EIGHT. From Magic to Psychomagic
When I was fifty years old, my son Adan was born. Also at that time, the producer of my film Tusk declared bankruptcy and did not pay me what he owed me. I had been in India during Valérie’s pregnancy, filming in miserable conditions with mediocre technicians — for economic reasons, according to the production company. I suspect that much of the money intended to create good quality images went into the pockets of this greedy organizer. Be that as it may, back in Paris I found that I had a tired wife, a newborn, three other sons, and a zero balance in my bank account. What little Valérie had saved in a Mexican candy box was enough to feed us for ten days, no more. I called a millionaire friend of mine in the United States and asked him to lend me ten thousand dollars. He sent five thousand. We left our spacious apartment in a good neighborhood, and under miraculous circumstances found a small house in Joinville le Pont on the outskirts of the city, where I was forced to make a living giving Tarot readings. All this, looking back on it now, was not a misfortune but a blessing.
Jean Claude, always concerned with finding the origins of diseases — since like the shamans he considered illnesses to be the physical symptoms of psychological wounds caused by painful family relationships or social relationships — had sent me to do Tarot readings for his patients on Saturdays and Sundays for two years. I always did it for free, and often with good results. Now that I was living in poverty, with pressing family responsibilities, I was forced to charge for my readings. The first time I held out my hand to receive money for a consultation I thought I would die of shame. That night, while my wife and sons slept, sitting on my heels as Ejo Takata had taught me to do, I knelt and meditated in the solitude of the little room that I had transformed into a temple of the Tarot by means of a rectangular violet rug. The monk had said, “If you want to add more water to a glass that is already full, it must be emptied first. Thus, a mind full of opinions and speculations cannot learn. We must empty it in order to create a condition of openness.” Once I calmed down and saw the shame as a passing cloud, realizing that it was pride in disguise, I recognized that I was not a public charity and that the act of reading the Tarot had a noble therapeutic value. But doubts assailed me. Was what I read in the cards useful for the client? Did I have the right to do this professionally? I thought again of Ejo Takata. When the monk lived in Japan, every year he paid a visit to a small island where there was a hospital for people with leprosy — which in those days was incurable — in order to perform a social service. There, he learned a lesson that changed his life. While walking together along a cliff side, the visitors walked in front and the lepers behind so that spouses, parents, relatives, and friends would not have to see the mutilated bodies of their loved ones. At a certain point, Ejo stumbled and was on the point of falling off the cliff. At that moment a sick man hurried to save him but, looking at his own fingerless hand, did not want to touch Ejo for fear of infecting him. Desperate, he began to sob. The monk regained his balance and went to the sick man, thanking him with great emotion for his love. This man, so much in need of compassion and help, had been able to forget his ego, acting not for his own benefit but with the intention of helping someone else. Takata wrote this poem:
He who has only hands
Helps with his hands
And he who has only feet
Helps with his feet
In this great spiritual work.
I also remembered a Chinese story:
A tall mountain cast a shadow, preventing a village at its feet from receiving sunlight. The children grew up stunted. One morning, the villagers saw the oldest man walking down the street with a porcelain spoon in his hands.
“Where are you going?” they asked.
“I am going to the mountain,” he replied.
“What for?”
“To move it away from there.”
“With what?”
“With this spoon.” The villagers laughed.
“You’ll never be able to!”
The old man answered, “I know I never will. But someone has to start.”
I told myself, “If I want to be useful, I must do so in an honest way, using my true capabilities. I will not in any way act like a clairvoyant. First of all, I cannot read the future, and second, I think it’s useless to know it when we don’t know who we are here and now. I’ll content myself with the present and focus the reading on self-knowledge, based on the principle that we do not have a destiny predetermined by any gods. The path is being created as we walk along it, and every step offers a thousand possibilities. We are constantly choosing. But who is it that makes this choice? It depends on the personality with which we have been shaped in childhood. And so, what we call the future is a repetition of the past.”
I began my Tarot reading sessions at the same time that I was writing the comic The Incal for Moebius. The more I progressed with the readings, the more I noticed that all problems have their roots in the family tree. To examine a person’s difficulties is to enter into the psychological atmosphere of his or her family. I realized that we are marked by the psychomental universe of our families. We are marked by their characteristics, but also by their insane ideas, their negative feelings, their inhibited desires, and their destructive acts. The father and mother project all their phantoms onto the expected infant. They want to see him or her do what they themselves could not experience or accomplish. Thus, we assume a personality that is not our own, but comes from one or more members of our emotional environment. To be born into a family is, as it were, to be possessed.
The gestation of a human almost never takes place in a healthy manner because the fetus is influenced by the parents’ diseases and neuroses. After a certain time, just seeing a client move and hearing a few spoken phrases was enough for me to tell the manner in which he or she had been born. (Someone who feels compelled to do everything quickly was born in a few minutes, as if with urgency. Someone who, faced with a problem, waits until the last moment to resolve it, using outside help, was born with forceps. Someone who has trouble making decisions was born by caesarean section.) I realized that the way we are born, which is often not the correct way, alters the course of our entire lives. And these bad deliveries result from our parents’ emotional problems with their own parents. The damage is transmitted from generation to generation: the possessed become the possessors, projecting onto their children what was projected onto them, unless there is a gaining of consciousness that breaks the vicious circle. We must not be afraid to explore ourselves deeply in order to confront the ill-formed part of our being, the horror of nonachievement, and shatter the genealogical obstacle that rises up against us as a barrier and obstructs the ebb and flow of life. In this barrier we find the bitter psychological sediment of our fathers and mothers, our grandparents and great-grandparents. We must learn to stop identifying ourselves with the family tree and understand that it is not in the past: on the contrary, it is alive, present within every one of us. Every time we have a problem that seems to us to be individual, the whole family is involved. At the moment we become conscious, in one way or another, the family begins to evolve — not only the living members, but also the dead ones. The past is not set in stone. It changes according to our point of view. We have a different understanding of ancestors whom we consider heinously guilty of altering our mentality. After forgiving them, we should honor them, which is to say, know them, analyze them, dissolve them, reshape them, thank them, love them, and finally see the “Buddha” in each and every one of them. Everything that we have achieved spiritually could have been done by any one of our relatives. The responsibility is immense. Any fall drags down the whole family, including future children, for three or four generations. Children do not perceive time in the same way that adults do. What seems to an adult to last an hour, children experience as if it lasts for months, and it marks them for their whole lives. As adults, we tend to reproduce the abuses we suffered during childhood, either on other people or on ourselves. If I was tortured yesterday, then I keep on torturing myself today, becoming my own tormenter. There is a great deal of talk about sexual abuses suffered during childhood, but we tend to overlook intellectual abuses, which imbue the child’s mind with insane ideas like perverse prejudices and racism; emotional abuses that include deprivation of love, contempt, sarcasm, verbal aggression; material abuses like lack of space, abusive changes of territory, lack of clothing, and improper nourishment. There are also abuses of the being, which may include not being given the opportunity to develop one’s true personality, having one’s life planned out as a function of one’s family history; being forced into an alien destiny, not being seen for who one is, being made into a mirror of someone else, being desired to be someone else, being born a boy to parents who wanted a girl or vice versa; not being allowed to see what one wants to see; not being allowed to listen to certain things; not being allowed to express oneself; or being given an education consisting of the implantation of limits. As for sexual abuse, the list is long, as long as the list of accusations: “I married out of obligation because your mother was pregnant with you; you have been a burden to us; I left my career because of you; you are selfish to want to live your life; you have betrayed us; you let yourself surpass us and achieved what we could not.” Family history is full of incestuous relationships, repressed or not, as well as homosexual urges, sadomasochism, narcissism, and social neuroses, which are reproduced as a legacy from generation to generation. This can sometimes be seen in names. One client wrote, “You suggested that I clarify my unconscious incestuous urges with my brother. You were right. My brother’s name is Fernando, and the father of my children is also called Fernando. But this can also be found in my genealogy; my mother has a brother called Juan Carlos, and she married a Carlos. It was the same for my grandmother: her brother was named José and she married a José, and her father (my great-grandfather) was also called José.”
