The Trickster and the Paranormal

by George P. Hansen

  Babcock noted the connection between creativity and the trickster, and Turner discussed creativity and liminality. Marginality is an aspect of liminality, and it helps foster creativity. Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner reviewed the lives of several highly creative people including Sigmund Freud, T. S. Eliot, Mahatma Gandhi, Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky, Martha Graham, and Albert Einstein. In his book Creating Minds (1993) he noted that they typically strived to maintain positions of marginality (i.e., anti-structural or liminal positions). They felt that their creative potential could be stifled if they became too much part of the establishment.

  Ellen Basso did extensive work on tricksters in Amazonia, and she recognized some of the same patterns as Babcock. In her book In Favor of Deceit (1987) she suggests that in order to understand the trickster: “We might look further, if we could, at Winnebago understandings of creative imagination, of poetic and shamanistic processes, and of dreaming. For example, a most prominent cultural theme involved the development of an adult identity through fasting in puberty, which was connected with quests for visions and protective guardians. The young seeker was forced to live outside the family camp, lonely and fearful … of sudden encounters with powerful beings. The grandmother (like the grandmother of the Winnebago trickster Hare) seemed to have figured in major ways as a personal guide and guardian during these experiences … Could there have been expectations that during these crucial life events the world suddenly lost its normal structure, or that a destructured world came into being, and with it the self of the seeker became deconstructed? To what extent were the orgies of self-abandonment connected with war-bundle rituals attempts to reclaim these experiences of a destructured world? If we could answer these questions, we might understand more clearly the various ways personal Winnebago events achieved significance through the sacred trickster narratives.”

  This is a succinct statement of many crucial points. Unfortunately, Basso did not develop these ideas further, but she certainly recognized the connection between the trickster and anti-structure.

  Liminality and communitas typically involve at least a temporary loss of status (i.e., loss of position in the social structure), and status loss can also serve as an impetus in the development of tricksters. This is seen in folklore, as Susan Niditch pointed out in her analysis of Biblical tricksters, but it is not limited to that. The same theme is found in the lives of impostors, which highlight the connection between liminality and deception.27

  Trickster figures have particular appeal to marginal (low status) groups. In ancient Greece, aristocrats viewed merchants and craftsmen with suspicion and disdain. Norman Brown notes in his Hermes the Thief (1947) that “Hermes symbolized the aspirations of the non-aristocratic classes”;28 in fact Hermes was the patron of merchants. A similar situation was seen in the Middle Ages. As feudalism began to crumble, some of the nobility no longer enjoyed the privileges they once did. The merchants’ plight improved, but their social position was unsettled, because their status was not bound to the class of their birth. The feudal and church authorities distrusted them, and fittingly, Reynard the Fox, a trickster, was their symbol. All this illustrates the nexus of merchants, liminality, unsettled status, and the trickster, and there was more. Anthropologist James Peacock suggests that monks supported the merchants in their opposition to church authorities. As will be described in the next chapter, monks are permanently liminal persons.

  The affinity between the trickster and marginal groups is also found our culture. Jay Edwards in The Afro-American Trickster Tale (1978) and John Roberts in From Trickster to Badman (1989) discussed the prominence of the trickster in African-American folklore (e.g., Br’er Rabbit). Henry Louis Gates, Jr., director of Harvard University’s Afro-American studies program, even developed a theory of African-American literary criticism based on Eshu-Elegba, the Yoruba trickster god. Gerald Vizenor, a writer and professor with a mixed An-ishinaabe-French heritage, has drawn attention to the trickster’s importance to Native Americans. Gates’ and Vizenor’s work will be discussed in a later chapter on literary theory.

  Structure and Binary Oppositions

  “Opposites” is a recurring theme in the literature on the trickster and anti-structure. In periods of liminality, binary oppositions come to the fore, and it is worth repeating Turner’s quote that initiates “are associated with such general oppositions as life and death, male and female, food and excrement, simultaneously.” As mentioned in the previous chapter, these are also directly associated with the trickster. This is puzzling, and it bespeaks internal contradictions, but this is an important clue to the nature of the trickster.

  Scholars from a variety of areas have suggested that human thought is naturally organized in terms of binary oppositions. The oppositions form a kind of structure, parts of a whole; one helps define the other. This idea can be traced at least as far back as the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Anaximander.

  Our current Western worldview is founded upon Aristotelian logic, which is based on dichotomy, a type of binary opposition, i.e., something is either A or not-A. In fact, one of the fundamental laws of logical thought is referred to as “the law of the excluded middle.” It allows no betwixt and between. This kind of logic is thus particularly hostile to blurring of distinctions, but tricksters do just that. They are subversive to Western rationality.

  Within a binary opposition, one element of the pair is typically privileged (e.g., men having more power than women). When a structure is subverted or deconstructed, there is a reversal of the positions of privilege or a blurring or collapse of the line dividing the pair. When that happens, a liminal condition is established.

  Figure 1 illustrates the ideas and gives a glimpse of how they relate to the paranormal.

  Figure 1 Major Binary Oppositions and the Liminal Space Between Them

  Note: The elements in the top row generally have higher status than those in the bottom row. The items between the binary elements blur or mediate them. The arrows indicate a reversal of status during liminal conditions.

  Notice that the elements in the top line have the higher status. They are generally viewed as more desirable, as having greater power, prestige, and privilege. Those on the bottom line are relatively inferior and less desirable.

  The items between the opposition elements are affiliated with the paranormal or supernatural. Angels and UFOs traverse the realm between the heavens and the earth. Spirits, near-death experiences, reincarnation, and ghosts call into question the boundary between life and death. Priests mediate between gods and humans, and they are ritually protected when doing so. The berdache was a person in some American Indian cultures who took on the role and dress of the opposite sex. The berdache was considered to have supernatural power.

