May saw the publication of the horror anthology Urban Cthulhu: Nightmare Cities, edited by Henrik Sanbek Harksen and featuring a story by Teeming Brain columnist T. E. Grau. As you’ll recall, T. E. writes The Extinction Papers for us, and as you’ll see if you read his bio on our Teem page or check out…
Author: Matt Cardin
Teeming Brain founder and editor Matt Cardin is the author of DARK AWAKENINGS, DIVINATIONS OF THE DEEP, A COURSE IN DEMONIC CREATIVITY: A WRITER'S GUIDE TO THE INNER GENIUS, and TO ROUSE LEVIATHAN. He is also the editor of BORN TO FEAR: INTERVIEWS WITH THOMAS LIGOTTI and the academic encyclopedias MUMMIES AROUND THE WORLD; GHOSTS, SPIRITS, AND PSYCHICS: THE PARANORMAL FROM ALCHEMY TO ZOMBIES; and HORROR LITERATURE THROUGH HISTORY.
Horror, meaning, and madness: Dangers of lifting the cosmic veil
(Liminalities, Cycle 1, Part 2) In my novelette “Teeth” — first published at Thomas Ligotti Online, then in The Children of Cthulhu, and then in expanded form in my Dark Awakenings — there’s a scene where the narrator reads a notebook filled with ruminations on the convergence of philosophy and religion with cosmic horror, all interwoven…
Russell Brand, Daniel Pinchbeck, and Graham Hancock on psychedelics, consciousness, media, society, and reality
In an event that was mind-expanding (or -blowing) in its own right, simply because it happened, last November Daniel Pinchbeck, Graham Hancock, and Russell Brand (!) teamed up to speak at a Reality Sandwich retreat at the Boulder Mountain Guest Ranch in Utah. They ended up having, in the words of the event’s description at…
Simon Strantzas: “There are no boundaries in horror”
Weird Fiction Review has just published an interview with Simon Strantzas that anybody interested in supernatural horror will surely find worthwhile. Here’s a taste: WFR: In his introduction to your collection Nightingale Songs, John Langan mentions your shared affection for Ramsey Campbell and Robert Aickman. What in particular do you think draws you to their…
Recommended Reading 19
This week’s recommended links and readings include: a mainstream university economist’s take on why America is economically (and societally) screwed; a classic article/essay about the Rolling Stones and the Altamont tragedy and its defining impact on a generation; a former television writer’s account of what happened when his meeting with Al Franken for a prospective…
James Fadiman, psychedelic heretic
Several weeks ago I talked on the phone for an hour and a half with Dr. James Fadiman, one of the central figures in the history of psychedelic research and a co-founder of the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology. I’ll be publishing the conversation as a Teeming Brain interview in the near future, but for now…
Cloud Atlas (MOVIE TRAILER)
This extended trailer for the forthcoming film Cloud Atlas — written and directed by Lana (formerly Larry) Wachowski, Tom Tykwer, and Andy Wachowski, and adapted from David Mitchell’s 2004 mindblow of a novel — looks positively extraordinary. I don’t know how the film can possibly live up to it. But I’m hopeful, since the Wachowskis…
On transmitting artistic and spiritual vision
Some years ago as I was searching for a way to introduce poetry to the high school writing and literature classes that I was then teaching — not just certain, selected poets and poems but the entire idea and import of poetry itself — I started telling my students that language can have an alchemical…
Recommended Reading 18
This week’s links, reading, and viewings encompass America’s apocalyptic obsession, the troubled future of America’s electricity situation, the continued rehabilitation of psychedelic research in academic and governmental contexts, the rise of America’s internal surveillance state, a worried critique of art’s monetization, the hijacking of social media by megacorporate interests, a warning from by-God Silicon Valley…
Liminality, Synchronicity, and the Walls of Everyday Reality
(Liminalities, Cycle 1, Part 1) A seminal moment in the formation of Carl Jung’s concept of synchronicity came as he was treating a highly educated woman who, by his description, was locked in a rigid Cartesian rationalism that hindered her therapy. The basis of all depth psychotherapy is the airing of unconscious psychic content and…