When did all this begin? I often see people burdened by problems dating back to the First World War because a great-grandfather returned from the front with lung disease caused by toxic gases, which caused him emotional disturbances, an inability to fulfill himself, moral devaluation. And when the father is weak or absent, the mother becomes dominant, invasive, and is no longer a mother. The absence of a father brings about that of the mother. The children grow up with a thirst for caresses, which translates into repressed anger that extends through several generations. The lack of touch is the greatest abuse suffered by a child. All this garbage affects us, even if it is not conscious. The relationships between our parents and our aunts and uncles trickle down onto us. For example, Jaime hated Benjamín, his younger brother. I was Jaime’s younger child. I became a screen onto which his brother was projected. This allowed him to vent his bottled-up hatred onto me. Even if we know nothing of rapes, abortions, suicides, shameful events, incarcerated relatives, venereal diseases, alcoholism, drug addiction, prostitution, or countless other secrets in our families, we still suffer from all of it, and sometimes we repeat it. A boy is named René, which means “reborn,” and feels himself invaded by a vampire-like personality, not knowing that he was born after another sibling died. A father gives his daughter the name of the woman who was his first love, and this dooms her to playing the role of his girlfriend for life. A mother gives her son the name of his maternal grandfather, and the son fruitlessly tries to be like that grandfather in order to satisfy his mother’s incestuous desires. Or, in a family with many daughters, one of them in desiring to give the father an heir to carry on his name will have a one-night stand with a strange man, a foreigner who will then return to his home country, leaving her pregnant. Symbolically this child is engendered by God; she is imitating the Virgin Mary. The Virgin was possessed by her father; he introduced himself completely into her womb, changed himself into his own son, then created a man-god pairing. Together forever, the two now reign in heaven, as if in a marriage. If a single mother gives birth to a son who, metaphorically, is the child of her father, and calls him Jesús or Emmanuel or Salvador, or in fact the name of any saint, then that child will live an anguished life, feeling obligated to be perfect. The sacred texts, when misinterpreted, play a nefarious role in this family catastrophe. Extremist religions create sexual frustrations, illnesses, suicides, wars, and unhappiness. Perverse interpretations of the Torah, the New Testament, the Koran, and the Sutras have caused more deaths than the atomic bomb.
The tree, with all its limbs, behaves as an individual, a living being. I dubbed the study of its problems “psychogenealogy” (just as I called the study of the Tarot “tarology”; years later, “tarologists” and “psychogenealogists” became abundant). Some therapists who have conducted studies in genealogy have wanted to reduce it to mathematical formulas, but the tree cannot be contained in a rational cage; the subconscious is not scientific, it is artistic. The study of families must be performed in a different way. A geometric body, with the relationships between its parts completely known, cannot be modified. In an organic body whose relationships are mysterious, you can add or remove a part, but in its essence it will still be what it is. The internal relationships of the family tree are mysterious. To understand them it is necessary to enter the tree as if in a dream, so it should not be interpreted, it should be experienced.
In a seminar in France, working with the minor arcana of the Tarot.
The patient must make peace with her subconscious, not becoming independent of it but making it an ally. If we learn its language, we can put it to work for us. If the family within us, rooted in childhood memory, is the basis of our subconscious, then we must develop each relative as an archetype. We must ascribe our level of consciousness to it, exalt it, imagine it reaching its highest potential. Everything we give it, we are giving to ourselves. When we deny it, we deny ourselves. As for toxic people, we should transform them by saying, “This is what they did to me, this is what I felt, this is what the abuse causes in me today, this is the reparation I desire.” Then, still within ourselves, we must bring all the relatives and ancestors to their fulfillment. A Zen master once said, “Buddha nature is also in a dog.” This means that we must imagine the perfection of every person in our family. Does someone have a heart full of bitterness, a brain clouded by prejudice, deviant sexuality due to moral abuses? Like a shepherd with his sheep we must guide them to the good path, cleansing them of their poisonous needs, desires, emotions, and thoughts. A tree is judged by its fruits, so if the fruit is bitter the tree it came from, even if it is majestic, is considered bad. If the fruit is sweet, the crooked tree it comes from is considered good. Our family — past, present, and future — is the tree. We are the fruit that gives it its value.
As my clients increased in number, on some weekends I had to receive them in groups. To heal a family, I organized a dramatization of it. The person whose family was being studied would choose from among the participants, picking those who would represent her parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, brothers, and sisters. Then she would situate them, standing, seated on chairs, or lying down (for the chronically ill or dead), at various distances from each other, according to the logic of her family tree. Who was the hero of the family, the most powerful person? Which people were absent or despised? Which people were joined together and by what sort of ties? And so forth. Then the patient would situate herself. Where? At the center, on the edge, or removed from all of them? How did she feel there? Then, she had to confront each “actor.” Representing the family in this way, as a living sculpture, the seeker discovers that the people she has “randomly” chosen correspond in many aspects to the real people in her family and have important things to say to her. This produces a conversation that generally ends in intense embraces and tears.
These exercises leave us convinced that, having become conscious of these unhealthy relationships, we are now cured. However, once we return from the therapeutic situation into the real world, the painful symptoms are still there as always. Merely identifying a difficulty is not enough to overcome it! A gain in awareness, a theatrical confrontation, and an imagined forgiving end up being fruitless when not followed up by action in daily life. I concluded that I should induce people to act in the midst of what they conceived as their reality. But I was reluctant to do so. What right did I have to intrude in the lives of others, exerting an influence that could easily degenerate into a power grab, establishing dependencies? I was in a difficult position, considering that the people who came to see me were, in a way, asking me to become their father, mother, son, husband, wife. I decided to induce them to act in order for the gaining of consciousness to be effective. I did not call these people my patients, but my clients. I prescribed very specific actions, without assuming responsibility or taking on the role of their guide over their entire lives. Thus was born the psychomagical act, combining all the influences I had assimilated during the years described in the preceding chapters.
First, the person would agree to carry out the act exactly as I prescribed it, without one iota of change. To prevent distortions due to failures of memory, the client had to immediately write down the procedure to follow. Once the act was carried out they were to send me a letter that first described the instructions received, then related in full detail the way in which the act was carried out as well as the circumstances and incidents that occurred in the process. Lastly, the results should be described. Some people waited a year to send me the letter. Others argued, not wanting to do exactly what I recommended, bargaining and finding all manner of excuses to avoid following the instructions precisely.
As I observed with Pachita, when you change something, however minimally, and do not respect the indispensable conditions for the achievement of the act, the effects will be null or negative. Indeed, most of the problems we have, we want to have. We are attached to our problems. They form our identity. We define ourselves through them. It is no wonder, then, that some people try to distort the act and try to devise ways to sabotage it: getting free of problems involves radically changing our relationship with ourselves and with the past. People want to stop suffering, but are not willing to pay the price — namely, to change, to not keep living as a function of their beloved problems. For all these reasons, the responsibility of prescribing an act that must be carried out to the letter was immense. In the moment of prescribing it I had to cease identifying with myself so that I could go into a kind of trance, stop talking with my subconscious, and connect directly with the subconscious of my client. I concentrated on the mere act of giving, alleviating pain, prescribing actions that were similar to lucid dreams, without worrying about the personal benefit that would accrue to me. In order to be in a condition to heal someone, you must not expect anything from that person; you must enter all the aspects of his or her inner self without becoming involved or destabilized.
