Description
Book SynopsisNot a traditional autobiography composed of a chronological recounting of memories, Dance of Realityrepaints 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 fulfilment means casting off the phantoms projected by parents on their children.
Dance of Realityis 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, Dance of Realityis the book upon which Jodorowsky's critically acclaimed 2013 Cannes Film Festival film of the same name was based.
Trade Review“An autobiographical work by an octogenarian,
The Dance of Reality begs to be read as a culminating work . . .” * Los Angeles Times *
“His films
El Topo and
The Holy Mountain were trippy, perverse, and blasphemous.” * Wall Street Journal *
“. . . The Dance of Reality [film is] a trippy but bighearted reimagining of the young Alejandro’s unhappy childhood in a Chilean town . . .” * New York Times Magazine *
“Beginning his unorthodox autobiography in Chile, where he grew up as the child of Russian Jews in exile, writer and filmmaker Jodorowsky sketches the squalor and desperation of his birthplace. It's here that the foundations of his spiritual liberation are laid in opposition to the violent deaths and poverty that surround him, as well as the brutal sadism of his father. His artistic pursuits from poetry to dance to theater, are also the pursuit of mystical understanding. As with his films (El Topo, The Holy Mountain), his style is vivid and dramatic, rich with symbolism. While his narrative concentrates on relatively few events, by this editing and highlighting he creates a tapestry that is both linear and complex. The author manages to craft scenes of intense surrealism while never losing sight of the human experiences of love, loss, fear, and wonder. The final chapters focus on how his ideas about creativity that he calls "psychomagic" can be actualized; for him, art is a means of freedom from what he calls 'the prison of the rational.'” * Publishers Weekly, July 2014 *
Table of ContentsOne Childhood
Two The Dark Years
Three First Acts
Four The Poetic Act
Five Theater as Religion
Six The Endless Dream
Seven Magicians, Masters, Shamans, and Charlatans
Eight From Magic to Psychomagic
Nine From Psychomagic to Psychoshamanism
Appendix I Psychomagical Acts
Transcribed by Marianne Costa Appendix II Brief Psychomagical Correspondence
Index
About Jodorowsky and The Dance of Reality Film
