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

Whoa! That intrigues me. Would you consider reading some of them to me?

With pleasure. Since I cannot show an actual act, the letters will give you a taste of it. For you to really know the process, I am going to comment on the first letter, sentence by sentence. Afterward, while I read the others to you, I will leave it to you to guess the hidden reason behind each act. Remember, they seem irrational at first glance.

Let’s go . . .

Do not forget as I read these letters, that it is not me speaking but the person to whom I prescribed an act, the person rendering an account to me. This is the first letter, then, that I will comment on as I go along:

(Alejandro’s comments are between brackets in the text. Some minor corrections in grammar have been made to the letters. Most of the originals are in Alejandro’s possession and can be verified.)

I am a psychologist and I came to see you because I have not succeeded in working in my profession. I cannot earn a buck. You gave me the following psychomagic act: Take a double square flowerpot [I told her to take a double square flowerpot, like the tarot cards. Double square magic, also known as the spirit and the body. It was necessary to work with the two.] of a color chosen as an initiatory color. [What color? The person chooses the color that has symbolic strength for him, so that the object speaks to the person.] Then, divide the flowerpot into two parts and plant wheat! [There, I play with words. When you plant wheat, you put wheat in your pocket. It is not by coincidence that in French one sometimes calls money “wheat” (“dough” in English).] One part of the wheat is planted on one side of the double square flowerpot in order, in four lines, two lines of even possibilities and two lines of odd possibilities. [For me, to make the lines even and odd symbolizes the recognition of the man and woman inside oneself. In every initiation ceremony, the odd is masculine and the even is feminine. Giving the same attention to man and to woman, we recognize the couple, man and woman, inside each of us.] On the other side of the double square flowerpot, the wheat is scattered randomly. [There is an ordered side, which symbolizes the necessity of the intellect to work methodically, and a side in disorder, indicating trust given to the unconscious. This spatial condition demonstrates that perfect order only exists next to disorder.] You told me to put potter’s clay on the other side, the sterile side, and water it in the evenings with holy water [For me, clay is the human body. God made Adam by taking clay from the four corners of the earth—north, south, east, west. And with this clay from the four corners, he made a balanced man. So, the four corners reside equally inside us. If a person has not established equilibrium between his physical needs, his desires, his emotions, and his intellect, he cannot feel good. In a well-adjusted human being, these four energies are balanced. Concerning the holy water—that was prescribed so that the body is blessed. That is the first thing to do in an effort to recover contact with the feminine dimension inside oneself. In asking this woman to bless her body, I invited her to make it sacred and thus to no longer despise it, to recover possession of it.] then to make little hearts of wire and put them in the four corners of the room; you told me to then pray to my female ancestors. I buy green potter’s clay. I put it on the left side and, at night, I water it with holy water (water I had beforehand kept on my altar next to my Buddha). I likewise obtained the wire to make the little hearts. [I gave her work to do because in order to find work, it is necessary that one learns how to work. These little markers should fulfill her and mean: learn to love work, or you will never work.] February 20. I make the little hearts and put them where indicated. I also add more potter’s clay and holy water, and I pray to the women of my genealogy tree so that they will help me. The 24th, I continue adding the potter’s clay, the holy water, and prayer. For a month, nothing happened. [In fact, everything has already happened.] Some little sprouts appear on the left, but not like the right side. [Here, she expresses a refusal to see the differences between the left and the right. She puts them in a competition. It is as if she says, “A woman is not like a man. She is weak, inferior.” And while she remarks, “It is not like the right side,” one cannot but reply, “Of course not! Because the left side is the left side!” What a mystery! We know that in our patriarchal society, the left side is the feminine: the symbol of the passive side of the body. In India, the right hand is the hand of God (the hand used for eating) and the left is the hand of Earth (the hand used for cleaning the backside). And when one spits, one has to do it toward the left, never toward the right. In this case, we should understand the message transmitted to the inner woman: negate your femininity. And the Psychomagic, which operates through synchrony or, if you will, poetry, becomes apparent through these squares of wheat: guard your femininity, do not neglect your intuition, attend to your inner woman! As if the wheat said, “I do not grow because you do not love the earth. And you do not love the earth because you do not love yourself in your feminine dimension.”] After having added potter’s clay and holy water from time to time, I saw that the wheat had sprouted. [Interesting. Supposedly nothing happened, yet wheat sprouted!] The sterile side is less dense than the other. [Always the comparison . . . But even if only one tiny plant had sprouted, in a handful of earth stolen from a cemetery in the dead of winter, that would still be a miracle. Wheat sprouted in her bedroom—what a miracle!] I have two rows of six plants and two of five. [Adding them up makes 22. We remember I had her use a double square flowerpot so that this forms a tarot card. So, in this square, in the shape of a tarot card, are twenty-two plants, as many as are in the Major Arcana—another miracle!] I found work on March 2, and I am still working at the moment. I thank you for having helped me.

Success. So . . . I would be curious to hear another letter.

So, here’s another one, but I will not add any comments. The author is an American writer by the name of R. M. Koster. He had gotten writer’s block and began to sink into alcoholism. His wife knew of my work, and feeling that I could help him recover his creativity, she encouraged him to make a trip from Panama —where he was living then—to Paris so that I could prescribe a psychomagic act for him. I noted that he had not written a book in more than ten years. I’ll read the letter that he sent me after he was free of alcoholism and had started to write again. He describes a done deal .

This should be good.

In this writing, Koster adopts a humorous style that does not mask the tragedy that he has lived through. Listen:

Situation early March 1987: During the 1970s, I wrote three novels, all three very good, whose subject is an imaginary country of Central America, a metaphor of Panama, and my reactions to this country. Without my knowing it, these books would prefigure the story of the Republic of Panama because once these books were written, God decided to plagiarize me and turn my imaginings into reality. An artist predicts the future because, unlike others, he knows the present. While working on the third novel, I lost heart and became nervous when in the presence of soldiers. I had decided to not write any more about this imaginary country that was called Ténèbre and, in the last pages, I destroyed it by an earthquake. Since this book was finished in September 1978, I have not written anything more. I lost all confidence in my literary aptitude and began to drink. When I met you, I said: “Without confidence, you are not able to work. In order to write a novel, it is necessary to throw yourself off the top of a building. At that moment, you are writing without knowing where you are going. Maybe the firemen will catch you, maybe not; but if your chief concern is security, you have to go down using the stairs. One is secure but one does not write a novel. When one claims to be living life, but takes the stairs, one does not truly live. The moment comes when you have to take a leap.” Your response was, “You are possessed by an old ‘I.’ When you wrote the book, it was another ‘I’ who wrote it, other characters who spoke. But these characters exist in your unconscious; they are part of you. And what do you do? You broke with them; you assassinated them. So, these beings are angry with you because you did not bring your novel where it was to go. In creativity, one must obey. When one is in the process of creating, it is necessary to give in, let the creation sprout like a mushroom. We must obey what sprouts inside of us, and you did not do that, you cut off your creativity.” I accepted your analysis, having always been convinced that it is the book that searches the writer, the same way the female seeks the male, and not the reverse. You recommended I: