The trickster is the one who denies duality. He or she is both light and dark, both good and bad, both the hero and the villain, both a benign force and a malicious one. He ruptures the status quo and causes transformation, in himself, in community, or/and in society. The trickster archetype is a mythological figure I find endlessly fascinating. I’ve spoken about the trickster figures several times before. Many moons ago I spoke about the Brer Rabbit who is an African American folklore tradition example. I’ve spoken about Ted Hughes’ crow poems a couple of times; the crow or raven is a classic trickster symbol. And there are the examples we find in the Bible of Yahweh expressing trickster-like characteristics, like in the Book of Job, when he does his wager with the devil.

The trickster archetype is an endlessly recurring mythological and literary character. Loki the shape-shifting God from Norse mythology is a trickster figure, the Joker in Batman is a trickster figure, the Mad Hatter in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is a trickster figure. You can probably think of more examples. The trickster archetype is, broadly speaking, someone who is unpredictable, unorthodox, creative, and living out from a deep sense of their own intuitive self. The wisdom of the trickster doesn’t follow conventional logic - he might manipulate a situation to his own end, but he does so accidentally. He is not like a Machiavellian-type figure, who is calculating, and orchestrates the ends he desires by emotionally manipulating the right people and pushing the right buttons, rather his end arises from the chaos he generates.

Although in mythology or fiction the trickster archetype is a being of some kind - an animal (like the Crow or the Brer Rabbit), or a God (Like Yahweh, or Pan, or Loki), or a person (like the Joker, or the Mad Hatter) within us, the trickster archetype is a mostly dormant part of our psyche, but nonetheless part of us all, rearing up to disrupt the status quo, within ourselves, or within community, or within society or nations. When one of these three things has calcified in some way, is no longer actualising its destiny in some sense, no longer flourishing, or no longer bringing forth the kind of reality it is supposed to be manifesting, then, the trickster must liberate us.

In Genesis, the fable of the Tower of Babel follows the Trickster motif. All the people of the world were speaking one language, they were all of one mind, they all agreed on what had to be done. But the Trickster, who was God, Yahweh in this case, had other ideas. Before the trickster, they would have been baffled by his obstinance, his resistance to their resolve would have seemed illogical. They were self-assured in their own purpose and objective, and why would anyone want to disrupt that? The Tower of Babel had to be destroyed, not because it didn’t work for the people - it clearly did - but because the Tower of Babel represented the direction humanity was taking, a direction which was contrary to their God-ordained destiny, at odds with the reality they were supposed to be manifesting together. They sought to build a tower that reached heaven. As such, they sought to make themselves like God. Now making ourselves like God is in one sense idolatry. Would we dare to play God? But in another sense, becoming more like God, or becoming God, is the narrative arc of the Bible.

Christ reflected God in some sense, he lived as God’s exemplar, and then he died, and his resurrection happens through us in as far as we inculcate the spirit of Christ amongst us. We make Christ alive in as far as we are Christ-like. Living fully into our Christ identity is ultimately to cast off any sense or belief that there is a moral arbiter above to determine what is good and bad. We must embrace our own radical freedom, and thus, in effect, become God. But it’s a process. There is a slow journey of becoming which needs to unfold psychologically for ourselves, but also in mythology we see it unfold across the narrative arc of the Bible, across the Bible’s 66 books from Genesis to Revelation. And yet, at the very beginning of this story, in book 1 chapter 11, we have humanity essentially trying to skip ahead to the end of the book. They’re trying to cheat, they’re trying to jump to something they’re wholly unprepared for. And so, the Trickster archetype emerges, and disrupts the status quo. And he does so in an almost comical fashion. They all wake up one morning to find that they can no longer all speak the same language. Dazed and confused, they disperse, and spread themselves out across the globe.

So that obviously would have been catastrophic: working towards a grand project, and suddenly their efforts were completely thwarted. But in the wake of the chaos the fertile ground was set, from which everything we know emerged. So, the trickster archetype is pushing back, not in a calculated way, but intuitively pushing back, because it can discern that there is something off. Something off that the trickster may not even be able to put into words, he just knows intuitively. And in this instance that works out, and Yahweh’s waggish behaviour ultimately has an edifying effect upon humanity. But because it is instinctual, and just a reaction against the way the world is showing up in that moment, it is inherently risky. It doesn’t always unfold positively or constructively in the short term.

Since the dawn of Civilization, the trickster archetype has arisen independently in every culture of the world. We can find his influence in religion, in mythology, in fiction old and new, and most evidently within ourselves, as an unconscious force welling up and disrupting the normative state of affairs. Thus, the Trickster has spoken. Look around you. Do you not perceive it? The soil at our feet is fertile, new doors are opening before us. Let us journey on, for the journey has only just begun.

Amen.