Alejandro Jodorowsky - The Dance of Reality - A Psychomagical Autobiography

According to magical thinking, a person’s clothes are the extension of that person. For this reason, witches do to the clothes what they would like to do to the person.

I came to see you because, having found the love of my life, I had tortured myself by believing that, out of economic necessity, I had to prostitute myself (something recommended by my mother, a woman who had completely erased my father, burning photographs of him and keeping his identity secret; sometimes I think I may be the daughter of my grandfather). Faced with my partner’s moral purity, I felt dirty, despicable. You asked me if I had kept some of the clothes that had been used to attract customers. I told you I kept them all in a trunk. You told me to put them all on, however many they might be; one outfit over the other. Then I should lie down on my mother’s bed (I live with her) at 3:00 in the afternoon and stay there until midnight. Then I should get up, and in the garden by the light of the full moon, after being sprayed with seven liters of holy water I should wash all the clothes in a tub, without soap, which would require me to wring and rub them forcefully. After washing, according to your instructions, I set up three strings in my room and hung up the wet clothes. Then I placed containers under them to collect the dripping water. The next morning I gathered the clothes, dug a hole in the garden, buried them there, and planted a tree that I watered with the water collected in the containers. Then I performed a second act: you told me to buy a life-size plaster statue of Christ, place it in my room, and cover it with all the whips that I had used to lash masochists. It had to stay there, starting on the twenty-second day of the month, for a period of twenty-two days. Every night before bed I had to observe this statue and meditate, connecting my old work to spirituality. In a way, the whips became sacred objects. You had told me that, according to legend, the spear that wounded Christ later began to grow roses from its tip, the petals of which cured blindness. You remarked: “In contact with the divine, even the most vile object becomes sacred.” The result: I have left my mother’s home, and without remorse, I live with the man I love. We have decided to stop using birth control.

9. LETTER TO THE ABSENT PARENT

We are united with the collective unconscious. Whenever we commit an act, even if it is anonymous, the world responds. What we do to others, we do to ourselves.

During the consultation you spoke to me about an unconscious contract that I had made with my father when I was a girl (“I will love only you”), which prevented me from fulfilling myself emotionally. My father went out one day to buy matches and never returned. You advised me to free myself from this bond by writing him a letter telling him everything I felt about our relationship and insulting him for having fled in such an irresponsible manner. I should also write “I will love only you” on a piece of paper, sign it with a drop of blood, then tear it to pieces and put them in the envelope with the letter. I was to address the envelope as follows:

Mr. Absent Father

Unconscious Street

City of Myself

Universal Consciousness

I wrote the letter and put it in the mail with several stamps on it and no return address. I cried, feeling rage invade me, burning the inside of my chest. But then I was overtaken by a peace that I had never felt before. The following week, to my immense surprise, the mailman deposited the letter I had sent in my mailbox. How did the post office know that I had sent it? Certainly not from the postmark on the stamps, because I did not mail it in my neighborhood; I do not believe in miracles, there must be some mysterious explanation. But I remember that in one of your lectures, you told this story: a student asked the great mystic Ramakrishna, “If I throw a stone into the infinite, where does it land?” The enlightened man replied, “It lands in your hand.” In any case, I sincerely thank you for this act, which has led me to make progress. Especially because something has happened that seems related to that letter: without any inquiry on my part, an association has offered me a job as a teacher in a poor neighborhood. They use very comprehensive methods in which the parents, who are skillfully advised by pediatricians, heal their relationships with their children.

10. THE FALSE INVALID

To see yourself, you must realize how others see you. The essential being is imprisoned in a psychological cage built from others’ gazes.

My first sexual experience was traumatic. I immediately got pregnant and secretly had an abortion. I was ill for several months. From then on, I only met men who did not function well sexually. I was married for twenty years to a premature ejaculator. I asked you what to do. You answered: “You must understand that these men are prisoners of their egotism and none of them have seen you as you feel yourself to be. Because of your sensual appearance, they think you are a passionate woman, when in fact you are living as a sexual invalid. We must do everything possible to make them see you as you really are. I advise you to have someone push you around public places in a wheelchair for six days in a row. The daily ride should last six hours.” The next day I found the specialized store where I could rent the chair, and a friend agreed to come. As soon as she wheeled me out into the street I burst into tears, I felt ashamed, I felt like a living corpse exposed to the eyes of the whole world. Although it was a hot day, my legs went numb, and the fatigue of more than twenty years of hopeless fighting fell down upon me. I saw my reflection in a shop window. That was me, that woman dressed in black, cowering there. I became aware of the self-flagellation that has been my life. I almost went mad with anger, then became grateful for this opportunity to plunge into the reality of my feelings, to come out on the other side of my frustration. The next day I dressed as seductively as possible. We went to have lunch at an Indian restaurant, but I could not get through to the dining rooms. Two young men, with big smiles, carried me in my wheelchair. I made no effort to hide the satisfaction on my face. I have lost the fear of desiring and being desired. After six days, I had expelled twenty years of fears, stagnant desires, and scorned sexuality. I decided to treat the gazes of men as complicit sexuality. When I returned the wheelchair I was filled with joy and also sadness for the woman who, in her denial of existence, had immobilized herself. For the first time, I felt that I was advancing toward life.

*1 The Chilean term for an individual from the poorest class, who was usually illiterate.

*2 Mantra of the Heart Sutra.

*3 A Chinese game related to dominoes, which uses 144 wooden tiles.

*4 [Dictator of Chile from 1973 to 1990 — Ed. ]

*5 Premises or room where zazen, Zen Buddhist meditation, is practiced.

*6 Sectarian movement founded by the author Lafayette Ronald Hubbard.

*7 Elephant trainer.

*8 Sacred Mapuche festival.

*9 [ Partido Revolucionario Institucional, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which held power in Mexico prior to Fox’s victory. — Trans. ]

Alejandro Jodorowsky was born in Tocopilla, Chile, in 1929. During his career as tarologist, therapist, author, actor, theatrical director, and director of cult films ( El Topo, The Holy Mountain, and Santa Sangre ) he developed psychomagic and psychogenealogy, two new therapeutic techniques that have revolutionized psychotherapy in many countries. Psychogenealogy served as the background for his novel Donde mejor canta un pájaro (Where a Bird Sings Better), and psychomagic was used by Jodorowsky in the novel El niño del jueves negro (Black Thursday’s Child). Both of these techniques are discussed and explored in his book Psicomagia ( Psychomagic ), in his autobiography La danza de realidad ( The Dance of Reality ), and in Métagénéalogie: L’arbre généalogie comme art, thérapie et quète de Soi ( Metagenealogy: Self-Discovery through Psychomagic and the Family Tree ), written with Marianne Costa. He has also written two books on the therapeutic application of the Tarot: La vía del Tarot ( The Way of Tarot ), written with Marianne Costa, and Yo, el Tarot (I, the Tarot).