The Dance of Reality: A Psychomagical Autobiography

by Alejandro Jodorowsky

  A very sensitive woman, Barbara, accused herself of being confrontational and destructive. “Because of this, I have destroyed the lives of my three daughters.” She wanted to rid herself of the “shadow” of her maternal grandmother, also confrontational and destructive. “My mother is always telling me that I look like her, that I’m following the same path, that I’m causing the same damage. In spite of all sorts of therapies, I can’t get rid of this shadow.” I advised her to dress up like her grandmother—underwear, clothes, shoes, wig—and stand next to a large surface covered by white paper, onto which she would cast her shadow with a spotlight. Her mother should draw the outline of the shadow with an indelible pen and then fill in the outline with black paint. After this the client should roll up the metaphorical shadow, go to a river, and facing away from the current, throw in both the shadow and the old costume over her left shoulder, then leave without looking back.

  Sometimes these psychological shifts result in a dead relative possessing us without our realizing it, prompting us to seek reparation. In these cases, instead of struggling against those urges that we feel to be alien, we should submit to them. One man, with a face as inexpressive as if carved in stone, was deserted by his wife, who left him after giving birth to their daughter and returned to her parental home after one year of marriage. Her mother had done the same thing: right after giving birth, she had abandoned her husband and returned to the parental home. The man was suffering because he loved his wife and wanted her back. He thought that his wife had gotten bored of him because of his taciturn nature. I advised him to hire a band of mariachis and go to serenade his wife in the Mexican style. When his wife’s mother had returned to her parents, her proud husband had never gone looking for her. What she was asking for was proof of love. “Your wife is possessed by her mother and is repeating her act, hoping that finally her husband will behave like a man in love. You should also go dressed in traditional mariachi costume. It’s not really about you seducing your wife; it’s about her father seducing her mother.”

  When a problem seems to have no solution because the client admits that he or she is the culprit and, out of repentance, feeling unable to repair the fault, brings about an illness, an economic or emotional failure, or a suicidal obsession, I turn to the concept that the “crimes” can be paid for. During the uprising against foreigners in Algeria, a son of French parents who had settled there watched from his bedroom window as his father and mother left the house, started their car, and were blown up by a bomb placed there by the revolutionaries. Instead of suffering, he began to laugh, feeling liberated from these narcissistic, intolerant, cold parents. Years later he came to see me, overwhelmed by guilt. He could not accept that he had felt so inhumane about the beings that had given him life. I did not allow myself to excuse his action by telling him that the person who had laughed was his badly mistreated inner child. Instead, I affirmed his guilt. Then I advised him to make a financial sacrifice by buying two very expensive jewels, traveling to Algeria, and burying the precious gems exactly at the spot where the car had exploded, without letting anyone see. Thus the emotional debt would be paid.

  Sometimes an unjust feeling of guilt can lead to a neurosis of failure. One woman had been told too many times by her parents, “When you were born, you created a problem for us: we were poor. Your arrival plunged us even further into financial difficulties.” I recommended that she exchange a five-hundred-franc note for the same amount in five-centime coins. Carrying this heavy weight in a bag at the level of her belly, she should walk along a main street scattering handfuls of coins as if they were seeds while thinking to herself, “I am giving wealth to the world.”

  Another technique is to transfer the painful feeling to an object and then “give” it to whoever has done the damage. One woman consulted me because she felt she had a symbiotic relationship with her sister, who unceasingly gave her orders, taking control of her will. Although this sister had died of breast cancer, my client still felt owned by her and wanted to be released. I advised her to put a steel ball, such as those used for playing boules, into a leather bag and wear it around her neck day and night. “Resist that weight as much as possible, because it symbolizes your sister, and when you can no longer support it, go to see your mother and give her the ball, saying, “This object is not mine, it’s yours. I am giving it back to you. It would be good if you would bury it.” I explained that competitive relationships between siblings are caused by the instability of the parents.

