“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 the 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 grey-haired baby, the crossdresser, 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. ztrickster is the mythic embodiment of ambiguity and ambivalence, doubleness and duplicity, contradiction and paradox.
That trickster is a boundary-crosser is the standard line… there are also cases in which trickster creates a boundary, or brings to the surface a distinction previously hidden from sight. In several mythologies, for example, the gods lived on earth until something trickster did caused them to rise into heaven. Trickster is thus the author of the great distance between heaven and earth; when he becomes the messenger of the gods it’s as if he has been enlisted to solve a problem he himself created. In a case like that, boundary creation and boundary crossing are related to one another, and the best way to describe trickster is to say simply that the boundary is where he will be found — sometimes drawing the line, sometimes crossing it, sometimes erasing or moving it, but always there, the god of the threshold in all its forms.” — Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World
I wonder how many of the boundaries we face are really the creation of Trickster. I find myself looking at the times I have crossed known boundaries and found myself entangled in a mess, but gained from it so profoundly. Perhaps Trickster does create our world, our thoughts, our illusions of separation from others. I’ve learned to respect the boundaries others create and observe them, but I am always questioning my own, wondering if they are something I still need or is it time to erase them, change the lines, move them around a little or get rid of them completely.
I guess I’ve absorbed enough of the Trickster to keep my personal growth constantly moving, and now find myself pressing once again on the boundaries around me. And I wonder where Trickster will next show up in my own life….
No Responses