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The Dance of Reality: A Psychomagical Autobiography
A glimpse into the mind and life of one of the most creative and enigmatic visionaries of our time, filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky
• Retraces the spiritual and mystical path Jodorowsky has followed since childhood, vividly repainting events from the perspective of an unleashed imagination
• Explores the development of the author’s psychomagic and metagenealogy practices vi ...more
• Retraces the spiritual and mystical path Jodorowsky has followed since childhood, vividly repainting events from the perspective of an unleashed imagination
• Explores the development of the author’s psychomagic and metagenealogy practices vi ...more
Kindle Edition
,
424 pages
Published
June 6th 2014
by Park Street Press
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Chilean filmmaker/writer/performance-artist and "psychomagician" Alejandro Jodorowsky may be a genuine wise man/shaman or he may be a narcissistic charlatan but he's definitely an original. One thing for sure, he has perfected the ability of living every moment of life as a passionate, committed artist. "Dance of Reality" is alternately, wise, flaky, moving, irritating, profoundly odd and often laugh-out-loud funny.
It was his deadpan sense of humour that got me through the eye-roll-inducing sect ...more
It was his deadpan sense of humour that got me through the eye-roll-inducing sect ...more
I really enjoyed this. The film of the same name adapts only the first of nine chapters, there's a LOT more here. Fans of Moebius may enjoy the detailed description of a magical ritual designed to help them complete 'The Incal' toward the end of the book.
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150 pages autobiography, 300 pages psychomagic, 100% pure insanity. highly recommended.
This book is the best of all of Jodorowsky's writing that I've encountered thus far. I loved its mix of autobiography (including his usual hilarious, insane, and wild anecdotes about all the craziness he got up to) as well as his theories on therapy, shamanism, healing, and lucid dreaming. It's mystical without being woo-woo, and woo-woo without being overly credulous. Thrilling, funny, and heart-opening all at once.
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Also credited as Alexandro Jodorowsky
Better known for his surreal films El Topo and The Holy Mountain filmed in the early 1970s, Alejandro Jodorowsky is also an accomplished writer of graphic novels and a psychotherapist. He developed Psychomagic, a combination of psychotherapy and shamanic magic. His fans have included John Lennon and Marilyn Manson.
More about Alejandro Jodorowsky...
Better known for his surreal films El Topo and The Holy Mountain filmed in the early 1970s, Alejandro Jodorowsky is also an accomplished writer of graphic novels and a psychotherapist. He developed Psychomagic, a combination of psychotherapy and shamanic magic. His fans have included John Lennon and Marilyn Manson.
“This fear of dying would haunt me for the next forty years. It was an anguish that drove me to travel the world studying religions, magic, esotericism, alchemy, and the Kabbalah. It drove me to frequent initiatory groups, to meditate in the style of numerous schools, to seek out teachers, and in short wherever I went to search without limits for something that might console me in light of my transient existence. If I did not conquer death how could I live, create, love, prosper? I felt separated not only from the world but also from life. Those who thought they knew me only knew the makeup on a corpse. During those excruciating years, all the works I accomplished, as well as all my love affairs, were anesthetics to help me bear the anguish that gnawed at my soul. But in the depths of my being, in a hazy kind of way, I knew that this state of permanent agony was a disease that I had to cure by becoming my own therapist. At its heart, this was not about finding a magic potion to keep me from dying, but above all about learning to die with happiness.”
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“I had to first overcome the nightmares: my dreams were populated by menaces, shadows, murderous persecutions, disgusting events and objects, ambiguous sexual relations that excited me while also making me feel guilty. Here, I was a character inferior to my level of consciousness in the real world, capable of misdeeds that I would never have allowed myself to perpetrate while awake. I repeated many times, like a litany, “It is I who dream, just as it is I who am awake, and not a perverse and vulnerable child. The dreams happen in me; they are part of me. All that appears is myself. These monsters are aspects of me that have not been resolved. They are not my enemies. The subconscious is my ally. I must confront the terrible images and transform them.” I often had the same nightmare: I was in a desert, and a psychic entity determined to destroy me would come from the horizon as a huge cloud of negativity. I would wake up screaming and soaked in sweat. Now, tired of this undignified flight, I decided to offer myself in sacrifice. At the climax of the dream, in a state of lucid terror, I said, “Enough, I will stop wanting to wake up! Abomination, destroy me!” The entity approached threateningly. I stood still, calm. Then, the immense threat dissolved. I woke up for a few seconds, then peacefully went back to sleep. I realized it was I myself who had fed my terrors. I now knew that what terrifies us loses all its power in the moment that we stop fighting it. I began a long period during which whenever I had dreams, instead of running I would face my enemies and ask them what they wanted to tell me. Gradually, the images transformed before me and began to offer me presents: sometimes a ring, other times a golden sphere or a pair of keys. I now understood that just as every devil is a fallen angel, every angel is also a demon that has risen.”
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