Sacred Trickery and the Way of Kindness

Sacred Trickery and the Way of Kindness PDF

Author: Alejandro Jodorowsky

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2016-02-18

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1620554607

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Enter the mind of Jodo and follow his initiatory saga from Zen disciple to revolutionary filmmaker to spiritual teacher • Explores the sacred trickery of shamans he encountered, including Carlos Castaneda, and how intention and action matter more than notions of “true” and “false” • Explains the Way of Kindness and how small acts of generosity and goodness can have a profound effect on your spirit, infusing life with a wealth of happiness • Includes contributions from friends and students of Jodorowsky on their experiences with him, including his son Adan Jodorowsky Known for his surrealist films, his unique approach to tarot, his symbolic comics, and his shamanic therapeutic method of psychomagic, Alejandro Jodorowsky has accomplished an extraordinary amount in his more than 80 years. In this book, we get an intimate look into the inner workings of the cult figure of Jodo. What is revealed is a man who has evolved since his groundbreaking films of the 1970s, El Topo and The Holy Mountain, a man who has grown from a sacred trickster, a shaman of psychomagic, into a brilliant spiritual maverick of the 21st century. We get to see Jodo’s own reflections on the rich tapestry of his remarkable life, including the initiatory failure of the Dune film project, which combined the talents of a multitude of creative greats, including Moebius, Salvador Dali, Orson Welles, Mick Jagger, and H. R. Giger. We learn about Jodo’s years with Marcel Marceau and with great masters such as Ejo Takata, whose Zen training featured strenuous physical and mental ordeals; the sorceress Pachita, who performed psychic surgery on Jodo; and the mysterious Carlos Castaneda, whose sacred trickery reveals how intentions matter more than notions of “true” and “false.” Discussing the Way of Kindness that he now follows, Jodo reveals how intentionally practicing small acts of generosity and goodness can have a profound effect on your spirit, infusing life with a wealth of happiness. From sacred trickery to the path of kindness, Jodo’s radical wisdom discerns the timeless within the immediate and gauges the everyday by the measure of eternity.

Sacred Trickery and the Way of Kindness

Sacred Trickery and the Way of Kindness PDF

Author: Alejandro Jodorowsky

Publisher: Inner Traditions

Published: 2016-02-19

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781620554593

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Enter the mind of Jodo and follow his initiatory saga from Zen disciple to revolutionary filmmaker to spiritual teacher • Explores the sacred trickery of shamans he encountered, including Carlos Castaneda, and how intention and action matter more than notions of “true” and “false” • Explains the Way of Kindness and how small acts of generosity and goodness can have a profound effect on your spirit, infusing life with a wealth of happiness • Includes contributions from friends and students of Jodorowsky on their experiences with him, including his son Adan Jodorowsky Known for his surrealist films, his unique approach to tarot, his symbolic comics, and his shamanic therapeutic method of psychomagic, Alejandro Jodorowsky has accomplished an extraordinary amount in his more than 80 years. In this book, we get an intimate look into the inner workings of the cult figure of Jodo. What is revealed is a man who has evolved since his groundbreaking films of the 1970s, El Topo and The Holy Mountain, a man who has grown from a sacred trickster, a shaman of psychomagic, into a brilliant spiritual maverick of the 21st century. We get to see Jodo’s own reflections on the rich tapestry of his remarkable life, including the initiatory failure of the Dune film project, which combined the talents of a multitude of creative greats, including Moebius, Salvador Dali, Orson Welles, Mick Jagger, and H. R. Giger. We learn about Jodo’s years with Marcel Marceau and with great masters such as Ejo Takata, whose Zen training featured strenuous physical and mental ordeals; the sorceress Pachita, who performed psychic surgery on Jodo; and the mysterious Carlos Castaneda, whose sacred trickery reveals how intentions matter more than notions of “true” and “false.” Discussing the Way of Kindness that he now follows, Jodo reveals how intentionally practicing small acts of generosity and goodness can have a profound effect on your spirit, infusing life with a wealth of happiness. From sacred trickery to the path of kindness, Jodo’s radical wisdom discerns the timeless within the immediate and gauges the everyday by the measure of eternity.

