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.
.
.
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.
.
.
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.
.
.
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.
