Dance of Reality: The Psychomagical Autobiography of the Creator of El Topo and The Holy Mountain

430 Pages·2014·7.467 MB·English

by  Godwin, Ariel, Jodorowsky, Alejandro

AUTOBIOGRAPHY/ARTS $24.95
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“An autobiographical work by an octogenarian, The Dance of Reality begs to be read D
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as a culminating work . . .” Los Angeles Times
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“His films El Topo and The Holy Mountain were trippy, perverse, and blasphemous.”
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Wall Street Journal
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Retracing the spiritual and mystical path he has followed since childhood, Alejandro
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Jodorowsky re-creates the incredible adventure of his life as an artist, filmmaker, writer,
and therapist—all stages on his quest to push back the boundaries of both imagination
and reason.
Not a traditional autobiography composed of a chronological recounting of mem-
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ories, The Dance of Reality repaints events from Jodorowsky’s life from the perspec-
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tive of an unleashed imagination. Like the psychomagic and metagenealogy thera-
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pies he created, this autobiography exposes the mythic models and family templates
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upon which the events of everyday life are founded. It reveals the development of
Jodorowsky’s realization that all problems are rooted in the family tree and explains,
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through vivid examples from his own life, particularly interactions with his father and
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mother, how the individual’s road to true fulfillment means casting off the phantoms
projected by parents on their children.
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The Dance of Reality is autobiography as an act of healing. Through the retelling
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of his own life, the author shows we do not start off with our own personalities, they
are given to us by one or more members of our family tree. To be born into a family,
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Jodorowsky says, is to be possessed. To peer back into our past is equivalent to digging
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into our own souls. If we can dig deep enough, beyond familial projections, we shall find

