1. Trickster myths are deeply satisfying entertainment.
These myths are entertaining at a variety of levels, both to those who tell them within their repective
belief systems and to those who study them formally from without. Within Western cultures during
the last century, the fascintation with the trickster and tricksterish characteristics has established the
trickster narrative as a literary genre.
The late Carlos Castaneda, a contemporary American scholar whose several volumes documented
a twelve-year encounter in the Sonoran desert with a Yaquai sorcerer, Don Juan Matus, might be cited as a case of the category "scholar- trickster."
Conrad Hyers has explored the film persona of Charlie Chaplin as a trickster figure(1981)
Real-life contemporary American tricksters have been celebrated both in book form and film:
for example The Flim Flam Man (1967), The Great Imposter (1961). Burt Reynolds in such films as
Smoky and the Bandit,and most recently Leonardo DiCaprio in Catch Me If You Can (2002). Let's
not forget, MTV's, Beavis and Butthead and Fox's,The Simpsons.
American Indian Myths and Legends by Erdoes and Ortiz (1984), demonstrates repeatedly that the trickster is very much alive in contemporary Native American culture, even as the figure spills over
into mass media transformations.
Thus, the trickster's humor melds entertainment and education.We may laugh, but a deeper unfolding is at work. At one level, the trickster provides the gift of laughter but at another level the trickster
evokes insight and laughter.
2. Tricksters are psychic explorers and adventures.
The trickster has been understood, particularly from a psychological point of view, as representing
a speculum mentis within which central unresolvable human struggles are played out (Radin 1955:
xxiv) As a prototypical human, the trickster " symbolizes that aspect of our own nature which is always nearby, ready to bring us down when we get inflated, or to humanize us when we become pompous..... The major psychological function of the trickster is to make it possible for us to gain a
sense of proportion about ourselves" (Singer 1972: 289-90. Thus, we can see the trickster as a jester
holding forth in both the macrocosmic court of human society and the microcosmic court of the self.
In Freudian terms the trickster could be said to embody in dramatic form the ongoing battle between
the id and the superego. The trickster constantly ocillates back and forth between self-gratification
and cultural heroism (Piper 1978: 15) In neo-Freudian terms, the trickster is caught between the
pleasure principle and the reality principle (Bettelheim 1975: 33-34)
Abrahams sees the trickster as the embodiment of a "regressive infantilism,"and yet the pattern
of a small animal outwitting a larger animal or a human can also provide a model of hope for children
or adults who fing themselves suppressed (1968: 173-75).
Pelton makes the same point more poetically when he observes: "The purpose of the stories is to
put an adult mind in a child's heart and a child's eye in an adult head (Pelton 1980: 279)
The most familiar psychological interpretation of the trickster is that of Carl Jung and some of his
disciples. Here the trickster is viewed as "a primitive 'cosmic' being of divine-animal nature, on
the one hand superior to man because of his superhuman qualities, amd on the other hand inferior
to him because of his unreason and unconsciousness" (Jung 1955: 203-204). Jung considers the
trickster to be a "shadow" that brings to the surface the underside or reverse of dominent values.
Breaking through into the world of normalcy and order, the trickster plays out "subterranean forbiddens in dreamlike fashion" (Hynes). For Jung this process represents the ongoing fugue between the personal consciousness and the more trans-personal unconsciousness, as well as the dynamic byplay between the civilized and the primitive. As a civilization rises to consciousness,it may attempt to clean up or repress the trickster altogether (Jung 1955: 202-9)
In Jungian interpretation, the trickster, as shadow, can therefore serve as a breakthrough point for the surfacing of repressed values. At a deeper level he remains a creative mediator between that which
is differentiated, ordered, predictable, and distinct, on the one hand, and that which is undifferentiated, unordered, spontaneous, and whole on the other. (Hynes) In this way the trickster may be understood as the embodiment of such productive chaos as creativity, play, spontaneity,
inventiveness, ingenuity, and adventure.
