The Dance of Reality: A Psychomagical Autobiography

APPENDIX II

Brief Psychomagical Correspondence

1. STEALING TO HEAL

When people say they cannot love, it is not because they have empty hearts. The anesthetized feelings build up like ice in a freezer. In this psychomagical act, instead of trying to give what is desired, a succession of dangerous situations provokes the awakening of the fundamental positive feeling: the love of life itself.

I wrote to you from Chile: “There are days when my vision becomes cloudy and I do nothing but lament being alive. I would be infinitely grateful to you if you would prescribe me a psychomagical act in order that I might be able to love without asking for so much in return.” You answered me: “Steal a raw heart from a supermarket on the sixth day of every month for a year. Cook the hearts, cut them into pieces, and give them to friends and hungry animals. Then you’ll be able to love.” From April 1997 to March 1998, I stole one heart each month from a different supermarket in Santiago. I was never caught, and each time completed the task of cooking it and then distributing it among friends and to animals. (It was hard to find hungry animals in my neighborhood, so I went out walking and generally gave them to the first dogs I saw.) Since the date indicated was the sixth (I suppose because card VI of the Tarot is the Lover), I was very nervous, terrified, at the beginning of every month. I used various strategies to steal the hearts: hiding them in my jacket pocket, in my underwear, under my cap, and so forth. During the summer it was even harder, because the weather was too hot for me to wear a jacket. Fortunately by then I was well experienced at shoplifting in supermarkets, so I was always highly successful. Another difficulty was that not all those large stores sell hearts. I had to visit several different ones to find them. As for the friends with whom I was supposed to share the cooked pieces, I mostly shared them with my family. Once in a while I shared them with someone I knew who happened to be in my house. In the last month, with the last heart, I invited a group of young neighbors. This social communion was a way of celebrating the fact that I had completed my task and had done well. Soon after, an uncle died, my mother’s brother, who I was very close to. The inner strength I had acquired allowed me to act with resolution with my family: this was something that surprised everyone. This strength was not a tough attitude, but rather meant that I had the appropriate attitude for the situation. Now, three months later, I’m learning a form of Brazilian dance that is also a martial art. The energy that I use in this activity, an energy that continues to grow, gives me a self-assurance that I had never experienced. I have just turned twenty-five, and I feel that I have great strength to love without asking for so much in return.

2. SYMBOLIC CONVERSATION

Thanks to symbolic acts one can enter into profound, cathartic relationships without reason intervening.

This was my question: “My brother hanged himself on the day of his twenty-eighth birthday. In a certain manner, I have carried the burden of my mother’s guilty suffering for this brutal death. How can I rid myself of it?” You answered me: “Carry a bocce ball that you have painted black in a white bag on your back for twenty-eight days. Afterward, offer it to your mother, saying, “This ball is yours, I am returning it to you.”

I went to see my mother, and just before I took out the ball and gave it to her, she said to me, “I’d like to make you a black shirt,” and began to take the measurements. I was very surprised, I let her measure me and then gave her the ball. She looked at it, scratched it with a fingernail and smiling, said, “The paint comes off easily.” I answered her, “The black goes away, but the weight remains.” She began to cry. I held her in my arms for a long while. Today I am breathing much better.

3. THE LOST COLOR

A tiny painful detail hinders overall development. I have often compared a problem that is considered small to a nail in the shoe. Although small in size, it affects one’s whole gait. This is the testimony of José Zaragoza, a Mexican poet living in Paris.

Knowing the work of A.J., I went to have him read the Tarot cards for me. At that time I was obsessed with the idea that I caused fear in people, an idea reinforced by the fact of my being a foreigner. Without further ado Mr. J. said, “The devil should be dressed in red,” and advised me to get dressed from head to toe in clothes of that color. I simply refused, because I had a strong fear of the ridiculous. But the next day, out of pride rather than conviction, I decided to carry out the prescribed treatment, adding on a scarf in the style of the Tarahumara people, which, as we know, is red and is worn on the forehead. The experience was terrible. At the corner by my house I encountered a group of people who looked at me, surprised. “I’m going to a costume party,” I stammered. In the metro things became almost unbearable. Everyone stared at me, from head to toe. I felt bad because I have always wanted to pass unnoticed, and this was impossible for me under such circumstances. Back at home I felt extremely tired and dirty. I took a shower and felt better. The next day I noticed that my perception had changed significantly. I felt as if I had taken a dose of medicine. I saw red as orange, orange as yellow, and so forth. I went out into the street and found that indeed my perception had changed and that I must be getting used to seeing the whole range of warm colors differently. Although this situation was somewhat embarrassing, I did not feel at all bad, and was able to perform my normal activities. Dressed in red, I went to all the places I normally go, saw all the people I usually see. A week later I had integrated myself into the prescribed color. It was then that I remembered a definite event in my childhood: one day, my mother had ferociously reprimanded me for a small fault saying, “You’re a devil.” This irritated me profoundly and made me blush. She insisted: “You see, now you’ve even turned red!” I then had a fit of inexpressible anger; once this passed over, I became extremely sad: I realized that my mother did not like the color red. From that moment on I removed it from my clothes and, as is obvious from my appearance, got rid of the smallest details relating to red, even though it was my favorite color. When I got that color back, thanks to the act of psychomagic, I regained the world. My trouble was resolved.

