Archives for Wyrdery

Archive81 and Cosmic Horror

Archive81 and Cosmic Horror

6 February, 2022 | 4 Comments

Archive81 proved a surprise Netflix hit, a slowburn horror series that wears a number of influences on its sleeve: Rosemary’s Baby, The Shining, The Ring, The Twilight Zone, Alex Garland, David Lynch and Mike Flanagan. Never less than engaging (thanks primarily to superb lead performances and polished production values) the cumulative effect over eight episodes is like playing a game of genre Bingo: witches, haunted houses, cult rituals, cursed recordings, spooky corridors, snuff films, evil tomes, seances and sacrifices, possibly mad and unreliable narrators, and ancient evil deities. The last ingredient, readers may recognize, marks the series’ most conspicuous influence:
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Re-reading “Foucault’s Pendulum” in the Age of QAnon – Pt. 1, The Plan

Re-reading “Foucault’s Pendulum” in the Age of QAnon – Pt. 1, The Plan

25 January, 2022 | 5 Comments

I just finished my third or fourth reading of Umberto Eco‘s classic esoteric suspense thriller and sublimely wacko-satirical thought experiment, Foucault’s Pendulum. The Premise First published in 1988 in Italian, Foucault’s Pendulum tells the story of three editors at the fictional Garamond Press in Milan (and its aptly named vanity press twin, Manutius Press), who are brought an esoteric manuscript purporting to include a secret coded Message regarding the fabled Knights Templar and their alleged centuries-spanning occult Plan. (Here be potential but necessary Spoilers – Caveat Lector!) The Message is highly ambiguous—imagine a purposefully vague Nostradamus quatrain written in a
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Down the Nazi Occult Rabbit Hole

Down the Nazi Occult Rabbit Hole

21 February, 2021 | 10 Comments

Have you ever noticed how fascinated Speculative, SciFi/Fantasy, and Thriller writers are about Nazis? From Marvel's Hydra to PKD's The Man in the High Castle, from Indiana Jones to Wolfenstein, from The Boys from Brazil to Arrowverse's Earth X to...you get the idea. You could spend years working through that reading list. And to be honest, I have.
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