The Teeming Brain https://www.teemingbrain.com/ Channeling the multiverse of ideas Sun, 03 Sep 2023 11:16:35 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 182890616 Join me at my new blog: The Living Dark https://www.teemingbrain.com/2023/09/03/join-me-at-my-new-blog-the-living-dark/ https://www.teemingbrain.com/2023/09/03/join-me-at-my-new-blog-the-living-dark/#comments Sun, 03 Sep 2023 11:13:44 +0000 https://www.teemingbrain.com/?p=23994 I have now moved all of my blogging activity over to The Living Dark, where I continue to pursue many of the core themes and interests that drove The Teeming Brain for 16 years. Chief among these is the intersection of creativity and calling at the intersection of nonduality and the daemon muse. Join me...

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]]> https://www.teemingbrain.com/2023/09/03/join-me-at-my-new-blog-the-living-dark/feed/ 1 23994 The Final Farewell https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/09/14/the-final-farewell/ https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/09/14/the-final-farewell/#comments Wed, 14 Sep 2022 15:19:19 +0000 https://www.teemingbrain.com/?p=22876 Well, here it is. The last post I will ever publish at The Teeming Brain. As previously announced, after 16 years I’m closing the doors to make way for a new project, which launched today. But before we leave, a trip down teeming memory lane: I started The Teeming Brain in June 2006. One month...

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]]> https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/09/14/the-final-farewell/feed/ 2 22876 The End of The Teeming Brain https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/09/08/the-end-of-the-teeming-brain-the-start-of-living-into-the-dark/ https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/09/08/the-end-of-the-teeming-brain-the-start-of-living-into-the-dark/#comments Thu, 08 Sep 2022 22:13:31 +0000 https://www.teemingbrain.com/?p=22827 Dear Teeming Brain friends: After 16 years of maintaining this site, I’m officially shutting things down. This is not a hiatus like the ones in the past. This is a definitive ending. Not to worry, though. As I said here several months ago, the end of TTB means the start of something else. The next...

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]]> https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/09/08/the-end-of-the-teeming-brain-the-start-of-living-into-the-dark/feed/ 4 22827 New podcast interview with me on Alan Watts, Christianity, and Nonduality https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/07/29/new-podcast-interview-with-me-on-alan-watts-christianity-and-nonduality/ https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/07/29/new-podcast-interview-with-me-on-alan-watts-christianity-and-nonduality/#respond Fri, 29 Jul 2022 15:28:42 +0000 https://www.teemingbrain.com/?p=22464 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...

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]]> https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/07/29/new-podcast-interview-with-me-on-alan-watts-christianity-and-nonduality/feed/ 0 22464 Weird Studies podcast: “The Daemon Speaks, with Matt Cardin” https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/06/22/weird-studies-podcast-the-daemon-speaks-with-matt-cardin/ https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/06/22/weird-studies-podcast-the-daemon-speaks-with-matt-cardin/#respond Thu, 23 Jun 2022 00:25:08 +0000 https://www.teemingbrain.com/?p=22435 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....

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]]> https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/06/22/weird-studies-podcast-the-daemon-speaks-with-matt-cardin/feed/ 0 22435 WHAT THE DAEMON SAID an Amazon #1 seller https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/06/09/what-the-daemon-said-an-amazon-1-bestseller/ https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/06/09/what-the-daemon-said-an-amazon-1-bestseller/#respond Thu, 09 Jun 2022 17:08:22 +0000 https://www.teemingbrain.com/?p=22419 Just a quick note to Teeming Brain readers to observe that as of today, the Kindle edition of my What the Daemon Said is the #1 new release in Amazon’s Gothic and Romantic Literary Criticism category. It also sits at #10 overall in Horror and Supernatural Literary Criticism. You can order from Amazon here. Or...

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]]> https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/06/09/what-the-daemon-said-an-amazon-1-bestseller/feed/ 0 22419 View the index for WHAT THE DAEMON SAID https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/04/26/view-the-index-for-what-the-daemon-said/ https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/04/26/view-the-index-for-what-the-daemon-said/#respond Tue, 26 Apr 2022 17:55:27 +0000 https://www.teemingbrain.com/?p=22374 Today is the official publication date for What the Daemon Said. John Shirley calls it “a fine, wide-ranging exploration of the deepest wellsprings of nightmare and chthonic revelation.” Laird Barron calls it “a treasure trove for fans and scholars of weird fiction.” Brian Keene calls it “a crucial deep dive into some of the darkest,...