an inner light—a light that can help us through life’s most difficult tests. R
Offering a glimpse into the mind and life of one of the most creative and enigmatic
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visionaries of our time, The Dance of Reality is the book upon which Jodorowsky’s criti-
cally acclaimed 2013 Cannes Film Festival film of the same name was based. A
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ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY is a filmmaker who made the legendary cult films El
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Topo and The Holy Mountain. His most recent film, The Dance of Reality, debuted at
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the Cannes Film Festival in 2013. He is the author of more than 20 books, including
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Psychomagic, The Way of Tarot, and Metagenealogy. He lives in Paris.
PARK STREET PRESS
ROCHESTER, VERMONT
www.ParkStPress.com
Cover design by Peri Swan
Cover image © “Le Soleil Films” Chile • “Camera One” France 2013 • Pathe •
Courtesy of ABKCO La Danza, LLC
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Praise
for
Alejandro Jodorowsky
His Works
and
“. . . The Dance of Reality [film is] a trippy but bighearted reimag-
ining of the young Alejandro’s unhappy childhood in a Chilean
town . . .”
New York Times Magazine
“The best movie director ever!”
Marilyn Manson, musician, actor,
and multimedia artist
“Jodorowsky is a brilliant, wise, gentle, and cunning wizard with
tremendous depth of imagination and crystalline insight into the
human condition.”
Daniel Pinchbeck, author of
2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
“Alejandro Jodorowsky seamlessly and effortlessly weaves together
the worlds of art, the confined social structure, and things we can
only touch with an open heart and mind.”
Erykah Badu, singer-songwriter,
actress, activist, and alchemist
“Rather than clarifying the meaning of his imagery, [The Spiritual
Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky] only inspires readers to enjoy its
‘mystery’. . . . a worthy read, filled with growing pains and cri-
ses that end in artistic triumph and achievement of wisdom and
compassion.”
Scene4 Magazine
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Alejandro Jodorowsky with one of his cats.
DanRea.indd 2 5/6/14 3:48 PM
Dance Reality
The of
A Psychomagical Autobiography
Alejandro Jodorowsky
Translated by Ariel Godwin
Park Street Press
Rochester, Vermont • Toronto, Canada
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Park Street Press
One Park Street
Rochester, Vermont 05767
www.ParkStPress.com
Park Street Press is a division of Inner Traditions International
Copyright © 2001 by Alejandro Jodorowsky
English translation copyright © 2014 by Inner Traditions International
Originally published in Spanish under the title La danza de la realidad: Psicomagia y
psicochamanismo by Ediciones Siruela
First U.S. edition published in 2014 by Park Street Press
Color insert images copyright © “Le Soleil Films” Chile • “Camera One” France 2013
•Pathe • Courtesy of ABKCO La Danza, LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,
or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jodorowsky, Alejandro, author.
[Danza de la realidad. Spanish]
A psychomagical autobiography / Alejandro Jodorowsky ; translated by Ariel
Godwin.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-62055-281-0 (pbk.) — ISBN 978-1-62055-282-7 (e-book)
1. Jodorowsky, Alejandro. 2. Authors, Chilean—20th century—Biography.
3. Motion picture producers and directors—Chile—Biography. 4. Theatrical
producers and directors—Chile—Biography. 5. Actors—Chile—Biography.
I. Godwin, Ariel, translator. II. Title.
PQ7298.2.O3Z46 2014
868'.6409—dc23
[B]
2014004218
Text design and layout by Priscilla Baker
This book was typeset in Garamond Premier Pro with Helvetica Neue and Legacy
Sans used as display typefaces
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Contents
One Childhood 1
TWO The Dark Years 33
THRee First Acts 63
FOuR The Poetic Act 86
Five Theater as Religion 128
six The Endless Dream 199
seven Magicians, Masters, Shamans, and Charlatans 236
eiGHT From Magic to Psychomagic 303
nine From Psychomagic to Psychoshamanism 348
s
APPenDix i Psychomagical Acts
Transcribed by Marianne Costa 385
APPenDix ii Brief Psychomagical Correspondence 393
Index 403
About Jodorowsky and The Dance of Reality Film 410
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There are problems that knowledge cannot solve. One
day we will come to understand that science is nothing
but a type of imagination, a specialized type, with all the
advantages and all the dangers that specializing brings
with it.
George Groddeck, The Book of the It
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One
Childhood
I was born in 1929 in the north of Chile, in a region conquered from
Peru and Bolivia. Tocopilla is the name of my birthplace. It is a small port
city located, perhaps not by coincidence, on the 22nd parallel. Each of the
22 arcana of the Tarot of Marseilles is drawn in a rectangle composed of
two squares. The upper square may symbolize heaven, the spiritual life,
while the lower square may symbolize Earth, material life. A third square
inscribed at the center of this rectangle symbolizes the human being, the
union between light and darkness, receptive to what is above, active in
what is below. This symbolism, found in the ancient myths of China and
Egypt (the god Shu, the “empty being,” separates the earth-father Geb
from the sky-mother Nut), also appears in Chilean indigenous Mapuche
mythology: “In the beginning, sky and earth were so close together that
there was no space in between them, until the arrival of the conscious
being, which liberated humankind, raising the sky.” In other words,
establishing the difference between animals and humans.
In the Andean language of Quechua, Toco means “double sacred
square” and Pilla means “devil.” In this case, the devil is not the incar-
nation of evil but a being of the subterranean dimension who gazes
through a window made of both spirit and matter—that is, the body—
in order to observe the world and share his knowledge with it. Among
the Mapuche Pillán means “the soul, the human spirit arrived at its
final destination.”
1
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2 Childhood
s
At times I have wondered whether it was the influence of having been
born at the 22nd parallel, in a place called Double Sacred Square—a
window through which consciousness emerges—that caused me to be
so absorbed by the Tarot for much of my life, or whether I was born
already predestined to do what I have done sixty years later: to renew
the Tarot of Marseilles and to invent psychomagic. Does destiny really
exist? Can our lives be oriented toward purposes that surpass the indi-
vidual interest?
Was it a coincidence that my good teacher at the public school was
called Mr. Toro? There is an obvious similarity between “Toro” and
“Tarot.” He taught me to read with his own personal method by show-
ing me a deck of cards, each of which had a letter printed on it. He
then told me to shuffle them, take a few from the deck at random, and
try to form words. The first word I spelled—I was no more than four
years old—was OJO (eye). When I spoke the word in my high voice,
it was as if something suddenly exploded in my brain; thus, in one fell
swoop, I learned to read. Mr. Toro, a great smile dawning on his dark
face, congratulated me. “I’m not surprised that you learned to read so
quickly. You have a golden eye (ojo d’oro) in the middle of your name.”
And he arranged the cards like so: “alejandr OJO D ORO wsky.”
This moment marked me forever, first because it broadened my view
by introducing me to the Eden that is reading, and second because it
set me apart from the rest of the world. I was not like other children.
Eventually I was placed in a higher grade with older boys who became
my enemies because they could not read with my level of fluency. All
these boys, most of them sons of out-of-work miners (the stock mar-
ket crash of 1929 had reduced 70 percent of Chileans to poverty), had
dark brown hair and small noses. But I, descended from Russian-Jewish
immigrants, had a large, hooked nose and very light hair. This was all
it took for them to dub me “Pinocchio,” and with their mockery to
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