![]() ![]() Through meditation, the Shaman is said to be able to fly. The coyote is always looking for a shortcut. The Shaman looks to the supernatural for his strength while the coyote relies on his own wits. The Trickster can be seen as a parody of the Shaman, or the spiritual leader of the tribe. Perhaps these stories are meant to teach Native Americans not to aspire to be anything more than human. No matter how hard he tries he cannot escape the human condition. He is always attempting to fly (which is the sign of a god to the Native Americans) with disastrous consequences. He is earthbound, like man, but is constantly trying to transcend this fate. In Native American stories, he takes the form of the coyote. The Trickster shares many attributes with man. And he will pull off elaborate schemes to teach a moral lesson or expose the folly of men. He provides comic relief to a religious myth. In religious stories, his role is very diverse. The trickster seems to be a comedy of opposites.įor every good aspect of his persona, there is an equal and opposite aspect. The malicious practical joker is deceived by just about anybody the inventor of ingenious stratagems is presented as an idiot the master of magical power is sometimes powerless to extricate himself from quandaries.” (p.67 Hynes and Doty). “ Admired, Loved, venerated for his merits and virtues, he is represented as thievish, deceitful, parricidal, incestuous, and cannibalistic. The best way to view a trickster is by his personality. His physical form seems to be particular to each religion. So who is this Trickster? He has many forms both human and animal. This suggests that the Trickster is within all of us just sitting on the borderline of conscious and unconscious thought. In his research on schizophrenia, he found the qualities of the trickster surfacing in the disorder (p.54 Euba). Evidence to support such a claim was found by psychologist John Laynard. Jung would say he is a manifestation of our own collective unconscious. Each trickster is unique to its own culture, but all tricksters are bound by certain characteristics no matter what religion they show up in.Īnthropologists would argue that each trickster should be evaluated in its own cultural setting, but in order to see their archetypal value, they must be and can be evaluated as a group. The “Trickster” is an archetype that surfaces in many cultural and religious stories. ![]()
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