from
EL TOPO - A BOOK OF THE FILM

These conversations took place in New York City in December, 1970.
Those who came together to question Alexandro Jodorowsky
about EL TOPO include Ira Cohen, Steve Roday, Ross Firestone,
Marty Topp, Susan Sedgwick, and Stefan Bright.
Joanne Pottlitzer was also present to translate their questions
into Spanish and his answers into English, wherever necessary.

This interview was done in one sitting.
The reader must read it in one sitting.
And then take a shower and try to forget it.
If he cannot forget it, he must open a window
and stick out his hand and wait for a bird
to build a nest in it and lay three eggs.
And then he should pull in his hand violently
and crack the eggs on his forehead.
If the reader is not ready for that experience,
he should not eat this book.
Alexandro Jodorowsky

JODOROWSKY
I believe that the only end of all human activity --
whether it be politics, art, science, etc. --
is to find enlightment, to reach the state of enlightenment.
I ask of film what most North Americans ask of psychedelic drugs.
The difference being that when one creates a psychedelic film,
he need not create a film that shows the visions of a person
who has taken a pill; rather, he needs to manufacture the pill.
I think that the journey of Alexander the Great is a psychedelic trip.
Many say that Alexander the Great was an idiot because his conquest
was so great, so complete, that he was actually progressing toward
his ultimate failure.  I think that Alexander the Great was journeying
into the depths of his being.  I think that Odysseus was another great
traveler.  I want to travel the route of the Odyssey, I want to travel
the route of Alexander the Great.  I want to travel into the
deepest areas of my being in order to reach enlightenment.

Punto!
OK, that's the introduction.
Now shall we talk about the movie?

FIRESTONE
You say it's a journey into the self.  You had told us when we
met before that certain scenes and images in the film related
to you personally. For example, that is your son in the first scene
and that is the first toy you gave him.  What I'd like to do is talk
about that sort of thing in the picture: the personal elements,
not necessarily an explanation of the picture per se.

JODOROWSKY
Very concrete things.

FIRESTONE
Yes.  Scenes and images.

JODOROWSKY
I use concrete symbols in every scene. Cultural symbols.
For example, the pole in the desert is the Tao symbol.
For me, it is a sundial. And I wanted to try to film the
scene at noon because I remembered a Sufi story.
It tells of a person who, standing at a given point
and facing a given direction, would cast a shadow
which would point to the site of a hidden treasure.
He went to that site.  He dug and dug, but found nothing.
And his shadow began to shorten until at noon
he had no shadow at all.  And then he understood.
This is an ancient symbol.  And the other symbol is real.
The child who works with me in the film is really my son.
He is the son of a French woman whos name is Landru.
When the child was born, his mother took him away.
I gave him a toy bear.  Sometime later I was reading
a book by Maitre Phillipe, the teacher of Papus.

COHEN
The author of the book about Tarot, you mean.

JODOROWSKY
Yes, a very obscure author and a very strange person.
Philippe went to Russia and spoke with Rasputin. And in
his book, he says that if one has debts which he doesn't
pay in this life, he will return in another life to pay them.
And since I don't want to come back to settle old debts,
I decided to settle all my debts now.  I had three children
by three different women.  So I began to ask them to give
the children to me.  Two of the women did.  One was Brontis --
the child in the movie -- who came to live with me when he
was seven years old.  He arrived with his toy bear.
And when we made the film, I took a photograph of his
mother, put it in an antique frame and filmed the scene.
I said to Brontis:  "You must bury your mother's picture
and your bear."  That was real.  But if you notice, when I was
filming, I cut out the bear's head.  I'll explain why I did that.

One day I saw an image of myself.  I was mute.
I had no tongue.  And half of the top of my skull opened up
into eight pieces, in slow motion.  And my brain began to
pulsate like a beating heart.  Then a large butterfly appeared.
A butterfly with one white wing and one black wing.
It alighted on my head, on my brain, thinking I was a flower.
It lowered its tongue into my brain, between the two lobes,
until the tip appeared through my mouth.  And I had a tongue.

I think the bear is waiting for a golden tongue
to enter his brain and speak for him.

COHEN
That's why you cut the bear's head from the frame.

JODOROWSKY
Yes, but I said that with a great sense of humor.
OK, let's continue.

If you look at the first scene, you will see that there are one
hundred women.  I counted everything in my picture. I mean,
there really were one hundred women.  I dressed them in white,
like brides -- bloody brides. When I saw the scene being filmed,
I felt I was seeing one hundred raped brides. In Mexico, bridal
gowns are very cheap, two dollars. But I didn't have the money
to dress them all in bridal gowns.  Otherwise I would have
had them all wear elegant white wedding gowns. One day I'll
make a movie with ten thousand women dressed as raped brides.

FIRESTONE
What about the man with no arms?

JODOROWSKY
The two men:  the one with no arms, and the other with
no legs. I designed their costume from one I saw in the
Encyclopedia of Film:  a John Wayne costume.  It was one
costume, which I cut into two parts. I put the upper half
on the man  with no legs and the pants on the man
with no arms.  Two cripples make one John Wayne.

FIRESTONE
You were talking about the differences between the two men ...

JODOROWSKY
Ah, it was terrible.  They hated each other -- hated each other.
The man with no legs would ask the man with no arms, "Where is
my horse?"  And they would fight.  One would say, "It's better to
have no arms."  The other would say, "It's better to have no legs."
Then one would say, "If you raise your voice to me, I'll sock you in
the jaw."  And the other, "If you sock me, I'll kick you."

