Alejandro Jodorowsky - The Dance of Reality - A Psychomagical Autobiography

Response: You are right. If your mother hates men, you must remain a child in order not to lose her love. Dress as you imagine this father you have never seen would dress. Over these clothes, put on women’s clothes, stolen from your mother. Go out and wander the streets dressed like that. As soon as you find a woman whom you like the look of, begin to stare at her while taking off the women’s clothes to expose your male suit. When you’ve made the change, go to the woman and tell her that you like her. She may reject you; she may accept. Experience the situation with pleasure. Later, paint an apple black and wrap your mother’s clothing around it, then wrap your “father’s” clothes around those. Then bring the package to your mother, giving it to her without explanation, saying only, “I am returning what you gave me.” The black apple symbolizes your existential angst.

17. A woman of seventy, who suffers from deafness, comes for a consultation to solve a problem with her forty-eight-year-old daughter, who complains that she has never listened to her.

Response: In the presence of your daughter, wash each ear seven times with rose-scented soap. Then anoint your ear canals with acacia honey, using the middle finger of the right hand for your left ear and the middle finger of the left hand for your right ear. Then ask your daughter to lick the honey while whispering everything that she wants to tell you.

18. An alcoholic woman who is about forty years old complains of being “nothing” and that she “cannot achieve.” She was raised Catholic and now practices Buddhism. When I ask her what her favorite drink is, she replies “red Bordeaux wine.”

Response: Buy a bottle of red Bordeaux wine. Go to church with it, sit on a bench, put it in front of you, and pray to it as if it were a saint. Then go to your Buddhist temple and meditate with the bottle between your legs to consecrate it. Then make a small altar in your home with flowers, incense sticks, and two lamps, one obtained from the church, the other from the temple. Thus you will have your own sanctuary in your home, and wine will become a magical elixir. At night, before going to sleep, rub your chest with it. This sacred wine will protect and heal you.

19. A very fat woman wants to lose weight. “My mother began to gain weight after giving birth to me. I carry with me the responsibility for her incessant diets, her ‘body drama.’ I weigh ten kilos more than she does.”

Response: Buy any object that weighs ten kilos, for example a TV, a vacuum cleaner, a collection of pots, and so forth. Put a picture of yourself on the package, naked and sad, and offer it to your mother, saying: “This is yours. I’m returning your gift to you.”

20. A painter of fifty years old who is a well-known artist confesses with shame that he hates his younger brother, born late to his parents. The baby came when he was twenty-two years old and “stole” his mother’s love.

Response: Buy a wooden bassinet, a life saver, and a large melon. Put the melon in the bassinet and the bassinet on top of the life raft. With an automatic pistol, shoot the fruit twenty-two times. Then pour a bottle of gasoline over its remains, set fire to it, and send the flaming melon and bassinet floating down a river on the life-raft. Then, to change the rage into acceptance, give twenty-two white roses to your brother.

21. A woman dressed in Hindu garments has spent twelve years in an ashram. Her guru, Muktananda, baptized her daughter with the name Krishna. There is something about this that makes her feel bad. In light of the Tarot, she realizes that this act reveals her unconscious desire to sleep with her teacher, elevated to the status of God the Father, in order to create a Christ (a Krishna), a perfect child.

Response: Buy a plaster figurine of Jesus Christ and paint it entirely blue to transform it into the god Krishna, who is of that color. Tie several orange balloons (Muktananda’s color) to the figurine’s feet and release it to the sky. Carry out this ceremony accompanied by your husband and daughter. When you see the Jesus figurine disappear, give the girl a Western name. Thus you will free her from the obligation to be a demigod and will restore her identity and her femininity.

Brief Psychomagical Correspondence

1. STEALING TO HEAL

When people say they cannot love, it is not because they have empty hearts. The anesthetized feelings build up like ice in a freezer. In this psychomagical act, instead of trying to give what is desired, a succession of dangerous situations provokes the awakening of the fundamental positive feeling: the love of life itself.

I wrote to you from Chile: “There are days when my vision becomes cloudy and I do nothing but lament being alive. I would be infinitely grateful to you if you would prescribe me a psychomagical act in order that I might be able to love without asking for so much in return.” You answered me: “Steal a raw heart from a supermarket on the sixth day of every month for a year. Cook the hearts, cut them into pieces, and give them to friends and hungry animals. Then you’ll be able to love.” From April 1997 to March 1998, I stole one heart each month from a different supermarket in Santiago. I was never caught, and each time completed the task of cooking it and then distributing it among friends and to animals. (It was hard to find hungry animals in my neighborhood, so I went out walking and generally gave them to the first dogs I saw.) Since the date indicated was the sixth (I suppose because card VI of the Tarot is the Lover), I was very nervous, terrified, at the beginning of every month. I used various strategies to steal the hearts: hiding them in my jacket pocket, in my underwear, under my cap, and so forth. During the summer it was even harder, because the weather was too hot for me to wear a jacket. Fortunately by then I was well experienced at shoplifting in supermarkets, so I was always highly successful. Another difficulty was that not all those large stores sell hearts. I had to visit several different ones to find them. As for the friends with whom I was supposed to share the cooked pieces, I mostly shared them with my family. Once in a while I shared them with someone I knew who happened to be in my house. In the last month, with the last heart, I invited a group of young neighbors. This social communion was a way of celebrating the fact that I had completed my task and had done well. Soon after, an uncle died, my mother’s brother, who I was very close to. The inner strength I had acquired allowed me to act with resolution with my family: this was something that surprised everyone. This strength was not a tough attitude, but rather meant that I had the appropriate attitude for the situation. Now, three months later, I’m learning a form of Brazilian dance that is also a martial art. The energy that I use in this activity, an energy that continues to grow, gives me a self-assurance that I had never experienced. I have just turned twenty-five, and I feel that I have great strength to love without asking for so much in return.

2. SYMBOLIC CONVERSATION

Thanks to symbolic acts one can enter into profound, cathartic relationships without reason intervening.

This was my question: “My brother hanged himself on the day of his twenty-eighth birthday. In a certain manner, I have carried the burden of my mother’s guilty suffering for this brutal death. How can I rid myself of it?” You answered me: “Carry a bocce ball that you have painted black in a white bag on your back for twenty-eight days. Afterward, offer it to your mother, saying, “This ball is yours, I am returning it to you.”