The Game as Psychomagic: How Symbolic Acts Can Transform Your Life

David Fincher’s 1997 thriller The Game isn’t just a suspenseful mind-bender—it’s also a hidden blueprint for radical transformation. At first glance, the film seems like a high-stakes mystery. But peel back the layers, and it begins to resemble something closer to a Psychomagic ritual, the kind that Alejandro Jodorowsky might orchestrate: theatrical, symbolic, and designed to shatter the ego.

The story follows Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas), a wealthy but emotionally frozen financier. When he’s enrolled in a mysterious “game” by his estranged brother as a birthday gift, his carefully curated life begins to unravel. Bit by bit, he loses his money, status, and sense of control—until he’s forced to confront the very things he’s spent his life avoiding. His fall (literal and figurative) becomes the ultimate ego death. It’s the Tower card from the Tarot made manifest: a violent collapse that clears the way for rebirth.

What Is Psychomagic?

Psychomagic is a therapeutic practice developed by filmmaker and mystic Alejandro Jodorowsky. It’s based on the idea that the unconscious mind responds more to symbolic actions than to rational explanations. Jodorowsky would prescribe rituals tailored to a person’s inner wounds—actions that bypass the intellect and speak directly to the subconscious.

A Psychomagic act is so effective because it works through metaphor—the only language the subconscious mind truly understands. And, ironically, it’s often within those metaphors that the deepest healing can be found. The subconscious doesn’t respond to analysis or logic; it responds to images, sensations, archetypes—symbolic experiences that mirror the emotional truth beneath the surface.

For example, someone grappling with guilt might be told to carry a heavy object through a public place to physically “bear the weight” of their emotion. These acts are strange, visceral, and deeply symbolic. But they work—not because they’re logical, but because they’re emotionally real.

In The Game, every twist Nicholas endures feels orchestrated with this same purpose: to dismantle his emotional defenses and force a confrontation with his buried fears. The game is a ritual—an immersive psychodrama meant to provoke transformation.

Crafting Your Own Psychomagic

We often wait for life to disrupt us—through heartbreak, illness, loss—before we grow. But what if, like Nicholas Van Orton, we could consciously design our own “game”? A controlled symbolic crisis that helps us break through fear, grief, or stagnation?

Here’s how to create a personal psychomagic ritual for healing and self-transformation:

1. Identify Your Core Psychological Block

What fear or belief is keeping you stuck?
Is it the fear of failure? Abandonment? Vulnerability?
For Van Orton, it was his obsession with control and his fear of becoming emotionally exposed—especially in the shadow of his father’s suicide.

2. Create a Symbolic, Ritualistic Act

Design an experience that mirrors the emotional terrain you want to move through. Some examples:

• Fear of loss? Voluntarily give something up.
  

• Fear of public judgment? Do something mildly embarrassing in public, like singing on a street corner.
  

• Low self-worth? Write yourself a love letter and mail it.
  

• Fear of poverty? Spend a day with no money, relying solely on kindness.
  

Jodorowsky often went to extremes—he might suggest walking naked in the woods if you hate your body—but even small, meaningful acts can disrupt the inner narrative.

3. Commit Fully—No Half-Measures

The ritual only works if you believe in it.
The Game succeeded because Nicholas believed everything was real. Your symbolic act must feel emotionally convincing.
Immerse yourself as if your life depends on it.

4. Reflect & Reinvent

Transformation isn’t in the act alone—it’s in what comes after. Ask yourself:

• How did it feel?
  

• What came up emotionally?
  

• What new choices feel available to you now?
  

Like Nicholas after his symbolic death and rebirth, we too can emerge changed—more open, more present, more alive.

What’s Your “Game”?
If you could design your own personal Psychomagic ritual… what would it be?
What part of yourself are you ready to let go of, symbolically destroy, or radically confront?

Transformation doesn’t always need to come through chaos.
Sometimes, the most powerful changes come from the rituals we dare to create ourselves.

Until we meet again,

Be well

How To Read Like A Seer

Symbology is the language of the subconscious mind and this is precisely where tarot (magick) exists. Ultimately symbolic literacy is what we wish to achieve over time, although this takes practice, trust, as well as an open mind & heart. 

From the moment of our birth into this physical world, we are born oracles. In fact each one of us carries a library of experiences from not only the physical, but our other world, too. For most of us, the key distinction is an overly developed emphasis within the realm of our conscious or physical world; with very little attention or development given to the landscape of our inner/other world.  

One of the biggest challenges of working with the tarot is learning to bypass the conscious mind in order to shift our awareness into the cockpit of our own subconscious mind; for this is the place of feeling which utilizes the otherworldly language of our own spirit’s symbology. When we do this, we open ourselves up, like an antenna, to receive messages (from beyond). All of this translates into our intuition - a place of magick. So, with this said, the key difference is either “thinking through” a tarot reading with our “rational” conscious mind, or “feeling” our way though a reading by tapping into this other world, often known as our intuition or inner guide.

Intuition = flow and one of the chief aspects of flow is that gentle voice we hear within ourselves during a reading; and ironically, this is the same voice we often discount as silly, not to be trusted, or some fiction created from our imagination which carries no credence within our current reality. When we doubt ourselves in this way, we are succumbing to the reality of the rational or conscious mind; and when we do this, our reading is already dead in the water! So when in doubt, turn off the head and turn on the heart.

Until next time,

stay magical!

Pain Needs A Home

From long ago, experiences we may have thought were once lost to time never fully left us. Whether they were terrible or pleasant in memory, they remain etched within the psyche of our subconscious mind; which functions much like a museum for these memories which we rarely feel the need to visit. Although in the case of negative experiences, similar in taste to a past episode, chances are very good that they will trigger a sounding of the guard within us. At which time, our own safety mechanism of fight or flight springs forth into action like a noble knight. After all, this is war and there’s a new battle waging just above the surface of our subconscious.

Once our guard has been roused into action, we naturally fear the worst, believing this new threat might even fair worse than its past predecessor. In response we often retaliate in such a way that we overcompensate in the hope of warding off or even destroying this new menace. I prefer to think of these unwelcome beasts as dragons, randomly manifesting throughout our waking life to remind us of unfinished business, often spiritual in nature and desperately in need of our attention.

In terms of our response, we might attempt to ward off the beast with substances like drugs, alcohol, self-inflicted physical abuse or possibly just shutting down or isolating ourselves from the living world altogether; until the dragon takes flight and temporarily leaves us once again, just long enough for us to regain our emotional and psychological equilibrium. 

In order to overcome the unfinished business of any past hurt, many might assume that we need to challenge the beast head-on to a duel. Although ironically it’s really not necessary nor productive to work against these forces in this way, largely due to the fact that we are destined to lose such a fight. No, what’s needed is to welcome the beast, even shine a light of understanding across its body in an effort to acknowledge the wounds of another age. In the end, pain needs a home and by providing safe harbor from the wreckage of our past, gradually we transmute ourselves from survivors into thrivers. 

This sort of inner alchemy begins with the soft and almost whisper-like summoning of patience for ourself and our predicament. And it is this same spiritual elixir which need not mire itself in judgment or any kind of conditional expectation. Instead, patience is the beginning of healing, of finding the way back to our higher self as well as reuniting us with our true path. For a nice reminder, one might meditate upon the Major Arcana tarot card, Temperance. Overall this card offers a recalibration that leads to balance, as well as inner calm, inner peace. 

Until next time,

be well.