Alejandro Jodorowsky - The Dance of Reality - A Psychomagical Autobiography

“But each passing day seems like a century. I can’t tolerate this situation. I feel diminished, sick with rage, old.”

“I’m not a charlatan, I won’t advise you to wrap a dead hummingbird in red ribbon and get him to touch it or sprinkle rose petals on his footprints in the sand so that he will come right back. But I can help you to accept this triangular relationship in your subconscious and calmly wait for the year to pass.” I told her to go to a pet store and buy three canaries, a male (symbolizing her husband) and two females: one young and pretty (symbolizing the lover) and one older, ugly, and fat (symbolizing herself). She should put the birds in a cage and hang them in her office, in front of her desk. After ten days, she should go back to the pet store and give the canaries back to the same man who sold them to her. I said, “The bird seller represents God (your father, an absent man). Once you feel good, you should give away this childish problem of abandonment.”

The days went by, then suddenly she called me in a state of shock: “Something amazing happened: I put the canaries together and fed them the same food. But bit by bit, the young female was getting fat, losing her feathers, staying still in a corner; the older one became prettier and thinner, and sang with joy. I learned later that a young female dies if she is not fertilized by the male. On the tenth day, today, when I sat down to work, I suddenly looked up at the cage, and at that precise moment the sick bird fell down dead. I’m terrified. She represented my rival. I feel like I’ve killed her. What should I do?”

“Reality has danced to comfort you. Accept this gift. Put the bird in the bottom of a flowerpot, fill it with soil, and plant a rose bush. Keep the rose alive in your house as long as you can, and go give the bird seller the remaining pair of birds.”

After some time, the client called me again to tell me she was glad of the act. It had been a long time since she had felt so good. She had returned to finding the joy in life. Now she did not care what her husband did.

It might seem like an easy surrealist game to give psychomagical advice, but in fact it can only be dispensed by a person who has done a great deal of work on him- or herself. Each act must fit the subtle characteristics of the client like a pair of shoes made to order. No two people are the same, so no two identical acts may be prescribed. A certain individual felt himself authorized to begin his own practice immediately after attending one of my lectures and rounded up a group of women. He asked each of his students to identify themselves with a doll, to discharge into it their childhood pain and rage against their parents, and to place it in a sack, which they would keep for a purification ceremony to be conducted later. They also had to send their mothers a large pair of scissors and the guts of a chicken. Catastrophic! You cannot prescribe acts “wholesale”! The supermarket of psychomagic is an aberration! Of course, the effect was negative. The relatives did not understand the act, and many thought that their daughters had gone mad. This was not so far from the truth: after the workshop, one terrified woman came to see me on the verge of psychosis, convinced that the “psychomagician” now had power over her. To calm her down I recommended that she go retrieve her doll, but the man could not return it because as soon as his students departed he had thrown them all in the trash. In sum, this was a matter of a businessman dedicating himself to making money by exploiting the credulity of a group of women. I am reminded of a story:

In a factory, a complicated machine breaks down. The best technicians arrive, working for days with all kinds of sophisticated tools, but they fail to make it work. Finally, an old man comes carrying a small case. He takes a simple hammer out of the case, gives a small tap on one gear wheel on the machine, and it starts up. The old man asks to be paid $1,000,001 for his services. The manufacturers complain: “How is this possible? You are asking for $1,000,001 for just one hammer blow!” “No,” the old man answers, “the hammer cost a dollar. The studies I had to do in order to do it effectively cost a million.” One can only propose an effective psychomagical act after a long apprenticeship.

When it became clear to me that my advice could cause a transformation in the mind of the client, I realized the enormous responsibility that this implied. An error could provoke catastrophes such as the worsening of an illness, a suicide, a divorce, depression, psychosis, or a criminal act. Therefore, as I began practicing psychomagic I took many precautions, the main one of these being to prescribe very small acts that involved no one other than the client.

I recommended buying pieces of honeycomb to a woman who had grown up verbally tormented by her parents and who could not speak without using harsh words. I told her to sweeten her mouth by chewing on these until nothing was left but a blob of wax, to save these remains in a jewelry box, and then after some time to form that wax into the shape of a heart, anoint her tongue with red vegetable dye, lick the heart to stain it red, and finally nail the heart to her bathroom wall in front of the toilet. Thus, her subconscious would receive the message that to speak is an act of love, not of excretion.

Another client asked that I prescribe her an act that would allow her to forgive her dead father and thus overcome the hatred she had toward all men. I asked her to tell me at what point her father had broken ties with her. “Shortly after my first period,” she replied. (It is common for a father to distance himself from his daughter once she becomes a woman for fear of arousal. The girl, not understanding why he draws away, suffers from no longer sitting on his knee and finds it painful to renounce this form of intimacy and contact.) I then asked her where her father was buried, and she suggested we go to his grave. “Bury some cotton wool soaked in your menstrual blood, along with a packet of sugar cubes, as close as possible to the coffin. The sugar is to indicate that this is not an aggressive act but a loving approach, a communication signifying that periods are not an impediment to happiness.”

When the person who has caused pain is dead, for the subconscious the grave is the representation of that person. If there is no grave a photograph is used, and if there is no photograph, a drawing. Another client was enrolled at the age of four in a school led by her great aunt. This lady bullied her sadistically. In her work with me, the client discovered the deep hatred she felt for this woman. She could not forgive her, but could not take revenge either, since her victim had already left this world. Therefore, I advised her to go to the woman’s grave and give vent to her hatred there: kick the grave, scream insults, urinate and defecate, but on condition that she thoroughly analyze the reactions caused by the execution of her revenge. She followed my advice, and after letting off steam on the grave, felt a fundamental desire to clean it and cover it with flowers. The hatred was nothing but the deformed face of unrequited affection.

If the hated person has been cremated and there is no grave, or if he or she is still alive, one can insult a photograph. Then the image must be burned. After this, the client should take some of the ashes, dissolve them in a glass of wine if male or milk if female, and drink it. Thus the evil, finally purified, becomes an antidote.

A young man complained to me of “living in the clouds,” explaining that he could not “get grounded in reality” or “advance” toward financial independence. I took his words at face value and suggested that he take two gold coins and glue them to the soles of his shoes, so that every day he might tread on gold. From that moment on, coming down from the clouds, he set foot in reality and moved forward.