The Panic Fables

The Panic Fables PDF

Author: Alejandro Jodorowsky

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2017-03-16

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 1620555387

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The complete series of filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky’s spiritual comics, translated into English for the first time • Contains all 284 of Jodo’s Panic Fables comics, published weekly from 1967 to 1973 in Mexico City’s El Heraldo newspaper • Includes an introduction describing how the Panic Fables came to be • Explains how he incorporated Zen teachings, initiatory wisdom, and sacred symbology into his Panic Fables, as well as himself as one of the characters In 1967, in response to theatrical censorship rules that put him on the political “black list” in Mexico City and caused his plays and his pantomime classes at the School of Fine Arts to be cancelled, Alejandro Jodorowsky decided to pursue a new form of artistic expression to earn his living: comics. Working with his friend Luis Spota, the editor of the cultural section of the newspaper El Heraldo de México, Jodo initially planned 3 months’ worth of weekly comics, which he would draw himself. However, his “Panic Fables”--named after his early ‘60s avant-garde theater movement in Paris--were met with such insatiable popularity that he continued the series for six and a half years, from June 1967 until December 1973. Appearing for the first time in English, this book presents all 284 of Jodorowsky’s Panic Fables in full color, along with an introduction by the author. He reveals how his first comics reflected his pessimism about the future and the meaning of life, the negativity of which soon exhausted him. He realized he needed to show the positivity that he encountered in life, and thus, little by little, he began incorporating Zen teachings, initiatory wisdom, and sacred symbology into his Panic Fables. Through this transformation and the outpouring of support from his devoted readers, many of whom cite the Panic Fables as providing pivotal guidance during their adolescence, Jodo discovered that art can serve to heal as well as raise consciousness. Writing himself into his comics, Jodo can be glimpsed as the character of the disciple who talks with his master and, as the series progresses, gradually grows to assume the role of master, providing psychomagic solutions to the problems of everyday life. In reading the complete Panic Fables in chronological order, much like his film The Dance of Reality, we witness in colorful detail Jodorowsky’s own path of spiritual growth.

The Finger and the Moon

The Finger and the Moon PDF

Author: Alejandro Jodorowsky

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2016-10-10

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 1620555360

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Jodo’s interpretations of the stories and koans of Zen master Ejo Takata • Offers more than 60 Zen teaching tales, initiatory stories, koans, and haikus for self-realization and spiritual awakening • Each story or koan is accompanied by the author’s lucid and penetrating commentary, blending the same burlesque slapstick and sublime insight that characterize his films • Explains how one must see beyond the words of the story to grasp the spiritual insights they contain Before he became the film maker and graphic novel author known throughout the world today, Alejandro Jodorowsky studied with Zen master Ejo Takata in Mexico City. In The Finger and the Moon, Jodorowsky recounts how he became Takata’s student and offers his interpretations of the teaching tales, initiatory stories, koans, and enigmatic haikus he learned at the feet of his great and humble teacher. Blending the same burlesque slapstick and sublime insight that characterize his films such as El Topo and The Holy Mountain, each story is accompanied by the author’s lucid and penetrating commentary, as well as insights from ancient Zen teachers. Yet their most significant gift to the reader is the sudden shock of realization they impart that can lead to spiritual awakening. Jodorowsky notes that most people are incapable of self-realization because of their fear of the void within, an emptiness they seek to fill with noise and chatter. He shows that Zen teachings can be compared to a finger pointing at the moon, directing you to awaken to your true nature--the Buddha within. The danger lies in mistaking the pointing finger for the moon, mistaking the words for the essential enlightenment, which can only be grasped once words have been surpassed. Unlike most tales, these stories are intended to evoke silent illumination--as true awakening and self-realization cannot occur until the mind has been stilled.

White Gold

White Gold PDF

Author: Susan Falls

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2017-09-01

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 0803277210

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Women have shared breast milk for eons, but in White Gold, Susan Falls shows how the meanings of capitalism, technology, motherhood, and risk can be understood against the backdrop of an emerging practice in which donors and recipients of breast milk are connected through social media in the southern United States. Drawing on her own experience as a participant, Falls describes the sharing community. She also presents narratives from donors, doulas, medical professionals, and recipients to provide a holistic ethnographic account. Situating her subject within cross-cultural comparisons of historically shifting attitudes about breast milk, Falls shows how sharing “white gold”—seen as a scarce, valuable, even mysterious substance—is a mode of enacting parenthood, gender, and political values. Though breast milk is increasingly being commodified, Falls argues that sharing is a powerful and empowering practice. Far from uniform, participants may be like-minded about parenting but not other issues, so their acquaintanceships add new textures to the body politic. In this interdisciplinary account, White Gold shows how sharing simultaneously reproduces the capitalist values that it disrupts while encouraging community-making between strangers.

