From the new issue: On Having Your Tarot Read by Alejandro Jodorowsky
As a Jodorowsky fan, I’d read all about the Tarot readings he used to do for free in Paris, and about the “psychomagic” therapeutic sessions he performed during lectures, also for free. I dreamed about attending one of those sessions or readings, but I knew it would never be. I couldn’t afford to go to Paris, I didn’t speak French or Spanish, and the guy was 86 years old. Getting a filmed “Muchas gracias” would probably be as close as I’d ever get. So I picked that prize and paid my $250. It wasn’t cheap, but what the hell: my birthday was coming up, and in addition to a thank you, I’d get a new Jodorowsky film to watch in a year’s time.
That was on a Friday. I left that weekend to go camping far from any cellphone or internet service. When I returned, I found an email from the Endless Poetry team in my inbox. The first sentence read, “Your video is online, and it’s an amazing surprise: Alejandro reads you your Tarot!!!!”
It’s a good thing my husband was out getting groceries, because my scream rattled the windows.
In halting English, the man gazed warmly into the camera, thanked me, and took about five minutes to read my cards. I’d read a bit of his book on Tarot, so I knew he didn’t use it to divine a person’s future. The symbols in the Tarot become a way for the reader’s subject to analyze their own psyche. What I understand of his reading is this: I have a well of creative inspiration that I keep locked up in a tiny, cramped space within me. Some great change must occur to break it open. To initiate that change, I must purify the place where I live, and, as Jodorowsky put it, “open the spring to anoint the world.”
I wept once more, though this time it was of happiness. One of the best gifts I’d ever received was this one, and I’d given it to myself. All it was: a man I admired who held up a mirror and said, ‘Look. This is who you are.’”
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)