It is no light task for me to write about the figure of the trickster in American Indian mythology within the confined space of a commentary:
When I first came across Adolf Bandelier's classic on this subject, The Delight Makers, many years ago, I was struck by the European analogy of the carnival in the medieval Church, with its reversal of the hierarchic order, which is still continued in the carnivals held by student societies today
CW9.1 ¶ 456Something of this contradictoriness also inheres in the medieval description of the devil as simia dei (the ape of God), and in his characterization in folklore as the “simpleton” who is “fooled” or “cheated”
CW9.1 ¶ 456TRICKSTER MOTIFS FOUND IN
THE ALCHEMICAL `MERCURIUS'
A curious combination of typical trickster motifs can be found in the alchemical figure of Mercurius; for instance:
CW9.1 ¶ 456His fondness for sly jokes and malicious pranks
His powers as a shape-shifter
His dual nature, half animal, half divine
His exposure to all kinds of tortures
His approximation to the figure of a saviour
These qualities make Mercurius seem like a daemonic being resurrected from primitive times, older even than the Greek Hermes
His rogueries relate him in some measure to various figures met with in folklore and universally known in fairy tales: Tom Thumb, Stupid Hans, or the buffoon-like Hanswurst, who is an altogether negative hero and yet manages to achieve through his stupidity what others fail to accomplish with their best efforts
In Grimm's fairytale, the “Spirit Mercurius” lets himself be outwitted by a peasant lad, and then has to buy his freedom with the precious gift of healing
CHARACTERISTICS
OF THE TRICKSTER
Since all mythical figures correspond to inner psychic experiences and originally sprang from them, it is not surprising to find certain phenomena in the field of parapsychology which remind us of the trickster. These are the phenomena connected with poltergeists, and they occur at all times and places in the ambience of pre-adolescent children
CW9.1 ¶ 457MALICIOUS TRICKS
The malicious tricks played by the poltergeist are as well known as the low level of his intelligence and the fatuity of his “communications”
ABILITY TO CHANGE HIS SHAPE
Ability to change his shape seems also to be one of his characteristics, as there are not a few reports of his appearance in animal form
SUBJECTIVE SUFFERING
Since he has on occasion described himself as a soul in hell, the motif of subjective suffering would seem not to be lacking either
SPIRITUALISM
His universality is co-extensive, so to speak, with that of shamanism, to which, as we know, the whole phenomenology of spiritualism belongs
SHAMAN / MEDICINE-MAN
There is something of the trickster in the character of the shaman and medicine-man, for he, too, often plays malicious jokes on people, only to fall victim in his turn to the vengeance of those whom he has injured. For this reason, his profession sometimes puts him in peril of his life. Besides that, the shamanistic techniques in themselves often cause the medicine-man a good deal of discomfort, if not actual pain
At all events the “making of a medicine-man” involves, in many parts of the world, so much agony of body and soul that permanent psychic injuries may result
WOUNDED WOUNDER
AS AGENT OF HEALING
His “approximation to the saviour” is an obvious consequence of this, in confirmation of the mythological truth that the wounded wounder is the agent of healing, and that the sufferer takes away suffering
These mythological features extend even to the highest regions of man's spiritual development. If we consider, for example, the daemonic features exhibited by Yahweh in the Old Testament, we shall find in them not a few reminders of the unpredictable behaviour of the trickster, of his senseless orgies of destruction and his self-imposed sufferings, together with the same gradual development into a saviour and his simultaneous humanization
CW9.1 ¶ 458TRANSFORMATION OF THE
MEANINGLESS INTO THE MEANINGFUL
It is just this transformation of the meaningless into the meaningful that reveals the trickster's compensatory relation to the “saint.” In the early Middle Ages, this led to some strange ecclesiastical customs based on memories of the ancient saturnalia
CW9.1 ¶ 458Du Cange says that the more ridiculous this rite seemed, the greater the enthusiasm with which it was celebrated. In other places the ass was decked with a golden canopy whose corners were held “by distinguished canons”; the others present had to “don suitably festive garments, as at Christmas”
Since there were certain tendencies to bring the ass into symbolic relationship with Christ, and since, from ancient times, the god of the Jews was vulgarly conceived to be an assa prejudice which extended to Christ himself, as is shown by the mock crucifixion scratched on the wall of the Imperial Cadet School on the Palatinethe danger of theriomorphism lay uncomfortably close