COHEN
Each one thought he was the best, right?

JODOROWSKY
Yes, they were very proud of what they were. The armless
man lost his arms when he was nine years old. He married
and had ten children. He sings in a mariachi band.
The other lost his legs just two years ago and his wife
and two children immediately left him.  They took all
his money and left him on the street.  Very cruel world.
 The arms and the legs fight each other.
Like most people in the world, right?

FIRESTONE
Where did you find them?

JODOROWSKY
Oh, I find ninety percent of my people on the street.

FIRESTONE
They're not actors?

JODOROWSKY
I find them the way I find locations.
When I'm looking for a location, I don't sleep.
I think the best drug is not to sleep.  I don't sleep.
I believe that the planet is a live being
who thinks -- logically -- but it also dreams.
And then it makes landscapes that are very different.
So without having slept, I happen on a place
and find these geological draems.

I said, for example, that I needed a man with no legs, and
he knocked on my door. That's how I found all the people.
They came.  When I needed a person, that person appeared.
The little dwarf, for example.  I saw her on the street.
I spoke to her ... I talked and talked and talked ...
She was a virgin.  And when I padded her stomach with the
pillow for the film, she cried, because she never imagined
herself with a baby. But three days ago, she had a baby --
a daughter -- with a very beautiful man.  I like her.
She married and had a little girl.  By Caesarian.

COHEN
You said when you met her, you had to teach her that she was little.
She thought of herself as normal size, right?

JODOROWSKY
Yes.  She didn't know she was little. She thought of herself as
a normal person.  When she was photographed, she would sit in a
position that would make her look normal in the pictures.  I don't know.
To say "normal" is a mistake because I think she is very normal.
Perhaps we are monsters for Venutians. I don't know. Because I think
she is very  beautiful.   A very intelligent person, very good as a woman.
I'm not attracted to consumer-women. I fall in love with ugly women --
"ugly" in quotes.  I think that all consumer women are men. Anyway, I told
the little dwarf, "I think you're crazy, because you don't know what
you are ... your size."  And she said, "I know now.  Because I know you.
And talking to you I know what I really am." I said to her,
"If you're going to make the film, you must have a photograph taken
with me, at my side holding my hand."  We took the picture.
And she saw herself in the picture. And she is.  Reality.
It was a great liberation for her.

FIRESTONE
The other two women, the women in the first half of the film?

JODOROWSKY
Yes, the first woman, the blond, came to my home one day.
She was in bad shape.  At one time in her life she had taken
LSD in great quantities, and had suffered.  She had been in
a hospital for mental illness.  I said, "I will make a film with you.
You will have the starring role."  And she believed me.
She didn't know who I was.  And I didn't know her name.
She lived with my children for six months.  (When my children came
to live with me, I thought it would be good to have two houses,
one for myself and Valerie, my wife, and the other for the children
and the three cats.  One day she said, "My name is Mara."
After we filmed the movie, she left.   I don't know where she is.

COHEN
She's never seen the movie?

JODOROWSKY
She's never seen the movie.
One I received a postcard from her that simply said,
"I'm not dead."  This is all I know about her.

FIRESTONE
What about the dark-haired woman?

JODOROWSKY
I saw her in a go-go club where she was dancing.
I went up to her and said, "I will make a film with you."
And she said, "Good."  She is an airline stewardess.

FIRESTONE
She went away, too?

JODOROWSKY
She went away.

FIRESTONE
I saw in the section of the screenplay that was published in
The Drama Review that there's a scene in which the two women
are destroyed.  It's not in the picture.  They just ... go away.

JODOROWSKY
Yes.  I didn't use that scene.  I didn't use it because I
thought ... why destroy the two women?   I am not a moralist.
If I destroyed the women, it would be a form of punishment.
I didn't want to say that in the film, but the audiences can think it.
Right?  They can imagine that the two women will ultimately
destroy each other, if they wish.  For me, the story of the film is
an internal one, not an external one.  But now I regret that it isn't
external because a few days ago I saw some Chinese movies with Ira Cohen.
 I think that was the most important experience of my life as a film director.

FIRESTONE
Why?

JODOROWSKY
Because I learn more from things that are not done well.
I think they are wonderful films, especially the swords.
I think that the Museum of Modern Art is in Chinatown.

FIRESTONE
What did you learn from the Chinese movies you saw?

JODOROWSKY
Well, I learned the complete break with any aesthetic, ethical, moral,
mental, emotional or political commitment.  It was really good.

FIRESTONE
I'd like to ask you more about your son.

JODOROWSKY
Yes, yes.

FIRESTONE
When you abandoned him in the movie ...

JODOROWSKY
Yes, I abandoned him in the movie.
And I had also abandoned him in real life.

FIRESTONE
In reality also.  First he buries the bear
in the picture, right?  And the photo.