In The Book of Five Rings the swordsman Miyamoto Musashi recommends going to the ring early, before a fight, and acquiring a perfect knowledge of it. Likewise, familiarity with the client’s psychoaffective terrain seemed to me a fundamental requirement for the recommendation of any act, so before anything else I would ask them to tell me about their problem in as much detail as possible. Rather than trying to guess what the Tarot might be hiding from me, I would put the person through an intense interrogation. I would ask about his or her birth, parents, uncles and aunts, grandparents, siblings, sex life, relationship with money, social complexes, beliefs, love life, health, guilty feelings. (Often enough, this resembles a church confession.) Terrible secrets would emerge. One man confessed to me that as a child, at the end of the school year, he had waited on top of a wall for a hated teacher to pass and had thrown a large stone at his head. He thought that the teacher had died, but fled without checking. For thirty years, he felt like a murderer. Another time I met with a Belgian father. I perceived that he was gay. “Yes,” he confessed, “and I do it with ten men a day, in the saunas, every time I come to Paris. Do you know what my problem is? I’d like to do it with fourteen of them, like a friend of mine does!” From people who seemed normal, I heard the darkest and most outlandish secrets. One woman confessed to me that the father of her daughter was none other than her own father; a Swiss teenager, seduced by his mother, told me all the details. What most disturbed him was her jealousy, because she would not let him have any girlfriends. Because they did not perceive any criticism in me, people vented with confidence. If the therapist judges in the name of some morality, he does not cure. The attitude of the confessor must be amoral. Otherwise, the secrets never come to light. I am reminded of a Buddhist story.
Two monks are meditating in the midst of nature; several rabbits surround one monk, but none come near the other. The latter asks, “If we both meditate with equal intensity the same number of hours each day, why do the rabbits surround you and not me?”
“Very simple,” replies the other, “Because I do not eat rabbit, and you do.”
A participant in one of my courses could not bear for her chest to be touched. As soon as a man, even one with whom she wanted to have sexual relations, made a move to touch her breasts, she would start screaming. This situation caused her much suffering, and she longed to be free from this senseless panic. I suggested that she bare her chest. She did so, revealing a nice pair of breasts. I asked, “Do you trust me?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“I would like to touch you in a particular way, not like the caress of a desiring man eager to enjoy your body, nor like the touch of a doctor who examines you coldly. I would like to touch you with my spirit. Do you think my spirit could establish an intimate contact with your breasts that does not have anything sexual about it?”
“Maybe. ”
I raised my hands, three meters away, and said gently, “Look at my hands. I’m going to approach slowly, millimeter by millimeter. As soon as you feel assaulted or uncomfortable, tell me to stop and I will stop approaching.”
I then brought my hands closer, extremely slowly. When I was ten centimeters from her breasts, she asked me to stop. I obeyed, and after a long while, slowly, very slowly, I started moving closer, watching for her reaction. Reassured by the quality of the attention I was paying to her and perceiving that I acted with delicacy and detachment, she did not protest. Finally my hands rested on her breasts without her feeling any discomfort, which caused her great amazement. Applying what I had learned from the man who fed the sparrows, I took another participant by the shoulder and, without letting go of him, had him touch her breasts as well. This caused her no suffering. But when I let go of the man, she started screaming. This story is an example of the detachment that, in my view, is indispensable for those who really want to help others. I was able to touch and feel the breasts of a woman standing before me while situating myself far away from my sexual center, without thinking of getting pleasure. In that moment I was not a man, but a being. The important thing is to place oneself in an inner state that excludes any temptation to take advantage of the other person, any temptation to abuse the fascination one exerts over the other in order to assert one’s power to dominate his or her will. If these things happen, the helping relationship loses its essence and becomes a masquerade.
For a magical act to have good results the popular charlatan must, by obligation, present himself as a superior being who knows all mysteries. The patient, in a superstitious manner, accepts his advice without understanding how or why it affects his or her subconscious. By contrast, the psychomagician presents himself only as a technical expert, as an instructor, and devotes himself to explaining to the patient the symbolic meaning and purpose of every act. The client knows what he or she is doing. All superstition has been eliminated. However, as soon as one begins to perform the prescribed acts, reality begins dancing in a new way. Unexpected things happen that aid in the accomplishment of something that seems impossible. For example, with an elementary school teacher who had been badly abused in childhood and was afflicted by chronic sadness I advised, among other things, learning to balance on a tightrope as circus performers do. “Impossible!” he said. “I live in a small village in the south of France. Where will I find someone to teach me that?” I insisted that he do what I proposed. Upon returning to school, one of his students told him that he was learning to balance on a tightrope from a retired circus performer who lived just a few kilometers away!
On another occasion, with a patient who had suicidal tendencies and felt that his blood was impure because he was the product of incest, I advised that he go to a slaughterhouse with two large thermoses, buy cow’s blood to fill them with, go home, and shower in the blood until all his skin was entirely covered in order to make his subconscious think that his blood had been replaced. Then, without washing off the blood, he should get dressed and go walking in the streets, proudly facing the stares of passersby. He also said, “Impossible.” However, when he went to the dentist, he found a copy of The Incal in the waiting room. He asked the dentist if he had read it. The dentist said no, one of his patients had left it there, a man who owned a slaughterhouse and admired my work. My client got the man’s address, went to him with some autographed copies of my works, and the slaughterhouse owner, very pleased, gave him all the liters of cow’s blood he needed.
One day I received a visit from a Swiss woman whose father had died in Peru when she was eight years old. Her mother had made all traces of the man disappear, burning letters and photos, so that my client remained an eight-year-old child on the emotional plane. I prescribed an act: she should go to Peru and visit the places where her father had lived, until she found tangible proof of his existence. When she returned to Europe she should bury the mementos in her garden and plant a fruit tree there, then go to her mother’s house and slap her. It should be explained here that her mother was an angry and virile woman who had mistreated and insulted her. The woman went to Peru, found the rooming house where her father had lived, and through that synchronicity that I call the dance of reality, found letters and photos. The father had entrusted them to the landlady, confident that one day his daughter would go to look for them. When she read those letters and saw those pictures, she no longer saw her father as a faceless ghost and finally knew that he had been a being of flesh and blood. By burying the documents in her garden, she also buried the eight-year-old child. Then she went to see her mother with the intention of giving her the prescribed slap. But she was surprised to find that for the first time her mother was waiting for her at the train station and, also, for the first time, had prepared a meal for her. Seeing her so kind, she felt very disturbed at having to slap her because, for once, her mother had given her no pretext for doing so. But she knew that the act was an inescapable psychomagical contract that must be respected. Over dessert, my client slapped her mother for no apparent reason, taking her by surprise, and feared a brutal reaction from her. But her mother only asked, “Why did you do that?” Faced with such equanimity, the daughter finally found words to express every complaint she had of her. The mother replied, “You’ve given me one slap. well, you should give me many more!”
A literary critic around fifty years old, married to a philosophy professor her same age but who was a perennial adolescent, called me from Barcelona because she had discovered that her husband had a twentythree-year-old lover. “We are intellectual, serious, mature people who shun emotional scandals. But I have fallen into a huge depression from holding back my anger. And he doesn’t want to give up either her or me. What should I do?”
“I am going to ask you to analyze your life as if it were a dream. Why did you dream that your fifty-year-old husband had a twentythree-year-old lover?”
“Oh, I remember when I was exactly twenty-three. I had an affair with a fifty-year-old man! It lasted three years. Then I left him for a younger man.”
“See? You are experiencing something that is like a recurring dream. In a certain way, you dream yourself into the place of the deceived wife and you realize how, when you were young, you made your lover’s wife suffer. If your affair didn’t last, it is very possible that your philosopher’s adventure will also only last another year, since you’ve found out that it’s already been going on for two years. Then he will come back and cry in your arms.”
