Episode 24: The Charlatan and the Magus, with Lionel Snell

Weird Studies

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.8 • 688 Ratings

🗓️ 28 August 2018

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As Lionel Snell, also known as Ramsey Dukes, observes in his seminal esoteric essay, "The Charlatan and the Magus" (1984), the series of trumps in a tarot deck doesn't begin with the noble Emperor or august Hierophant, but with the lowly Fool, followed by the Juggler. Trickery or illusion, Snell suggests, may not be the dealbreaker we've thought it to be in parapsychological investigation. It may even be a feature, not a bug, of the magical process. In this episode of Weird Studies, JF and Phil talk to Lionel Snell about trickster magic, and all we miss out on when we make rational truth the only measure by which we know reality. Ramsey Dukes [Lionel Snell], "The Charlatan and the Magus" Darren Brown, Tricks of the Mind Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Phil Ford, “Birth of the Weird" Ramsey Dukes [Lionel Snell], How to See Fairies: Discover Your Psychic Powers in Six Weeks Ramsey Dukes [Lionel Snell], S.S.O.T..B.M.E. John Keats, Negative Capability Weird Studies, Episode 9: "On Aleister Crowley and the Idea of Magick" Special Guest: Lionel Snell [Ramsey Dukes]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Specter Vision Radio
0:03.3	Welcome to Weird Studies, an art and philosophy podcast with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martel.
0:21.8	For more episodes and to support the podcast, go to Weird Studies.com. Hi, this is Phil.
0:51.2	This week, our guest on Weird Studies is Lionel Snell, who is better known by his pen name, Ramsey Dukes.
0:58.1	Mr. Snell's works of magical philosophy includes Sassotpamy, which stands for sex secrets of the black magicians exposed,
1:06.3	as well as thunder squeak, the good, the bad, and the funny, Uncle Ramsey's Little Book of Demons,
1:11.6	and, most recently, my years of magical thinking.
1:15.6	I can't promise the same thing will happen to you, but for me, discovering and reading these
1:20.6	works completely changed the game, changed my whole way of thinking.
1:24.6	His works identify and examine motions of thought and feeling that
1:28.8	are immediately recognizable, but which we most often contrive to hide from full awareness.
1:34.1	Perhaps we dismiss them as silly or irrational when we notice them in ourselves, or we give
1:39.8	them a respectable or at least recognizable name, depth psychology, for instance, or marketing,
1:46.6	anything but what they actually are, which is magic.
1:50.4	The piece we are discussing in this episode is The Charlatan in the Megas, which is an essay
1:55.0	in a collection titled Blast Your Way to Megabucks with My Secret Sex Power Formula.
2:00.7	Such a great title. You can use the show notes
2:03.1	to find it online. In it, Lionel Snell slash Ramsey Dukes recalls to our memory all those spirit
2:10.0	mediums and spoonbenders whose claims of authentic psychic powers have been debunked by skeptical
2:15.4	researchers, as well as those yogis and gurus and
2:19.4	ascended masters who turn out to be exploitative frauds. As Snell points out, when confronted
2:25.9	with such stories, we tend to respond in one of three ways. If we are skeptics, we believe that
	...

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