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]]> https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/04/26/view-the-index-for-what-the-daemon-said/feed/ 0 22374 Should I start a Substack? Or a Patreon? https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/04/25/should-i-start-a-substack-or-a-patreon/ https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/04/25/should-i-start-a-substack-or-a-patreon/#respond Mon, 25 Apr 2022 17:59:28 +0000 https://www.teemingbrain.com/?p=22370 I’m seeking input from my Teeming Brain readers on a decision about my online future as a writer. On the one hand, I’m thinking of launching a Substack about the daimon muse. It would be a blog-slash-newsletter on the practical and philosophical work of triangulating the inner genius at the nexus of creativity, consciousness, and...

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]]> https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/04/25/should-i-start-a-substack-or-a-patreon/feed/ 0 22370 We’re All Possessed: A Demonology of Social Media Madness https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/04/19/were-all-possessed-a-demonology-of-social-media-madness/ https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/04/19/were-all-possessed-a-demonology-of-social-media-madness/#respond Tue, 19 Apr 2022 14:00:00 +0000 https://www.teemingbrain.com/?p=22362 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...

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]]> https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/04/19/were-all-possessed-a-demonology-of-social-media-madness/feed/ 0 22362 The Internet + 24/7 Capitalism = Apocalyptic Dystopia https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/04/18/the-internet-24-7-capitalism-apocalyptic-dystopia/ https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/04/18/the-internet-24-7-capitalism-apocalyptic-dystopia/#respond Mon, 18 Apr 2022 19:02:30 +0000 https://www.teemingbrain.com/?p=22359 Here’s a pointedly stark and palpably fierce excerpt from art critic and essayist Jonathan Crary’s Scorched Earth: Beyond the Digital Age to a Post-Capitalist World, which was published just this month: If there is to be a livable and shared future on our planet, it will be a future offline, uncoupled from the world-destroying systems...

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]]> https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/04/18/the-internet-24-7-capitalism-apocalyptic-dystopia/feed/ 0 22359 Authors move in an entire universe of their own creation https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/04/15/authors-move-in-an-entire-universe-of-their-own-creation/ https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/04/15/authors-move-in-an-entire-universe-of-their-own-creation/#respond Fri, 15 Apr 2022 21:27:13 +0000 https://www.teemingbrain.com/?p=22352 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...

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]]> https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/04/15/authors-move-in-an-entire-universe-of-their-own-creation/feed/ 0 22352 Creative illness as a liminal shamanistic transformation https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/04/14/creative-illness-as-a-liminal-shamanistic-transformation/ https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/04/14/creative-illness-as-a-liminal-shamanistic-transformation/#comments Thu, 14 Apr 2022 16:23:07 +0000 https://www.teemingbrain.com/?p=22347 Here’s a necessary passage from George P. Hansen’s 1994 opus The Trickster and the Paranormal, which is a flatly necessary book (though one that’s oddly semi-obscure, for reasons that have long eluded me): [Anthropologist Larry] Peters recognized that the idea of creative illness, advanced by Henri Ellenberger in 1964, can be understood as a liminal...

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]]> https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/04/14/creative-illness-as-a-liminal-shamanistic-transformation/feed/ 2 22347 WHAT THE DAEMON SAID: Cover, TOC, and Publication Date https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/04/12/what-the-daemon-said-cover-toc-and-publication-date/ https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/04/12/what-the-daemon-said-cover-toc-and-publication-date/#comments Tue, 12 Apr 2022 17:50:01 +0000 https://www.teemingbrain.com/?p=22333 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...

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]]> https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/04/12/what-the-daemon-said-cover-toc-and-publication-date/feed/ 4 22333 The Myth of Persephone and the Cycle of Creativity https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/04/09/the-myth-of-persephone-and-the-cycle-of-creativity/ https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/04/09/the-myth-of-persephone-and-the-cycle-of-creativity/#comments Sat, 09 Apr 2022 13:55:45 +0000 https://www.teemingbrain.com/?p=22325 Rembrandt, The Rape of Proserpina, 1632 (public domain, via Wikimedia Commons) In typing up my life journal from 1993 to the present, I’ve been coming across hundreds of thousands of words that I forgot I ever wrote. Some of these take the form of excursive, semi-extemporaneous mini-essays. Here’s one of them. I won’t be including...

