February 26, 2012

Martin S. Day on The Trickster Archetype in Mythology

Martin S. Day: "The High God looks like the spiritual vision of the early shaman. The Sly Trickster looks like the anti-spiritual viewpoint of the early common man. In the myths of many Amerindians the Trickster and the High God are in direct and bitter opposition. To some degree Trickster vs. High God is individuality vs. conformity, unconventionality vs. conventionality, disorder vs. order, destruction vs. creation, chaos vs. cosmos. Since man apparently asked "How did the world become its present self?" before asking "How did the world first begin?", the trickster-transformer may have preceded the High God and may be one of the oldest figures of all mythology. Jung describes the Trickster as "a faithful copy of an absolutely undifferentiated human consciousness, corresponding to a psyche that has hardly left the animal level." The Trickster is a completely amoral character who lives by his wits and enjoys perpetrating coarse and cruel jokes against anyone. In many African and Amerindian myths the Sly Trickster is an animal; perhaps the idea originated from seeing animals steal food or otherwise succeed by stealth.

No chicanery is beyond the Trickster and his cleverness is unbounded, but there seem to be two basic feats of the Trickster: theft of valuable objects and defeat of a "cannibal monster" by wits and duplicity. The stealing may be of fire, water, sun, fish, game animals, cereal grains, human or divine property, maidenheads, and anything else within his knavish grasp. Autolycus is an obvious example in Greek myth. Odin in the Norse mythology stole mead from the dwarfs and giants and triumphantly bore it to the gods. The "cannibal monster" seems metaphoric for famine, disease, enemies, and other dire perils. Heracles would overpower such obstacles by brute strength, but the Trickster conquers by duplicity, as Odysseus outwits Polyphemus. Amerindians of Northwest USA often depict Trickster luring animals by stratagem to a precipice and then tricking them or forcing them to leap to death; unknown among Amerindians of this area in historic times, the practice suggests primitive driving of animals over cliffs.

Though apparently the product of a vulgar and earthly populace, Trickster is far from a simple character. He seems to fulfill the following human needs:

(1) Sheer entertainment. All men need escape from the mundane world. The shaman's escape is an eerie and perilous flight out of this world. Perhaps the Trickster tales were the very early release of the common man, tricking him with the deucedly clever and the outrageously ludicrous in this world.

(2) Satire. Much of the Trickster material seems parody or travesty of the shaman. The self-dismemberment of Trickster is a laughable parallel to the shaman's solemn dissection. The "excrement advisors" of Trickster burlesque the shaman's spirit guides. Trickster is himself outwitted on occasion by birds and animals, again looking like a sneer of the shaman's power over the animal world.

(3) Blowing off steam. Like the medieval Feast of Fools, Boy Bishop, and similar escape valves, the Trickster accounts represent a "ritualized rebellion." Society is an unnatural imposition, and a provident society must offer means to get hostilities and frustrations out of one's system effectively, while not breaching the actual citadels of that society. Trickster lets the audience purge itself of its anarchistic and socially undesirable drives.

(4) Psychological satisfaction. Trickster institutes one of the surefire successes of all storytelling: the cheeky little chap who bests giant adversaries. Trickster offers ambivalent effects. One may enjoy one's own noble virtue by scornful disapproval of that immoral Trickster. Or one may revel deliciously in vicarious enjoyment of tabued acts. The Navajo Amerindians are most unusual in carefully discriminating between the two responses to Trickster. Navajo Coyote tales to children are very moralistic, always ending in exemplary punishment meted out to Coyote in exact proportion to his degree of tabu violations. Navajo Coyote tales to adults evoke guffaws and thigh-slapping pleasure at the wild, clever antics of that wonderful rascal.

(5) Re-evaluation. For many archaic cultures the strongest, most penetrating undercutting of society is the Trickster cycle within its madcap ridicule of sacred social practices: tribal rituals, male and female roles, sexual and religious tabus, social structure and customs, even behavior in eating and excreting. The enormity of the criticism demonstrates the rigidity of archaic societies, where change is rare and usually minute. Only the clout of the Trickster myth has much chance to effect internal change in a static society.