JODOROWSKY
Yes.  And he understood, he understood. I explained it to him;
I explained everything he did in the movie before asking him to do it.
I explained things to everyone.  Mara, for example. When I wanted
to do the rape scene, I explained to her that I was going to hit her
and rape her. There was no emotional relationship between us,
because I had put a clause in all the women's contracts
stating that they would not make love with the director.
We had never talked to each other. I knew nothing about her.
We went to the desert with two other people: the photographer
and a technician. No one else.  I said, "I'm not going to rehearse.
There will be only one take because it will be impossible to repeat.
 Roll the cameras only when I signal you to." Then I told her,
"Pain does not hurt.  Hit me." And she hit me.  I said, "Harder."
 And she started to hit me very hard, hard enough to break a rib ...
I ached for a week.  After she had hit me long enough and hard
enough to tire her, I said, "Now it's my turn.  Roll the cameras."
And I really ... I really ... I really raped her.

And she screamed.

Then she told me that she had been raped before.  You see, for me the
character is frigid until El Topo rapes her. And she has an orgasm.
 That's why I show a stone phallus in that scene ... which spouts water.
 She has an orgasm. She accepts the male sex.
 And that's what happened to Mara in reality. She really
had that problem.  Fantastic scene.   A very, very strong scene.

COHEN
Do you know that the mole has a cock like a knife?
You know, with a serrated edge, like a surgical instrument.

JODOROWSKY
I think that's fantastic because I wore two knives in the film. You can
see them in the photos.  Two knives -- not just one -- I wore two knives.
Maybe one was for the blonde and the other for the second woman.
 I don't know ... maybe.  I had two knives.

FIRESTONE
And the eggs?

JODOROWSKY
They were turtle eggs.  I think the turtle egg is a marvelous symbol.
Brancusi's egg, for example, is an egg suspended in time. So is
a normal egg.  It's the symbol of potentiality. But it rejects
you.  You can't penetrate a chicken egg; you have to break it.
 A turtle egg is very hard when you take it in your hand,
but as you hold it, it moulds to the shape of your hand
like solid water.  And you can relate to it.  To break it is to have
to squeeze it very hard.  And when you squeeze it, the yolk bursts
in your hand, and it becomes part of your hand.  I like turtle eggs.

What else?  Ask me.  I'll put all my symbols in order.
When I want to order my thoughts, I put my library on order.
And I feel that El Topo is a library ... of all the books I love.

For example, I don't think anyone realizes that when
El Topo says, "I am God," it is a reference to the Sufi poet Al Halaj.
 And with the blood -- there is so much blood in the picture --
I was referring to the Essenes. In their Gospel of Peace, they say that
all blood comes from the Universal Mother, that stones are blood,
flowers are blood, walls are blood, that everything is blood.
So when I wound someone in the picture, I exaggerate the blood
because I feel it is Truth being exposed ... quite apart from the humor of it.

But there's one thing the audience doesn't know which I should reveal here:
to get the blood effects, you must place a little sack of blood inside the
clothing of the actor, next to his skin.  The sacks I used were prophylactics --
rubbers -- because they are very strong and they worked.  It was very funny
to watch the workmen filling a rubber with blood ... a blood-filled condom.
So when the sacks are broken to get the effect, every wound is a phallus
that explodes.  For me this is very beautiful.

It's like Rene Guenon's symbol of the lance.  There is a close union
between the lance and the wound.  The blood flows from the lance,
falls to the ground and turns into red flowers.  Right? In other words,
wounds don't bleed; weapons bleed. When I do my next Western, maybe
the guns won't shoot bullets. Maybe they'll shoot streams of blood.
 Maybe.  It's a nice idea. And not so crazy, because in the Middle Ages,
when someone was wounded by a sword, the wound wasn't treated.
Instead, the sword was treated and bandaged.  This is history.

OK.   Shall we continue?

COHEN
You said that the artificial blood was very sweet.

JODOROWSKY
Ah, yes, yes, it was.  The American blood.  When I began filming the picture,
it was fascinating to work with the blood. I used Mexican technicians who
had worked with Peckinpah in The Wild Bunch, and they taught me how to do
the tricks. They told me that Peckinpah was very bloody, but when I made
my effects, they were astonished.  I actually used a very classic technique.
But as I became more familiar with the technique, I began to fall in love with it
and wanted to use it more and more. I started out with five litres of American
blood, which is very expensive in Mexico.  It tasted very good ... like strawberries.
Like vaginal deodorants taste like strawberries. They never taste like blood.

I know the taste of blood.  I've eaten blood, human blood.  Once during
a happening in Mexico, my disciples drew a little blood from their arms.
Then they collected it all in a glass and offered it to me with some tequila ...
a sangria.  I took the glass in my hands and started to improvise a long
Panic poem, trying to put off drinking it for as long as possible.
By the time I decided to drink it, the blood had coagulated.
That day I had just finished reading Zanoni's works, so there was
no turning back:  I put my hand in the glass, scooped out the red gelatin,
and devoured it. At first it made me sick, nauseous.  But almost immediately ...
as soon as I allowed myself to sense the taste of it, I felt an exquisite pleasure.
It was the finest food my mouth had ever been fed: delicate, velvety, delicious.
 The next morning I woke up with the smoothest complexion ... and a dry mouth.

Anyway, I needed more blood for the film, so I began to make it myself because
it was so expensive.  I used Mexican artificial blood ... and it tasted horrible,
like rotten metal.  I'll tell you how I made it. I used almond cream --
it's very cheap in Mexico -- and I put vegetable coloring in it.  Very cheap.
 But then I needed more blood. Five thousand litres, to make the river
of blood for the town scene. So I rented a truck with five thousand
litres of water and I mixed five thousands litres of red paint.
That's the story.

COHEN
But at the end of the film, you even ran out of that, right?

