I do not know what God is, but God knows what I am.
I do not know what the world is, but I know it is mine.
I do not know what I’m worth, but I know not to compare myself.
I do not know what love is, but I know that I rejoice at its existence.
I cannot avoid blows, but I know how to resist them.
I cannot deny violence, but I can deny cruelty.
I cannot change the world, but I can change myself.
I do not know what I make, but I know that what I make makes me.
I do not know who I am, but I know that I am not the one who does not know.
APPENDIX I
Psychomagical Acts
Transcribed by Marianne Costa
1. A young man would like to work in the tourism industry, going to Hong Kong and other legendary cities. But this professional desire seems impossible. He doubts himself. After questioning him, A.J. found that the client’s mother had died and that during childhood his brother had captured all the maternal love.
Response: On one side of a can of sardines stick a picture of your mother, and on the other side, a picture of your brother. Walk along the right-hand side of Champs-Élysées, from the Obelisk of Luxor to the Arc de Triomphe, kicking the can along in front of you until you reach the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Then leave without looking back.
2. After this young man, a young woman came in to consult. She is his girlfriend, but their relationship has not gone beyond the platonic. She also doubts her professional abilities, and her psychological problems are similar to those of her boyfriend: an older sister favored by the parents, a distant and perhaps incestuous father.
Response: Do the same thing your boyfriend was advised to do, but instead of a can of sardines buy a fake phallus in a sex shop. To avoid being bothered by the police wrap it in a bag, along with a picture of your father. Walk with your boyfriend, each of you kicking your own item along. Face each other before leaving the Arc de Triomphe, with your faces an inch apart, and roar in anger until you are exhausted.
3. An Algerian woman is possessed by great sadness. The Tarot shows that this pain is that of her mother, who died in exile, separated from her homeland.
Response: Since you cannot go there, have someone in Algeria send you a bag containing seven kilos of earth from the village where your mother lived. Go to the cemetery and deposit this soil on her grave. Then, to celebrate this event, go to the Grand Mosque and drink seven cups of mint tea.
4. Another sad woman; she does not know the joy of living. When her mother was six months pregnant with her, her father left to go and live with another woman.
Response: Go to see your father, disguised as if you were six months pregnant. Ask him to kneel before your belly and ask forgiveness from the fetus he abandoned.
5. The client, a vegetarian pacifist, admits to having such rage against his mother that he wants to kill her.
Response: How can you realize your desire without killing an animal? Buy two watermelons to symbolize your mother’s breasts and destroy them with your fists. Put the pieces of watermelon in a flesh-colored sack that you will make yourself. At midnight, throw the sack into the Seine and leave without looking back.
6. A young man who is professionally disoriented says he does not know what profession he should go into. When questioned, he confesses that he studied law and political science at a good school but failed to get his diploma.
Response: Fabricate a diploma identical to what you would have received, but thirty centimeters larger in width and length. Frame it, hang it on the wall of your bedroom, and put a boxing champion’s cup under it. Then go find the job you want.
7. A thirty-year-old woman doubts herself. She is greedy, materially and emotionally.
Response: If you live insecurely asking for things, it is because your parents, blinded by their own projections, did not see you as you truly were. Buy two nice red apples. Keep one in your bag and carry the other in your hand. Take the metro and observe the passengers. If a person, man, woman, or child, awakens in you the desire to give them the apple, do so. Keep riding the metro until you get that urge, even if it takes several days. When you have given someone the apple, leave the subway and walk along the street savoring the other apple, which you have kept in your bag. Thus you will understand that to give is to receive.
8. A thirty-year-old man cannot achieve success as a musician. As a child he studied piano, but his father, a garage mechanic, made fun of his hobby, considering it gay. He has a sister who lives symbiotically with their mother, both of them hating men. The two worlds, masculine and feminine, are separated by an abyss in their home.
Response: You must take on your feminine sensibility in order to express yourself artistically. Cover your body with auto grease and play the piano naked, dirty like your father. Of course you will get grease on the keys. Furiously play all the melodies that you fancy then clean the keys. After this massage the piano as if it were a woman, for exactly one hour. Stick a picture of your mother on the sole of your left foot, one of your sister on your right foot, and start playing again. You will see the anger converted into creative pleasure. To thank me, bring me a white rose.
9. A fifty-year-old man cannot bear the process of divorce from his wife. Three months earlier, after living with him for eight years, his wife expressed her deep desire to become pregnant. He rejected the proposition outright. She thought it over, then suggested divorce, which he accepted calmly. But after three months he suddenly repented and proposed to his wife that they have the desired child. She was inflexible and told him she would have it with someone else. The Tarot reveals that this man has a twin brother. When asked how his relationship is with this brother, he stammers a bit and answers laconically, “Okay.”
Response: Call your wife and tell her you do not want one child, but two. That being a twin, you could not imagine having an only child, and that was the reason why you refused to get her pregnant when she asked for “a” child. This will require you to consider: would you really want to be a father of two children? If you want that, call her. She is very likely to accept.
10. A brunette woman with large black eyes, about forty years old, has a very conflicted relationship with a coworker in the office where she works. He refuses to resolve the conflict, despite the pacifying efforts she makes.
Response: We see in the Tarot that your relationship with your older brother was disastrous. You project this original conflict, which is very much part of you, onto your colleague. You need him to hate you, to reproduce your childhood love/hate relationship. He, in turn, must project his sister onto you. You must destabilize his view. If you see yourself differently, you will not be the object of his rage. You must go to the office as soon as possible with a different appearance: a new haircut, dyed blond, with contact lenses that make your eyes light, and a different style of clothing.
11. A woman who has moved to a new house does not feel good in her new territory; it seems alien to her. What should she do?
Response: Put your urine in a bowl, fill a dropper with it, and put a drop in every corner of the new house.
12. A forty-year-old therapist is in a passionate but troubled relationship with a woman who feels a great aggressiveness toward men due to her having seen her father kill her mother with a hunting rifle that had been given to him by his grandfather. How to calm this hatred of men that she constantly projects onto him?