It was pure delight this weekend to encounter the work of Alejandro Jodorowski. His film “The Holy Mountain” had been in my awareness since it was mentioned- in an itself inspirational- DTFH podcast. Then, as gifts from the universe often do, it popped up and winked at me a few more times in talks with a friend.

While the film’s trailer looked too intense for me to take Saturday evening, I watched instead the now 90 year old Alejandro give a Tarot reading unlike any I’d seen before. The depth of understanding that a lifetime of personal and professional transformational work creates came through in poetic language and warmth of presence.

My curiosity was piqued.

I’ve long found the imagery of the Rider-Waite Tarot captivating and mysterious. From time to time I’d pop on to The Happy Vibes and pull a card for the day, to see how the message fit my intuition, until I had enough interesting experiences with it to buy my own deck. For example, pulling the same card three days in a row in consideration of a situation that was persistent.

Now I had to know how Alejandro came to understand it in such vibrant and multifaceted brilliance.

Thus I came upon his book “The Way of Tarot”

In the couldn’t-stop-reading-it “look inside” section on Amazon, I found this gem, offered from Jodo’s generous imagination in response to his question about what purpose his years of diligent study of the Tarot may serve:

“You should acquire only the power of helping others. An art that does not heal is not an art”.

A strong statement! I needed to chew on this one for a while.

We might refer to a master of any discipline as “an artist”, and to their work as “art”. At the highest levels of excellence, these masters remind us of our wholeness. We can recognize the excellence of others because of the innate capacities we have in ourselves.

Art certainly can be made in service of the self, and while it may make a point, it does not touch the heart. In service of the self, the art separates- “this is my excellence”, but in service of others, it says “This is us. This is what we can be”.

This sentiment is echoed in a conversation with Dr. Cornel West on the JRE podcast.

“One of the great gifts of the artists, and I think about this in the black tradition, is soulful kenosis. Now Kenosis means self giving, self-donating, and self-emptying. So if you go to a James Brown concert that brother goes for four and a half hours and gives everything- every fiber of his be-ing. and at the end of every concert what does he say? “I’m an extension of you, you’re an extension of me. I don’t exist without you”.

In fact Dr. West asserts that artists have an indispensable part to play in healing our world. Because they touch the soul. Because their work can heal.

“There are so many examples that we human beings generate that require our moral and spiritual witness, our analytical attention and our artists, who can authorize and alternative. Even if only for a moment. An alternative.”

I’ll leave you with the most touching sentiment from the talk that still resonates in my heart:

“One of the uplifting features of being rooted in the arts is no matter how ugly and vicious and hateful things are, it never suffocates the human spirit. Somebody gonna tell a joke, make you laugh. Somebody gon sing a song, touch your soul.”

I know Alejandro would agree.

You can find Jodorowsky’s exhaustively researched and painstakingly restored Marseille Tarot here.