JODOROWSKY
Ah!  I used watermelons.  I tooks pieces of watermelon
and threw them like baseballs at the cripples wo were writing
on the ground in the last scene.  The watermelon would hit a body
and bounce off.  I edited the film to show only the melons bouncing
off the bodies.  This is very, very amusing:  to shoot the last scene
where El Topo immolates himself, I took a skeleton of a man, intact,
and covered it with beefsteaks -- completely, completely covered
it with steaks.  And then I burned it.

COHEN
 Did you eat it?

JODOROWSKY
I'm not a cannibal!  What I did eat was the honey.

When I direct a film, everybody -- myself included -- falls into such trances
that there is dead silence, because our lives are at stake.  Animals are killed,
for example, and it is a religious sacrifice.  In the first segment, we cut open
six burros and the Books of Intestines spilled out.  I say "Book" because,
in primitive times, destiny was always read in the intestines.  The intestines
spilled out ... without a drop of blood.  Like parchment.  I had to paint the red.
And there was a religious silence.  Only the women were restless.
I shouted once, down the long street -- it was half a kilometer long --
and the women remained absolutely still for five hours.

When we filmed the scene on the bridge, it was real.
An old wooden bridge.  A hundred years old and the wood was rotten.
And at a height of nine hundred meters.  I climbed up on the railing and
leaned against it without holding on.  You can see that in the film.
And the entire technical crew was out on the bridge, running from it,
doing all sorts of things.  And suddenly an umbrella fell from it,  and for
several minutes we watched it float down like a feather.   Then we
woke up and realized that we could die from one second to the next.

And in the desert, for example, when we buried ourselves in the sand,
there could have been rattlesnakes there; we killed three of them during
the filming of the picture.  And every time I got on a horse,  I was risking my life,
because the first time I touched a horse was in this movie.  It threw me three times.
I couldn't direct the horse.  But when the camera started rolling, I had complete
control over the horse.  When the camera stopped, I'd fall off.  When the cameras
were on, I could have done anything.  I was invulnerable, I was invulnerable.
I even threw myself down a mountain.  The photographer did, too. When we
started the picture, he told me, "I never get tired.  I'm never sleepy, and I'm never
hungry."   And I'd fall into a trance -- we all would -- and when he'd come out of it,
he was tired and he was hungry.  He nearly died after the film;  he was in bed for
a whole month.  In one day I could climb four mountains and I'd take him with me.

Everybody would fall into a hypnotic trance.  I didn't direct them. I think I was
directing some unknown force ... I don't know what it was. The basement scene,
for example, underneath the bar. We brought in twenty-five whores from the
red-light district.  And they did everything we wanted them to without
saying a word. They understood.  And when I was filming in the little town
with my head shaved, everyone in the town thought I was a saint.
Yes, they really thought so.  They believed in me.

It was very easy to do the picture.  Very easy to make the people do things.
Everything was easy.  I think we had a kind of communication working among us,
a very magical communication.  When you live the picture, when you are not acting,
there is no dichotomy ... no alienation.  What you are doing is real.  Because I think
that if you want a picture to change the world, you must first change the actors
in the picture.  And before doing that, you must change yourself.  Right?
This must be done.  With every new picture, I must change myself, I must kill
myself, and I must be born.  I must kill the actors and they must be born. And then
the audiences, the audiences who go to the movies, must be assassinated, killed,
destroyed, and they must leave the theatre as new people.  This is a good picture.

FIRESTONE
That's what happens, that's what happens.

JODOROWSKY
It's exactly like marijuana, exactly like psychedelic drugs. The picture is
a psychedelic drug.  But you must not show the visions, what you are
seeing, imagining.  You must give the way, right? Timothy Leary said
in an article that a psychedelic drug is  not an end in itself; it is a way.
 But you can have other ways, like the Sufi way, the Yoga way, the artistic
way. We must use art -- artistic activity -- like a way.  I pick up this white
book of matches, for example. i open it and I see black matches.
When I pick it up and open it, I am a poet.  If I am a poet, I make poetry.
But if I am a politician, picking up the matchbook and opening it is
a political act, right?  And if I am John Cage, it is music, a musical game.
If I am a dancer, it is a dance.  What matters is the way ... what you are.
 If you're a poet, everything is poetry; if you're a politician, everything is politics.
But it's the same thing.  With a different flavor.  OK?  Something else.

There are a lot of things in the film that the audience doesn't know.
For example, El Topo wears black silk undershorts with two holes:
one to expose his balls, and the other, just the tip of the head of his penis.
And he wears the black leather pants over them. Oh, and on the shorts
there is a green circle around the area of the anus. That's why it's green.
 But it doesn't mean anything. I drew it on just as  a joke, to make me laugh.
To make sure I wouldn't act like an actor, I would think about the green circle.

There are other things the audience doesn't know.  In the beginning of the
scene with the Second Master, I took the Tarot and made a cross to express
the unity of all philosophies. The Tarot is a Christian symbol, and a Christian book.
I used it to make a cross.  Yesterday I was at a dinner with very square people.
And they started to talk among themselves ... private conversations.
I saw a conversation between two men who were sitting opposite each
other at the table.  At the same time, a woman was talking to another woman
opposite her.  I saw a line  between the two men and a line between the two women,
like a cross. And at that moment I understood one of the symbols of the cross.
The vertical line is a masculine principle and the horizontal line a feminine principle.

