PROLOGUE

Having lived many years in Mexico, I had the opportunity to study the methods of those called “witches” or “folk healers.” They are legion. Every neighborhood has one. Rising up in the heart of Mexico City, is the great Sonora market, which sells exclusively magic products: colored candles, dissected fish shaped in the form of the devil, images of saints, medicinal plants, blessed/holy soaps, Tarots, charms, plaster sculptures of the Virgin of Guadalupe turned into skeletons, and so on. In some back rooms plunged in semidarkness, women with a triangle painted on their foreheads rub bunches of herbs and blessed water on those who are there for consultations; they practice “cleansing” the body and the aura. . . . The professional doctors, faithful sons of the university, despise these practices. According to them, medicine is a science. They would like to find a precise, ideal remedy for every illness, and to not differentiate one from the other depending on who has it. Patients are treated only as bodies. These doctors do not propose to cure the soul. Contrarily, medicine, to folk healers, is an art.

It is easier for the unconscious to understand dream language than rational language. From a certain point of view, illnesses are dreams, messages that reveal unresolved problems. The “folk healers” develop personal techniques with great creativity: ceremonies, spells, strange medicines such as café au lait laxatives, rusty screw infusions, or animal excrement tablets. Some have more imagination or talent than others, but all, if consulted with faith, are useful. They speak to the primitive and superstitious individual, whom we all carry inside.

Watching these popular therapists operate, often performing miracles using the honorable tricks of a skilled magician, I came up with the notion of the “sacred trap.” For the extraordinary to occur, it is necessary for the sick to firmly believe in the possibility of a cure and accept the existence of miracles. Once the sacred trap tricks the person seeking consultation, he experiences an interior transformation that permits him to capture the world by way of the intuition rather than by reason. It is only this way that a true miracle can take place.

But I asked myself at that moment: If one eliminates the sacred trap with this artistic therapy, could a person cure another without faith? At every moment the unconscious exceeds the limits of our reason, whether by way of dreams or by futile acts. A particular incident that occurred in one of my psycho-genealogy courses indicated the way to me: at the moment in which I described the causes for the neurosis, a medical student of surgery fell on the floor twisting with painful spasms. It seemed like an epileptic seizure. In the middle of general panic, without anyone knowing how to help him, I went over to the inflicted person and, without knowing why, I removed, with a lot of trouble, his wedding band from the ring finger of his left hand. Immediately, he calmed down. I noticed that the objects that surround and accompany us form part of the language of the unconscious. In this way, putting a ring on a person can imprison him, taking this ring away can alleviate him . . .

Another experience, which had very revealing results: When my son Adan was six months old, he was ill with a very bad case of bronchitis. A doctor friend of mine, an herbalist, prescribed drops of essential oils. My ex-wife Valeria, Adan’s mother, was to pour thirty drops into his mouth three times per day. She quickly complained that the boy was not getting better.

I told her, “The problem is you don’t believe in the remedy. In what religion were you brought up?”

“Like every Mexican, Catholic!”

“Then we are going to incorporate faith into these drops. Each time you administer them, say an Our Father.”

That’s how Valeria did it. Adan recovered quickly.

So when a person seeking consultation asked me how to solve a problem I began, with great care, to prescribe what I called “psychomagic” with my Tarot readings.

Why not ordinary “magic”?

A witch doctor, supported by the spiritual superstitions of the patient, must present himself like the owner of superhuman powers obtained through a secret initiation and relying on divine and infernal allies in order to cure. The remedies they provide are a mystery to their clients, and the actions they recommend are intended to be performed without knowing why. In psychomagic, to the contrary, we need the individual’s understanding instead of superstitious beliefs. The person should know the reason for each of his actions. The psychomagician makes the transition from witch doctor to adviser: thanks to these prescriptions, the patient is converted into his own healer.

Okay. Examples . . .

But first a warning: To describe a psychomagic act, it is to enter directly into the language of the unconscious. While I try to solve extraordinary enigmas with these acts, I am satisfied with dealing with small, simple human problems. Our daily difficulties conceal mysterious and more irrational abysses; they are the point of enormous icebergs . . .

Let’s take the case of a woman who cannot stop having vertigo. A simple flask of water was sufficient to make her feel bad. I advised her to place her feet between the thighs of a woman then rub the sole against her vulva.

Ahem . . . What was the result of this shock treatment?

The practice of this act provoked a crisis of tears followed by a saving awakening. The symbolic significance of her vertigo was the fear of being swallowed by her mother, fear in relation to the maternal sex, and so forth.

How do such ideas come to you?

They come. That’s all! The truth is that I am an artist. That is indeed why I have taken the pain to explain my journeys. The diverse creative stages of my existence shaped me and developed my imagination.