The Dance of Reality: A Psychomagical Autobiography

I excitedly purchased this book after watching Jodorowsky's moving Santa Sangre. I was hoping it would be a window into the genius film director. After all, psycho-magical or not, it is an auto-biography. Instead it was a window not into the author, but into the worldview shared by the intellectually lazy followers of Theosophy and other New Age religions. This communal window has been peered through before and is devoid of value inside and out.Forgiving the thinly veined proselytization, the writing is unimpressive and contradictory. The story starts with the depiction of 2 parents who are willing to do anything for their child. One of the earliest examples is when young Alejandro refuses to leave the house until his parents find him red shoes to wear. They oblige, and his mother travels 100 km to get him red boots, which he wears for a day and promptly gives them away to his shoe-shiner friend in the name of "charity". Yet later in the chapter he depicts his mother as cruel and neglectful because she won't buy him new socks or mend his tattered ones.This is the second New Age book where mysticism is accepted as an excuse to forgo all rational continuity and even basic storytelling principles. This stuff is really illegible. The uncritical praise says more about the reviewers than the work itself.

Great. Dunes was even better

Of myself and you beyond the material comprehension we have been bound to.What a gift Mr Jodorowsky. Your journey has become mine as well.

I truly recommend this book! It's amazing the sensibility of Alejandro Jodorowsky to write about life, art and spirituality.

Jodorowsky is an exceptional human being. A remarkably deep, sensitive, and fascinating autobiography.

good stuff

Great!

Jodorowsky's mind is incredible. Great book to dive into his world.

I read this after seeing the films The Dance of Reality and Endless Poetry based on this autobiography by the irrepressible Jodorowsky. What a book - and some of the stuff in the films that I thought were flights of fancy turned out to be true (the dwarfs dressed as Hitler outside his made father's shop). Other things in the film are made up but the life he led is worthy of five films. He's made two and in his nineties I hope he or his sons will make the other three.

Positioned, I guess, somewhere between The Spiritual Journey (the better book in my view) and Psychomagic (not so good), this is a psychological autobiography recounting key moments (and their impacts) in Jodo's life, rather than a chronological accounts. As such it's fine; funny in parts, insightful in others, but he has written better. I have read most of Jodo's books that have come out in English recently and also note quite a bit of repetition as the stories get told again (sometimes in almost exactly the same seemingly cut-and-pasted words) but Jodo is usually a rewarding read and some of his stories are funny so the repetition doesn't grate too much but it's noticeable.

A brilliant piece of work. In a way it is the encapsulation of a not just a career but a life, as a true autobiography ought to be. For me Alejandro is one of the most inspiring people of my lifetime, a man of great humanity and insight.

One of my favourite books.

An Amazing trajectory of Life .... a REAL COMPLETE ARTIST ! Thank you Jodo for all you are & and have shared with us .. a guiding light !