COHEN
Like the Yin-Yang ...

JODOROWSKY
Yes, like the Yin-Yang.  I've always been very interested in the symbolism
of the cross.  In the sequence of the Second Master, I intuitively made a
cross with the Tarot that was on the table. The union of mother and son.
Etcetera, etcetera. In the same sequence, the river I crossed was not in
a desert; it was in a mine.  And the river had traces of cyanide in it. When
I finished that scene, the workmen took my shoes off and washed my feet.
 It was a very religious moment. When I made the film, there was no
difference between filming and reality. It was a very religious trip.

The lion.  There was only one lion, because I didn't have
the money for any more.  But my idea was to have
seven lions pull the gypsy wagon in that scene.

BRIGHT
When I saw the first lion, I thought there were going to be more.

JODOROWSKY
Yes, yes, yes.  That's good because there were  more.
I gave you more.  It's fantastic. There were more lions.
 But we don't see them.

The structure of the Second Master was made entirely of toothpicks.
An artist worked for two months to build it. I wanted an enormous
structure, but it was so difficult to make, so I got a little structure.
I wanted a pyramid, but a huge pyramid, the biggest possible, like Cheops.
Why did I use toothpicks?  For me, the toothpick is this: when you eat,
you use a toothpick because you have eaten well, right? The toothpick
is a mystical symbol which means: now I have the Communion within me.
I have the Food within me.  I clean my teeth.  And as I'm cleaning my teeth,
I don't speak.  Words are no longer necessary.  This is what I feel.

FIRESTONE
The voice of the Mother of the Second Master ...

JODOROWSKY
It's a man's voice. The second woman, the one dressed in black,
had a man's voice also.  When I made the picture, I said,
"I'll change the voices any way I like." I changed my voice, too.
 The first woman, Mara, has the voice of a seventy-year-old woman.
Because I feel that in the voice of a 70-year-woman, there is experience.
And if you give that voice to a young woman, you create a great actress.

COHEN
I'm surprised you've never written poetry.

JODOROWSKY
When Mohammed saw his first vision in the cave, he screamed and said,
"Why me?" And he wanted to commit suicide. He didn't want to accept
the vision because he thought it was too beautiful.  One day I was drinking --
I never drink -- and that day I drank Vodka because Vodka is transparent.
 So it was like drinking the glass. I've always wanted to drink the glass
instead of the liquid. Later, I was fucking with Valerie and all of a sudden
I started to cry. And I whispered in her ear, desperately and with
certain vengeance, "I'm a poet."   i think that films must be made
like poems.  Right? Some people make films like novels:  Truffaut.
Some people make films like metaphysical stories:  Bergman.
But I want to make poems.  We can make poetry --
we must make poetry.  Poetry meant for a poet-audience.
  That, too.

BRIGHT
Who were the four old ladies in the scene with the young black guy?

JODOROWSKY
They were extras in Mexican films.  Old extras.
They liked doing that scene very much, and the young man
excited them very much.  The young man hated those women ...
hated them ... but when we shot the scene, he had a problem.

When we filmed the part where they devour him, he had an erection.
He couldn't keep himself from having an erection with the old women.
And he was very embarrassed.  But he had it.  And the women were
happy.  Their lives changed.  It was a brief, beautiful moment of life.
One of the women used to be an opera singer; another, a rhumba dancer.
 I don't know about the others.  Except for one detail: the scar that one of
the women has on her arm.  It was inflicted when a two-hundred-forty-five
kilo iron statue of Christ fell from a cross and broke her arm.

COHEN
What about the four Masters of the Revolver?
Where did those stories come from?

JODOROWSKY
Oh, it's a very, very, very complex precis.  For example, in the sequence
of the First Master, you see a white horse. There is so much to say
about the white horse.  So much, so much. The white horse is a Christ.
 Christ is a white horse. A white horse has four horseshoes.
Christ has four horseshoes:  four wounds. And the fifth shoe,
the wound on his side, are the spurs you kick the horse with.
The white horse is also the materialization of instinctive forces.
It stands outside the octagonal building which you enter
by climbing a ladder of ten rungs.  It's a building without doors
or windows where a blind Master lives.  You can find the eight-
sided tower in Sufism, in the Templars, and in the baptismal font.
I think it's a symbol of maternity.  Eight is maternity. It's the alchemist
oven:  the sperm that fertilizes the eggs in darkness. In athanor.
 That's why I used the tower.  I wanted a very, very high tower,
but didn't have the money.  We did what we could.

in the same sequence, there is a sheep.  Everyone knows the
meaning of the sheep.  I'm not going to say it, but everyone knows
that a sheep is a shoe.  Sometimes I feel like running with a pair of
sheep on my feet -- live sheep shoes. Maybe the First Master is the sheep.

He has a stone figurine in his hand.  There is a very nice story about
this little sculpture. I have a friend -- his name is Fierro.  In English,
Fierro means iron.  He is very Mexican and one day he was eating
mushrooms and his vision was changed. He acquired a new quality:
 now he finds pre-Columbian sculptures and obsidian stones wherever
he goes. He sees the top of something that looks like a little stone
and he knows it's something very old and he picks it up.
 One day at six in the morning he came to my house.
He was high on something.  I don't know what ... he was laden
with obsidian arrowheads which he threw on my bed.  Among
them was the stone sculpture that was in the position of
Zen meditation. And he said ... it was fantastic what he said.
"These are obsidian mirrors.  Always look at yourself in an obsidian
mirror because it is made of a single material.  Don't look at yourself
in ordinary mirrors because behind the glass there's a sheet of
mercury.  It's a duality."  And I said to him, "The fundamental
quality of a mirror is not to reflect, but to be broken."
And then I picked up the little sculpture to demonstrate the
similarity between ancient Mexican culture and the Orient.
Zen meditation exists everywhere.