Even the bishops could do nothing to stamp out this custom, until finally it had to be suppressed by the “auctoritas supremi Senatus”
The suspicion of blasphemy becomes quite open in Nietzsche's “Ass Festival,” which is a deliberately blasphemous parody of the mass
MEDIEVAL CUSTOM DEMONSTRATES
ROLE OF THE TRICKSTER
These medieval customs demonstrate the role of the trickster to perfection, and, when they vanished from the precincts of the Church, they appeared again on the profane level of Italian theatricals, as those comic types who, often adorned with enormous ithyphallic emblems, entertained the far from prudish public with ribaldries in true Rabelaisian style. Callot's engravings have preserved these classical figures for posteritythe Pulcinellas, Cucorognas, Chico Sgarras, and the like
CW9.1 ¶ 464PHANTOM OF THE TRICKSTER
HAUNTS MYTHOLOGY OF ALL AGES
In picaresque tales, in carnivals and revels, in magic rites of healing, in man's religious fears and exaltations, this phantom of the trickster haunts the mythology of all ages, sometimes in quite unmistakable form, sometimes in strangely modulated guise
CW9.1 ¶ 465TRICKSTER IS AN ARCHETYPAL PSYCHIC
STRUCTURE OF EXTREME ANTIQUITY
He is obviously a “psychologem,” an archetypal psychic structure of extreme antiquity. In his clearest manifestations he is a faithful reflection of an absolutely undifferentiated human consciousness, corresponding to a psyche that has hardly left the animal level. That this is how the trickster figure originated can hardly be contested if we look at it from the causal and historical angle
CW9.1 ¶ 465TRICKSTER CYCLE REFLECTS
EARLIER STAGE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Considering the crude primitivity of the trickster cycle, it would not be surprising if one saw in this myth simply the reflection of an earlier, rudimentary stage of consciousness, which is what the trickster obviously seems to be
CW9.1 ¶ 467The only question that would need answering is whether such personified reflections of the trickster exist at all in empirical psychology. As a matter of fact they do, and these experiences of split or double personality actually form the core of the earliest psychopathological investigations
CW9.1 ¶ 468The peculiar thing about these dissociations is that the split-off personality is not just a random one, but stands in a complementary or compensatory relationship to the ego-personality
CW9.1 ¶ 468It is a personification of traits of character which are sometimes worse and sometimes better than those the ego-personality possesses. A collective personification like the trickster is the product of an aggregate of individuals and is welcomed by each individual as something known to him, which would not be the case if it were just an individual outgrowth
CW9.1 ¶ 468Now if the myth were nothing but an historical remnant, one would have to ask why it has not long since vanished into the great rubbish-heap of the past, and why it continues to make its influence felt on the highest levels of civilization, even where, on account of his stupidity and grotesque scurrility, the trickster no longer plays the role of a “delight-maker”
CW9.1 ¶ 469TRICKSTER MOTIF
IN MODERN MAN
In many cultures his figure seems like an old river-bed in which the water still flows. One can see this best of all from the fact that the trickster motif does not crop up only in its mythical form but appears just as naïvely and authentically in the unsuspecting modern man whenever, in fact, he feels himself at the mercy of annoying “accidents” which thwart his will and his actions with apparently malicious intent
CW9.1 ¶ 469He then speaks of “hoodoos” and “jinxes” or of the “mischievousness of the object.” Here the trickster is represented by counter-tendencies in the unconscious, and in certain cases by a sort of second personality, of a puerile and inferior character, not unlike the personalities who announce themselves at spiritualistic séances and cause all those ineffably childish phenomena so typical of poltergeists
CW9.1 ¶ 469TRICKSTER AS THE SHADOW
I have, I think, found a suitable designation for this character-component when I called it the shadow. On the civilized level, it is regarded as a personal “gaffe,” “slip,” “faux pas,” etc., which are then chalked up as defects of the conscious personality
CW9.1 ¶ 469We are no longer aware that in carnival customs and the like there are remnants of a collective shadow figure which prove that the personal shadow is in part descended from a numinous collective figure. This collective figure gradually breaks up under the impact of civilization, leaving traces in folklore which are difficult to recognize. But the main part of him gets personalized and is made an object of personal responsibility
CW9.1 ¶ 469