“But each passing day seems like a century. I can’t tolerate this situation. I feel diminished, sick with rage, old.”
“I’m not a charlatan, I won’t advise you to wrap a dead hummingbird in red ribbon and get him to touch it or sprinkle rose petals on his footprints in the sand so that he will come right back. But I can help you to accept this triangular relationship in your subconscious and calmly wait for the year to pass.” I told her to go to a pet store and buy three canaries, a male (symbolizing her husband) and two females: one young and pretty (symbolizing the lover) and one older, ugly, and fat (symbolizing herself). She should put the birds in a cage and hang them in her office, in front of her desk. After ten days, she should go back to the pet store and give the canaries back to the same man who sold them to her. I said, “The bird seller represents God (your father, an absent man). Once you feel good, you should give away this childish problem of abandonment.”
The days went by, then suddenly she called me in a state of shock: “Something amazing happened: I put the canaries together and fed them the same food. But bit by bit, the young female was getting fat, losing her feathers, staying still in a corner; the older one became prettier and thinner, and sang with joy. I learned later that a young female dies if she is not fertilized by the male. On the tenth day, today, when I sat down to work, I suddenly looked up at the cage, and at that precise moment the sick bird fell down dead. I’m terrified. She represented my rival. I feel like I’ve killed her. What should I do?”
“Reality has danced to comfort you. Accept this gift. Put the bird in the bottom of a flowerpot, fill it with soil, and plant a rose bush. Keep the rose alive in your house as long as you can, and go give the bird seller the remaining pair of birds.”
After some time, the client called me again to tell me she was glad of the act. It had been a long time since she had felt so good. She had returned to finding the joy in life. Now she did not care what her husband did.
It might seem like an easy surrealist game to give psychomagical advice, but in fact it can only be dispensed by a person who has done a great deal of work on him- or herself. Each act must fit the subtle characteristics of the client like a pair of shoes made to order. No two people are the same, so no two identical acts may be prescribed. A certain individual felt himself authorized to begin his own practice immediately after attending one of my lectures and rounded up a group of women. He asked each of his students to identify themselves with a doll, to discharge into it their childhood pain and rage against their parents, and to place it in a sack, which they would keep for a purification ceremony to be conducted later. They also had to send their mothers a large pair of scissors and the guts of a chicken. Catastrophic! You cannot prescribe acts “wholesale”! The supermarket of psychomagic is an aberration! Of course, the effect was negative. The relatives did not understand the act, and many thought that their daughters had gone mad. This was not so far from the truth: after the workshop, one terrified woman came to see me on the verge of psychosis, convinced that the “psychomagician” now had power over her. To calm her down I recommended that she go retrieve her doll, but the man could not return it because as soon as his students departed he had thrown them all in the trash. In sum, this was a matter of a businessman dedicating himself to making money by exploiting the credulity of a group of women. I am reminded of a story:
In a factory, a complicated machine breaks down. The best technicians arrive, working for days with all kinds of sophisticated tools, but they fail to make it work. Finally, an old man comes carrying a small case. He takes a simple hammer out of the case, gives a small tap on one gear wheel on the machine, and it starts up. The old man asks to be paid $1,000,001 for his services. The manufacturers complain: “How is this possible? You are asking for $1,000,001 for just one hammer blow!” “No,” the old man answers, “the hammer cost a dollar. The studies I had to do in order to do it effectively cost a million.” One can only propose an effective psychomagical act after a long apprenticeship.
When it became clear to me that my advice could cause a transformation in the mind of the client, I realized the enormous responsibility that this implied. An error could provoke catastrophes such as the worsening of an illness, a suicide, a divorce, depression, psychosis, or a criminal act. Therefore, as I began practicing psychomagic I took many precautions, the main one of these being to prescribe very small acts that involved no one other than the client.
I recommended buying pieces of honeycomb to a woman who had grown up verbally tormented by her parents and who could not speak without using harsh words. I told her to sweeten her mouth by chewing on these until nothing was left but a blob of wax, to save these remains in a jewelry box, and then after some time to form that wax into the shape of a heart, anoint her tongue with red vegetable dye, lick the heart to stain it red, and finally nail the heart to her bathroom wall in front of the toilet. Thus, her subconscious would receive the message that to speak is an act of love, not of excretion.
Another client asked that I prescribe her an act that would allow her to forgive her dead father and thus overcome the hatred she had toward all men. I asked her to tell me at what point her father had broken ties with her. “Shortly after my first period,” she replied. (It is common for a father to distance himself from his daughter once she becomes a woman for fear of arousal. The girl, not understanding why he draws away, suffers from no longer sitting on his knee and finds it painful to renounce this form of intimacy and contact.) I then asked her where her father was buried, and she suggested we go to his grave. “Bury some cotton wool soaked in your menstrual blood, along with a packet of sugar cubes, as close as possible to the coffin. The sugar is to indicate that this is not an aggressive act but a loving approach, a communication signifying that periods are not an impediment to happiness.”
When the person who has caused pain is dead, for the subconscious the grave is the representation of that person. If there is no grave a photograph is used, and if there is no photograph, a drawing. Another client was enrolled at the age of four in a school led by her great aunt. This lady bullied her sadistically. In her work with me, the client discovered the deep hatred she felt for this woman. She could not forgive her, but could not take revenge either, since her victim had already left this world. Therefore, I advised her to go to the woman’s grave and give vent to her hatred there: kick the grave, scream insults, urinate and defecate, but on condition that she thoroughly analyze the reactions caused by the execution of her revenge. She followed my advice, and after letting off steam on the grave, felt a fundamental desire to clean it and cover it with flowers. The hatred was nothing but the deformed face of unrequited affection.
If the hated person has been cremated and there is no grave, or if he or she is still alive, one can insult a photograph. Then the image must be burned. After this, the client should take some of the ashes, dissolve them in a glass of wine if male or milk if female, and drink it. Thus the evil, finally purified, becomes an antidote.
A young man complained to me of “living in the clouds,” explaining that he could not “get grounded in reality” or “advance” toward financial independence. I took his words at face value and suggested that he take two gold coins and glue them to the soles of his shoes, so that every day he might tread on gold. From that moment on, coming down from the clouds, he set foot in reality and moved forward.
Another client, married with no children, did not feel man enough. He had been raised by his widowed mother along with three aunts and a grandmother, all either widows or spinsters. For him, a father was a nonexistent being: a man who had impregnated a woman, then died. Because of this, he was afraid of his wife becoming pregnant. To make him feel that he existed as a man I suggested that he collect thirty thousand francs (he could borrow the money), roll the stack of bills up along its long edge and hold them together with a rubber band; buy a pair of Chinese balls (the kind that people hold and spin in their hands in order to calm down and meditate); and make a holder out of suede, in which he would wear the roll of bills between his legs as a phallus and the Chinese balls as testicles. With that weight in his pants, for three days he should go to work, visit friends, talk with his family, cuddle with his wife, and sleep wearing the apparatus. This advice, seemingly comic, had an unexpected result: in addition to changing his character, the man got his wife pregnant.
For a singer who was always unsuccessful in auditions, who felt that she had no talent, I advised putting ten gold coins inside a condom and inserting it into her vagina. Thus equipped, she should show up for an audition. She sang like never before and got the part.