Manual of Psychomagic

Manual of Psychomagic PDF

Author: Alejandro Jodorowsky

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2015-01-30

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 1620551616

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A workbook for using symbolic acts to heal the unconscious mind • Provides several hundred successful psychomagic solutions for a wide range of specific psychological, sexual, emotional, and physical problems, from stuttering, eczema, and fears to repressed rage and hereditary illnesses • Details how practitioners can develop unique psychomagic solutions for their patients • Explains how psychomagic bypasses the rational mind to work directly with the unconscious for quicker and more enduring change Traditional psychotherapy seeks to unburden the unconscious mind purely through talk and discussion. Psychomagic recognizes that it is difficult to reach the unconscious with rational thought. We should instead speak directly to the unconscious in its own language, that of dreams, poetry, and symbolic acts. By interacting on this deeper level, we can initiate quicker and more enduring change to resolve repressed childhood trauma, express buried emotions, and overcome deep-seated intimacy issues. Through the lens of psychomagic, illness can be seen as the physical dream of the unconscious, revealing unresolved issues, some passed from generation to generation. In this workbook of psychomagical spells, legendary filmmaker and creator of psychomagic Alejandro Jodorowsky provides several hundred successful psychomagic solutions for a wide range of psychological, sexual, emotional, and physical problems from stuttering, eczema, and fear of failure to repressed rage, hereditary illnesses, and domineering parents. Each solution takes the same elements associated with a negative emotional charge and recasts them into a series of theatrical symbolic actions that enable one to pay the psychological debts hindering their lives. Explaining the shamanic techniques at the foundation of psychomagic, the author offers methods for aspiring practitioners to develop solutions for their own unique patients. Jodorowsky explains how the surreal acts of psychomagic are intended to break apart the dysfunctional persona with whom the patient identifies in order to connect with a deeper, more authentic self. As he says in the book, “Health only finds itself in the authentic. There is no beauty without authenticity.”

Psychomagic

Psychomagic PDF

Author: Alejandro Jodorowsky

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2010-06-18

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 1594779562

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A healing path using the power of dreams, theater, poetry, and shamanism • Shows how psychological realizations can cause true transformation when manifested by concrete poetic acts • Includes many examples of the surreal but successful actions Jodorowsky has prescribed to those seeking his help While living in Mexico, Alejandro Jodorowsky became familiar with the colorful and effective cures provided by folk healers. He realized that it is easier for the unconscious to understand the language of dreams than that of rationality. Illness can even be seen as a physical dream that reveals unresolved emotional and psychological problems. Psychomagic presents the shamanic and genealogical principles Jodorowsky discovered to create a healing therapy that could use the powers of dreams, art, and theater to empower individuals to heal wounds that in some cases had traveled through generations. The concrete and often surreal poetic actions Jodorowsky employs are part of an elaborate strategy intended to break apart the dysfunctional persona with whom the patient identifies in order to connect with a deeper self. That is when true transformation can manifest. For a young man who complained that he lived only in his head and was unable to grab hold of reality and advance toward the financial autonomy he desired, Jodorowsky gave the prescription to paste two gold coins to the soles of his shoes so that all day he would be walking on gold. A judge whose vanity was ruling his every move was given the task of dressing like a tramp and begging outside one of the fashionable restaurants he loved to frequent while pulling glass doll eyes out of his pockets. The lesson for him was that if a tramp can fill his pockets with eyeballs, then they must be of no value, and thus the eyes of others should have no bearing on who you are and what you do. Taking his patients directly at their words, Jodorowsky takes the same elements associated with a negative emotional charge and recasts them in an action that will make them positive and enable them to pay the psychological debts hindering their lives.

The Dance of Reality

The Dance of Reality PDF

Author: Alejandro Jodorowsky

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2014-06-06

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13: 1620552825

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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 via his realization that all problems are rooted in the family tree • Includes photos from Jodorowsky’s appearance at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival and from the film based on this book, which debuted at Cannes Retracing the spiritual and mystical path he has followed since childhood, Alejandro Jodorowsky re-creates the incredible adventure of his life as an artist, filmmaker, writer, and therapist--all stages on his quest to push back the boundaries of both imagination and reason. Not a traditional autobiography composed of a chronological recounting of memories, The Dance of Reality repaints events from Jodorowsky’s life from the perspective of an unleashed imagination. Like the psychomagic and metagenealogy therapies he created, this autobiography exposes the mythic models and family templates upon which the events of everyday life are founded. It reveals the development of Jodorowsky’s realization that all problems are rooted in the family tree and explains, through vivid examples from his own life, particularly interactions with his father and mother, how the individual’s road to true fulfillment means casting off the phantoms projected by parents on their children. The Dance of Reality is autobiography as an act of healing. Through the retelling of his own life, the author shows we do not start off with our own personalities, they are given to us by one or more members of our family tree. To be born into a family, Jodorowsky says, is to be possessed. To peer back into our past is equivalent to digging into our own souls. If we can dig deep enough, beyond familial projections, we shall find an inner light--a light that can help us through life’s most difficult tests. Offering a glimpse into the mind and life of one of the most creative and enigmatic visionaries of our time, The Dance of Reality is the book upon which Jodorowsky’s critically acclaimed 2013 Cannes Film Festival film of the same name was based.

