Jodorowsky, Alejandro - Psychomagic - The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy

So, you had asked this young man to interpret an existential situation as if it were a dream filled with symbols to decipher.

Exactly. Since we dream our life, we will interpret it and discover what it wants to say to us, the messages that it wants to transmit to us, as if transforming it into a lucid dream. Once the lucidity is reached, we are free to act in reality, knowing that if we seek only to satisfy our egotistical desires, we will be taken, we will lose all detachment, all control, and all possibility for a true act. To live amusing and effective lives—as much in the nocturnal dream as in the diurnal dream that we call our life—we must become less and less involved.

This detachment, which does not prevent action or compassion and does not authorize greed or sentimentality, looks a lot like wisdom.

Of course! What good is it to live with the dreams and to make an effort at lucidity if not to move toward wisdom? Reality is a dream on which we must work in order to progressively pass from the unconscious dream, lacking all lucidity, and which can be a nightmare, to what I call the sage dream.

And the Enlightened? The spiritual traditions say those that are Enlightened . . .

To wake up is to stop dreaming, to vanish from this oneiric universe, to become the dreamer.

FOUR

THE MAGIC ACT

How does one pass from the oneiric act to the magic act? Above all, what is the magic act according to Jodorowsky?

As I have said, it was in Mexico where I acquired a true command of the oneiric act. If Chile was, in the past, a poetic country, Mexico is an absolutely oneiric country where the unconscious flourishes. Any person just a little bit sensitive feels this dimension there, understands this dream presence in the very texture of Mexican reality. On the other hand, you could travel there for ten years without ever catching a glimpse of the Mexico magic. Mexico City comprises a whole world of sorcerers, a world that is very costly for uninformed foreigners to enter. When people are in bad shape or when things are not going well, they pay a call to a sorcerer who carries out a kind of purification. She scrubs the whole body using a heap of herbs soaked in holy water. This is an extremely common practice, and not only among the peasants. Intellectuals and politicians do not hesitate to devote themselves to it; so much is witchcraft part of Mexican life. Among these sorcerers, there are, of course, healers expert in hallucinogenic mushrooms and medicinal plants. Some are acquainted with up to three thousand herbs. Others use animal excrement exclusively. There are also bizarre creatures presenting phenomena that may be swindle or may be magic. For example, I remember a woman from a remote village who always went about scantily dressed in a nightshirt: steel spikes came out of her whole body.

Black magic is also practiced, and a number of sorcerers operate with evil spells. You can ask these sorcerers to cast an evil spell on an enemy. I have personally been witness to some things. For example, in one of my shows, I made fun of an influential woman whom everyone called la Tigresa and said she was the president’s mistress. My actors refused to perform, convinced that la Tigresa had cast a spell over the theater. So I agreed to have a sorcerer’s assistant come to lift the spell. I have to admit that I laughed when I saw him splash the theater with holy water. But then, while we had a coffee, he began to complain, and an immense boil pushed its way out onto his anus. This sudden eruption grew to such proportions that he had to go to the hospital. There was no doubt in his mind that he had absorbed into his body the bad spell cast over the theater.

Psychosomatic reaction?

It’s possible. But in any case, sometimes strange things happen . . . One day, a director of a fine arts school with whom I had just signed a contract told me, “You are naive. You swear by Mexico. Everything seems wonderful to you. But if you dare to look here in this drawer, you will discover there another aspect of this country.” So I moved near the drawer, opened it, and straightaway was overcome by an atrocious headache.

What then did this infernal drawer contain?

Horrible wax statuettes used by sorcerers to torture from afar the designated victims of their clients. Their features were, in themselves, so horrible to look at that I felt faint. If they were exhibited at Beaubourg or the Louvre, the public could see what power an art object can have, beneficial or maleficent. A work bearing such energy directly affects the organism of anyone who contemplates it. Although strongly disagreeable in itself, this experience made me wonder. I asked myself what could a beneficial artist be: the good magician whose works of art would be charged with such a positive force that they would push a spectator into ecstasy. It is a principle that served me thereafter in Psychomagic.

Can you give me an example?

I received a visit one day from a mother whose son was homosexual. This woman had never accepted her son’s difference. While continuing to devote a real affection to him, she felt real shame. The son wanted to become a pianist, but each time he took an exam or gave a concert, his mother panicked fearing his failure. The poor boy felt it and was so disturbed that he indeed failed. I quickly realized that this woman saw the pianist profession as an effeminate activity, one of homosexual character. So I gave her an exercise. The sorcerers who cast spells make little effigies of their victim then riddle it with pins. I asked this mother to proceed in the same way. So she made a figurine in the image of her son and used bitten fingernails, hair, and a piece of the boy’s clothing so that the object would be truly soaked with his energy. In accordance with my instructions, she glued a gold Louis under each foot and sprinkled a drop of white wine on each of the chakras. She splashed the statuette with holy water and placed it on the side of a piano with honey-coated keys—symbol of smoothness, sweetness. She left a candle constantly burning in the room, and for one hour each day, she came to pray for the success of her son. The following concert was a success, and the pianist’s relationship with his mother was transformed.

Is that good magic?

No, it is Psychomagic! Later, we will get back to the principles of Psychomagic, but I gave this example to show how I was inspired by the standard practice of black magic in Mexico. I wanted to reverse the process: if it can do evil from a distance, why not do good?

Okay, but it is not enough to have good intentions and simulate the reverse of popular evil spells. How do similar practices work?

Son and mother are connected psychically. If the mother had not made a step in the direction of adopting a different attitude—and performing the psychomagic act with the effigy came to embody the change, to confer a solidity, a materiality that would have otherwise been absent—the son would feel it, even if he were far away. He cannot but react. As the mother could not rationally accept the homosexuality of her child and forgive him, I gave her the concrete possibility of making a step in that direction by complying with a prearranged meticulous ceremony. That is the language the unconscious can understand. In the traditional analysis, it has to do with detecting messages sent by the unconscious and interpreting them into everyday language. Me, I do the reverse: I send messages to the unconscious using appropriate symbolic language. In Psychomagic, it is the unconscious that deciphers the information transported by the conscious.