Trickster

There is a mythological archetype called Trickster. Trickster is found in many mythologies, including those of the North American Indians.

Paul Radin, an authority on the Trickster Cycles of the North American Indians, describes Trickster as being

... at one and the same time creator and destroyer, giver and negator, he who dupes others and is always duped himself. He wills nothing consciously. At all times he is constrained to behave as he does from impulses over which he has no control. He knows neither good or evil yet he is responsible for both. He possesses no values, moral or social, is at the mercy of his passions and appetites, yet through his actions all values come into being ... Laughter, humour and irony permeate everything Trickster does ... he is primarily an inchoate being of undetermined proportions, a figure foreshadowing the shape of man.

Trickster has never been restricted to one society. In European countries he appears in the guise of Jester or Fool, and his roots in the human psyche are deep. Alan Garner has collected Trickster stories from many countries in his book The Guizer and he writes:

If we take the elements from which our emotions are built and give them separate names such as Mother, Hero, Father, King, Child, Queen, the element that I think marks most of us is that of the Fool. It is where our humanity lies. For the Fool is the advocate of uncertainty: he is at once creator and destroyer, bringer of help and harm. He draws a boundary for chaos, so that we can make sense of the rest. He is the shadow that shapes the light. Psychology calls him Trickster. I have called him Guizer. Guizer is the proper word for an actor in a mumming play. He is comical, grotesque, stupid, cunning, ambiguous. He is sometimes part animal, and always part something else. The something else is what is so special. He is the dawning godhead in Man.

Taken from an essay by Dr Ann Skea.