Sometimes in order to solve problems I do not hesitate to recommend acts that a prejudiced person might consider pornographic. However, if one intends to heal suffering spiritually, it is necessary to understand that the sex organs are sanctuaries where what we call God can be found. The client must also learn to value his or her body, not disdaining its secretions. Feces, saliva, urine, sweat, menstrual blood, or semen can be used as elements that liberate us from inhibited feelings. One client, a lesbian, felt unable to begin the book that she intended to write. As soon as she turned on her computer, she just started playing games. I explained to her that she had remained a child, that is to say sexless, because when she reached adulthood she knew that she was lacking phallic power. I advised her to go to a sex shop, buy a strap-on dildo, put it on, tape up a large white piece of paper at waist level, dip the dildo in ink, and write the first two sentences of her book with it. After this, the rest would be easy to write on the computer.
In Guadalajara, a pathologically shy man came to see me because he could not settle on projects or finish what he started. I advised him to go to the busy Plaza de la Liberación, naked under a big coat, sit on a bench, put a hand through a cut-out pocket and masturbate to the point of ejaculation. He should keep the semen inside an oval medallion with a picture of his mother, wearing it around his neck as a talisman.
A young French woman had never felt any sexual desires. Her father had died of prostate cancer, and she irrationally blamed this on her mother, accumulating fierce anger toward her. I explained to her that she was afraid that experiencing desire and having sexual relations would cause her to become pregnant and transform her into a mother, that is to say, her mother. I advised her to place two ostrich eggs, a symbol of maternal ovaries, on a photograph of her mother. By smashing the eggs with a hammer, she would make her anger come out. Then with another two ostrich eggs, representing her own ovaries, she should make a huge omelet and serve it at dinner to a group of seven friends. “While you watch them eat, allow yourself to imagine what they would be like in bed, and you will see that desires emerge. As for the remains of the eggs you break with a hammer and the picture of your mother, bury them and plant a white flower there. Then go to your father’s grave and wash it with water, soap, and a brush.”
A married man with two children, who loved his wife, came to see me because he had premature ejaculation. I asked how long the sexual act lasted. “Just twenty seconds,” he answered. I advised him to make love to his wife that night with a stopwatch by the bedside, promising her that he would ejaculate more quickly than ever, in exactly ten seconds. He did so. He came back to see me, happy, and told me with a big smile, “I failed. As much as I tried, I could not. I lasted half an hour.”
A young man who had no father felt that he had no authority. He asked me for advice on how to develop his ability to give orders. I suggested that he start by giving orders for things that were already happening. If he saw that it was starting to rain, he should say, “I order it to rain!” If his dog was lying down, he should say, “I order you to lie down!” If he saw cars passing, he should say, “I order the cars to pass!” And so on. In this manner he would overcome his timidity and get used to commanding.
A woman who was abandoned by her father at the age of six always got into relationships with men who abandoned her. She did not want to continue living alone like her mother, who used to tell her, “Better alone than in bad company.” She wanted to form a stable partnership. I explained, in light of the Tarot, “Because you’ve had a lack of communication with your father and you’ve listened only to your mother, you do not know how to accept men. You must learn to hear male words. I advise you to buy a Walkman and for forty days, listen to the voices of male poets and wise men as you walk around and work.”
Not wanting to be seen as a charlatan, I gave up trying to cure physical illnesses. However, I made a few exceptions. A scuba diving instructor had suffered for years from sores in his mouth. No doctor had been able to cure these ulcers. I saw in the Tarot that this illness came from the powerlessness that he felt from being unable to speak with his mother, who was deceased. She had been a divorced, narcissistic woman; she had no husband and spent whole days in front of the mirror preoccupied with herself, fighting against wrinkles. I asked him how tall his mother was. “A hundred and sixty centimeters,” he replied. I advised him to get a plaster statue of the Virgin Mary a hundred and sixty centimeters tall. Then, he should dive with this idol down into the ocean until he reached the bottom. Once there he should make holes in the ears of the saint with a drill, then he should put his mouth to each ear hole for a moment. Later, back on land, he should yell everything that he could never say to his mother at the sculpture. Finally, he should bury this virgin with a little of his semen in each ear hole, and plant a tree there. The client followed my advice. His sores disappeared.
My Chilean friend Martin Bakero, a psychiatrist and poet, found it painful to walk because a wart had grown between the fourth and fifth toes of his left foot, reaching down to the bone. The dermatologist, seeing that the ointments he had given him were not taking effect, had begun to burn the wart off in layers and said that this treatment could last between one and two years. I asked Bakero how long he had lived in Paris. “Four years,” he replied.
“Did you have a good relationship with your parents during childhood?”
“My father was an absent man. My mother treated me like royalty. I was an only child, and in a way I was her partner. I recognize that we have a deep Oedipal relationship.”
“What’s happening is that you feel guilty for having left her in Chile. Take a picture of your mother and make ten photocopies. Take one every morning, stick it to your afflicted foot with green clay, and walk with it on your foot all day long.”
In a letter, the poet told me about his act: “At first, I was reluctant to carry out what you advised: a sick person’s symptoms are always accompanied by an unconscious enjoyment. I told you, ‘I have no pictures of my mother,’ and you answered, ‘Draw one.’ ‘I cannot draw,’ I grumbled, and you replied, ‘You’re resisting the cure.’ The next day I summoned all my strength and found a picture of my mother, performed the act, and upon completion of the ten applications, the wart had disappeared, leaving behind new, clean skin. I have not had any more problems.”
A woman with a limp, who needed to support herself with a cane, wanted me to help her walk properly. I explained that I did not work miracles. I was not Pachita, who would have put in a new leg bone and stretched out her leg for her, but I could make her better able to accept her limp. I asked her where she had gotten such an ugly stick, unvarnished and made out of ordinary wood. “It belonged to my paternal grandfather,” she said.
“And what became of that grandfather?”
“He never communicated with anyone. He lived as a hermit, holed up in his apartment.”
I advised her to burn the cane, take a handful of the ashes, and rub them on her short leg. After that, she should buy the most beautiful cane she could find, made of ebony with a silver handle. She did so. She regained her enjoyment of walking. From prescribing this act, I learned that the places where the body is affected, such as a scar or a hump, should be exalted.
I will conclude these examples by sharing this letter:
“I went to see you at the café where you read the Tarot for free every Wednesday, and consulted you: ‘eighteen months ago I felt a sharp pain in my neck. Can this pain be the effect of a regression from the spiritual point of view?’ I had consulted doctors, acupuncturists, massage therapists, osteopaths, bonesetters, healers, and of course, taken antiinflammatory drugs, cortisone, infiltration, and so forth. Nothing had taken effect. You prescribed a psychomagical act for me: I should sit on my husband’s knees and get him to sing a lullaby to my neck. But what you did not know is that my husband is an opera singer. He sang a song by Schubert. I’m cured, there is no more pain.”
Forming an equation between the neck, the past, and the subconscious, I felt that this client’s relationship with her father had not developed well. By seating her on his knees, her husband would symbolically play the role of her father and she would return to childhood. Moreover, singing a lullaby at the site of the pain would fulfill a childhood desire that had not been satisfied, namely the desire for her father to rock her to sleep and communicate with her on the affective plane.
I continued this first series of recommendations over a period of four years, most often given at the end of a Tarot reading, without daring to resolve more significant problems. (Having solved my financial difficulties thanks to the warm welcome received by my comics, drawn in collaboration with ten artists, I decided to conduct Tarot readings for free at a café for two-hour periods, after which I would give a lecture commenting on the readings. I called this activity the Mystical Cabaret.) Although I never gave the same advice more than once, I set myself some rules. For example, I always made sure that the act had a positive end, never advising anyone to do something that would finish in anger or destruction. In cases where it was necessary to sacrifice animals, they were always edible ones, which were then cooked and served in a banquet to family or friends. When something was buried in order to be dissolved and purified in the earth, a beautiful plant would be planted at the site. Any virulent confrontation over a grave was followed by an offering of honey, sugar, or flowers, or by cleaning the grave with soap and water, then perfuming it. In cases where the family had implanted a castrating vision in the client, I advised that he or she appear before them in disguise, first as the vision the family imposed, then as the person the family prevented him or her from being. Many women who had disappointed their fathers by not being born as boys and had been forced to masculinize themselves, resulting in subsequent frigidity and sterility, were advised to show themselves to their fathers wearing a fake pregnant belly, erotic female clothing, ample makeup, and a long wig.
