Participating with trickster stories from Native American sources is tricky for a number of reasons. Many of these stories follow a different plot progression--they seem not to have a punchline--though Coyote Keeps His Name is one that satisfies our expectations about what constitutes a story. The stories contain a different sense and use of humor, and they reflect a different consciousness. Animals are "people," conscious beings with a mission to perform, for example. And as the prominence of Coyote/tricksters in these cultures indicates, there is a recognizable and valuable, even sacred place, reserved for a force of creation via the ridiculous and profane, not just the wisely orchestrated. The stories I will tell at the round table and post here will illustrate these points over time.
The story Coyote Keeps His Name raises the question: who is this guy? Coyote seems kind of a buffoon, a boaster, but is he harmless? He gets this important job, especially as it relates to us, the "New People," and is that good news given the fiasco of the naming, the falling asleep with eyes propped wide open with twigs? There are many Coyote stories and reading a group of them imparts some more information (he is not always harmless and may have brought death into the world), but bottom-line what you learn about Coyote as you tend to Coyote tales is his character, his way of being. Not his motivation. Not his plan. Not his point. The absence of comprehensible information about these topics and our desire for it is interesting in itself. We often want to know "why?" something happens when the point is simply that it does. And we often reject the implicit "why" of motivation the story carries because we can't reconcile seeming opposites (generosity and greed, wisdom and stupidity) that we insist must be separate--in the world, in others, and most crucially, in ourselves.
So what is Coyote's way? Here's a partial answer, a few glimmers and slim gleanings from my acquaintance with him (and he is always a he). The Trickster is a creator but he doesn't set out with a grand plan, there's no first day and second day until he rests. Coyote responds to the moment and acts with the cunning and cleverness borne of circumstance and contingency. Trickster energy is the energy of the road, particularly the ambiguity represented by the crossroads (think Jack Kerouac). Tricksters are intimately connected with language and communication and that is one slippery device. Tricksters can spin great, enchanting rhetoric and weave a spell of enthusiasm. Later we reflect on their speeches and realize that actually, they didn't say much.
One thing that puzzles is the connection between his ingenuity and boldness and his innate foolishness. Coyote does a lot of things that go wrong--which is why he needs more than one life to fulfill his mission. This calls to mind the pairing of Prometheus (foresight) with Epimetheus, his foolhardy brother. Why does Prometheus let his reckless brother hand out the divine gifts? Epimetheus screws up, he gives everything away and keeps nothing back for humankind, hence the corrective act, a crime against Zeus, the theft of fire. Inexplicable but this pairing tells us something about the relationship between plans and order and chaos and impulsiveness. Transgression of some sort, lying and stealing and competitiveness push the boundaries and reset them, and this an important form of creativity albeit one with costs, a method without guaranteed success which is what creativity requires, is it not?
In our round table discussion, someone asked about Trickster energy in our culture and I think it's everywhere but it's largely unconscious in our goal oriented, plan driven, control freak culture in which we think that we decide things and make them happen on our own without the participation, assistance or interference, of the psychic and cosmic forces that contain us and the world. Bernie Madoff acted with Trickster energy and he hurt a lot of people because the flipside of unconscious Trickster action is unconscious trickster enabling, that is, gullibilty and a desire to satisfy our own inner Trickster (maybe get something for nothing). Could someone like Bernie Madoff succeed on such a grand scale if we were culturally clued in to the existence of the Trickster in ourselves? I don't know. But it's something to ponder and a thread we'll keep alive as our engagement with the Trickster Coyote continues.
“It's all a question of story. We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story. We are in between stories. The old story, the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it is no longer effective....Our challenge is to create...a new sense of what it means to be human.” ---Thomas Berry
