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

How many people have I heard give similar reports that Jodorowsky had, with the aid of a tarot card or solely with the power of observation, summed up their current difficulty in a word and exposed some arcane secret of their nature to broad daylight?

During a visit one day, I was shocked to witness Jodorowsky, who had never previously met the friend I had brought along, and without her formulating a question or drawing a card, sum up in a few sentences the essentials of the situation in which she found herself. No surprise then that our man inspires such passion and devotion.

The king Jodorowsky sits enthroned in his court, surrounded by swarms of followers for whom the Mystical Cabaret is like a very holy mass. There are those who for years have not missed a service, gathering with devotion to follow the master’s most unusual sermons . . .

I would like to make it clear that I am not part of the flock. To use the terms Jodorowsky uses in the postscript to La Trampa Sagrada, the “nearly young man” that I am has more to learn from the “nearly old man,” and it is, above all, as friends that we have conversed. It is with a healthy confusion that I sometimes oppose his stories, and this has the positive result of obliging him to clarify his thoughts.

Because of his dazzle, which always provokes fascination, one can also become doubtful or even irritated; for, as exact as they often are, these right-out-of-the-box intuitions sometimes seem a bit hasty. After seeing him indulge in his lightning treatments in the framework of the Cabaret where, in the space of one evening, he boasts about unraveling old psychological knots as a result of the genealogy tree embellished with the zest of “Psychomagic,” the spectator, sympathetic but having conserved a wisp of critical sense, cannot help but swing between admiration and skepticism, amazement and doubt. Admiration and amazement, at the breathtaking performance of this actor par excellence, his ability to manage and to guide the energy of a hall of five hundred people, and the iron relevance of his observations. Skepticism and doubt, as these evenings are garnished with laughter and emotion while human woes are staged with a mad audacity in which complexes and traumas are exposed to broad daylight then treated by the “master” with a clever combination of keenness, outrageousness, and benevolence . . . ushering in a new genre, that of spiritual-analytical “reality show.” One leaves the hall both seduced and worried, wondering about the real consequences and the long-term effects of this jumble of artistic therapy.

There is something of the old-fashioned tooth puller and snake oil peddler in this visionary of Vincennes who describes himself as a “sacred trickster.” But this facet of “transcendental charlatan,” an integral part of the Jodorowsky character, is in the final analysis at the service of a rare compassionate energy. One can also very well say that Alejandro is a bodhisattva à la South American salsa—a spicy salsa, very spicy . . .

He is not a sacred trickster simply because he claims to be; under the excess and the apparent ease of this unconventional artist is a lot of rigor (a particular rigor, but rigor all the same), an inexhaustible creative potential, a profound poetic vision, and, I believe, a lot of kindness.

Our man has a pure heart. If he is king, Jodo doesn’t abuse his absolute power, which some of his subjects have granted him. His Majesty is his own fool, never hesitating to put his teachings on trial and through a good measure of buffoonery. Although he doesn’t disregard homage from his disciples, he also has no desire to become an idol. Fundamentally disinterested—as I myself have had numerous occasions to verify—Jodorowsky remains, in my opinion, a lucid being, made of his talents as well as of his limitations.

Having had the chance to be in contact with some true masters, such as the Japanese Ejo Takata who marked him with the red iron of Zazen, he knows not to be a guru in the strict and noble sense of the word but rather to be a kind and disturbing genius with whom anyone can walk a stretch of the way.

“Grow up a little,” Jodorowsky yelled one day to his daughter Eugenie, aged twenty; and she replied: “Why don’t you grow down a little!” The fact that Alejandro himself, not without pride, related this to me—his progeny’s fine response—says a lot about his character.

Servant of the truth, although at times with the air of an impostor, a brazen acrobat who asks no more than to be silent and bow down before those who surpass him, Jodorowsky is very much a crazy shaman. If the mystical clown indeed has what it takes to immediately inspire fascination or repulsion—and sometimes both—there is much to be gained by knowing him in all of his interior richness.

Even though he has published several novels and countless comic strips, Jodo waited for retirement age to put down on paper what he holds closest to his heart. Following the thread of our conversations, Alejandro took me on a magical journey with all the art of a Castaneda writing for the theater. It is this journey to which you are now invited. This book is as much an artistic-spiritual autobiography as it is a guide for a new therapy. As an open window to a world in which poetry embodies riots, in which theater transforms into ritual sacrifice, and in which a real witch, armed with a kitchen knife, cures cancers, transplants hearts, and nourishes dreams, it is my hope that this book will remain as the legacy of a far from ordinary individual’s journey among us.

GIILS FARCET

PARIS, 1989–1993

ONE

THE POETIC ACT

I suppose the birth of what you call Psychomagic responded to a need . . .

Exactly. During the time of my life that marks my activity as a tarologist, *3I received at least two people per day to read their cards . . .

You predicted their future?

Not at all! I do not believe in the real possibility of predicting the future, insofar as from the moment you see the future, you modify it or you create it. To foretell an event is to provoke it; in social psychology this is called “self-fulfilling prophecies.” I have here a text by Anne Ancelin Schutzberger, professor at the University of Nice, which evokes precisely this phenomenon:

If one carefully observes the pasts of a certain number of terminally ill cancer patients, one will notice that many times it has to do with people in infancy predicting something about themselves, which developed into an unconscious “life script” (of themselves or of their families) related to their life and death, at times including the date and time, their age, the very moment that they actually find themselves in the position of dying. For example, at thirty-three years (Jesus Christ’s age at death) or at forty-five (the age of the person’s mother or father at the time of their deaths) or when his son turned seven years old (because this person was orphaned at seven) . . . These are examples of a kind of automatic realization of personal or family predictions.

In the same way, according to [Robert] Rosenthal, if a professor predicts (in his own head) that a poor student’s performance will remain so, it is certain that it will not change. By contrast, when the professor considers that the student is intelligent but timid and predicts (again, only in his own head) that the student will make progress, the student begins to progress. It is a surprising discovery but verified often and sufficiently enough to inspire a serious distrust of those who, under the pretext of possessing supernatural gifts, take the liberty of predicting events that their client’s unconscious will translate into personal desires with the purpose of obeying the soothsayer’s orders. As a result, the client assumes the work of realizing these predictions, many times with fatal consequences. All predictions are a seizing of power whereby the soothsayer takes pleasure in writing destinies, thus high-jacking the normal course of a life.