“Thought of the Week” for October 2, 2000
Trickster crosses boundaries and disrupts,
but stimulates creativity and change
In short, trickster is a boundary-crosser. Every group has its edge, its sense of in and out, and trickster is always there, at the gates of the city and the gates of life, making sure there is commerce. He also attends to internal boundaries by which groups articulate their social life. We constantly distinguish — right and wrong, sacred and profane, clean and dirty, male and female, young and old, living and dead — and in every case trickster will cross the line and confuse the distinction. Trickster is the creative idiot, therefore, the wise fool, the gray-haired baby, the cross-dresser, the speaker of sacred profanities. Where someone’s sense of honorable behavior has left him unable to act, trickster will appear to suggest an amoral action, something right/wrong that will get life going again. Trickster is the mythic embodiment of ambiguity and ambivalence, doubleness and duplicity, contradiction and paradox.
Lewis Hyde. (1998). Trickster Makes this World: Mischief, myth and art. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. (p. 7)
Comment:
Trickster is the agent of chaos
by Reg Harris
Copyright © 2000 by Reg Harris. All rights reserved. Updated October 2007. All rights reserved. Apart from properly cited quotes and short excerpts, no part of this article can be copied or used in any form without written permission from the author. For permission to use, please contact me.
In the Hero’s Journey, Trickster is the ever-present element of uncertainty and chaos. He is often the initiator of the call to adventure. Sometimes he guards the threshold and sometimes, if our life has stagnated because of micro-management or the entrenchment of security, he may even be our mentor.
In psychology, the trickster is most likely the shadow, undermining the carefully constructed personas which shield us from the world, thereby forcing us to seek our true identity. Wherever Trickster is, he is both destroyer and creator. He knows that form, structure and security restrict our vision and limit us to what we already know. He can see them stifling our potentials by focusing our attention on a goal, an outcome, a standard, or a specific result.
Then Trickster becomes that creative energy inside us which will not be content with the status quo. Ever seeking expression, he will stand at the corner of the house of cards we call security, light a cigarette, and then casually lean against the house, sending the whole structure tumbling down. He will shrug, as if to say, “Hey, I didn’t know it was so fragile,” and walk away laughing, leaving us to create new form out of the chaos, to exercise our minds in a way we never have before.
The Hero’s Journey: Trickster brings chaos and change
“Thought of the Week” for October 2, 2000
Trickster crosses boundaries and disrupts,
but stimulates creativity and change
In short, trickster is a boundary-crosser. Every group has its edge, its sense of in and out, and trickster is always there, at the gates of the city and the gates of life, making sure there is commerce. He also attends to internal boundaries by which groups articulate their social life. We constantly distinguish — right and wrong, sacred and profane, clean and dirty, male and female, young and old, living and dead — and in every case trickster will cross the line and confuse the distinction. Trickster is the creative idiot, therefore, the wise fool, the gray-haired baby, the cross-dresser, the speaker of sacred profanities. Where someone’s sense of honorable behavior has left him unable to act, trickster will appear to suggest an amoral action, something right/wrong that will get life going again. Trickster is the mythic embodiment of ambiguity and ambivalence, doubleness and duplicity, contradiction and paradox.
Lewis Hyde. (1998). Trickster Makes this World: Mischief, myth and art. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. (p. 7)
Comment:
Trickster is the agent of chaos
by Reg Harris
Copyright © 2000 by Reg Harris. All rights reserved. Updated October 2007. All rights reserved. Apart from properly cited quotes and short excerpts, no part of this article can be copied or used in any form without written permission from the author. For permission to use, please contact me.
In the Hero’s Journey, Trickster is the ever-present element of uncertainty and chaos. He is often the initiator of the call to adventure. Sometimes he guards the threshold and sometimes, if our life has stagnated because of micro-management or the entrenchment of security, he may even be our mentor.
In psychology, the trickster is most likely the shadow, undermining the carefully constructed personas which shield us from the world, thereby forcing us to seek our true identity. Wherever Trickster is, he is both destroyer and creator. He knows that form, structure and security restrict our vision and limit us to what we already know. He can see them stifling our potentials by focusing our attention on a goal, an outcome, a standard, or a specific result.
Then Trickster becomes that creative energy inside us which will not be content with the status quo. Ever seeking expression, he will stand at the corner of the house of cards we call security, light a cigarette, and then casually lean against the house, sending the whole structure tumbling down. He will shrug, as if to say, “Hey, I didn’t know it was so fragile,” and walk away laughing, leaving us to create new form out of the chaos, to exercise our minds in a way we never have before.