Alejandro Jodorowsky - The Dance of Reality - A Psychomagical Autobiography

Another piece of advice I gave several times, each time of course with variations, was for people who suffered from having an invasive mother. Even if they did not live with her, she was in their minds all the time, controlling their lives. I proposed that they treat her as an idol. In India, people feed gods who are represented by sculptures. This means that they bring them offerings of flowers, incense, and food. During the time that I was directing for Maurice Chevalier, I was invited to dinner at his mansion. There I saw a bench where the singer knelt to pray. In the place where Christ or the Virgin would normally be, there was the portrait of a woman. It was the singer’s mother. He had exalted her to the status of an idol. Inspired by this, I recommended that instead of fighting fruitlessly to expel the invader, who would keep growing the more they attacked her, my clients should give her a precise location in the house. A photo of the mother should be placed on a small altar, but in a steel frame covered by a wire screen so the subconscious can be assured that the “beast” will not escape. Then, in order to feel that she is satisfied, they should honor her by depositing fresh flowers before her, burning incense, keeping a candle bought at a church burning there at all times. In addition, every time they eat they should save a few morsels of food to place in a saucer before the maternal idol. Thus well fed, she will cease to devour them.

Many consultants suffered problems related to self-worth. Drawing inspiration from the shamanic techniques of Don Ernesto, I asked them to take a sheet of nice paper and write down all the things they wanted to be rid of: crippling self-criticism, lack of talent, pathological jealousy, shyness, and so on, to sign the list with a drop of their own blood, and to bury it. I followed my own advice: for twenty years, I had been polishing and editing my first novel, El loro de siete lenguas (The Parrot of the Seven Languages), thinking that no one would ever read it. I buried my “failed novelist.” Two months later, I received a phone call in Paris from a Chilean publisher, Juan Carlos Sáez, who had heard from a friend of mine that I had written a novel and offered to publish it. It was published.

For some male clients who complained of not being able to find a lover, I recommended that they write in indelible ink on a pink silk ribbon, “I wish with all my heart to find a woman,” sign it with a drop of their blood, and then tie it around the penis and keep it there for a day and a night.

Some women asked me for a psychomagical act that would enable them to find a man. To those appearing to be shut away in themselves, who were timid and unable to express anger against their fathers, I advised going to a specialized school for shooting lessons, not only with pistols and rifles but also with machine guns. I received a letter from one client effusively thanking me for my advice, who told me she was now in a relationship with her instructor. Later she came to me asking for a psychomagical act that would allow her to break free of this man.

Abortions made necessary by emotional or economic problems cause deep trauma. The woman, feeling guilty, becomes depressed and cannot come to terms with it. There may be a crisis in the couple’s relationship as they move further and further away from each other. To help my clients in these cases, I suggested that they think of a fruit to identify with the fetus — some chose a raspberry, some a mango, others a small tangerine. Having chosen a fruit, the woman should place it on her bare belly and fasten it there with four strips of flesh-colored bandage. A friend, the husband, the lover, or a family member should dress as a surgeon, cut the bandages and take the fruit out, acting as if pulling it out with great difficulty. During this action, the consultant should relive the feelings she experienced during the operation and express them aloud. Then the “fetus” should be placed in a small hardwood box, and she and the man who inseminated her (or her current partner, a friend, or a family member) should go to a beautiful place, dig a hole with their hands, bury the “coffin” there, and plant a sapling on top of it. Once this is done, the man should kiss her on the lips, slipping a honey candy into her mouth.

When people consult me who have pimples on their faces and I see that they have had a lack of attention from their parents, I advise them to get their mother and father to spit into a green clay pot that they hold in their right hand. Then, with the middle and ring fingers of the left, they should stir the clay and saliva to form a paste that is then applied to the pimples or eczema.

In extreme cases where the child abuse has been so cruel that the damage seems incurable, I advise the client to die. and then be reborn as someone else. I advise him to choose a beautiful place; dig his grave there aided by a group of friends; read his funeral rites facing the grave; then lie down, naked and wrapped in a sheet. His friends will cover him with dirt (of course leaving his mouth and nose exposed), and he will stay there, mimicking the emptiness of death, for at least forty minutes. When he says he is ready his friends will disinter him, wash him, put new clothes on him, and baptize him with a new name.

When a child has unconsciously been given an abominable name, such as that of a sibling who died before he or she was born, that of a relative who committed suicide, or other tragedy, I advise changing the name. To prevent the child from feeling dispossessed of her identity, she should be given two small boxes, one gray and one gold. “In this gray box you will keep your old name.” On a simple, opaque card, the mother or father writes the child’s name and puts it in the gray box. “And from this box”—the golden box is opened and a brightly colored card with cheerful decorations is taken out—“you get a new, better name.” And they read the new name on the card. “From now on you will be called by this name. When you want to remember your old name, take it out of the gray box for a moment, greet it, then put it back again.”

For divorced women who cannot get over the anger they feel toward their ex-husbands, I have advised sticking a photograph of the man’s face onto a soccer ball and kicking it around.

I have advised people who were never cuddled to get their partner or a friend to give them a long massage using acacia honey instead of oil, completing the massage by rubbing them all over their body with a photo of their mother in the left hand and one of their father in the right hand.

Sometimes I have used active poetry as a remedy for people who suppress their feelings. I told a frustrated musician to get up at dawn and listen to the songs of the birds while repeatedly saying, like a litany, “They are happy because I exist.” I told a woman who felt nonexistent to stand in the middle of a bridge at midnight in the summertime, repeating many times while looking at the current, “The river passes but the reflection of the stars remains.” I advised a man who suffered from thinking that he was fundamentally disagreeable to whisper in the ears of a hundred people (relatives, friends, colleagues, etc.), “A single firefly in the dark night lights up the whole sky.”

Little by little, I was daring to propose more complex acts. At the time of writing, every Wednesday, without any advertising and always for free, aided by the Tarot I prescribe psychomagical acts to around twenty people. Fortunately, my partner, Marianne Costa, has taken notes of this advice (which can be found in Appendix I of this book), because I, being in a state of trance, forget it after a few minutes.

I once gave a series of interviews to Gilles Farcet, which was published in the book Psychomagic. His readers wrote to me asking for private sessions, which I did for a year in order to confront important problems and to experiment with new directions in this form of therapy. Many psychoanalysts, osteopaths, and doctors of so-called New Medicine (students of Dr. Gérard Athias in the south of France) took my courses and applied them to their disciplines. Later, the SAT Institute (Seekers After Truth), headed by the psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo, a direct disciple of Gestalt therapy founder Frederick Perls, invited me to teach some courses in Spain and Mexico, where three hundred future therapists learned the techniques of tarology, psychogenealogy, and above all, psychomagic. I also formed groups of students of the psychoanalyst Antonio Ferrara in Santiago de Chile, and then in Naples. To convey this art, which I practiced in a state of trance, I had to force myself to find “laws” that would allow scientific minds to delve into its mysteries.