A woman who had lived with her widowed father and four brothers, a “harem of men,” had been treated as a decorative but worthless being and had always masculinized herself in order to seek acceptance from her father. I suggested, “Go to see him dressed as a man, bringing him a gift of a bottle of mezcal, his favorite type of alcohol. If he wonders why you came dressed like that, tell him, ‘Let’s drink a glass first, then I’ll tell you.’ After drinking, go to the bathroom and transform yourself into a seductive woman with a long wig, false eyelashes, scarlet lips, miniskirt, and so forth. Present yourself before him and say, ‘Look, this is an aspect of me that you do not know. I have shown you two extremes: the man you want me to be and the exaggerated woman I do not want to be. Now I’ll show you who I really am.’ Then dress like a decent woman with good taste. Show yourself to your father and tell him, ‘Look at me; I’m not a butch or a slut. This is the woman I am. Being a woman does not mean being an idiot. Accept me as your daughter.’”
Regarding the idea of appearing before ones parents, obeying to the letter the images that they have pasted onto us, by common consensus my son Cristóbal and I performed an act that he says changed his life. I must admit when he was born I was still what I call a “psychological barbarian.” I was interested only in my own artistic achievement, not caring to heal my own psychological problems or anyone else’s. I thought that people were what they were and took a critical stance toward them. I was an insensitive, stern, competitive father. I remember having a fit of jealousy when I saw him sucking milk from the breasts of “my” woman. That is to say, I behaved toward him exactly the way my father had behaved toward me. In the mist of my neurosis, I gave him two names: Axel, so that he would be an exact imitation of me (Alex), and Cristóbal, so that he might discover a new world. Axel Cristóbal, subject to this double desire, seemed to grow up with a double personality. Every time he did something “satisfactory” (imitating me), he was Dr. Jekyll. When he did something “bad” (attempting to be himself), he was Mr. Hyde. This conflict caused him to have kleptomania. (Also, I took away his toys to punish him, as Jaime had done to me.) For years he could not overcome his impulses to steal. Although as time went on our relationship emerged from psychological barbarism to become one of conscious love (we both worked to smooth out the roughness of the past through multiple confrontations, which finally resulted in Axel making way for Cristóbal), he continued to feel these urges to steal things. The struggle to restrain the urges distressed him. He asked me for a psychomagical act to cure it. I told him to dirty his hands with mud collected at the foot of a tree. I knelt before him, placed his dirty hands on my face, and asked him for forgiveness. Then, at my bathroom sink, slowly and with concentrated attention, I washed and perfumed his hands. Following this he rubbed his palms on a Mexican postcard that showed Saint Christopher carrying the Christ child. Finally, I recommended that he have some business cards made that read, “I am Axelito, the thief child. I could have stolen this, but I decided not to. Thank me and bless me.” Whenever Cristóbal went into a shop, as soon as he felt tempted he would deposit a card there, taking care that no one saw him do so. Sometimes he would leave more than ten cards. He was so good at this that nobody ever caught him at it. His kleptomania disappeared completely, definitively.
Some time afterward, he came to see me, bringing a suitcase. I sat in the living room while he disappeared into a bedroom and dressed as Dr. Jekyll. With superhuman strength, he let loose his anger and tore apart the disguise, kicking it on the floor. Thus naked, he went back to the bedroom and came back out again dressed as Mr. Hyde, with his hat, cape, stick, and long teeth. He lay in my arms and cried, uttering deep and heartbreaking cries. I understood what I had to do. Also weeping, I began to strip him of his disguise. Then we put the clothes, those of Jekyll and those of Hyde, into a package together and walked out to the Seine. There, with our backs to the river, we threw the package in and without looking back went to celebrate his liberation at a good restaurant.
Another piece of advice I gave several times, each time of course with variations, was for people who suffered from having an invasive mother. Even if they did not live with her, she was in their minds all the time, controlling their lives. I proposed that they treat her as an idol. In India, people feed gods who are represented by sculptures. This means that they bring them offerings of flowers, incense, and food. During the time that I was directing for Maurice Chevalier, I was invited to dinner at his mansion. There I saw a bench where the singer knelt to pray. In the place where Christ or the Virgin would normally be, there was the portrait of a woman. It was the singer’s mother. He had exalted her to the status of an idol. Inspired by this, I recommended that instead of fighting fruitlessly to expel the invader, who would keep growing the more they attacked her, my clients should give her a precise location in the house. A photo of the mother should be placed on a small altar, but in a steel frame covered by a wire screen so the subconscious can be assured that the “beast” will not escape. Then, in order to feel that she is satisfied, they should honor her by depositing fresh flowers before her, burning incense, keeping a candle bought at a church burning there at all times. In addition, every time they eat they should save a few morsels of food to place in a saucer before the maternal idol. Thus well fed, she will cease to devour them.
Many consultants suffered problems related to self-worth. Drawing inspiration from the shamanic techniques of Don Ernesto, I asked them to take a sheet of nice paper and write down all the things they wanted to be rid of: crippling self-criticism, lack of talent, pathological jealousy, shyness, and so on, to sign the list with a drop of their own blood, and to bury it. I followed my own advice: for twenty years, I had been polishing and editing my first novel, El loro de siete lenguas (The Parrot of the Seven Languages), thinking that no one would ever read it. I buried my “failed novelist.” Two months later, I received a phone call in Paris from a Chilean publisher, Juan Carlos Sáez, who had heard from a friend of mine that I had written a novel and offered to publish it. It was published.
For some male clients who complained of not being able to find a lover, I recommended that they write in indelible ink on a pink silk ribbon, “I wish with all my heart to find a woman,” sign it with a drop of their blood, and then tie it around the penis and keep it there for a day and a night.
Some women asked me for a psychomagical act that would enable them to find a man. To those appearing to be shut away in themselves, who were timid and unable to express anger against their fathers, I advised going to a specialized school for shooting lessons, not only with pistols and rifles but also with machine guns. I received a letter from one client effusively thanking me for my advice, who told me she was now in a relationship with her instructor. Later she came to me asking for a psychomagical act that would allow her to break free of this man.
Abortions made necessary by emotional or economic problems cause deep trauma. The woman, feeling guilty, becomes depressed and cannot come to terms with it. There may be a crisis in the couple’s relationship as they move further and further away from each other. To help my clients in these cases, I suggested that they think of a fruit to identify with the fetus — some chose a raspberry, some a mango, others a small tangerine. Having chosen a fruit, the woman should place it on her bare belly and fasten it there with four strips of flesh-colored bandage. A friend, the husband, the lover, or a family member should dress as a surgeon, cut the bandages and take the fruit out, acting as if pulling it out with great difficulty. During this action, the consultant should relive the feelings she experienced during the operation and express them aloud. Then the “fetus” should be placed in a small hardwood box, and she and the man who inseminated her (or her current partner, a friend, or a family member) should go to a beautiful place, dig a hole with their hands, bury the “coffin” there, and plant a sapling on top of it. Once this is done, the man should kiss her on the lips, slipping a honey candy into her mouth.
When people consult me who have pimples on their faces and I see that they have had a lack of attention from their parents, I advise them to get their mother and father to spit into a green clay pot that they hold in their right hand. Then, with the middle and ring fingers of the left, they should stir the clay and saliva to form a paste that is then applied to the pimples or eczema.
