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

What are the laws of magic?

There are four: to love, to dare, to be capable, and to be quiet. “To be quiet” I understand as “to obey.” Strength at rest is the greatest strength. For this reason, at times, I tell this initiation story that relates how the strongest man in the Chinese Empire makes his demonstration of strength by taking a butterfly from a little box and saying, “I am so strong that I can take a butterfly by the wings without hurting it.” This is to be quiet.

It is necessary to manifest knowledge only when it asks us to, and if it does not, be quiet. One is giving; the other is forcing others to receive.

And how do you define “to love,” “to dare,” “to be capable,” “to be quiet”?

“To love”: If you do not love, you do not advance. There are those who do not want to cure themselves. The gospels tell us of when Jesus asked the paralytic if he wanted to walk, because if you do not want it, not even a god can cure you.

“To dare”: To cure yourself you must be willing to face the changes that the cure is going to produce. For forty years the paralytic was an invalid, so to be cured, for him, meant to not have money—he would not be able to beg anymore. When you are sick, you are really calling to others to cure you; you are asking for tenderness. Sickness is a request comedy. The sick person is screaming to be loved. It is necessary to dare to be cured, to enter into a new individuality in which you “unknow” the way. The cure produces a change and, in a certain way, a new personality.

“To be capable” means that once you are doing something, you enter into the fight, and you do not have to be your own enemy. To be capable, it is necessary to be one and to not be the other, to not fight against yourself, because that will produce a big neurosis and a failure for you.

“To be quiet” means that when you try to broadcast what you won, you lose, because now you’ve become an exhibitionist. This is the problem that some gurus have: they show their saintliness, and they lose it through the same act. The true master is invisible: no flowers, no necklaces, no rings, no photos, no school, no disciples. But to the true master, all of humanity is the disciple. In an unguided way, the true master lets wellness slip in and subtly introduces knowledge that can raise another’s level of consciousness. To be a master, neither school nor ambition is needed. A master obeys a superior universal will.

What does an alchemist do?

First we should define what an alchemist is: one who seeks the philosopher’s stone, who changes base metals into gold, who seeks a universal solvent, and finally who has the elixir for lasting life. The philosopher’s stone: the alchemist wants to develop inner values as much as possible, to grow as a human being, and thanks to this, to raise the level of consciousness and climb to other dimensions.

The elixir for lasting life is a person who accepts life and lives everything as it is without self-annihilation.

The universal solvent is a person who has developed divine love in his heart. Love is what dissolves all resistances.

VII

Why does laughing cure us?

In a certain way because to laugh is to dislodge what hurts or tortures us. Laughter distances us from our inner conflicts and unties the knots. It helps momentarily. It opens the levees and portions out happiness for a few moments. It works as well as a sneeze: quick and liberating.

That’s also how jokes work.

But there are many kinds of jokes. There are aggressive jokes and racist or sexual jokes, which are sick. People display a great deal of sickness with these kinds of jokes, which liberate them from the anxiety of being filled with these negative things. But certain jokes have a metaphysical, philosophical, or human content, and these are profound jokes. Humor was always used in the mystic schools. The Sufis told a story about the idiot sage Mullah Nasrudin, the Roshis Zen have something similar, and there is a whole series of jokes about rabbis. In the initiates’ training, the joke is as important an element as the sacred texts.

It seems incredible, but that’s how it is. Similarly, we have to understand folk tales, fairy tales, and legends, which are also valuable.

Although our culture denigrates them.

Yes, because our culture degrades everything that has deep meaning, for example, the tea ceremony. Tea was an essential element in oriental cultures, especially in China and Japan, like coffee in Sufism. However, now we drink tea at all hours, when in reality, it’s a sacred tool like marijuana is. When I went to Holland and asked how to take mushrooms, they answered, “Put them in pizza.” People eat them without any reverence. Everything sacred has been lost.

Recently, they sold at public auction the last art objects that André Breton left in his inheritance, and the curious thing is that the best treasures he had were his rocks. Breton dedicated himself to picking up beautiful pebbles. That, for him, was the best artwork that existed. Logically, they have no commercial value. Poetry doesn’t sell either. That is the marvel of true art, that no one has yet found a way to commercialize it. Man, when he achieves an adequate level of consciousness, feels the sacred in everything around him, and the world takes on this essence. The plants, the rocks, the joke: they are sacred; these things are consecrated. I knew a shaman who cured laryngitis with an infusion of cow dung.

Do you remember some special joke?

Each day I have a favorite joke. The one from yesterday had to do with a man who wins the lottery and they ask him if he is happy with the millions and he answers, “I am not happy because I bought two tickets, one gave me millions, but the other gave me nothing.” Instead of seeing the happiness in life, this man was anchored to the negative.

It is necessary to laugh at the absurdity of the world and to not believe anything . . . but not even in ourselves or in our own mutations?

Of course. There are different kinds of humor. Black humor, which creates distance from the world. Normal humor, which is to laugh at the world. Panic humor, which is to laugh heartily at oneself and be happy about life. It is not helpful to laugh at, like vulgar humor does, but to laugh with, like surrealist humor. Or panic humor, which is simply to laugh: to be happy in the middle of chaos and destruction. The Chinese showed their agreement with this idea by inventing the game of dying: a master died doing a handstand, cackling. This is to understand existence.

TEN

THE TRAIL OF LIFE

I

Do you think we can escape our origin or that we are determined by it?

We have destinies from the past, without a doubt, but what is necessary is to be conscious of them without being subservient to them. We can choose each step of our existence. In this is our freedom, in not letting the past determine our present and in not repeating the past.

Is it possible to intuit, as some traditions maintain, these previous experiences or influences that weigh on our lives?

I cannot talk of past lives, except to say that before birth there was something—I do not know what—and that after death there will be something—I do not know what either. This is all I can say for sure, the rest I do not know. Now, although we can imagine past lives, it would not be possible to say for sure that they were true. There is no way to prove it.