The Hopi Indians believe the Kachina dancers are "supernatural beings, spirits of their much-loved ancestors". Only men can perform this dance where they put on masks to lose their identity to become a spirit.
Clown Kachinas provide amusement during Kachina ceremonies.Many times the actions of the clowns is meant to portray a lesson on improper behavior apparent in a tribal member. During Hopi ceremonies the men of the tribe wear costumes and masks that closely resemble the Kachina that is being honored. To the Hopi, these men serve as an intermediaries between the spiritual and natural worlds. In the eyes of the Hopi, the Kachina dancers become the human personification of the spirits. The ceremonies involving the Kachinas are extremely sacred.The Hopi believe that these ceremonial acts serve many purposes, such as bringing good weather and bountiful crops. Participation in ritual ceremonies is vital to the Kachina religion, as a prayer or an observance isn't enough.The majority of the ceremonies are held in kivas which are underground ceremonial sites.
The Clowns humanize the dancers by harassing them, thus, providing the people with greater access to the divine nature of the kachina spirits, much in the same way Christians have access to the "Father" through the divinity of the "Son" By poking fun at the dancers the clowns, as tricksters, ritually deflate the collective tribal ego. Eventually the foolishness provided by the clowns becomes tedious and boring. At this point the clowns make their exit. The resonating profanity of the clowns will eventually dissolve into the sacred non-stop rhythm and chant of the dancers.
The audience will be able to renew their identification with the tribe by witnessing and participating, through laughter, in the profane behavior of the clowns.The clowns attempt symbolic dismemberment or ritual death of each katchina dancer (spirit), through ridicule. This symbolically provides tribal members a ritual rebirth in consciousness. This rebirth is provided for the tribe through the suffering of the katchina spirits embodied in the dancers. The clowns as tricksters become agents of transformation.
Carl Jung called his concept, "Individuation"a movement toward wholeness. He felt it was the
source of all true health. Individuation is the process that moves one to become a completed,
unique person. Individuation appears when the ego-Self axis reaches consciousness, which is
characterized by a conscious dialectic relationship between ego and Self. ( Edinger: 7)
It is my contention that the collective Hopi "ego" experiences Jung's repetitive cycle of inflation and alienation symbolically through daily challenges faced on the reservation.
As a cultural or ethnic group deeply connected to the land the Hopi have for generations lived by universal principles informing the sacred ways of life and thought through what they called balancing and unifying earth with sky. It is a process of finding equilibrium between the polar energies affecting oneself and the cosmos-at-large, which once begun must be extended to a fusion between the individual self and the greater cosmos. It is a dialectical dance of nature that must be relearned by each human generation; it is the two-in-one or "at-onement."
Because tricksters(clowns) are so often the official ritual profaners of the central beliefs of a given system, they can act as a camera in which the reversed image serves as a valuable index to the sacred beliefs of that same system. as the seventeenth-century Jesuit, Balthasar Gracia, notes in his novel El Criticon (1651), "The things of this world can be truly perceived only by looking
at them backwards" (Babcock-Abrahams 1978:13) Even as these sacred beliefs are ritually profaned by the trickster, they are simultaneously being reconfirmend, particularly for those who are not themselves tricksters.
Before there can be an "individuation process" there must be a recognition of the (a) "self".
Could the Kachina Dancers symbolize for the Hopi the integrity of that "self". While the dance celebrates their collective identity the clowns could symbolize the challenges facing the tribe as the "collective inflated ego" of the tribe passes through periods of alienation, unemployment and substance abuse.
The sacred clowns, as agents of individuation for the Hopi provide through their antics an axis between the past and the future. A past that represents proud histories and traditions (inflation) and a future charged with fear and economic uncertainty (alienation).Each time they cause laughter by their imitation of the powers and prerogatives of another being the relative wisdom of the place and boundaries of these rights and privileges is reconfirmed leading them as a people closer to wholeness.