In extreme cases where the child abuse has been so cruel that the damage seems incurable, I advise the client to die. and then be reborn as someone else. I advise him to choose a beautiful place; dig his grave there aided by a group of friends; read his funeral rites facing the grave; then lie down, naked and wrapped in a sheet. His friends will cover him with dirt (of course leaving his mouth and nose exposed), and he will stay there, mimicking the emptiness of death, for at least forty minutes. When he says he is ready his friends will disinter him, wash him, put new clothes on him, and baptize him with a new name.
When a child has unconsciously been given an abominable name, such as that of a sibling who died before he or she was born, that of a relative who committed suicide, or other tragedy, I advise changing the name. To prevent the child from feeling dispossessed of her identity, she should be given two small boxes, one gray and one gold. “In this gray box you will keep your old name.” On a simple, opaque card, the mother or father writes the child’s name and puts it in the gray box. “And from this box”—the golden box is opened and a brightly colored card with cheerful decorations is taken out—“you get a new, better name.” And they read the new name on the card. “From now on you will be called by this name. When you want to remember your old name, take it out of the gray box for a moment, greet it, then put it back again.”
For divorced women who cannot get over the anger they feel toward their ex-husbands, I have advised sticking a photograph of the man’s face onto a soccer ball and kicking it around.
I have advised people who were never cuddled to get their partner or a friend to give them a long massage using acacia honey instead of oil, completing the massage by rubbing them all over their body with a photo of their mother in the left hand and one of their father in the right hand.
Sometimes I have used active poetry as a remedy for people who suppress their feelings. I told a frustrated musician to get up at dawn and listen to the songs of the birds while repeatedly saying, like a litany, “They are happy because I exist.” I told a woman who felt nonexistent to stand in the middle of a bridge at midnight in the summertime, repeating many times while looking at the current, “The river passes but the reflection of the stars remains.” I advised a man who suffered from thinking that he was fundamentally disagreeable to whisper in the ears of a hundred people (relatives, friends, colleagues, etc.), “A single firefly in the dark night lights up the whole sky.”
Little by little, I was daring to propose more complex acts. At the time of writing, every Wednesday, without any advertising and always for free, aided by the Tarot I prescribe psychomagical acts to around twenty people. Fortunately, my partner, Marianne Costa, has taken notes of this advice (which can be found in Appendix I of this book), because I, being in a state of trance, forget it after a few minutes.
I once gave a series of interviews to Gilles Farcet, which was published in the book Psychomagic. His readers wrote to me asking for private sessions, which I did for a year in order to confront important problems and to experiment with new directions in this form of therapy. Many psychoanalysts, osteopaths, and doctors of so-called New Medicine (students of Dr. Gérard Athias in the south of France) took my courses and applied them to their disciplines. Later, the SAT Institute (Seekers After Truth), headed by the psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo, a direct disciple of Gestalt therapy founder Frederick Perls, invited me to teach some courses in Spain and Mexico, where three hundred future therapists learned the techniques of tarology, psychogenealogy, and above all, psychomagic. I also formed groups of students of the psychoanalyst Antonio Ferrara in Santiago de Chile, and then in Naples. To convey this art, which I practiced in a state of trance, I had to force myself to find “laws” that would allow scientific minds to delve into its mysteries.
Psychomagic is fundamentally based on the fact that the subconscious accepts the symbol and the metaphor, giving them the same importance as real things, which was also known to the magicians and shamans of ancient cultures. For the subconscious, acting on a photograph, a tomb, a garment, or some intimate object (one detail can symbolize the whole) is the same as acting on the real person.
Once the subconscious decides that something should happen, it is impossible for the individual to inhibit or completely sublimate the impulse. Once the arrow is launched, one cannot make it return to the bow. The only way to free oneself from the impulse is to fulfill it. but this can be done metaphorically.
Many children who have been disliked by their parents grow up with the desire to eliminate them. While they do not do this, they remain submerged in a depression that can lead to suicide, addiction, or fatal disease. For these people I recommend hanging a portrait of the mother from the neck of a black hen and a portrait of the father from the neck of a red rooster. Then they should cut the throats of both chickens and bathe in their blood. After plucking them, they should cook them and serve them at a party with a group of friends. The black and red feathers and the other remains of the animals should be buried and a sapling planted above them.
Cases of female frigidity in which I detected a sexual fixation on the father have been cured by the recommendation that the woman print a photograph of her father on a t-shirt and make love with her partner while he wears that shirt. Thus, metaphorically, the incestuous desire is fulfilled and overcome. One woman who came to see me suffered from wounds and burns in her vagina each time she made love. Looking at her family tree, I could see that at age thirteen she had been separated from her Italian father. To conduct the metaphorical incest, I suggested that she cook a package of spaghetti in three liters of water. She should then send the spaghetti in a bag to her father and douche with the cooking water. She was cured.
It is not possible to eliminate an anxiety or an irrational fear by trying to reason with the client to show him that what he fears can never happen. One must push him toward the anxiety in order to bring about, metaphorically, what he fears so much. In this, I was inspired by an anecdote from the American psychiatrist Milton Erickson, who, as a child, saw his father’s workers trying to get a stubborn bull into the corral. The bull refused to budge. For all their pushing, they could not move him. Erickson approached them, took the animal’s tail, and tugged on it. Feeling that he was being given an order to retreat, the stubborn bovine took off running toward the corral.
When a person feels possessed — by somebody in her family, a witch, or some evil person — it is impossible to convince her that this is not the case by giving reasons. However well she may accept it intellectually, her emotional center will reject it. She must be treated as a possessed person and must submit to an act that resembles an exorcism. To accomplish this, her entire body should be covered by copies of a photograph or a drawing of the invader, stuck on with a mixture of clay, flour, and water. Then these images should be ripped off while yelling furious orders such as, “Out! Leave this person in peace! Go back to yourself!” Once they have all been torn off, the patient should be bathed, perfumed, and dressed in new clothes. The photographs should be buried and a chrysanthemum planted there.
It may also be advisable to make a fake identification document for the patient with a false name, age, and profession, to mislead whoever wants to possess him. In some central European Jewish families, when someone is gravely ill they call the rabbi to change his name. Thus, when death comes to look for him, it will not find him.
The psychoanalyst Chantal Rialland, who studied with me for many years, writes in her book Cette famille qui vit en nous (The Family That Lives in Us), “With regard to the child, the parents feel anguish as a function of their own problems, as a consequence of their childhood and adolescence. They feel this with all the more intensity if the father and mother have felt unwanted, rejected, or not conforming to the family’s wishes: ‘We hope everything will go well and be normal,’ ‘We hope the birth will be easy.’ Perhaps the last birth in the family was difficult, or perhaps one of the women in the family died in childbirth, a mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, or aunt: ‘We hope it won’t be as bad as it was for Grandma Agatha,’ ‘We hope she won’t be a druggie like our cousin,’ ‘A whore like our aunt,’ ‘Unfaithful like Grandmother Ernestine,’ ‘We hope he won’t be an alcoholic like Grandpa Arthur,’ ‘A homosexual like Uncle Peter,’ ‘Lazy and womanizing like our paternal grandfather.’ Some parents dread the crisis of adolescence: ‘We hope he’ll find a decent woman,’ ‘When I think that my daughter will belong to another man. ’ On the affective plane, every child is compared to his or her family, and since this is a mechanism that tends to reproduce itself, the parents’ fears act in the background as curses.”