There is a little story I read in a French book.  It is very beautiful.
A man was told to search for a sunflower that shone like the sun.
And he wanted to find the sunflower, but he couldn't find any flowers
at all.  For years and years, he walked all over the world.  But he didn't
find a single sunflower anywhere. And one day someone said to him,
"I know a person who has sunflowers."  He went to see the person, and
there he saw thousands and thousands of sunflowers.  And he said,
"How can you have thousands and thousands of sunflowers
when I haven't see one in all my life?" And the person said,
"Ah, it's very easy.  Every morning I look at the sun and then I
see sunflowers everywhere. If once in your life you see the sun,
then light is everywhere."   Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Another question?

FIRESTONE
Was the actor who played the First Master, Mexican?

JODOROWSKY
He's Mexican.  He plays an electric organ in a rock band.
I used him because I liked his name:  "El Borrado" --
The Erased One.  The egoless man.  I gave him a woman's voice.

FIRESTONE
In the sequence of the Second Master,
at the very end, when the mother screams ...

JODOROWSKY
Yes.  I wanted to use a bird sound for her scream ...
a dramatic bird sound.  But I didn't find what I wanted
because bird sounds aren't dramatic.  So I used the
shriek of a rat ... and deformed it a little, electronically.

In the sequence of the First Master, I used Chinese stories.
For example, when the Master says that bullets don't
harm him because they find the empty spaces of his body ...
this is a Chinese story about a king who went to market.
He saw that the meat was very well cut and he asked the butcher,
"How do you do this?  You are an artist!"  And the butcher said,
"You see this knife?  A beginner should sharpen it once a day.
An expert, once a year.  I sharpened it only once, when I bought it.
And I've had it now for forty years.  I lay it on the meat and let it find
the empty spaces of the meat."  I used this story for the First Master.

That Master also says, "I don't need light.  I am blind."
I say the same thing with the mole.  The mole is an animal
that searches for the sun.  And when he sees the sun, he is blinded.
 You can take that in a negative way or a positive way.  A negative way:
 we you find your ideas, your life is over.  Ah, that's terrible!
  People who says this think that they are, not that they are becoming.
 And they desire to be, and they don't want to die. I think that you must die
each second of your life ... you must die this second and be born this second
and die in being born.  That's why, when I'm asked to give a lecture on theatre,
on theatre theory, I say, "Now I have one theory.  Halfway through the lecture
I'll have another. And when I finish the lecture I'll have yet another."  Yes.
But in a positive way, when the mole sees the sun and is blinded, it means the
duality has been lost.  He's blind but he no longer needs to see the sun.
He has it.  To be a good Christian, you must kill Christ.  I won't explain that.
That's why the Master is blind.

Another story about symbols:  when the two cripples say to El Topo,
"But you search for light in broad daylight."  A Japanese poem says,
"The roar of thunder in the blue sky of midday."  There is no thunder in
a blue sky; there is lightning. You hear it within you.  Yet you look for
light in the day. So at the beginning of the sequence of the First Master
there is a lantern that is blown out.  It's a Japanese symbol.  It means:
 "Don't look for light outside yourself; you already have it within."
That's why the Master is in darkness.

The Second Master is, in one sense, like a Sufi teacher: he is a laborer;
he works with his hands. In another sense, he is like an Essene who
surrenders himself to the Universal Mother.  He works with his hands.
He says, "First I strengthened my fingers by working coppers; then I
worked delicate things."  It is a Chinese story. A king sends for the
strongest men of his kingdom and asks them, "Which of you is the
champion?"   But of course they are all champions. "What can
you do?"   And one says, "I can lift three oxen."  Another says,
"I can support twenty men on my back."  Etcetera, etcetera.
But when the strongest man is brought in and the king asks him,
"What can you do?",  he says, "I can lift a butterfly by its wings
without harming it."  This is the story I used for my Second Master.

I used so many things.  The honey:  I took that from Samson.
Samson sees a lion, a dead lion.  And bees are making honey in the
body of the lion.  Honey is the product of your spiritual work.
I've always been very surprised when bees came to make honey
in the cadavers of certain saints.  Honey is the Divine Word.
The Bible was written with honey.  It was written with honey,
and I suppose you could eat the first Bible and it was very sweet.
Yes, because there's a part where God comes and gives Ezekiel
a scroll, and He says, "Eat the scroll.  Don't read it.  Eat it."
I think that knowledge is to be eaten; if you want, you can
digest knowledge.  And so when El Topo reaches the moment
 of enlightenment, he eats honey.  And the eight sides of the
tower open up.  They are eight petals of the lotus that spring
from Buddha's head.  And he releases two doves to the air.
He releases two because those two doves are his two knives.
And it's an Annunciation in reverse.  Because, as the dove is the
Annunciation for Mary, Mary is the Annunciation for the dove.
So when Mary is enlightened, the dove is enlightened.