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]]> https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/04/09/the-myth-of-persephone-and-the-cycle-of-creativity/feed/ 2 22325 “Everything in this mansion is a horror” https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/04/02/everything-in-this-mansion-is-a-horror/ https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/04/02/everything-in-this-mansion-is-a-horror/#respond Sat, 02 Apr 2022 18:52:17 +0000 https://www.teemingbrain.com/?p=22311 Yesterday I posted the transcript of a nightmare that I suffered in 2003 and recorded in my personal journal, which I’m currently turning into a manuscript for publication later this year. I characterized that nightmare as the most narratively developed dream that I’ve ever experienced. Today, in the interest of accuracy, I’ll point out that...

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]]> https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/04/02/everything-in-this-mansion-is-a-horror/feed/ 0 22311 A nightmare that was better than the story I made from it https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/04/01/a-nightmare-that-was-better-than-the-story-i-made-from-it/ https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/04/01/a-nightmare-that-was-better-than-the-story-i-made-from-it/#comments Fri, 01 Apr 2022 18:15:12 +0000 https://www.teemingbrain.com/?p=22305 The idea of publishing my 30-year private journal that I recently mentioned here is becoming a reality. The first volume will be published later this year by S. T. Joshi’s Sarnath Press. For weeks I’ve been typing like mad to produce a manuscript from mounds of old notebooks. And I’ve been coming across many things...

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]]> https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/04/01/a-nightmare-that-was-better-than-the-story-i-made-from-it/feed/ 1 22305 Dreams and Demons in Modern Horror Fiction https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/03/14/dreams-and-demons-in-modern-horror-fiction/ https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/03/14/dreams-and-demons-in-modern-horror-fiction/#respond Mon, 14 Mar 2022 20:27:01 +0000 https://www.teemingbrain.com/?p=22270 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...

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]]> https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/03/14/dreams-and-demons-in-modern-horror-fiction/feed/ 0 22270 Writing a Novel: Slow, Underwhelming, One Sentence at a Time https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/02/19/writing-a-novel-slow-underwhelming-one-sentence-at-a-time/ https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/02/19/writing-a-novel-slow-underwhelming-one-sentence-at-a-time/#respond Sat, 19 Feb 2022 13:00:00 +0000 https://www.teemingbrain.com/?p=22245 A rather neat novelist origin story from science writer Sara Goudarzi, author of the soon-to-be-published The Almond in the Apricot. Her insights into the creative process and the writer’s craft that she had to learn when transitioning from writing science journalism to prose fiction ring true: While I wrote several science articles a week, a...

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]]> https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/02/19/writing-a-novel-slow-underwhelming-one-sentence-at-a-time/feed/ 0 22245 On ditching your phone and social media to achieve your potential https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/02/16/on-ditching-your-phone-and-social-media-to-achieve-your-potential/ https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/02/16/on-ditching-your-phone-and-social-media-to-achieve-your-potential/#respond Wed, 16 Feb 2022 13:00:00 +0000 https://www.teemingbrain.com/?p=22242 From The Wall Street Journal: Chen delivered a rapturous free program with five quadruple jumps here on Thursday to win the men’s individual gold medal for the United States, avenging his devastatingly uneven performance at the Olympics four years ago in the grandest way and reigniting a conversation about whether he’s the greatest figure skater...

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]]> https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/02/16/on-ditching-your-phone-and-social-media-to-achieve-your-potential/feed/ 0 22242 Video essay: Thomas Ligotti and the Polish Avant-Garde https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/02/14/video-essay-thomas-ligotti-and-the-polish-avant-garde/ https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/02/14/video-essay-thomas-ligotti-and-the-polish-avant-garde/#respond Mon, 14 Feb 2022 13:00:00 +0000 https://www.teemingbrain.com/?p=22239 Last summer I became aware of this rather brilliant video essay by Sam Pulham, co-host of the Sherds Podcast, “a literary discussion programme exploring the peripheries of world literature and unearthing neglected texts from outside the mainstream canon.” Pulham’s thesis is that the weird supernatural-horrific sensibility that infuses and defines Ligotti’s 2006 fiction collection Teatro...

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]]> https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/02/14/video-essay-thomas-ligotti-and-the-polish-avant-garde/feed/ 0 22239