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

Interesting . . . Claudie did not believe, but she allowed it, unlike the magazine editor who let it go to his head.

Yes. For the practice to work, it was necessary, above all, to participate in the game without seeking to understand. For my part, however, I tried hard to take hold of some of the mechanisms at work in the process of healing and to be able to use them later. I remember, for example, one of my friends who felt extremely weak. Pachita told him to stop taking vitamins. She ordered him to go to the butcher, to steal a piece of meat and eat it. He should perform this ritual once a week. Of course, he recovered all of his energy, in my opinion, for one very simple reason: commitment to a weekly crime was for this poor timid man an act of unheard of audacity. He had to mobilize all of his energy. He discovered himself stronger and decided to believe it, and his life changed from the instant that he developed another perception of himself. This, at least, is how I explain it.

Between capturing certain subtle psychological mechanisms at work in the sorcery practiced by Pachita and prescribing psychomagic acts there is a big gap. How did you cross it? How did you go from reflecting on a magic act to the practice of Psychomagic?

As you know, I studied the tarot a lot, and I enjoyed a certain reputation as a tarologist. Author of comic books, filmmaker, and stage director, I never looked to earn my living through the cards; however, I wanted to, at one time, study the tarot further. For that, it was necessary to communicate with others, to practice giving readings. So I went to rue des Lombards to the bookstore called Arcane 22 that specializes in the tarot. Because the owners respected me, I suggested that they outfit a little room in the rear of the boutique and hire me to receive two people per day for six months to give professional readings. They posted an ad, and clients came. I am not going to exaggerate my idea of the tarot. Suffice it to say, I do not read the future but I content myself with the present and focus the client on self-knowledge, starting from the principle that it is useless to know the future if one ignores who one is here in the moment. In short, I gave these consultations, which aroused in me certain thoughts. The more I advance, the more I notice that all problems stem from the genealogy tree.

What do you mean to say by that?

To enter into a person’s difficulties is to enter into his family, to penetrate the psychological atmosphere of his domestic milieu. We are all marked, not to say contaminated, by the psychomental universe of our people. A number of people have associated with them a personality that is not theirs, one that is borrowed from one or more members of their emotional environment. To be born into a family is to be, if I may say it this way, possessed.

This possession is transmitted from generation to generation: the enchanted becomes the enchanter in projecting onto his children what was projected onto him—unless an awakening comes to break the cycle. At the end of their two-hour consultation, a number of people exclaimed, “I have not discovered so much in two years of analysis!” So I was happy with myself, convinced that only an awakening sufficed to eradicate problems. Yet that was not true. To undo a difficulty, it is not sufficient to clearly identify the problem. An awakening that is not followed by some action serves nothing. From that, little by little, I glimpsed that I had to advise people. And yet, I refused. What right had I to intrude into people’s lives, to try to influence their behavior? I did not want to become a sorcerer myself! It was a difficult position, because the people who came to see me asked for that: I would have had to become their father, their mother, their husband, their spouse . . . But I was not disposed to become a director of consciousness, to interfere in anyone’s existence. So, something was imposed on me: for the awakening to become operable, I must make the person act, lead them to commit a very precise act, but I must do so without taking charge or assuming the role of guide regarding their life. Thus, the birth of the psychomagic act in which I joined together all that I had absorbed over the years and all that I had talked about in interviews.

How did you proceed?

First of all, I would thoroughly study the person, compel him to tell me absolutely everything. Instead of trying to divine, by way of the tarot, what could be well hidden, I subjected him to a very simple interrogation. I would question my clients about birth, parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, sexual life, relationship with money, emotional life, intellectual life, health . . .

A true confession.

Absolutely, and I quickly became a record holder of dreadful secrets! Thefts, rapes, incest . . . A man confessed a childhood secret: At the end of one school year, he waited for a hated teacher, planning to throw a big rock at his head from the top of a wall. Maybe the teacher died, but the boy didn’t stick around to find out . . . One day, I received the father of a Belgian family, and I immediately guessed him to be homosexual. “Yes, I confess, and I have sexual relations with ten people a day at the saunas, every time I come to Paris. And do you know what my problem is? I would like to be able to do it with fourteen, like my friend.” The skeletons began to come out of the closets. I gathered up the blackest, most extravagant secrets. Incest erupted: a woman confessed to me that the father of her daughter was no other than her own father; a boy seduced by his mother told me everything . . . Sadomasochism, homosexual fixations, masturbation . . . Everything has happened! People were free to tell all because they trusted me, and they judged me capable of proposing a therapy adapted to their cultural and social heritage.

Why do you have to receive such a detailed confession?

Because, before taking on whatever the problem may be, it is most important to know the situation. This principle I learned from the author of The Book of Five Rings, Mijamoto Musachi. He says that before combat, one must surrender very early to the situation and acquire a perfect knowledge of it. Certain doctors also apply this method. A familiarization with a person’s psycho-emotional state appears to me to be a prerequisite for the prescription of a psychomagic act.

How does the tarot play in all of this? If a person confesses, you don’t need to guess at anything.

People usually make only partial confessions. They guard the best, if I dare say, for later. The tarot helps me to expose certain shameful secrets right off the bat. Then, working with all the elements, I’m ready to recommend an irrational and, at the same time, rational act: irrational in its appearance but rational in that the person knows why it has to be done. On the other hand, all psychomagic acts have perverse, that is to say, uncontrollable, effects—which are precisely what gives Psychomagic its richness.

Please explain.

I’m going to give you an example. One day I received a visit from a Swiss woman whose father had died in Peru when she was eight years old. Her mother had erased all traces of this man, burning his photos and letters. So my client had remained emotionally eight years old. In her forties, she still talked like a little girl and had big problems. I prescribed an act to her: she must go to Peru to the places where her father had lived and bring back something, a souvenir, a palpable trace of his existence. Upon returning to Europe, she had to place whatever mementos she brought back in her room, light a candle, then go to her mother’s home and slap her across the face. Specifically because her mother had always mistreated her and poured insults on her. As you will see, accomplishing the act required a real commitment. She went to Peru and found the boarding house where her father had lived and, by one of those synchronicities which reveal what I call “Reality Dance,” found letters and photos. Her father had entrusted them to the owner of the boarding house in the hope that his daughter would come one day to take possession of them. My patient found, several decades later, the mementos he had left, and thanks to them, she was able to “resurrect” her father. Reading these letters and looking at the photographs, she stopped seeing her father as a ghost and ended up feeling that he had been a flesh and blood being. Upon returning to her home, she placed the letters and photos in her room, lit the candle, and went to see her mother with the intention of really smacking her. Mother and daughter ordinarily had a very difficult relationship. Yet my patient was surprised to discover that her mother—to whom she had announced her visit—was waiting for her and, for the first time, had prepared a meal. Stupefied to see her being so nice, she was embarrassed at the idea of slapping her, especially since her mother gave her no cause. But the psychomagic act supposes a closed contract that she had to respect. So, at the moment of dessert, she smacked her mother by surprise and for no apparent reason, already anticipating a furious reaction because she had always felt terrorized by her mother. So, the mother contented herself to simply ask, “But why did you do that?” Before such an opening, the daughter finally found the words and could express all the grief that she held toward her. Do you know what the mother concluded? “You smacked me,” she said, “and, as well, you should owe me another.” Through this act, a friendship finally formed between these two women.