the Divine Ms. L...

In The Trickster Makes This World, Lewis Hyde calls the tricksters of myth the “lords of in-between” (Hyde, pp.6). They are the boundary crossers, the boundary makers and, the boundaries themselves. The trickster archetype comes up when an old boundary no longer serves us; when we have to break the rules we have been given, or the rules we have given ourselves.

In the stories, trickster characters seem mostly unaware of the trouble their actions will create, he is an unconscious and un-socialized impulse. To acknowledge the trickster is a recognition and even respect for those times when we do the stupid things that shatter our world and force us to a new one. These are the times when it seems that our rational mind was not working but that, in retrospect, it seems clear that some part of us was. Sometimes, we want to look back on these times and chastise ourselves. But, as the trickster plays on that line between good and bad, sacred and profane and all other pairs of opposites, he reminds us that sometimes you have to be bad to be good. Sometimes you have to blaspheme against what you thought you believed to really feel the divine. Sometimes you have to appear to regress in order to move forward.

The trickster has been in play a lot for me this past year…I have done a lot of stupid things. I am a long time student of experience and, looking back, I always think that I should have been able to make it to the same place without so much drama. However, in a further retrospect, it seems that things work out pretty well. A big piece of this for me is humility. At some point last year, I started explaining myself by saying that, “you can put a monk’s robe on over many wounds”. The wounds would still be there though, so I needed to let them bleed. The idea of the trickster seems to be of playing at life as it truly is for you without judgment. Not pretending to be anywhere other than you are. It is a return to an undifferentiated state prior to any hierarchy or ideas of what life should look like. For me, it is a deeper recognition that learning is everywhere and how transcendence can be avoidance. Do not belittle any plane or way of being; nothing is empty.

Another element of the trickster stories that I really loved is the idea that what you do not have, you must steal. Lewis gave examples of Krishna as the butter thief and Prometheus stealing fire (Hyde, pp.6). This is contrary to the idea that one should just be “good” and wait for something to be handed to them. This is a more heroic risk, being willing to steal what you need, even if it means you get in trouble--you have to want it bad enough to accept the trouble. It is interesting to me how myth and life requires us to steal. In a sense, it is a recognition of how life requires sacrifice—every time one eats, breaths or steps. It demands us to get off of any high horse and deal with things as they are.

It also brings to mind a sort-of pattern of individuation where: ignorance/innocence is bliss, consciousness brings pain, then--through consciousness--comes a deeper bliss through depth. The pain of the trickster is the pain of waking up. Maybe we could stay asleep forever and not feel it, but who would want to? I am reminded of the tree of good and evil and Eve stealing the fruit of knowledge. Stupid Eve! I would argue that they were certainly going to wake up, but God was not going to hand the fruit to them. Individuation must come from a personal volition—even if it appears unconscious. We must grab for ourselves those parts of our soul that we imagine only belong to someone else. It looks like stealing but really it is already ours.

Looking at stories or looking back on pieces of my life, it is easy to see how good and bad intertwine—how bad actually comes from a deeper good. However, compassion is sometimes not that easy while in the experience and I find myself wanting to know if there is a difference between actions that are bad/good in the trickster sense and things that are just plain bad. This issue came up for me when Hyde was analyzing whether America was a nation of tricksters (Hyde, pp. 11-13). I found myself thinking that, yes, America does seem like it’s in an individuation learning curve, being the rebellious teenaged jerk…but isn’t it possible that a jerk sometimes is simply a jerk? The trickster myth would hold me back and ask for some compassion: I cannot see now what the good of this bad/good will be. The trickster myth, I think, asks us to see all bad as bad/good. However, it does temper this allowing position with warnings in the stories that the trickster should not go too far or not too many times. In the eye tossing story, coyote was told to only toss his eyes four times. He went for five and his eyes did not come back. That is to say that we don’t need to have good intentions when we are being a trickster, but we should not get caught. The purpose of the stupid times is for us to grab what we need and move forward. Otherwise, eye tossing becomes just a new way to be stuck.

I want to close this paper with a trickster story that was told to me. Hyde mentioned that, aside from entertainment, Native American trickster stories are also told as medicine. In short, it was the story of coyote traveling between the Earth plane and the underworld by climbing down and up a ladder. At some point while in the underworld, he noticed that the ladder he had been climbing was actually a very delicate spider web. Coyote was now being asked to do consciously something that had never scared him before because he hadn’t been aware of what he was doing. Coyote took the risk and returned to the Earth plane with what he had learned in the underworld. I was told that, in this version of the story, Coyote made it back safely, but that there were other stories where he had quite a bit more trouble.

I said before that I think there is bliss before awareness and also after. I also said that the things we are stealing are already ours. That story was the story of the fall out of innocence/ignorance---like Adam and Eve. It was told to me at a time that I was in the pain of waking up. I was(/am) becoming aware of the truth of things that have always been so and then needing to see the world with new awareness. Besides being the element of disruption that causes the waking up, I think that the trickster is also the compassion for the messiness that follows.