Alejandro Jodorowsky - The Dance of Reality - A Psychomagical Autobiography

I concentrated on my hands and felt the power of evolution in them, those millions of years it took for them to become human, emerging from hooves and paws, evolving from the prehensile fingers to the opposable thumb, developing into extremities that not only manipulate instruments and seek food, shelter, and touch, but that can also transmit spiritual energy. Desiring to awaken this sensibility, I had the idea of putting my hands in contact with sacred symbols or beneficent idols. I stood before the Aztec solar calendar in the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. This great granite wheel on which the mysterious wisdom of an ancient civilization is engraved is a mandala with a face in the center surrounded by an inner circle of twenty symbols, with another circle on the edge formed by two serpents with their tails joined together at the top and their human faces forehead to forehead at the bottom. This mandala, today a symbol of the Mexican nation, drew me like a magnet. In the inexplicable dance of reality the room in which the monument was exhibited among other sculptures, also of immense value, was momentarily empty of visitors and the guard was absent, perhaps having gone to relieve himself. I was alone with the calendar. I stepped over the barrier and put my hands on the center, right on the bas-relief face that looks out at the viewer (the faces of the two snakes are presented in profile). As soon as I placed my hands on that surface, a chill ran through my body. I do not claim that the mandala produced it; it may have been a psychological reaction, not caused by the stone. However, wherever it came from, a tremendous energy filled my cells. My vision changed, and I no longer saw this monument as a disc, but as a cone. The apex was the face that was under my hands and the base, a hundred meters distant, was composed of the two serpents that formed the outer circle. That is to say, the stone began at the animal level and rose in twenty rings, each one formed by an encircling symbol, until reaching the angelic/demonic consciousness represented by the forward-facing face. I felt that this face, bright as a sun, looked at me as if I were its mirror. I felt that the body of a serpent was growing behind it. And if I was its reflection, my spirit also had the body of a serpent: two snakes in profile forming a circle, and now two snakes facing forward, this face and I forming another circle because in addition to this union at the top our animal natures were also intermingling at the roots, far down below. This intense experience lasted about five minutes. Then I heard the footsteps of the guard and also a large group of tourists. The room filled with people. I left the museum feeling like a different person.

A statue of the Black Virgin, an idol of the Roma people, is preserved in a small church in the town of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in the Camargue region of France. Once a year during the summer thousands of Roma, coming from all corners of Europe, gather there to pay homage. The saint is paraded, sung to, and prayed to in an impressive public ceremony. After these celebrations, the nomadic people leave and the little church stands empty again. When I visited in the winter, the doors were unlocked. No priest was guarding the place. I approached the Black Virgin, who despite her great importance appeared abandoned. Impressed by her legend, I knelt before her. My first impulse was to ask for something, as all others do. But I held back. I approached her and started to massage her back. One might say that this is a subjective projection — that a piece of carved wood cannot have feelings — but through my hands I perceived the effort this idol made to bear the weight of so many requests. I stroked her back as if she were my mother, filled with a painful tenderness that was gradually transmuted into joy. When I felt that she was restored I joined my hands, which despite the cold winter were full of warmth, and prayed, “Teach me to transmit consciousness through my hands.” Her sweet voice resonated in my mind, “Give life to the stone.” I did not understand the meaning of this sentence. I attributed it to a folly of my imagination.

Months later, during the holiday period, I was invited to give seminars on the Tarot in the south of France. The architect Anti Lovacs had a beautiful property on the slopes of the mountains in Tourrettes-sur-Loup with a sphere-shaped house in which I stayed for two months. On a long mountain road, from which one could see the valley extending to the coast, I found a rock that was almost oval in form and approximately six feet tall. Here was this mineral, simple, humble, anonymous, beautiful, a witness to the passage of millions of years. I understood the message I had received from the depths of my subconscious in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. The Aztec solar calendar, with its symbolic system very similar to the Tarot, had placed its energy in my hands, entering through the intellectual portal. The Black Virgin, a powerful idol, had done the same, but had entered through the emotional portal. Now I had to face matter in its original state, without any human sculptors having intervened in its form. This was the body-to-body method. There was nothing significant about this stone other than itself. It was not part of a cathedral, a wailing wall, or the tomb of a demigod; it was itself, living with a rhythm infinitely slower than mine but also with a colossal capital of life. I remembered the five mottoes that appear on the engraving adorning the Rosarium philosophorum: Lapis noster habet spiritum, corpus et animam (Our stone has a spirit, a body, and a soul). And then Coquite. et quod quaeris invenies . The word coquite , being ambiguous — likely “sew”—I translated as “massage,” which gave me “Massage. and find what you seek.” Solve, coagula (Dissolve, coagulate) indicated to me that I should feel that I was dissolving the stone into its own consciousness, in order then to reintegrate it into its body again, this time as an illuminated material. Solvite corpora in aquas (Dissolve the bodies in water) told me that in the action of massaging the stone, I should dissolve both my body and the rock in an absolute communion, feeling the love of the mysterious alchemical elixir that dissolves everything, that transforms all things into unity. And finally: Wer unseren maysterlichen Steyn will bauwen / Der soll der naehren Anfang schauwen (He who wants to realize our perfect stone / should first contemplate the nearest beginning). In order to surpass the individual “I” it was necessary that I let myself be possessed by the impersonal “I,” the universal consciousness (the impersonal is closer to the truth than the personal), and thus, in a trance, reach the living heart of the stone. I decided to massage it for two hours every morning, from six to eight, before having breakfast with my students.

The first day, in a morning mist that submerged us in an abstract space, I saw the rock as an immense egg, insensible to my presence. It seemed clear that whatever I did, no contact would ever be established between us. But I thought of the fable of the hunter who wants to shoot the moon. He tries for years. His arrows never reach it, but he becomes the best archer in the world. I realized that this was not a matter of making the stone a living thing, but of trying to do so. The alchemist must attempt the impossible. The truth is not at the end of the road, but is the sum of all the actions we perform to get there. I felt that I should be naked while performing the massage. Patiently, with water, soap, and a sponge, I washed the stone. Then, aided by lavender oil, I began to caress it. The sun had not yet shone its brightest rays. Although I never ceased fondling the stone, its surface remained cold, impenetrable. True to my decision, I continued my massages every morning. Slowly, I began to love it as one loves an animal. I learned to forget the idea of an exchange, to give with no hope of receiving. I learned to love the existence of this stone without preoccupying myself with the question of whether it was conscious of my existence. The more insensible its body was, the more profound my massages. I remembered the words of Antonio Porchia: “The stone that I take in my hands absorbs a bit of my blood, and palpitates.” Those two months passed by without my knowing it. On the last day, concentrating on massaging as always, I do not know why I raised my eyes but a black raven with a white spot on its chest was there, quietly perched on the rock. It locked eyes with me, squawked, and flew away.