INTRODUCTION

It was somewhere in my late teens that I picked up a copy of Paul Radin’s book, The Trickster, and began reading Carl Jung’s essay on this archetypal character; I have been studying, reading, and writing about Trickster ever since. I was fascinated to learn that there were these reoccurring literary forms called “archetypes,” folk creations that spanned cultures and time that followed similar blueprints, and that were being spun over and over, reinvented time and time again, characters with common characteristics, told by people as diverse as the  Eskimos of the Artic to dwellers of the Congo rainforests, from tribal cultures to urban centers, in every country and tribe. Cleary, there was something similar in the human psyche that was being revealed through these patterns, though as I studied Anthropology in college I got no answers—as the field was still under the illusion that every culture and language was the product of its own particular evolution, and it was uncouth to compare or contrast stories (or anything else) from different cultures—as each had to be examined as if existed pristine and alone. A literary student or Anthropologist could not pry deeper into the "why" of the Trickster, so we had to eschew any discussions about universal patterns that linked Trickster figures across the globe. This ban stemmed from a longstanding belief in the humanities that a universal human nature was preposterous: that we are all different, not the same, and that basically human beings were blank slates at birth and everything we developed was due to learning and education, an idea known as Social Constructivism. Yet, the rise of evolutionary psychology and neuroscience eventually began to challenge those antiquated notions. Recent findings suggested that the universal patterns found in literature and mythology might indeed reflect fundamental aspects of our biological makeup, showing we humans to be more similar than we had imagined. So, after studying world literature, I moved on to study neuroscience, which opened the door to new scientific insights about the brain and how it works. Because of things like MRI scans, the brain could now be looked at in real time, examined in living people, information which began to reveal how the brain actually processed information, mapped, categorized the environment, and how it even felt. This new knowledge fit in perfectly with biological evolution and evolutionary psychology--the notion that our bodies and minds had been shaped over eons of time through natural selection, creating us as we are today. All the while, Trickster kept popping up in my life, until one day it dawned on me that I myself (as a musician, songwriter, cartoonist, & writer) was indeed  a trickster of sorts—a fool/jester—for I had also learned that throughout time and across cultures real men and real women had taken on these roles of  “sacred clowns” who confronted authority and the status quo when it became idiotic and wrong--acting as intellectual warriors who challenged the  accepted “wisdom” of the societies in which they lived. But why had these similar traits developed in both the Trickster of mythology and the comedic and musical fools of the world who had been so inclined to follow such a contrary path?

 

The answer was simple yet profound—archetypal stories are not just tales we tell—they are mirrors to the human mind, shaped by the evolutionary forces that sculpted our ancestors, and these similar characters resonate with us not just as relics of the past but as ongoing influences that continue to shape us, reflecting the very neurochemistry and wiring of our brains. Neuroscience makes clear that we are not blank slates at birth but rather are pre-wired for complex social interactions, for storytelling, and more. Tricksters, through their tales, highlight some of these primal brain functions, showing us the biases and mechanisms that govern our decision-making (usually at an unconscious level and linked to emotion and feeling).  An awareness of this can lead to a much better understanding of human nature and to what makes us tick. By studying tricksters, we not only delve into the folklore of various societies, but we also examine our own lives through these stories. Narratives of Tricksters like Ajapa, Anansi, or Coyote resonate with universal themes of struggle, adaptation, and survival—themes that mirror the ongoing human quest for understanding and living in the world. The Trickster Inside—Walking with Our Shadow invites you to explore these complex figures and their stories, so you might see them as I do, as conveying vital lessons we still need. Peeling back the layers of Trickster, we uncover not only ancient wisdom but also Trickster’s contemporary relevance, as tricksters are not afraid to speak truth to power or stand up against dictators and authoritarians, and Tricksters always shine a light on the human condition, revealing our animal nature and the hilarity of our self-importance and pomp.