Podcast interviews on ‘Writing at the Wellspring’

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Here are two recent interviews with me in connection with the publication of Writing at the Wellspring.

Living into the Dark: Matt Cardin on Creativity, Horror, and the Daemonic
The Gospel of Direct Experience, February 5, 2026 (1 hour, 7 minutes)

In this episode of The Gospel of Direct Experience, we’re joined by Matt Cardin, acclaimed writer of cosmic horror and author of the new book Writing at the Wellspring. What unfolds isn’t just a discussion of creativity; it’s also an initiation into darkness—darkness as terror and generative source and spiritual/cultural necessity.

Matt reframes the “demon muse” or “genius” not as a benevolent guide from beyond but as an abducting, inner organizing force that destabilizes our egoic certainty and is the true wellspring of art, vocation, and transformation. Our conversation ranges from the chapel perilous and cosmic horror, to non-dual philosophy and role-playing games to Frankenstein and the collapse of modern culture.

Get ready to descend into the living dark—not to transcend it, but to be transformed by it.

Matt Cardin: Writing at the Wellspring
Lovecraft eZine, December 7, 2025 (1 hour, 48 minutes; my portion is about 1 hour, 17 minutes of the total episode)

Writers, artists, and creatives won’t want to miss today’s episode! Matt Cardin will talk about his new book Writing at the Wellspring: Tapping the Source of Your Inner Genius.

Later, Doug Murano of Bad Hand Books will join the conversation. Plus: John Taff!

Art as escape, art as reality

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There’s such a deep and delicate divide between art and ideas as expressions of reality and art and ideas as escapes from reality. Their status and function in each of our lives hinges on our inner state and attitude, our relative clarity of vision and intent whenever we engage with them, whether as creators or appreciators. I’m convinced that for most of us, most of the time, including me, the escapist intent, the desire to use art and ideas to abstract away from living reality, is dominant. I could cut out more than 90% of my reading, viewing, thinking, and writing, and lose nothing of value. In fact, I’d gain clarity and peace by lopping off one of the prime fuel sources for the mad monkey mind.

This is a key self-recognition, because that monkey mind is so very good at chattering to itself about how the exact opposite is true, about the supposed supreme spiritual value of continuing to wallow in mental and artistic representations of reality instead of just dropping the whole thing and resting in the present reality of what simply and actually is. This primary, unmediated Real is what that misguided outer search via artificial means is really after all along.

Ramana Maharshi famously observed that reality is simple, but we make it complicated. He said the average person won’t be content when told the simple truth, that “the kingdom of heaven is within you,” and will instead demand the elaboration of complex religious systems. The same holds true for our daily engagement with all of life. Life is simple. Reality is simple. It’s all given right here, with no holding back, immediately and totally, all of it at this moment. But we feel that we need to think something, say something, do something, create something, see/feel/hear know something, before it’s really real. The ultimate cosmic self-punking.

Spanish edition of ‘What the Daemon Said’ coming soon: Lo que el diablo me contó

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What the Daemon Said, my collection of essays and interviews on horror, creativity, and the numinous, is being released in Spanish this April by Dilatando Mentes Editorial. The Spanish edition is titled Lo que el diablo me contó, and it features a striking new design as part of their Línea Paraíso Perdido collection, with cover and interior illustrations by Luis Pérez Ochando, translation by José Ángel de Dios, and careful editorial work by Aine.

Here’s how the publisher describes the book:

Matt Cardin es uno de los críticos y estudiosos más interesantes y provocadores que trabajan en el campo del terror (gracias a sus amplios conocimientos de la filosofía y la religión aplicados al análisis de la ficción de terror); en este volumen se recogen una serie de interesantes ensayos sobre una amplia gama de temas dentro del género:

A lo largo de seis textos, Cardin acerca a la figura de Thomas Ligotti y aborda, entre otros temas, la influencia de H. P. Lovecraft en la obra y el pensamiento del autor, y se adentra en la naturaleza del terror en cuentos tan célebres como «Nethescurial» o «El Bungalow».

