Volume 17 Number 4 Article 5 Summer 7-15-1991 Devil, Trickster and Fool Tim Callahan Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Callahan, Tim (1991) "Devil, Trickster and Fool," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 17 : No. 4 , Article 5. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol17/iss4/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm Abstract Discusses the Trickster and Fool figure in world folklore and mythology as well as selected fantasy literature. Additional Keywords The Fool in literature; Tar Baby motif; Trickster figures This article is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol17/iss4/5 CPyTHLORe Issue 66 - SummcR 1991 Page 29 Tim Callahan Fool, shaman, mage, culture-hero, devil, demiurge; Baldur, is bound beneath the earth and writhes in agony, lying at the crossroads of so many characters, themselves causing earthquakes when the venom of a serpent drips often archetypal, the Trickster is hard to define. One seeks on his face. This image is strikingly like that of Satan cast a fixed point from which to begin. Yet the central charac­ into the pit. But the fire-bringer Prometheus is also bound teristic of the Trickster is that he (usually, although some­ and tormented for his much more noble transgression. times she) has no fixed nature. Just when we've decided That he suffers for the sake of humanity, interposing him­ he's a villain, he does something heroic. Just when we're self between mortals and the wrath of the gods, makes him sure he's a fool, he does something intelligent. His one a Christ-figure. Thus both savior and destroyer spring constant characteristic is appetite. He is governed by a from the Trickster's personality. Often, this dichotomy is desire to immediately satisfy his bodily urges, both gastric a strain on the thinking of people intolerant of those and sexual. Often, therefore, he is a phallic deity. This aspects of divinity which refuse to conform to a neatly characteristic is common to both the Olympian Hermes rationalized world. One way of dealing with the strain is and the Winnebago Trickster, Wakdjunkaga, who keeps to separate the incongruous aspects of the Trickster into his incredibly long penis rolled up in a box he carries on two different personalities and make them twins. his back. And yet Wakdjunkaga at one point turns himself Prometheus, whose name means "forethought," is the into a woman, marries a chief's son and bears him twin of Epimetheus, meaning "afterthought." Prometheus children. Loki, the Norse Trickster, turns himself into a carried die functions of culture-hero and savior, while mare to lure away a giant's stallion. Likewise, in Japan, the Epimethius was the fool. This division of the Trickster's fox, a trickster in the Orient as well as Europe, is fond of personality may suit those who can't tolerate ambiguity in taking the form of a beautiful young woman. The fox- their gods. women lead men into sexual liaisons that can be anything The Trickster, as an aspect of deity, does make it hard from a mischevous hoodwinking to a vampire-like drain­ to view the divine entirely in terms of worshipful awe. His ing of the victim's vitality. behavior is often too much that o f the fool for those of us Though the Trickster is a trouble maker and often raised in a Judeo-Christian culture to in any way equate cruel, his behavior is naive rather than mean. His cruelty with any sort of god. He talks to the parts of his body as is that of a child, quite alarming at times, but not based on though they were separate entities. W akdjunkaga tells his systematic viciousness. It is helpful, when trying to under­ anus to guard his recent kill while he sleeps. The anus tries stand the Trickster, to keep the image of the child in mind. to wake him up by breaking wind when a fox steals the Jung considered him a representation of an undeveloped, food, but Wakdjunkaga sleeps through it. When he does as yet unsodalized individual, someone with immense wake to find his food gone, he punishes his anus by potential and vast energies who has not yet learned to burning it. focus or master his great gifts. As such, he, in his naivete, As one can see from this story, scatological jokes tend does what others would never dare, blithely committing to accrue to the Trickster. Common to many Amerindian sacrilege and violating taboos. This aspect of the Trickster tribes is the story of the laxative bulb. Trickster comes is the source of such fool-heroes as Parsival. upon a talking bulb that says, "Whoever eats me will Both sides of the Trickster's personality show through defecate." Trickster thinks this is nonsense and eats the in many creation stories. He is the helper who actually bulb. Not long after, he begins ,to break wind. At first he fashions the details of the world the Creator has imbued makes light of this, but his flatulence becomes so powerful with life and energy. In the process he usually does a few that each blast propels him several feet. Finally, the bulb's things wrong; thus the world is less than perfect. His prophecy comes true and Trickster is buried in his own understanding is flawed and his selfish jealousy interferes excrement. Even the kitsune, the elegant and bewitching with his handiwork. The Demiurge of the Gnostics, think­ fox-women of Japan, are not above this crude level of ing himself the true Creator, when he is in reality only the behavior. Upon having their deceptions discovered and agent of creation, is another example of this aspect of the their true form revealed, they often break wind as they Trickster's persona, as is Lucifer. make their escape. Yet in mythic systems throughout the world, it is the Fortunately for him, the Trickster's ability to come back Trickster who steals fire from jealous, selfish guardians from the dead saves him from suffering the full conse­ and shares it with all. For his transgressions he is often quences of his folly. When, in a Sioux story, Coyote is bound and tormented. Loki, for causing the death of flattened by a boulder he has offended and is mistaken for Page 30 Issue 66 - SummcR 1991 CPyTHLORe a rug by a white rancher, he spends the night puffing Africa and the Americas. In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, himself up into shape again. The next morning the man's Campbell alludes to some 267 versions of the Tar Baby wife tells him, "I saw your rug running away." This story. sounds like a cartoon, and, indeed, cartoon characters such In one variant of the story there is a drought. The as Wiley Coyote and Bugs Bunny are modem day animals get together and decide to dig a well. Rabbit Tricksters. refuses to help, saying that he can lick the dew off the Often Trickster stories have two parts in which he is by ground. The animals dig the well without him and strike turns crafty and foolish. Either he does something clever water. Each morning, however, they find it dry. Someone to gain an advantage then does something stupid to lose is stealing their water. So they decide on a stratagem to it, or he does something stupid, gets himself in a fix, and catch the thief. They make an image out of tree sap (pine can only get out of it by a clever trick. The story of tar, rubber tree sap etc.) and set it by the well. The next Wakdjunkaga burning his anus is an example of the night Rabbit, who is of course the thief, comes upon the former. Earlier in the tale he had killed several ducks image and asks it what it's doing there. Its failure to answer through trickery. enrages him. He punches and kicks it and is found stuck fast in the morning. After giving him a drubbing and a For an example of the later type of tale, consider the warning, the other animals let him go. This variant is told Skidi Pawnee story of Big Turtle's war party. At the begin­ by both the Yoruba of Nigeria and the Cherokee. In a ning of the story, Big Turtle, having decided to go on the similar story, Anansi, spider Trickster of the Ashanti, is warpath, spurns the services of such formidable warriors caught and humiliated after stealing nuts from the king's as the fox and the hawk. Instead he chooses a number of orchard.