And Mary made Christ in nine months.
In the first month, Mary grows a mustache;
in the second month, she grows a beard;
in the third month, her breasts fall off
and become two musical instruments
which are supported by the thin thread
of solid milk from her nipples.
In the fourth month, testicles appear;
in the fifth, a penis;
in the sixth, a long foreskin ... long like a tail.
In the seventh month, Christ's sandals grow on her,
because Christ was born with sandals ... and Moses too.
And they had to be removed.
In the eighth month, her chest becomes transparent;
and in the ninth, the wounds appear.
And then she was Christ.  And Mary disappeared.
If you don't believe me, how can I convince you?
Because when Christianity was born, it was born like a dance:
everyone was dancing, and shouting.  You who don't dance
don't know what we feel.  If you don't dance, how can you feel it?

OK.  Another question.

COHEN
What about the Third Master?

JODOROWSKY
The Third Master is a Mexican Master. In every Western ever made,
the Mexican is always the outlaw, the bad guy. In my picture, the Mexican
is a very wonderful man, because Mexico has a very wonderful culture.
I'm not Mexican.  I'm not talking about my country.  But I wanted to use
the nobility of ancient Mexico ... the finest of Mexico. The Third Master says,
"You have a flute.  We'll come to know each other through music."
 He is very refined.  Where did I find this story?  Confucius.
 Once Confucius was listening to music -- it's historical -- and he said,
"How beautiful!  I love it."  And he locked himself in a room for three days.
For three days he listened and he listened to the music.  And when he came
out of the room, he said, "I know the musician's name, the sound of his voice,
how old he is, what he looks like, where he lives, and I know what he's like."
Which means that the music was so good that he was totally immersed
in the music ... embodied in it.  Just as I am totally immersed in my hair.
 Or as the entire tree is in a leaf;  or, as they say, the entire Koran is in its
first sentence, the entire first sentence is in the first word, and the
entire first word is in the first letter, and the entire first letter is
in the first dot, and before the first dot is the non-manifested.
I'll be content with reaching the first dot.

But we were talking about the Third Master. About the music.
 And the rabbits. Mexicans count years by rabbits:  one rabbit,
two rabbits. Yes. The rabbit is also a solar symbol of reproduction.
You notice that each Master lives with a different animal:
the first one with a horse, the second with a lion,
the third with a rabbit, and the fourth with a butterfly.

COHEN
There was no butterfly.

JODOROWSKY
But there was a butterfly net.  Which means there was the shadow
of a butterfly:  the net was black.  For me, the animals are solar symbols.
 Vital fire symbols.  Of inner life.  That's why the rabbits' grave burns of itself.
 Fire is the Word for rabbits.  Dragons were enormous rabbits.
Fantastic, isn't it?  Fantastic, fantastic!

FIRESTONE
Killing the rabbits ...

JODOROWSKY
Yes, but they were killed by a disease ... by El Topo.
He was the disease, like the plague. I was very illuminated
when I filmed that scene. I had asked for ten thousand rabbits.
But there aren't ten thousand rabbits in the whole province of Torreon.
And I wanted a stampede of rabbits like the great cattle stampedes
in cowboy movies.  Wild ... screaming.  But they only brought me
three hundred rabbits.  So I had to kill them.  Because three hundred
live rabbits don't mean anything.  Dead, yes. So I invented  El Topo's
disease and filmed the scene. But it was so hot, so very hot that the
rabbits swelled up and burst. And the whole company was vomiting --
forty people vomiting. The photographer and I didn't, we were so involved.
 And I saved twenty rabbits because they were very beautiful.
And when we finished the scene, people came to get the rabbits
I had saved and took them home.  They killed them and ate them.
Because though a rabbit is a dragon for poets, it's a chicken for the hungry.

COHEN
Who killed the rabbits for the scene?

JODOROWSKY
I killed all the rabbits because no one else wanted to do it.
It upset them.   I did it with Karate blows on the neck.
To kill a rabbit, you take it by the ears and strike it on
the nape of the neck with the edge of your hand.
And the rabbit dies easily.  That's all I look for in life:
to die easily.  By killing three hundred rabbits, I learned
how to die peacefully.  A rabbit surrenders its life much more
easily than a woman surrenders to an orgasm.  Easier.
The vengeance of today's woman is to make the man work to give
her an orgasm.  "I'll reach an orgasm by the sweat of your brow."

COHEN
A rabbit can die without a knife, right?

JODOROWSKY
Yes, without a knife.   It takes nothing to make a rabbit die.
And it takes nothing for a rabbit to give life.
Those rabbits were agonizing and fucking at the same time.
A rabbit gives life very easily; in a state of agony, he is fucking.
And that's why he gives up his life easily, too.
He's like butter ... unrefrigerated butter.  I don't mean American
butter, I mean normal butter.  It has a form, and it surrenders
its form very easily because it can acquire its form very easily.

COHEN
That's why Michelangelo sculpted in butter.
And the Tibetans make beautiful butter sculptures.

JODOROWSKY
Yes, because there is a symbol in butter.
Butter is a very profound symbol.
It's mother's food.  Well churned.  Shall we continue?