  A lesbian woman suffered because she did not feel at ease with her lover. She had been sexually repressed and often lacked sexual energy, although sex had worked well with her lover until her desire ceased because her lover constantly asked her to be perfect, as her mother had done before her. I advised her to steal some of her mother’s dirty clothes, dress her lover in them, lie in bed with her, and during sexual relations tear up these garments with rage while shouting, “I’m not perfect, and you’re not my mother!” Then she should give her lover a massage with rose-scented oil. After this, she should wrap the shredded clothes in white paper and tie up the package with a blue ribbon. In another package of black paper tied with a pink ribbon, she should wrap up a new dress. She should send both packages to her mother with a letter saying, “I do not know if you will understand this: I have destroyed your old dress to return it to you changed into a new one. Thank you.”

  Another woman, very distressed, said that she was having terrible problems with her period. She felt as if she would never stop bleeding. After analyzing her family tree, I told her, “You are suffering the anguish of your mother. You are bleeding because of the kicks in the belly that your maternal grandfather gave to his wife when he found out she was pregnant again. She gave birth only to girls. You were supposed to have been a boy. You must return these kicks to your grandfather. Go to his grave with a calf fetus and a liter of artificial blood. Throw this cadaver on the slab and pour on the blood. Then kick the grave ferociously. Expel your grandmother’s rage from yourself. Then bury the calf fetus nearby and plant a beautiful plant with red flowers there.”

  A person can be freed from a problem by breaking a record. To a woman who suffered from being twenty kilos overweight I recommended going into a butcher shop, buying twenty kilos of meat and bones, loading the package on her shoulders and walking twenty kilometers, ending up at a river where she would throw the package in. To a bank teller who had lost his will to live, I recommended traversing all of Italy, from one end to the other, on roller skates. To an old lady, an inconsolable widow, I advised going hang gliding accompanied by an instructor.

  The problem of perfectionism can be cured by showing yourself as more imperfect than you are to whoever demands the perfection. A very young client, a student in film school, suffered because she demanded too much of herself. “As a child, I was never happy with what I did. This desire for perfection paralyzes me.” I advised her to make a short film, as short as possible. It should be badly directed, with poor cinematography, bad interpretation, and a stupid storyline told in absurd form. Then she should gather her family, show them this horror, and demand to be applauded and praised by all.

  A man consulted me because he had made up his mind that no woman would love him if he were not perfect. He had a girlfriend whom he decided not to marry because of this. Despite all her demonstrations of affection, he believed that she was faking it because “how can it be possible for her to love such an imperfect man?” I advised him to study with a jeweler and learn to make rings, after which he should try to make the ugliest wedding ring in the world: if she consented to wear it on her finger, he would finally feel loved because his imperfection would be accepted.

  If one is lacking a quality that one wants, one can imitate it. This reminds me of the story of a man who was desperate because his stubborn donkey refused to drink. Neither prayers nor blows could convince it. If this went on, the animal would die of thirst. His good neighbor offered to help him. The neighbor brought his
own donkey, stood it next to the nondrinker, and gave it a bucketful of water, which the animal drank up with pleasure. Seeing this, the stubborn donkey, in the spirit of imitation, also began to drink. A young woman who had stopped having periods several years earlier due to emotional problems asked me what she should do. I advised her to buy artificial blood (such as is used in films), to inject it into her vagina once a month for three or four days, to use the appropriate hygiene products, and to continue imitating periods in this manner. Soon her real menstruation would return. This same phenomenon often occurs when a woman who cannot have children adopts a child. Thanks to the “imitation” of motherhood, to her surprise, she soon becomes pregnant.

  For depressed people—besides asking, “If laws did not exist and anything was allowed, who would you kill and how?” and allowing them to commit their crimes in a metaphorical fashion—it is also very useful to recommend trying something that they have never done or that they have not even imagined doing. For example, taking a balloon ride and throwing seven kilos of seeds down onto the earth, painting a self-portrait with menstrual blood, or going to Mass dressed as a parrot. Or, for someone very masculine, taking Arabian-style belly dancing classes. Or offering a flower to the first bald man you see on the street and asking for permission to kiss his bare head. Or dressing up as a poor person and going out to beg. For a woman who had never played during childhood because she had weak, childish parents who made it necessary for her to act as an adult and take care of them, I advised going to the Dauville casino, buying five thousand francs worth of chips, and playing to lose.

