Alejandro Jodorowsky talks about his fascination with the Tarot and how he helped recreate what the Tarot of Marseilles looked like 1400 years ago. He also goes into what the different Tarot cards mean. This video is an extra from the 2007 restored DVD of The Holy Mountain (1973 film).

(via Arthur)

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Here’s another excerpt from Alejandro Jodorowsky’s new memoir, The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky:

Full Story: Reality Sandwich

See also: Arthur’s excerpt from Spiritual Journey

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So it was with great excitement that I read the recent translation of Jodorowsky’s spiritual autobiography, entitled-hold onto your hats-The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky. Like his films, it is a puzzling, wonderous, grotesque, and sometimes tedious book, but it does confirm the sense I get from his films that he is not fucking around with the mysteries. In the Sixties and Seventies, Jodorowsky was a serious practitioner of Zen, studying and meditating with a Japanese priest in Mexico City named Ejo Takata. Their koan combat is the most steady thread of this book, a male-buddy-cognitive conversation that forms a counterpoint with the other figures in the book, all of whom are women who offer Jodo various modes of initiation-artistic, sexual, magical, energetic. These women include the surrealist painter Leonora Carrington, who sounds as wacky brilliant as Dali, and a goat-killing silicone-implanted Mexican actress known as La Tigress.

The strongest aspect of the book are the tales themselves. Jodo is a great story-teller, and the details he provides about his fascinating life-a Chilean expat in Mexico, a renegade theatre director turned filmmaker, a celebrity in Mexico City’s hothouse creative environment-make me pray that someone chooses to translate his autobiography La Danza de la Realidad as well. His stories are rounded out with remarkable and sometimes hilariously bizarre details about random encounters with street urchins and strange synchronicities involving firing squads and singing vulvas. Late in the book, he visits a brujo, and the setting tells you all you need to know: ‘A black dog gnawed the remains of an iguana and a pig was snuggling its belly comfortably into a freshly dug hollow in a humid patch of ground.’

Full Story: Techgnosis

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J: You, Manson, you are a symbol. You always wear make-up, no-one knows who you are… Christ is a man who became a symbol, you are the opposite. You are a symbol who is in the process of becoming human. When you say ‘Eat Me, Drink Me’, you prove your love for the world. You offer yourself… you are food for the vampire cannibals. That’s what I feel. Talking about you personally: you are a mythology, but back to front. Each new era needs new mythologies…

M: I completely agree. You understood that so much better than anyone… yes.

J: To express ourselves as artists in the world, we can no longer destroy it. It is ourselves that we have to destroy.

Full Story: End and End

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Hot on the heels of a different announcement about Werner Herzog’s collaboration with Nic Cage comes words of an even stranger paring. The Hollywood Reporter reports that a film co-written by Herzog and his longtime assistant director Herbert Golder will be produced by David Lynch and his Absurda production company.
My Son, My Son is based on the true story of a man who, based upon a play by Sophocles, kills his mother with a sword. Lynchian enough already, the film will tell the story in a flashback structure. Also following Lynch’s style, it will be shot in DV rather than film. My Son was actually delayed in order for Herzog to work with Cage while his schedule allows. He’ll also be tight on shooting afterwards, since he’s signed on to shoot The Piano Tuner this fall. With his documentary Encounters at the End of the World out this summer, even for Herzog, 2008 is one prolific year.

As odd a collaboration as Herzog and Lynch may be (and trust us, it’s odd), even more unlikely comes the announcement that Lynch and Absurda will be working on a film with Alejandro Jodorowsky. Best known for his series of surreal, mind-bending Fando y Lis, El Topo and The Holy Mountain, Jodorowsky hasn’t made a film since 1990. Jodorowsky certainly shares a lot more common ground with Lynch, but hearing of any new project by the Chilean 79-year-old is a bit incredible.

Jodorowsky’s film will be the metaphysical gangster movie King Shot. Already guaranteed to be NC-17 (no surprise given his earlier works), the film features Marilyn Manson as a 300-year old pope and will star Nick Nolte.

Meanwhile, Lynch is spending any time he’s not producing on his own project according to Hollywood Today. A “Lynch-esque documentary,” (as if he could direct any other kind), it’s a road movie where he speaks with regular folks on the meaning of life and discusses the ’60s with Donovan and John Hagelin. Looks like these days Lynch may be just as busy as Herzog.

From: Pastemagazine

(via Coilhouse)

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An excerpt from Alejandro Jodorowsky’s new book, the Center for Tactical Magic’s guide to hexing corporations, and plenty more.

Full issue available for download in PDF at Arthur (or available in print at these locations)

(though I still think the definitive article on magical warfare with corporations was Wes Unruh’s article first published here by Technoccult. Then again, I’m biased.)

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