4. MILK IN THE EYES

Some physical diseases can be cured with symbolic elements.

The day after my mother died, my eyes began to hurt. The pain lasted eight years and no medicine could alleviate it. You gave me the following advice: “Go to your garden on a moonlit night accompanied by your husband and boil a liter of milk. Let it cool down, bathed in the moonlight. Then repeatedly rinse your eyes with the milk, until dawn.” I did this. The pain disappeared.

5. A DEVOURER OF DENIALS

The whole is present in every part. More often than not, when we get angry it is for reasons other than what we think, and what we demand is not what we really want.

I came to consult you because my son was having fits of anger, demanding things, kicking and screaming. You advised me to give in to his demands, but to satisfy them partially, not completely: “If he wants chocolates, give him one. If he wants cake, give him a small piece, and so on.” I wondered how this could make the child stop throwing one fit after another. Well, for the first few days it was the same as always: he ate up the first chocolate then howled for the second. One day he ate a whole packet of chocolates and ate five gumballs (which I had badly hidden) in one bite. And of course, as usual, he had a fit of rage.

Then, little by little, I realized one thing you’d suggested to me in the reading: I was impatiently saying “no” to him all day. Very few “nos” were because of actual danger, and a great many “nos” were because his demands were disrupting my habitual activities. That is, I only noticed him when he bothered me. For this reason he did everything he could to bother me, especially out of the house where he was not at risk of violence from me. Now, for a month, not a single “no” has escaped my mouth. For a month, whenever we have been together, I have given him my complete attention. His tantrums have ceased. We get along very well. But now I realize that I am lacking a husband, and he a father.

6. ASPIRING TO BALDNESS

Sometimes the daughter’s disease is only the mother’s disease.

This is what I told you: “I pluck out my hairs one by one and chew them between my teeth. I feel this has something to do with my relationship with my mother. I do not know how to stop this habit.” You replied: “You are pulverizing your lover with your teeth. Every hair you pluck out and chew brings you closer to baldness and therefore further away from men. Your mother, abandoned while she was pregnant, has given you a terrible image of your father. You see men through her gaze. You feel too much in this world. When you go to bed, pull out a hair and give it to your mother to chew. While she munches on it, she should stay very close to you and sing you a lullaby. The next morning she should wash your hair and then comb it gently.” I carried out everything that you advised. Strangely, my mother, always so taciturn and cold, collaborated in the act with her entire soul. While combing my hair she began to cry, asking for forgiveness. I no longer pluck out my hair, and my relationship with my mother has improved.

7. METAPHORICAL REALIZATION OF LESBIAN INCEST

Certain neuroses of failure come from a prohibition of sexual pleasure. Most diseases are caused by a lack of freedom. When the client’s way of getting sexual pleasure is not criticized, when she feels she has been given “permission,” then she ceases to unconsciously attach herself to her incestuous desire and allows her dreams to be realized.

My greatly deteriorated relationship with my mother was affecting my femininity. Despite my intense desire, for years I had not been able to have children. When a pregnancy occurred, I always miscarried. Psychoanalysis made me aware of a great lesbian psychological tie with my mother, who was so absent and so desired before being so hated. Knowing that my mother has lived in the Antilles for fifteen years, and I have almost no contact with her, you proposed that I make a huge salad of fresh exotic fruits to eat in the company of a woman, any woman, without giving her any explanation. At work I have a colleague my age who, like me, is called Catalina, and has a little daughter. The ideal person! We often eat a sandwich together in the coffee shop. That day she was very pleasantly surprised when I invited her to share an abundant exotic fruit salad. We ate zealously. In the following months I gave birth to a boy, conceived with awareness and loved. His name is Ángel. His father was born and raised in the Ivory Coast amid exotic fruits such as those I shared with my colleague.

8. REPENTANT PROSTITUTE

According to magical thinking, a person’s clothes are the extension of that person. For this reason, witches do to the clothes what they would like to do to the person.

