…
A Psychic Invasion from Above and Below: Our Present Cultural Apocalypse
As someone who rode the apocalyptic wave of the aughts and 2010s very hard, I find it striking to note the uncanny, almost clinical precision with which mythologist and author Michael Meade, writing back in 2012 about trends that were then becoming visible, forecast and diagnosed the deep mythic-psychological apocalyptic eruptions of 2020-2021: Often apocalyptic…