(6) Unification of society. Strange but psychologically true is the statement that this apparently disruptive element in society actually works as a catalyst to greater social solidarity. The regular rituals and customs of a society tend to accentuate class and role distinctions and enforce inflexible status and behavior. When social structure is bent or broken by the Trickster myth, there is actually a powerful reinforcement of the sense of community in the ungusseting and fellow merriment.

(7) Individual development. The picaresque novel from the Spanish Renaissance onwards proffers a rogue who, very much like the Trickster, lives by his wits through a series of dramatic encounters. Actually, in the individual myths about the trickster there seems little maturing of the character. Nonetheless, the emergence of Creator and Transformer from the Trickster and the ennobling of the trickster to Promethean stature suggest that the trickster cycle is the Bildungsroman or development novel in embryo.

(8) Spiritual enhancement. Paradoxically, the agent of disorder and caprice may actually compel the spiritually lackadaisical to turn to the gods. Legba is the sly trickster among the Fon of Dahomey, West Africa, who as a disruptive and destructive force causes mankind to seek divine order and harmony. Probably the sly trickster lurks behind Goethe's Mephistopheles, whose machinations and nihilism will eventuate in the greater glory of god and the firmer achievement of divine symmetry.

The earliest manifestation of Trickster seems the basically egotistical, amoral, wholly self-motivated personality, only incidentally benefiting mankind. Apparently the Amerindians gradually developed this selfish rascal into an elaborate Trickster-Creator-Transformer and Culture-Bringer (or various combinations). Amerindians usually designate Trickster as an animal--Coyote, Wolf, Fox, Raven, Crow, Raccoon, Badger, Bat, Mink, Bluejay, Hare--but Trickster is not described as an animal, and his actions and speech are altogether human.
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Just as the gods themselves seem to have originated in animal deities and from such a humble source rose to the heights of Ahura Mazda and Allah, so Trickster from amoral animal beginnings moves upwards towards the esteemed Prometheus.
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Prometheus the Fire Bearer is the supreme success story of the Trickster. Probably this notable figure began as a thieving animal. Archaic reasoning holds that all things belong to the deities: animals to the Lady or Lord of Beasts, fruits and surface edibles to Mother Earth, tubers and roots to chthonic deities. Natural forces such as fire are the jealously guarded possession of Nature's gods. Around the world archaic myth portrays the dog, kingfisher, dove, jaguar, chameleon, rat, tortoise or other animals as stealing the divine fire and giving it to man. Punishment from the wrathful gods is usually visited upon the thief: the rat is reduced to scavenger, the tortoise is slowed from earlier agility, and so on. The liver of Prometheus was pecked at by a vulture as punishment because the liver was regarded as the seat of the passions.

Consider the effrontery of mankind, even in the very pious Aeschylus, ennobling a thief, and above all, a thief stealing from the gods. A theft by the Trickster has benefited mankind, so now we laud the Trickster as a Christ figure suffering agonies for his benevolent theft, and (especially from 19th century Romantics) the defender of our species from the tyranny of the gods. The rebellious, amoral Trickster apparently appeals to all mankind and we excuse his theft and glorify his character.

Deities traditionally consecrate the old conservative society, and man feels that change and progress may produce significant benefits but certainly will generate pains of adjustment for all and perhaps severe hostility from reactionaries.
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Amerindians and most of the world have conceived of the Culture-Bringer as an intentional benefactor to man, the revered introducer of what makes and sustains human culture. Even the most backward and rigid society recognizes the contrast between animals in nature and the culture of men. Someone must have started human culture, and that one must be the Culture-Bringer. The effective technology introduced by the Culture-Bringer renders possible a degree of social coherence and individual well being, setting the human condition above that of animals. The separation of man from Nature by the Culture-Bringer is sensed, however, as a violation and often has the Trickster's taint of theft. The Culture-Bringer has advanced human society, but at the cost of our lost innocence." - Martin S. Day, The Many Meanings of Myth. 1984. University Press of America: Lanham, Maryland. Pg. 229-235.