Tricky Tricksters

Crafty Creatures, Dangerous Deities, Legendary Liars:

The Trickster Archetype in Ancient Mythologies and Today

by Writer-Colorer

    Loki, Coyote, Raven, Puck, Bugs Bunny. Names we know well and names that denote trickery and cunning. These ideas are all of the Trickster Archetype, beings who are the ultimate Slytherin idols. But how did they come about and why?

    The first, and perhaps most important, thing to know is that every pantheon, from every civilization has at least one trickster deity. From the Inuit to the Japanese, they all have a Trickster or two in their myths and legends. But what is a trickster deity?

    A trickster deity, as defined by mythologists and folklorists, is a deity who often breaks the laws of their universe, either maliciously or for simple amusement. They will work to subvert the wills of the gods or the Fates themselves. Trickster deities also tend to be kinder to the mortals than their colleagues, such as Prometheus stealing fire from the gods and gifting it to humanity, while they will also inflict karmic comeuppances onto people who deserved it, as Loki had many, many times.

    What’s interesting though, very very interesting, is how different civilizations view their Tricksters.

    Take Loki, of the Norse Pantheon; Loki is the most famed Trickster of the European pantheons, and possibly the world, no doubt helped recently by the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Tom Hiddleston portrayal and the Supernatural incarnation, who is really truly the Archangel Gabriel, as portrayed by Richard Speight, Jr., and yet he was often the villain of his stories that the Norse told.

    See, the Norse valued forthrightness, honor, courage (stereotypical Gryffindor behavior really) and while cunning and intelligence was valued, it had to be honorable. Oaths were most important; once you swore an oath to someone you had to have an almost divine reason to break it. Loki, he was known by many, many names. One of which being ‘Oath-Breaker’, a damning title for any Norseman, mortal or divine. What made it worse was that he was not a god at all, but a frost giant brought into Asgard and raised by the kindness of Odin, All-Father.

    To be fair, Loki was not an ‘oath-breaker’ at first. Truly he was cursed; he was destined to bring about the Twilight of the Gods, which did not involve sparkly statues posing as vampires but instead was Ragnarok, aka the Norse Apocalypse. However, at first he was a mere prankster, a bit like the Weasley Twins rolled into one man. He played tricks and games with both gods and mortals, aided by his shape-shifting abilities. He tried to fight his destiny, he loved his family, the Aesir, the Norse gods, and hated most of the Jotun, the Norse giants, and they all knew that the Aesir would fight their end but ultimately lose, thus ending the world. And he liked the world really, like Odin, he wandered the mortal realm, Misgard, blessing the good, righteous, virtuous beings he came across and punishing the evil, immoral, sinful beings in turn.

    However, something happened. Something very, very bad. Loki killed Baldr, another god and fellow son of Odin. After this point Loki was bad, evil, and treated accordingly. It’s interesting that, although he started out good or at least neutral, the Norse came to view their Trickster god as malicious and dangerous. Loki was dangerous, Loki was an ‘Oath-Breaker’, Loki was evil. See, in the Norse worldview, Destiny could not be changed or avoided. Everyone had a destiny and everyone had to face it. Even the gods.

    Let’s head to warmer climates, shall we? And a few hundred years back, maybe. Greece. Birthplace of democracy. But Greece was not like it is today. Where today stands a country united then stood a loose collection of city-states, individual kingdoms and governments, held together only by shared mythologies and political alliances that were always changing, always fragile.

    To the Greeks, and I use that name lightly because again there were so many different city-states, their gods were just like them. Flawed, petty; the only difference being that the gods had great cosmic powers, which is just lovely when they start throwing tantrums. Which brings us to the story of Prometheus, the Trickster god that gave humanity fire and thus civilization.

    In the beginning, when humans still had prominent brow ridges and had to huddle together in their caves for warm, the gods were already evolved, already living the high-life at the summit of Mount Olympus and they looked down their nose at the stinky, disgusting mud-monkeys that were humans. But Zeus, King of the Gods, Master of the Sky and of Lightning, feared the humans, feared that they might become greater than even he with all his powers and immortality. So, he kept them beaten underfoot, downtrodden, too worried about their survival day-to-day to do anything more. The other deities conspired with him to keep humans down.

    
Except one; Prometheus, a Trickster god, one of the rare good Titans, the original creator of humanity, the one who molded them from clay and gave them life and breath, whose heart ached for humanity. He begged and pleaded and threatened Zeus to try to win favor for his creations. But Zeus remained absolute and cruel.

    In desperation, Prometheus stole the sacred fire of Zeus and gave it to humans, teaching them how to create fire. Thus starting civilization. Oh, but he paid deeply for this betrayal; he was chained to a mountaintop, where giant eagles picked out and at his liver. However, because he was a god, he could not die; for all the agony, there was no sweet embrace of death to end it. Every night his liver grew back and so every day the eagles feasted again. Until Hercules freed him.

            But where Loki was reviled, hated for his transgressions against his own pantheon, Prometheus was celebrated, Prometheus was loved. For without Prometheus’s sacrifice, humanity would not have progressed. He was particularly worshipped in Athens, having his own alter at Plato’s Academy and being the center-point of a few, rather important, festivals.