  “And if I win?”

  “Keep playing, days, weeks, months, years, until you end up losing it all.”

  Sometimes very simple advice leads to a good result. I drew one woman out of depression by advising her to go to a tea shop and eat an éclair (a pastry with a phallic shape) with coffee-cream filling every morning before breakfast for twenty-eight days in a row.

  The film The Wizard of Oz provided inspiration for advice I gave to clients with social neuroses. The Tin Man wants to have feelings, so the psychomagician places a heart-shaped watch on his chest. The Scarecrow wants to be intelligent, so the psychomagician gives him a university diploma. The Cowardly Lion wants to be brave, so the psychomagician gives him a medal. The subconscious takes the symbols for realities! In traditional Chinese culture if one burns fake bills on the graves of one’s ancestors, one feels that one has made an important sacrifice. A voodoo priest who spits out clouds of rum that evaporate feels that his spirit is ascending to the gods with them. For a doctor whose brother was a tennis champion and who could not get enough patients because he felt anonymous, I recommended placing a photograph of himself with his brother in his waiting room. But using a clever trick, he should switch the heads so that the tennis champion’s head was on his body and his head was on his brother’s body.

  In some cases, the archetype that causes the client’s frustration is the mother, backed up by the grandmother and great-grandmother. This coalition is the most powerful of all and can only be overcome by an archetype of divine character. The only one that is psychologically stronger than the mother is the Virgin Mary (assuming the client is Catholic, of course). Often, motivated simply by the desire to help, I have used places that are exalted in popular culture and, at the risk of being branded sacrilegious, elements of sacred ceremonies. An example is a woman from a Protestant background, one of eight siblings, who wanted to start a family but an irrational fear prevented her from marrying. I explained to her that when a family tree has mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers burdened by a large number of children, there is a fear of semen as a diabolical substance that causes unwanted pregnancies as punishment for pleasure. I proposed an act that would make her lose her fear of sperm, giving it its true dimension: a divine substance. “First, make love with your boyfriend, asking him to ejaculate into a glass at the bottom of which there will be a host. After that, fill the glass with melted wax and put in a wick. After the wax has hardened, bring the candle to the crypt dedicated to the Virgin at Lourdes, and place it at her feet. Then light the wick, kneel, and pray nine Our Fathers, one for your father and eight for your eight siblings.”

  As my students increased in number, I took on broader problems. Santiago Pando, one of the directors of the advertising campaign for President Fox of Mexico, had attended my seminars in Guadalajara and had applied the principles of psychomagic in his successful campaign. Pando asked me, “If we consider that our country has suffered for seventy-five years from a disease called PRI,*9 could you propose psychomagical advice to cure it?” I suggested, first of all, to celebrate collectively at the national level: at the moment when power was handed over, the new president would shout, “Mexico is rising!” and millions of helium-filled balloons (made of biodegradable material), in the three colors of the country’s flag, would be released into the sky.

  Secondly, an Internet site called Virtual Mexico would be launched where all citizens would collaborate, ideally to convert Mexico into Eden. The virtual country would serve as a model for the real country.

  I considered it of vital importance to change the appearance of the currency. The bills, which had become symbols of corruption and exploitation, imbued with the suffering of the people, had to recover their dignity and become positive talismans. I advised them to print bills with images from popular faith, such as the Virgin of Guadalupe, Saint Simon, Santa Muerte, Saint Paschal Baylon, and María Sabina.

  I also suggested covering the entire Pyramid of the Sun with a thin layer of gold leaf and covering the entire Pyramid of the Moon with silver leaf. At the top of the masculine (gold) pyramid, a silver-plated statue of the goddess Coatlicue should be placed. At the top of the female (silver) pyramid, there should be a gold-plated Aztec solar calendar. This phenomenal act would attract millions of tourists. With the money raised, the lake that had been so absurdly dried up, turning the region into a dusty valley, could be restored.