Albina and the Dog-Men

Albina and the Dog-Men PDF

Author: Alejandro Jodorowsky

Publisher: Restless Books

Published: 2016-05-10

Total Pages: 151

ISBN-13: 1632060698

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From the psychomagical guru who brought you The Holy Mountain and Where the Bird Sings Best comes a supernatural love-and-horror story in which a beautiful albino giantess unleashes the slavering animal lurking inside the men of a small village. When two women—an amnesiac goddess and her protector, a leather-tough woman called Crabby—arrive in a Chilean desert town, Albina’s otherworldly allure and unfettered sensuality turn men into wild beasts. Chased by a clubfooted corrupt cop, evil corporate overlords, giant-hare-riding narcos, and Himalayan cultists, Albina and Crabby must find a magical cactus that will cure Albina and the men’s monstrous affliction before the town consumes itself in an orgy of lust and violence. Albina and the Dog-Men is Alejandro Jodorowsky’s darkly funny, shocking, and surreal hybrid of mystical folktale, road novel, horror story, and social parable, ultimately uniting in a universal story of love against the odds and what makes us human. Praise for Albina and the Dog-Men “Deeply psychological and mysterious, the book will stimulate the imagination of the reader's mind to the extreme.” —Marina Abramović “In his latest novel, Jodorowsky builds on his multi-decade long assault of the public imagination . . . a fantastical and genre-defying parable of love and friendship. . . . Throughout this dark dream of a novel, Jodorowsky's writing is comic and occasionally mesmerizing. It is also ripe with horror and philosophical questions about what it means to belong, everywhere and nowhere. And while some of the subject matter is disturbing, it often carries the air of something ancient that you read children by a fire. For years Jodorowsky has proven the intensity of his imagination, and how far he is willing to go to present his singular vision to the world. He is a fully realized artist whose tales demand attention. At its core, Albina and the Dog-Men is a love story about two people committed to one another's survival and to discovering their potential. And, as with life, it is sometimes only through the weathering of a storm that our true capacities are made clear.” —Juan Vidal, NPR Books “[Albina and the Dog-Men] may be the ultimate piece of Jodorowsky arcana, a mind-bending adventure story on par with his wildest cinematic visions. . . . A surrealist novel par excellence, Albina and the Dog-Men is a dream, a prophecy, a hallucination, and a transfiguration such as only Jodorowsky could induce.” —Publishers Weekly “Composed like a feverish fairytale, Albina and the Dog-Men is a South American parable of self-acceptance and belonging that is fueled by prurience and colored with vivid, hallucinogenic details. . . . No moment of Jodorowsky’s book is at all predictable or familiar, and those who have a taste for the uncanny will be in awe over its undulations into strange, even godly, territory. The sensuality of the prose thickens as Albina’s situation becomes more tenuous, resulting in heady and appealing constructions. . . . As Albina and her followers traipse over barren lands and into forests protected by ancient Incans, the novel winds toward territory both magical and needfully human. The surreal methods of redemption in the novel’s final pages prove both glorious and moving. Jodorowsky’s is a work of unforgettable weirdness, a work whose movements are directed by sometimes violent mysticism and whose final lessons may speak to all who have ever dreamed of transformation.” —Michelle Anne Schingler, Foreword Reviews, Five-Star Review

Troubling Topics, Sacred Texts

Troubling Topics, Sacred Texts PDF

Author: Roberta Sterman Sabbath

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2021-10-04

Total Pages: 712

ISBN-13: 3110651009

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Abrahamic scriptures serve as cultural pharmakon, prescribing what can act as both poison and remedy. This collection shows that their sometimes veiled but eternally powerful polemics can both destroy and build, exclude and include, and serve as the ultimate justification for cruelty or compassion. Here, scholars not only excavate these works for their formative and continuing cultural impact on communities, identities, and belief systems, they select some of the most troubling topics that global communities continue to navigate. Their analysis of both texts and their reception help explain how these texts promote norms and build collective identities. Rejecting the notion of the sacred realm as separate from the mundane realm and beyond critical challenge, this collection argues—both implicitly and sometimes transparently—for the presence of the sacred within everyday life and open to challenge. The very rituals, prayers, and traditions that are deemed sacred interweave into our cultural systems in infinite ways. Together, these authors explore the dynamic nature of everyday life and the often-brutal power of these texts over everyday meaning.