"There are ways of thinking that we don't yet know about."
-Adrienne Rich
The trickster is one of the most prominent archetypes I find within myself, as well as one I frequently turn to for guidance. His presence emanates from many of those I feel closest to and enables us to quickly form bonds through the exchange of an energetic wink. I find him in the modern day jesters: stand up comedians, the friend who hid pictures around the house of a frog she knew I found especially disconcerting, Merry and Pippin, the teachings of Ram Dass, and my cackling father.
He proves to be the unexpected hero in many of my darkest moments, surprising me with the persistence of my own humour. I don’t often laugh alone, but at one point I saw a video of a dancing ostrich named Jimmy, and for some reason it really got me. Shortly after this, I met some pretty desolate days and found myself bedridden, drenched in illness and grief. It seemed, as it always does, that there would be no end to it all. But then, right in the middle of a silent sob, an image appeared in my mind as though projected onto a movie screen. It was Jimmy. Nothing could have subdued the severity of that moment more powerfully than this utterly ridiculous, oversized bird, flailing around in all of his glory.
Reynard the Fox, Michel Rodange, 1869
I have always struggled with our societal striving for measurable productivity and felt great resistance to expectations that others seemed to meet with ease. It was all too easy for my discomfort to be written off as oversensitive whining and my concerns dismissed with a quick “That’s just how things are.” It all led to a feeling of inherent brokenness and masked estrangement. But Trickster is exempt from rules and regulation and knows no bounds. He presents alternatives, ones that could not have been conceived of by those who do not dare look beyond their enclosures of indoctrinated certainties. He is guide to the outcasts, the bizarre, and the mad, and presents them with a belonging never to be found within the confines of normalcy.
As a chronic perfectionist, Trickster has served me by inviting in play and wonder in place of rigidity and pressure to get it all “right”. He indulges in the beginner’s mind and takes delight in allowing himself to be an amateur, over and over again. He is enemy to the ego, who clenches its jaws around its own self importance and possesses one with performative proving. He colours outside the lines, dances off beat, and laughs in the faces of those who try to correct him.
Trickster traverses borders between the accepted and rejected, known and unknown, matter and spirit, and carries the wisdom of the Sacred Other. He has been woven throughout mythology and folklore across cultures, appearing as Loki, Hermes, Heyoke, Coyote, Maui, Kitsune... Within the 78 tarot cards, he appears first as number “0”, offering infinite potential and new beginnings. He looks up to the sky, nearing a cliff, unbothered by a potential fall; who knows where it could take him? He trusts fully in his own unfolding and is willing to take a leap of faith. The trickster pokes at hierarchy and authority, visiting us as the fly that decided to land on Mike Pence during the debate or the woman at a news conference who fed us gibberish while pretending to be the sign language interpreter.
The Rhine maidens ask for the help of God Loki, Arthur Rackham, 1910
In a world suffering from climate devastation, an eruption of mental illness diagnoses and perplexing autoimmune disease, and severance from the teachings of our ancestors, we must remember to turn to Trickster to find another way, that of the soul. After continuously bashing into the walls of our own rationality, may we surrender the notion that we can think our way out and admit that perhaps we don’t really know at all, and that it’s okay not to. Under the guidance of the trickster, we can sift through the lost and found of our childhoods and remember the magic that can be found should we surrender to blessed bewilderment.
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