Alejandro Jodorowsky - The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky - The Creator of El Topo

Then she used all her weight — increased perhaps by the weight of entities from other dimensions — to crush me completely against the ground so that I became an amorphous mass.

Vibrating me with a shifting combination of rhythms — fast, slow, trembling, explosive, delicate, and brutal — she caused me to relive my fetal memories. I felt my eyes, mouth, and limbs growing and felt the palpitating center that must have been my heart. Above all, I saw my soul. It was like a rose opening abruptly, emanating its immense, anguished desire to live.

Then she brought me through infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, middle age, old age — and onward to a sort of millennial androgyne, an angel, a limitless god.

She awakened my vital energy by causing my navel (which she called Eden) to spout four intangible rivers branching into thirteen centers in my body, which she called temples. Through mysterious pressures, she opened these like jugs, giving a list of the different gifts that they were able to pour out.

The forty days had come to an end. “That is enough,” she said. “You have received it all. You no longer need to receive. What I have given you, you can give to others.”

She placed her palms on the back of my hands with such firmness and assurance that I felt as if we shared a single skin. Then she directed me in self-massage. The more confident I became, the more she relaxed the pressure of her hands until, without my even realizing it, her hands seemed to have flown away like a pair of doves. Everything she had been teaching me came back little by little: I palpated my bones, stretched my skin, made contact with my viscera, planted my feet in the ground after having calmed my shadow, combed my aura, traced out meridians and circuits, centered myself in my spinal column and from there sent out energy to the sides with the sensation of unfolding two immense wings.

“Yes, fly, my son! Spread your wings; your body doesn’t stop at your skin. It extends out into the air, filling all space. It grows with the cosmos, embracing the divine creation. The earth is yours, the galaxies are yours, you are eternal and infinite. In the shadow of your reason live countless goddesses, and they are also yours. Humans, animals, plants, the unborn, the legions of the dead — they are all yours. Make your decision! Become master of your life! You are a flower whose numberless petals open and close every instant, surging like an explosion of light from the black matrix that is neither matter nor energy but the creative womb. And you live in all this, in the corolla that is collective consciousness, like a diamond scintillating with rays of love from conscious beings. Other diamonds form a necklace that shines eternally around the mystery that none can name.”

As I walked the streets, I no longer felt that the weight of my body was a burden. Instead, it was a link of union with this mirage I called reality. Every step was a caress, every breath of air was a blessing. These sensations were so surprising that I felt as if I were living in a new body and a new mind. The thought of receiving any further massages from Magdalena was distinctly unattractive — a bird does not need extra air to fly, a fish does not need extra water to swim without limits. I allowed a week to pass, during which my eating habits changed. I could no longer tolerate meat, coffee, or dairy products. Rice best suited my stomach. It also reminded me of Ejo Takata. On the same day his image came to mind, I received from Ana Perla a postcard with a Hindu-style Buddha on it announcing the imminent return of the master.

I bought a bouquet of white roses and went to say good-bye to Magdalena. Her door was open, but the room was empty.

I went downstairs and asked the taco merchant where she had gone. The people working there only shrugged their shoulders. Noticing one of the boys offering himself in the street nearby, I asked him about her whereabouts.

“Doña Magdalena is like the wind,” he answered. “She arrives bearing her seeds, sows them, and then leaves. No one can pin her down.”

I murmured to myself: “Under the motionless clouds, the wind carries away the city.”

The curandera Pachita

Maria Sabina, the mushroom priestess

Chilean singer Violete Parra

Spanish writer Francisco Gonzalez Ledesma, who used the pseudonym Silver Kane

Mumon Yamada, the master of my Zen master. He was an elegant Buddha.

My own master, Zen monk Ejo Takata, after his arrival in Mexico

“Intellectual, learn to die!” Myself, about thirty years old

Me with Ejo Takata. I’m reflecting on the austere staging of my theater production Zarathustra, based on Nietzche’s work.

During Zarathustra, my Zen teacher agreed to sit motionless on stage, meditating during the entire two-hour performance.

Surrealist painter and artist Leonora Carrington

Carrington’s husband, Chiki, who wore this beret day and night

The actress Maria Félix

Leonora Carrington’s painting of Maria

I acquired a dubious notoriety because of my relationship with the Tigress, before we had a major falling-out.

The Tigress with her tiger, Salgari