Last Updated: Saturday, July 03, 1999

Riddle of the Trickster

from the Rocky Mountain Pagan Journal.

by

Thunderspud of Dragonfhain

Who is this trickster archetype, the one who inspires such

mixed feelings and brouhaha? Trickster has been with us from the

beginning. Trickster will be there at the ending. (If there is

an ending, Trickster will probably trigger it). Trickster is a

creator, a transformer, a joker, a truth teller, a destroyer.

Whoever has created a dance, a song, written a ritual,

tailor-made a job, birthed a child or invented a game has

partaken of a controlled Trickster energy. After all, in

Northwest Native and Inuit tradition, Raven created the world;

Loki is known to the Norse as a co creator (and the bringer of

Ragnarok); Anansi the spider-trickster among the Ashanti of Ghana

and Nareau the spider in Micronesia; Coyote among the Southwest

Natives --these are the creator aspects of this wild and

uncontrolled energy. Trickster often begins in the void,

desiring to bring Order out of Chaos; once Order is imposed,

however, Trickster represents the breaking free of negative power

from the Universal Order of things.

As a shape-shifter, Trickster is all things to all people,

at one time or another, and often simultaneously. Of course

Trickster is a creator and a destroyer. Sure he's a family man

and a vagabond. Naturally he gives fire to humans and then

steals their food before they can cook it. This is his style;

when he acts out of selfishness, everyone benefits -- Maui of the

Thousand Tricks might snare the Sun to slow it down, making life

easier for humans, but he did it so his mother would have more

time to cook for him. When he acts out of altruism, there's most

always a negative effect --Marawa, a Lou Costello prototype from

Banks Island carved human figures from wood and put them in the

ground so they would grow and be strong; however, they merely

rotted and death came into the world of humans. This shape-

shifter not only moves from shape to shape, but from world to

world. Number Eleven suffered at the hands of death to free his

brothers; his brothers then took his lifeless body away and

revived him. In the Winnebago cycle, Trickster dies three times

and returns to life three times. In just one collection of

Coyote stories, Giving Birth to Thunder, Sleeping With His

Daughter, Coyote dies of a snake bite, a gunshot, an arrow wound,

a broken heart, a rock-fall and a drowning; this resembles

nothing so much as a Roadrunner cartoon.

Trickster fuzzes the lines between Male and Female, between

cunning and stupidity (in one story Coyote steals a horse, in

another he almost drowns trying to eat some berries reflected in

a stream), between wisdom and stupidity. Trickster tells us the

truth about our selves, showing us with truth and wit the sides

of our nature that we may be more comfortable not acknowledging;

he's the one who points at the Emperor's nakedness, he's Lenny

Bruce and Ashleigh Brilliant, Ken Kesey and Uncle Remus, Opus,

Geech, Tom Robbins, Abbie Hoffman, Don Becker, Weird Al Yankovich

and David Letterman, holding up a skewed mirror of reality for us

to look into. Among the Aztecs, as serious a culture as this

continent has ever seen, Ueuecoyotl, a funny and outrageously

unacceptable clown figure; in the Southwest, at serious rituals,

he's the Koshare speeding around the circle with tickling

feathers and rattle, being ignored completely by the priest.

Trickster shines on as a culture bringer: Prometheus steals

fire for his poor stunted creations, and pays a terrible and

eternal price for his philanthropy. Loki also steals fire for

humans, as do Anansi, Raven, Coyote, Maui; so far I have found no

less than seventeen stories from different cultures on this

theme. Anansi tricked Nyankopon the Sky-God out of his stories

and gave them to the humans. Clat, from Banks Island, taught

humans how to sleep.

In the stories of the Ashanti, Anansi invented the tar-baby

as a ruse to trap an elemental spirit, but in the Native American

stories, Coyote is trapped by a tar-baby set up by a farmer.

Actually the farmer had caught a rabbit with his tar-baby, but

Coyote happened along and asked Rabbit what he was doing there.

"The farmer who owns this field got mad at me because I wouldn't

eat his melons, so he stuck me here and said he'd come back and

make me eat chicken." Rabbit replies, "But I told him I wouldn't

do it." Of course, greedy Coyote extricates Rabbit and wraps

himself around the tar-baby where he still his when the farmer

comes out and shoots him.

So this is the Trickster, the energy that allows us to

break out of our stereotypes, whether they've been imposed by

ourselves, our families, our culture. This is the energy that

opens the world of limitless possibilities and it behooves us all

to work with it before it destroys us, to touch the Trickster as

he touches us.

............from RMPJ, Oct.'86
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