  NINE

  From Psychomagic to Psychoshamanism

  Psychomagic is about saving time, accelerating the gaining of awareness. Just as a disease can announce itself suddenly, healing can also arrive in an instant. A sudden illness is called unfortunate, while a sudden healing is called a miracle. However, both take part in the same essence: they are forms of the language of the subconscious. Thanks to rapid detection through tarology, a deep understanding gained by studying the repeating patterns in the family tree, and psychomagical actions, we can come closer to the inner peace that is a product of the discovery of our true identity, which allows us to live with joy and die without anguish, knowing that we have not squandered our time in this dream called “reality.” However, valuable as these interventions are, if the client does not put in as much effort as the therapist, no mental mutation will be achieved; all the work will do nothing more than calm the symptoms, seeming to eliminate the pain but leaving unhealed the wound that invades the entire individual with its distressing shadow. The client, at the same time that he or she is seeking help, rejects it. The therapeutic act is a strange fight: we struggle mightily to help someone who puts up all possible barriers and tries to steer the healing toward failure. In a way, the healer is the hope of salvation for the sick person, but at the same time an enemy. He who suffers, fearing that the source of his ill health will be revealed to him, wants to be put to sleep, wants to be made insensible to pain, but wants in no way to change, in no way to be shown that his problems are the protesting of a soul locked in the cell of a false identity. Many clients have come to see me because, despite having achieved what they wanted to achieve—success in love, in material life, in social events—for no apparent reason, they want to die. Some triumphant people die in senseless accidents; others, apparently healthy, succumb to chronic diseases. Astute businessmen are ruined every day. Tranquil beings, surrounded by loving families, commit suicide. Why? When a mother, consciously or not, wants to get rid of the fetus for some power
ful reason (because the couple has economic or emotional problems, because the father has fled or died, because the woman became pregnant by accident, because ancestors have died in childbirth, or for many other anxiety-related reasons), then this desire for elimination, for death, is embedded in the intrauterine memory of the new being and acts as an order during his or her earthly life. Without realizing it rationally, the individual feels that she is an intruder who has no right to live. Even if the woman becomes the best of mothers after the birth, the damage is already done. Her son or daughter, even if everything that others consider happiness is at his or her disposal, will have to battle against incessant desires to die.

  Moreover, even if the mother joyously accepts the pregnancy, she may not want a real child but an imaginary one who will carry out the family’s plans, even if those plans have nothing to do with the child’s true nature. The offspring is expected to be equal to his progenitor, or to achieve something that the adult could not achieve, or else the mother—whose father, having unresolved homosexual desires, has made her into a failed man, forcing her to suppress her femininity and develop masculine characteristics—dreams of giving birth to a perfect boy whose phallus she will take control of, satisfying her father’s wish. In such cases, it is common for the mother to be single, so that her child is given the surname of the maternal grandfather, metaphorically carrying out the father-daughter incest. Because humans are warm-blooded mammals, in the depths of their animal nature they carry the need to be protected, nurtured, and sheltered from cold by the bodies of their fathers and mothers. If this contact is lacking, the offspring is doomed to perish. A human being’s greatest fear is to be unloved by his or her mother, father, or both. If this happens, the soul is marked by a wound that never stops festering. The brain, having not found its true, bright center that would keep it in continuous ecstasy, lives in anguish. Unable to find true pleasure, which is nothing other than being oneself rather than being an imposed mask, it seeks out the less painful situations. I had a French friend who when asked, “Hello, how are you?” would reply with a smirk, “Not too bad.” Between two evils, the brain chooses the lesser one. Since the greatest evil is not being loved, the individual does not recognize this lack of love, and rather than enduring the atrocious pain of becoming conscious of it, prefers to be depressed, to create a disease, to be ruined, to fail. Because of these unbearable symptoms, the client starts therapy. If the healer wants to heal the wound at its core, a wide range of defenses must be deployed.