    But I grow bored of the Old World; let’s travel instead to the New World, the Americas. And into North America itself. Before the White Man arrived there was a loose federation of the Native peoples. Now, like the Greek city-states, they were not really united so much as allied. Different tribes believed different things.  Some things, though, crossed barriers into many cultures. Like Coyote.

    Now, the myths and legends of Coyote vary drastically from tribe to tribe but there is a big one that remains the same. Coyote, like Prometheus, stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity. Now, he wasn’t punished, as he was far too cunning. Other than that, the myths are too different. He plays pranks, he helps people, he hurts people, he made people from clay, he sleeps with men, women, anything, he’s all over the board really. You can’t pin Coyote down and he laughs when you try.

    Coyote had a buddy, an enemy, an ally, a partner in crime in Raven. But he has the same problem as Coyote; different tribes tell different stories. In one he actually stole the stars, the moon, and the sun, flinging then flying them into the night sky! That is why some raven sounds sound like laughter. Raven is laughing at the great tricks he has played, and will play, perhaps on you.

    Downward we go! South of the border, into Mesoamerica! Where there are blood thirsty gods holding the world hostage and into meeting our next Trickster god,   Huehuecóyotl. An Aztec god, and his name means, guess what, ‘very old coyote’. Huehuecóyotl was the god of music, dance, mischief, and song in ancient Mexico. He was also, like all of his colleagues, dualistic. He could be both good and evil. Just as his purview was. Mischief is fine, after all, until someone gets hurt. Dance can be both elegant and dirty. Song can calm the beast or whip a company of warriors into bloodthirsty animals. He was a prankster whose pranks often backfired and when he was bored he liked to start wars between humans. Lovely guy really.

    Time to hop continents; we’re heading to the land of the Rising Sun where they don’t have a trickster god but instead Trickster creatures, the Kitsune. The Kitsune were many-tailed spirit-foxes, Yokai, although we usually translate that word into the English ‘demon’, who loved to play tricks on people when not being servants to the gods. Like people, some could be kind and some could be cruel. As long as you never get on their bad sides, then your life would be hell. They could shape-shift so they could be anyone or anything. Some even took the form of Human women and borne children for mortal men. As long as they went undetected they would stay with their families but as soon as the husband figured it out, the Kitsune-wife would leave, never to return. Children of these marriages often carried gifts from their inhuman heritage. However, the Kitsune could also possess a human, using them as a puppet at best, as a meat-suit at worst.

    Due to possession, the entire family could be cast out from society. An exorcism would be performed at a shrine but if that failed to work, the victim would be beaten, sometimes burnt in the hopes that the spirit would surrender its’ host. Of course, the host often died from these extreme measures.

    Across the ocean, in Korea there was a more malevolent version. The Kumiho were Kitsune with a bad attitude.  They did everything the Kitsune did but with an added bonus, they like to eat people who were not groveling enough. Lovely.

    To the land of sand and camels that spit when annoyed, the Middle East. Once again, there are too many different deities and myths here to cover them all but the most prominent Trickster deities in this region are the Jinn. Or Genies as we know them today. Jinn are tricky spirits that love messing with people, blessing some, cursing other, and just generally being up to no good. With the advent of the Abrahamic religions, Jinn were downgraded into minor demons who tempt humans off the godly path and into sin. If you find a Jinn in a bottle or lamp, before you make your wishes, contact a lawyer for any loophole in a wish will be used and abused by the trapped Jinn.

    Leaping across the continent again, passing the land of the Norse, we hit the UK, where we find the Fae. Fairies. Not nice. Fae were very alien to humans, having an entirely different worldview. They didn’t think in terms of good or bad, at least not in any way we could recognize. Fae come in various forms and most like to make mischief for humans if not torment them completely. They would even take human babies and leave their own sickly offspring in their place. Fae were more often than not cruel, a danger to be avoided. Fairy mounds and fairy castles were to be left alone for fear of angering the inhabitants. Fae could strike down people and animals with diseases, make milk and other foodstuff spoil, salt the lands so crops would not grow, or perhaps worst of all, strike men sterile and women barren.

    Few humans made friends with the Fae, those who did were often stole away into the land of the Fae, never to be seen or heard from again. Handsome young men and pretty young women were in particular danger, for they might caught the eye of a Fairy suitor.

    And now we join the modern age, an age of television and technology. And the Trickster character is still with us.

    One of our modern Trickster characters is very famous, very well-known and often quoted. Bugs Bunny of Looney Tunes fame is the Trickster for a modern world, having all the same characteristics of his forerunners. His ability to bend space and time, to control the physics of his environment, and his wit all harken back to the ancient deities and the ancient stories.

    What have we learned? That humanity has always recognized cunning and mischief as both fun and dangerous and should be treated with care and great caution. Those who think outside the box, even if that box is blue and bigger on the inside, often have the last laugh and make the greatest leaps of progress.

    Oh yes, the Trickster will stay with us for a while yet, as it should be.

     Sources Used:

    Wikipedia:
           "Trickster"

    "Loki"

    "Huehuecóyotl"

    "Coyote"

    "Raven"

    "Prometheus"

    "Kitsune"

    "Kumiho"

    Godchecker:

    "Loki"

    "Huehuecóyotl"

    "Coyote"

    "Raven"

    "Prometheus"

    TVTropes:

    "Trickster Mentor"

    "The Trickster"

    "Great Gazoo"

    "Useful Notes/ Norse Mythology"

    "Useful Notes/ Classical Mythology”