Pero también nos encontraremos con estudios sobre Ángeles y demonios, sobre religión y vampiros, sobre la naturaleza del horror cósmico, sobre el Frankenstein de Mary Shelley, sobre las películas de «Muertos vivientes» de George Romero, o sobre la naturaleza del weird.

Matt Cardin is one of the most interesting and provocative critics and scholars working in the field of horror today, thanks to his deep knowledge of philosophy and religion, which he brings to bear on the analysis of horror fiction. This volume brings together a series of compelling essays on a wide range of topics within the genre:

Across six texts, Cardin explores the figure of Thomas Ligotti, addressing, among other topics, the influence of H. P. Lovecraft on Ligotti’s work and thought, and delving into the nature of horror in such celebrated stories as “Nethescurial” and “The Bungalow House.”

But readers will also find studies on angels and demons, religion and vampires, the nature of cosmic horror, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, George Romero’s Living Dead films, and the very essence of the weird.

Preorders are available at the publisher’s website:

Lo que el diablo me contó

For English-language readers who missed the original release, you can find more information about it here.

Writing, nonduality, and the lurking presence beyond form

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I recently joined Robert, host of the Leafbox podcast, for a wide-ranging conversation on writing, creativity, and spiritual purpose—topics we first explored in the online course that I taught last fall, based on my (currently unpublished) book Writing at the Wellspring.

For those who prefer reading to listening, I’ve created a refined transcript that goes beyond a literal transcription, much like The Power of Myth book differs from its TV counterpart. The revised version enhances clarity, corrects errors, and makes the conversation more engaging as a stand-alone text.

The discussion covers themes like the daemon muse, nonduality, meditation, creative quietude, and the intersection of religion and horror. You’ll find section headings and a deeper exploration in the full post.

Read the full transcript here:

Through the Magic Eye: Writing, Nonduality, and the Lurking Presence Beyond Form

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My introduction to ‘Charnel Glamour’ by Mark Samuels

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The final collection of weird supernatural horror stories by the great Mark Samuels is now available from Chiroptera Press. I was honored to be asked by Mark to write the introduction to it. What I didn’t and couldn’t know when I accepted his invitation was that Charnel Glamour would end up being Mark’s last, and would be published posthumously, several months after his sudden and untimely death in December 2023.

With the blessing of both Chiroptera Press and Hippocampus Press (the latter of which will be publishing a paperback edition in 2025), I have shared the full text of my introduction at my Living Dark newsletter. It includes not just my introduction to Mark’s book but my reminiscence of our more than two decades of friendship, standing as my tribute to him:

Forbidden Transmissions: An Introduction to Charnel Glamour

Here are two passages from that intro:

When my instinctive move in reflecting on Mark’s new book is to think back to where his career began, and to remember our early acquaintance, and to consider how this informs my own reading of Charnel Glamour, maybe I’m just trying to explain to myself how twenty years can possibly have passed, and why the memory of Mark’s first book still resonates with me all these years later, and how it is that he writes weird supernatural horror stories that patch directly into my apprehension, amplified by the passage of time, of the strange fact that we live in a world of phantoms in which we ourselves, despite our presumed solidity, may be the very source of spectrality….

[T]he Samuelsian weird fictional cosmos…is a place where I can sense some of the most pointedly personal intimations of metaphysical fear from throughout my lifetime peering through the elements of the various narrative vehicles that Mark has constructed for conveying his vision. Readers of such stories—readers like you and me—find pleasure in this emotion of weird and numinous fear. At the same time, we also recognize that stories like this are about more than just delivering a few literary fictional pleasures. They carry the ring or scent of truth. They feel like revelations, like forbidden transmissions, like windows or doorways to something that is real, but that we are otherwise not allowed to acknowledge or talk about. In short, they feel a lot like the supernaturally potent books-as-carriers that show up in many of the stories themselves.

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