Georg Groddeck in The Book of the It writes, “Fear is the result derived from the repression of a desire,” and “Fear is desire: those who fear rape, desire it.” During childhood it is through the psyches of our parents that the family injects its desires into our minds in the form of fears. Arrows that were shot many generations ago arrive to strike us, demanding that we fulfill their self-destructive impulses: “You have to develop the same cancer that your grandfather had,” “You have to lose your ovaries like so many of your ancestors did,” “Alcoholism is a family tradition,” “The son of the tiger must be born with stripes,” “If the mother’s a whore, the daughter’s a whore.” Unless they can be fulfilled metaphorically through an act of psychomagic, these family curses will obsess us for our whole lives.
A psychoanalyst could not shake off the fear of losing her patients and ending up on the street, homeless, a beggar. I advised her to disguise herself as an indigent (dirty and worn out clothes, hair encrusted with dirt, red nose) and receive clients thus in her office. She must also have a liter of wine by her side and a few crusts of hard bread.
“And what am I going to tell them?”
“Tell them you’re doing an act of psychomagic.”
“And for how long do I have to present myself like this?”
“You’re thirty years old. You will be a psychoanalyst-beggar for thirty days.”
A wife was obsessed with the desire to have many lovers, but due to a high appreciation of fidelity, she contained herself. I suggested that she trick her husband by remaining faithful to him.
“That’s what I want, but it’s impossible!”
“It is possible, metaphorically. First of all, you should confess these desires to your husband and convince him to collaborate with you. He will rent a hotel room. Then he will call you, imitating someone else’s voice, and tell you to come there for a rendezvous. When you arrive at the room, he will be waiting there disguised as someone else, with a false mustache, beard, or wig, and acting with gestures he never uses. Without saying a word, you two should make love. Then he will leave. You will go back home, where your husband, having restored his own personality, will be waiting for you. He will ask you, ‘Where were you?’ And you’ll answer with a lie: ‘I was at the dentist’s.’ This act should be repeated several times, each time disguising your husband as a different person.”
The family incessantly makes predictions about us: “If you do not study, you will fail in life,” “You don’t have a good ear; don’t sing,” “You are insufferable; no man will want to marry you,” “If you keep on like this, you’ll end up in jail.” The subconscious tends to fulfill the prediction. Anne A. Schutzberger, a professor at the University of Nice, mentions one aspect of this phenomenon: “If one carefully examines the past of a number of patients seriously ill with cancer, one will find that in many cases, they are people who unconsciously developed a ‘life script’ during their childhood, sometimes even with the date, time, day, or age at which they will die, and then they find themselves actually in this situation of dying. For example, at age thirty-three — the age at which Jesus Christ died — or forty-five — the age at which a father or mother died, and so on. These are all examples of a kind of automatic fulfillment of personal or family predictions.”
It has been proven that if a teacher expects a bad student to remain the same, it is most likely that nothing will change, while on the contrary, if the teacher believes that the child is intelligent but shy and predicts that despite this he or she will make progress, the child begins to study well.
The only way to free oneself from an obsessive prediction is to fulfill it, not to try to forget it. A Spanish friend of mine, a skeptic who always made fun of clairvoyants, had me read the Tarot for her out of curiosity. The cards told her, “Someone very close to you will die, and it will cost you a lot of money.” From that moment on, she never ceased to be distressed. The more she tried not to believe the prediction, the greater her obsession grew. I recommended, “Close the doors and windows of your home. Pump insecticides into all the rooms. Watch a fly die. Then it will be true that ‘someone very close to you will die.’ Then take a dollar bill and add six zeros to it in indelible ink. Wrap the fly in it and bury it. Thus it will have ‘cost you a lot of money.’” She did it. Her obsession vanished instantly.
A French woman with an exceptional voice who had been told by her father, “You’re a dreamer; you’ll never earn a living with your throat unless you sing at the opera house,” felt obliged to take singing lessons but never went on from being a student to being a professional. Her impossible goal was to sing at the opera. Knowing she was unable to achieve this, she felt like a failure. I offered to fulfill her father’s demands. She was to dress humbly, go to the Palace of the Opera at six o’clock in the evening, and start singing next to the gates with a bowl at her feet. Seven friends, one after another, would deposit a bill in the bowl. After the song, they should applaud her. With the money she received, she should buy an article of clothing that emphasized her beauty. Once the paternal requirement of singing at the opera house was fulfilled, her feelings of inferiority disappeared, and very soon after she became successful at singing the popular songs of which she was fond.
In Mexico City, I met with a young man who was afraid of committing suicide. This fear had been instilled by his mother who, when angry with him, had always yelled, “You’re going to end up like your father!” He had been told that his father was a bad man who ended up committing suicide with pills. I asked him what color he imagined these barbiturates to be. He said they were blue.
“Where did he die?”
“In a hotel in Buenos Aires, in Argentina.”
“Look in the city for a street named after Buenos Aires or Argentina. Rent a hotel room there, or as close to it as you can. Warn your mother that you are going to perform a therapeutic act that is necessary to prevent you from committing suicide and that you need her help. Go to the hotel room carrying a small bottle of blue sugar pills. Swallow all of them and lie in bed, completely still. An hour later, your mother should arrive and find you like that, ‘dead.’ She should cry, embracing your ‘corpse,’ uttering great lamentations and asking for forgiveness. Then she should call four assistants, who will carry you, very stiff, out of the hotel room. They will carry you, stretched out in a van, to the apartment where you live with your girlfriend. They will deposit you at her feet. She will embrace you, kiss you, caress you. Then you will wake up. You will tell your mother, ‘I have committed suicide like my father! Now that the prediction is fulfilled I will live my own life.’ To celebrate, you will invite your girlfriend, your mother, and the four friends to dine on tacos made from blue tortillas.”
A clairvoyant had predicted to a very fat, childlike man that on his next birthday he would have a serious accident. The fateful date was approaching, and he was so preoccupied that he could barely get up in the morning to go to work. I recommended that he buy one of those calendars from which one tears off a page for each day. The next day, in the early morning, he should tear off the pages until he got to the date of his birthday. Then he should go to a bakery dressed like a child and buy a multitiered cake covered in cream. He should carry it away unwrapped, walking down the street. He should purposely stumble and fall face down onto the cake, burying his face in the cream. He should scream like a child who believes he has had a major accident. Then he should go to the seer’s house with the crushed cake and smear it on him.
A woman was obsessed because a doctor had told her it was likely that she would have ovarian cancer. She felt sterile. To eliminate this negative prediction, I advised her to insert two fresh dove eggs into her vagina and keep them there for one whole night in order that they might confer their germinative strength. Then she should bury them in fertile soil, planting two large flowers there to symbolize her fulfilled ovaries.
A young woman was worried because all the women in her family tree were only children and had been widowed. She wanted to find a husband who would not die. I advised her to fulfill the prediction, since she was not currently living with a partner, by dressing in black and having business cards printed with her name on them, followed by “widow of X.” She should also make a human-sized doll representing the dead husband with her own hands, with which she would sleep for seven nights. After that time she should bury it and plant a tree over the “grave.”
In order to solve a problem I often make the client aware that, as in dreams, he or she is shifting the image of one person onto another. One woman could not break free from her former husband. Although she hated him, the separation made her suffer. I advised her to obtain a picture of her father’s face and a picture of her ex-husband’s face. The pictures should be large, life size, on transparent sheets. Then she should place the ex-husband’s face over that of the father and tape them to the glass of her bedroom window, preferably where the rising sun shines in, in order to see both images at the same time, superimposed. “Go to visit your father, and without him knowing it, dig in his laundry basket and steal a pair of underpants. Back at your house, cut a piece off the fly and stick it at the bottom of the double picture. When you truly realize that you are suffering not from your ex-husband’s lack of understanding but from your father’s, due to a repressed incestuous desire from childhood, you can burn the two transparencies and the piece of underwear, dissolve some of the ashes in a glass of wine, and drink it. Then you will accept the divorce with pleasure, knowing that it is a liberation.”
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.
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