I came to see you because, having found the love of my life, I had tortured myself by believing that, out of economic necessity, I had to prostitute myself (something recommended by my mother, a woman who had completely erased my father, burning photographs of him and keeping his identity secret; sometimes I think I may be the daughter of my grandfather). Faced with my partner’s moral purity, I felt dirty, despicable. You asked me if I had kept some of the clothes that had been used to attract customers. I told you I kept them all in a trunk. You told me to put them all on, however many they might be; one outfit over the other. Then I should lie down on my mother’s bed (I live with her) at 3:00 in the afternoon and stay there until midnight. Then I should get up, and in the garden by the light of the full moon, after being sprayed with seven liters of holy water I should wash all the clothes in a tub, without soap, which would require me to wring and rub them forcefully. After washing, according to your instructions, I set up three strings in my room and hung up the wet clothes. Then I placed containers under them to collect the dripping water. The next morning I gathered the clothes, dug a hole in the garden, buried them there, and planted a tree that I watered with the water collected in the containers. Then I performed a second act: you told me to buy a life-size plaster statue of Christ, place it in my room, and cover it with all the whips that I had used to lash masochists. It had to stay there, starting on the twenty-second day of the month, for a period of twenty-two days. Every night before bed I had to observe this statue and meditate, connecting my old work to spirituality. In a way, the whips became sacred objects. You had told me that, according to legend, the spear that wounded Christ later began to grow roses from its tip, the petals of which cured blindness. You remarked: “In contact with the divine, even the most vile object becomes sacred.” The result: I have left my mother’s home, and without remorse, I live with the man I love. We have decided to stop using birth control.

9. LETTER TO THE ABSENT PARENT

We are united with the collective unconscious. Whenever we commit an act, even if it is anonymous, the world responds. What we do to others, we do to ourselves.

During the consultation you spoke to me about an unconscious contract that I had made with my father when I was a girl (“I will love only you”), which prevented me from fulfilling myself emotionally. My father went out one day to buy matches and never returned. You advised me to free myself from this bond by writing him a letter telling him everything I felt about our relationship and insulting him for having fled in such an irresponsible manner. I should also write “I will love only you” on a piece of paper, sign it with a drop of blood, then tear it to pieces and put them in the envelope with the letter. I was to address the envelope as follows:

Mr. Absent Father

Unconscious Street

City of Myself

Universal Consciousness

I wrote the letter and put it in the mail with several stamps on it and no return address. I cried, feeling rage invade me, burning the inside of my chest. But then I was overtaken by a peace that I had never felt before. The following week, to my immense surprise, the mailman deposited the letter I had sent in my mailbox. How did the post office know that I had sent it? Certainly not from the postmark on the stamps, because I did not mail it in my neighborhood; I do not believe in miracles, there must be some mysterious explanation. But I remember that in one of your lectures, you told this story: a student asked the great mystic Ramakrishna, “If I throw a stone into the infinite, where does it land?” The enlightened man replied, “It lands in your hand.” In any case, I sincerely thank you for this act, which has led me to make progress. Especially because something has happened that seems related to that letter: without any inquiry on my part, an association has offered me a job as a teacher in a poor neighborhood. They use very comprehensive methods in which the parents, who are skillfully advised by pediatricians, heal their relationships with their children.

10. THE FALSE INVALID

To see yourself, you must realize how others see you. The essential being is imprisoned in a psychological cage built from others’ gazes.

My first sexual experience was traumatic. I immediately got pregnant and secretly had an abortion. I was ill for several months. From then on, I only met men who did not function well sexually. I was married for twenty years to a premature ejaculator. I asked you what to do. You answered: “You must understand that these men are prisoners of their egotism and none of them have seen you as you feel yourself to be. Because of your sensual appearance, they think you are a passionate woman, when in fact you are living as a sexual invalid. We must do everything possible to make them see you as you really are. I advise you to have someone push you around public places in a wheelchair for six days in a row. The daily ride should last six hours.” The next day I found the specialized store where I could rent the chair, and a friend agreed to come. As soon as she wheeled me out into the street I burst into tears, I felt ashamed, I felt like a living corpse exposed to the eyes of the whole world. Although it was a hot day, my legs went numb, and the fatigue of more than twenty years of hopeless fighting fell down upon me. I saw my reflection in a shop window. That was me, that woman dressed in black, cowering there. I became aware of the self-flagellation that has been my life. I almost went mad with anger, then became grateful for this opportunity to plunge into the reality of my feelings, to come out on the other side of my frustration. The next day I dressed as seductively as possible. We went to have lunch at an Indian restaurant, but I could not get through to the dining rooms. Two young men, with big smiles, carried me in my wheelchair. I made no effort to hide the satisfaction on my face. I have lost the fear of desiring and being desired. After six days, I had expelled twenty years of fears, stagnant desires, and scorned sexuality. I decided to treat the gazes of men as complicit sexuality. When I returned the wheelchair I was filled with joy and also sadness for the woman who, in her denial of existence, had immobilized herself. For the first time, I felt that I was advancing toward life.