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

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Could you explain to us what the tarot really is?

The tarot is a metaphysical machine. An organism of images and forms that is very difficult to summarize, one of humanity’s first optical languages. The tarot has twenty-two Major Arcana. If with the Spanish alphabet one can write Don Quixote, imagine what you can do with twenty-two cards, to which it is necessary to add another fifty-six Minor Arcana.

The tarot responds to some rules of optical projection. It is like a mirror that permits you to develop yourself by seeing more and more of yourself. I use it for others and also for myself, to gaze into this mirror and be able to understand ourselves. If, for example, I ask it, “What is prayer?” it responds. “What is love?” it explains it to me. “Who am I?” and there you appear. The tarot shows us the client’s unconscious, and if it can help, it helps. It serves to heal.

You can use the tarot for everything except reading the future.

When people are interested in the future, and they ask me, for example, “Am I going to find a mate?” I tell them, “This I am not going to tell you because it would influence you. What I am going to explain to you is why you have not yet found a mate.” They want to know, “Am I going to have money?” and what I show them is why they do not have money. “I do not know whether to live in Madrid or Barcelona,” another tells me and, well, the important thing is to know why you can’t decide. I reduce everything to the present.

Actually, I don’t believe in the future. It is something I do not even want to touch, because the brain has a tendency to obey predictions. To the person who has a bit of faith in you, if you say he is going to break his leg, he breaks it.

At times, what happens is that this big magic machine, the tarot, when it falls into the hands of pseudo-tarot readers, is reduced to an instrument for reading the future. They convert it into an object. It is a crime that they do not know that the tarot is a sacred work of art.

You have said that in order to read the tarot it is necessary to distance yourself from the client, to not interfere at all in that person’s life.

Yes and no. To read the tarot, it is necessary to identify totally with the client, but without interfering in that person’s affairs. It is necessary to respect him, without expecting to influence or use him.

I have always read for free—except for some months in the beginning when I had to make a living—not because I was generous, but because the tarot is something useful for others. If I charge, I distort it, and in this way, I cannot know it in depth. To read the tarot is to do good, and it is to make art.

In other words, what you do with the tarot is “consult the client.”

Yes. It is like a Geiger counter. It tells you what’s up, what’s happening, how a person is doing. It is told to the client himself. And at times, when a doubt or a choice exists, it responds. The tarot clarifies; it shows the will of the client and helps to uncover what is inside of him.

How can we understand what the tarot tells us?

At the beginning, trying to develop telepathy, I tried to predict. Then I dedicated myself simply to reading it, which did not impede my trying to see how the client was doing, how was his health, what were his passions, sexually or intellectually. I accept the client with his limitations. I feel his voice, I notice how his breath smells, and at times, I touch him. I capture all I can before pulling a card: I see how he mixes them, how he moves, how he acts, how he speaks to me.

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Throughout the history of humanity, the metaphor of personal transformation has taken different forms. One of these has been magic. Is magic possible without superstition?

Magic is not superstition; magic is the nature of the world. The world is not logical or rational, it is magic. Everything is closely related. For this reason, I called my book Reality Dance, because all events are aligned, united; time is not linear, the effects are sometimes produced before the causes; there are mysteries. Seventy percent of the world cannot understand it, like the chimpanzee does not understand 90 percent of the world. We have a lot to learn. Reality is miraculous, it is magic. It obeys nonscientific principles. Reality is not scientific.

And when we do not understand the nature of the world, we create superstitions?

Exactly, and we believe in things that are not real because we need them.

Does magic work in reality or in our way of seeing the world?

In magic, if you are conscious, you can see the metaphors, the analogies; for it to rain, the shaman makes noise with his fingers on the earth. If you have evolved, you realize, at a certain level, that this works because the analogy is useful. The unconscious accepts the metaphors. When you know the laws of the unconscious, you realize that magic drives these laws. Magic works on the unconscious.

I speak of the unconscious of reality, not of our little unconscious. To be mysterious, reality shows that a personal unconscious exists, as well as a familial one, one of the group, one of the planet, one of the universe. That is reality. The world is as much manifested as it is not manifested. The world is as much what it is as what it is not. The world is as much the possibilities that appear to us, as it is the infinite possibilities that hide from us.

Everyone is an immortal consciousness, an exact reproduction of the universe. Your unconscious is a particle and at the same time the totality of the cosmos. And say what they will with respect to your limited body, you are the complete consciousness. Let them tell you what they will about your ephemeral flesh; if you achieve integrating yourself into the divine consciousness, you are immortal. However, to achieve this, it is necessary to have enough humility to erase yourself personally and accept being only a channel. But if you present yourself as an all-powerful being who knows everything, you will be a fraud. For all that I tried to be more than what I am, I am not more than what I am. It is necessary to be conscious of what we are. The greatest power of your life is to be able to help, and the greatest blessing man has is to be able to live in peace. There are mysteries, but one does not dominate them. I have known little telepathic miracles that each day are a little bigger. But I do not arrive at things found in legends: “a teacher looks at someone and knows his name and birth date.” I don’t get to this, but I get to other things. Telepathy exists, I know.

How would you define black magic as opposed to white magic?

Black magic is a sick magic that tries to profit from the nature of the world. It is a useless magic because it is directed toward destruction. It exists only for those who believe in it. Opening that door can be very dangerous.

How can you explain the existence of a white magic and a black magic?

The spirit has deep roots, long branches. You can melt infinitely into the negative, into the darkness, or you can rise toward the light. It is a question of choice. But I do not want to speak about black magic because, like I said, it is a sick thing.

The technique, isn’t it actually applied magic?

We do not know what it is. We know it works. Just as we do not know what energy moves the universe. Still we ignore it. We can intuit how the world works, and this we call by many names, including God. What we are not able to understand, we call magic. But, in reality, it is a use of magic. We are talking of a use of magic, but we do not know exactly what it is. We do not control it. We cannot yet.