Through the Masters I show El Topo progressing
from everything to nothingness.
The house of the First Master is brick, very strong;
the Second Master's house is wooden;
the Third's is of straw;
and the Fourth has no house.
The First Master has two revolvers;
the Second has one revolver with five bullets;
the Third has one revolver with one bullet;
and the Fourth has no revolver.
The First Master has a large animal;
the Second, a smaller animal -- a lion is smaller than a horse;
the Third has a rabbit;
and the Fourth, an invisible butterfly.
It's like this throughout the entire story.  And that's why
the Third Master makes his own revolver with his hands.
And makes his own bullets.
And he fires only one shot ... to the heart.
Because the heart is the center of the world for him.
And he begins to talk about the crow ...
and the crow frightens the two characters.
There are two crows in the film.
Two crows.  The crow, or raven, is an
alchemical symbol of something rotten.
When you kill a crow, you have light;
when you kill a decayed stone, you have gold.
They kill the two crows, and the Third Master says,
"Put in your heart what you have in your head, and put
in your head what you have in your heart."  It's cabalistic.
 One principle must rise, and the other must be lowered.

COHEN
You said that when the First Master played in a rock band ...
he played the electric organ.  What does the Second Master do?

JODOROWSKY
He's a theatre director.

COHEN
He was beautiful.  And the Third?

JODOROWSKY
The Third Master is an antique dealer. He has an antique shop.
 And the Fourth is a retired actor ... very drunk.  At six one morning,
he arrived on the set with a bottle of tequila.  And I grabbed the
bottle away from him as if I were tearing out his liver.
 No one had ever done that to him.  He was a famous actor.

COHEN
I liked the fourth story.  It's very beautiful.

JODOROWSKY
Yes, yes, yes.  The Fourth Master.  I wanted to tell you
something about the Third Master ... Ah!  When El Topo says
that too much perfection is a mistake. All Oriental culture is in
that sentence.  Right?  I think that the Masters willed themselves
to be killed.  Because I think they sought out El Topo. They saw
a sign in him.  Gurdjieff says that when you are the right person,
the Master seeks you out. And he gives you the possibility of killing him.
The Master wants you to kill him because he wants to dissolve into you.
That's why Christ gives his flesh and blood to his disciples. After the
Last Supper, Christ didn't exist. He didn't exist because his disciples
ate him.  And before dying ... before being eaten ... Christ left a toulku,
a projection of his body. And it was the toulku that was  crucified.
And the real Christ was eaten by his disciples ... completely.  Beautiful!

COHEN
You're creating this story right now.

JODOROWSKY
Yes, this very moment.  It may not be true, but it's beautiful.
Fantastic ... this gift came to me from ... I don't know.
This is the first time in my life I realized it.
He was eaten by his apostles.  They were the first vampires,
the first cannibals ... of religion.  Sacred cannibals.

FIRESTONE
The Fourth Master.

JODOROWSKY
To create that little story, I studied Karate for two years.  Really,
I studied Karate for two years. One day I think I'll make a movie
using all of the Karate movements ... the short, quick movements
of Karate.  Because I like Karate. Sometimes we must talk for
hours about Karate.  I think Buddha practiced Karate ...
Karate was first done by Buddha. When you practice Karate,
you study the Sacred Book. Karate is like the Tarot for me.
 The most important significance of the Tarot is Karate.  Right?
Etcetera, etcetera.  This is a very solemn subject.
It took me two years to learn its meaning.

COHEN
You studied Karate two years to prepare for the fourth story?

JODOROWSKY
No, not to prepare it!  We are always in the process of preparing.
There are two kinds of priests:  one asks for things, the other gives
thanks for what he receives.  I recieve.  And the only thing I prepare
myself for is to give thanks. Fantastic.  Beautiful.  I don't prepare myself
to obtain something; I prepare myself to give thanks.  Thank you,
thank you, thank you.  I believe that the entire universe recites a
poem that says, "Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,
thank you, thank you." Fantastic.  And when the Fourth Master says,  "But you
can't take anything away from me," and El Topo says, "I can take your life,"
he says, "No, my life doesn't mean anything." And he takes his own life.

A story:  a samurai searches for another samurai to challenge him. There are
very few samurais, so he doesn't find one. But one day he sees an old man --
this is a beautiful, beautiful story -- and he says, "You are a samurai!"
And the old man says, "No, I'm not a samurai.  I'm a gardener." So he
takes out his sword and hurls it at him. And the gardener catches
it with great finesse. He says, "You see?  You act like a samurai."
And the gardener says, "No, perhaps the only resemblance
is that I'm not afraid of dying."  Beautiful.  And then the samurai
says, "I'll fight you." And the gardener says, "I won't fight."
The samurai insists and the gardener says, "OK."  And
then he puts his hands over his eyes and says, "Come."
And the samurai says, "You won."

This is why I liked the Chinese movies, because there was a blind hero.
I asked, "Why is he blind?"  Because a blind person doesn't need to see.
He has nothing to lose.  Right? He's always a beggar.   A beggar like a
Sufi teacher.  It's a great mystical way ... because to be blind means to
have no conscience. I can act.  I act.  I don't think; I act ... I do.  But I do
only what is necessary, nothing more. There have been certain moments
in my life when I was very concious of my body.  And when I am concious of
my body and I make an unnecessary movement, I feel that the walls tremble.
We make so many unnecessary movements, don't we?  Really.  I feel this.

CONVERSATIONS WITH JODOROWSKY - 2

EL TOPO - A BOOK OF THE FILM - MAIN PAGE

THE SOUNDS OF EL TOPO

SUBTERRANEAN CINEMA

 THE SUBTERRANEAN COLLECTION