trickster

An archetype in many mythological traditions, tricksters such as Loki, Anansi, and Hermes are subversive troublemakers who prove useful by humbling the powerful and revealing deeper wisdom by shattering common illusions.

Tricksters use their brains to fill their bellies

As Lewis Hyde writes,

The trickster myth derives creative intelligence from appetite. It begins with a being whose main concern is getting fed and it ends with the same being grown mentally swift, adept at creating and unmasking deceit, proficient at hiding his tracks and at seeing through the devices used by others to hide theirs. Trickster starts out hungry, but before long he is master of the kind of creative deception that, according to a long tradition, is a prerequisite of art. Akin to Taoism, trickster learns the way of things, and uses that knowledge to get their way.

Notably, tricksters often succeed by using others’ appetites against them in a way akin to Judo in martial arts. In a Nez Perce story, Coyote invents the first salmon weir, using the salmon’s upstream swim to spawn (an example of sexual appetite) to entrap them.

Traits of Tricksters

In Mythical Trickster Figures, Hynes and Doty state that every trickster has several of the following six traits:

1. fundamentally ambiguous and anomalous
2. deceiver and trick-player
3. shape-shifter or master of disguise
4. situation-inverter
5. messenger and imitator of the gods
6. sacred and lewd bricoleur

Further Reading

• Trickster Makes this World by Lewis Hyde is filled with trickster stories from around the world emphasizing the creative and generative aspects of this archetype. The author summarizes of some key points.