  The arrows in Figure 1 indicate reversals. During liminal periods, a pauper may take the role of the king, and vice versa. Ritual clowns may eat excrement in liminal times.

  Binary opposition is a significant theme in anthropology. In 1909 Robert Hertz, a student of Emile Durkheim, showed that binary oppositions played important roles in primitive classification schemes. The matter became better known in the 1960s with the study of myth by Claude Levi-Strauss and the short-lived French intellectual movement known as structuralism. Much of Levi-Strauss’ analysis involved binary oppositions, and he posited the existence of underlying mental structures that unite social, linguistic and psychological reality. The movement was ultimately unsuccessful in its grand aim, but structuralists introduced a number of seminal ideas that are still influential.

  Partly in response to structuralism, the deconstructionist movement arose. Deconstructionism was academically prominent in literary criticism, but its influence is wider and is still causing controversy. Binary oppositions are central to several formulations of it.

  Deconstructionists say that oppositions and privileged positions are simply arbitrary human constructions and that any arrangement is as valid as any other. Not surprizingly, those in positions of pow
er are not altogether receptive to such notions. However, the arguments are far deeper than simple disputes between power elites and the disenfranchised. The entire notion of objective reality has been called into question by deconstructionists. Today those advocating deconstructionist ideas have almost no knowledge of their intellectual lineage. Hence important implications are no longer understood by academics. Most of them now think that the area betwixt and between opposition elements is empty. The history of how that happened will be reviewed in a later chapter.

  Anti-structure and Danger

  Turner notes “that liminal situations and roles are almost everywhere attributed with magico-religious properties … [and these are] often … regarded as dangerous, inauspicious, or polluting to persons, objects, events, and relationships that have not been ritually incorporated into the liminal context.” He explains that: “all sustained manifestations of communitas … have to be hedged around with prescriptions, prohibitions, and conditions.” The sacred is surrounded by taboos, and there are innumerable examples.

  Anthropologist John Middleton investigated binary classification schemes among the Lugbara of Uganda and found that breaches of the schemes are regarded as uncanny and dangerous. He tells us: “The confusion of order and disorder is seen as the confusion of authority (which is moral, responsible, controlled, and predictable) and power (which is amoral, perhaps immoral, irresponsible, uncontrollable, and unpredictable). The people associated with this confusion have in common the characteristic of themselves being incomplete and so representing the essential nature of disorder itself. These people are diviners, prophets, witches, rainmakers.” David Hicks reports in his book Tetum Ghosts and Kin (1976) that similar patterns were found in Indonesia. Persons ambiguous in binary classification schemes (e.g., hermaphrodites) were viewed as having supernatural power.

  Cambridge anthropologist Edmund Leach has given some of the best expositions of the issues. His 1962 essay “Genesis as Myth” notes that God-man is a major opposition, and he explains that “’Mediation’ (in this sense) is always achieved by introducing a third category which is ‘abnormal’ or ‘anomalous’ in terms of ordinary ‘rational’ categories. Thus myths are full of fabulous monsters, incarnate gods, virgin mothers. This middle ground is abnormal, non-natural, holy. It is typically the focus of all taboo and ritual observance.” This middle ground is the liminal, the interstitial, the betwixt and between, the antistructural; it provides contact with the supernatural realm.

  The same issues are found in religion today, and the writings of German religious scholar Rudolf Otto illuminate these matters. In his seminal work, The Idea of the Holy (1917), he explores the concept of the “numinous,” a realm peculiar and unique to religion. Otto explains that this domain is an objective reality and not just a subjective feeling, though it has nothing to do with the rational. A primary function of religion is to deal with this aspect of existence. Otto explicitly recognizes that miracles come from the numinous. The numinous evokes an awe and fascination with an extra-rational power, the mysterium tremendum. But there is a negative aspect, sometimes referred to as the wrath of God. Otto notes that “this ‘wrath’ has no concern whatever with moral qualities … It is ‘incalculable’ and ‘arbitrary’”; it is encountered in the “grisly.” There is a duality to the divine.

  Otto notes that a much-subdued experience of this wrath is seen in the fear of ghosts. Ghosts are liminal (interstitial) creatures. They exist in the netherworld between life and death, and they challenge the idea that there is a clear separation of the two. The dread evoked by such beings can be profoundly disturbing. Surprisingly, parapsychologists have largely neglected this, but folklorists have drawn attention to it. William Clements’ papers “The Interstitial Ogre” (1987) and “In terstitiality in Contemporary Legends” (1991) give a helpful introduction. Linda Degh and Andrew Vazsonyi noted that encounters with such entities raise primal questions such as “Is there anything one can hang onto? Is there a solid basis on which one can base one’s trust in this confusing universe … ? It is not the individual who is separated from his ‘security base’ … The world itself has lost its protective familiarity.” It is precisely this that evokes such intense hostility to claims of the paranormal by some, and extreme anxiety in others, though it is rarely recognized consciously.

  British anthropologist Mary Douglas addresses perils of the liminal in her frequently cited book Purity and Danger (1966). Speaking of restrictions and taboos, she says “some are intended to protect divinity from profanation, and others to protect the profane from the dangerous intrusion of divinity. Sacred rules are thus merely rules hedging divinity off, and uncleanness is the two-way danger of contact with divinity.” The supernatural’s intrusion must be limited. Douglas later comments: “Ritual recognizes the potency of disorder. In the disorder of the mind, in dreams, faints and frenzies, ritual expects to find powers and truths which cannot be reached by conscious effort. Energy to command and special powers of healing come to those who can abandon rational control for a time.” In disorder, comes power, too, in disorder is danger.

  Even though many other scholars could be quoted about the supernatural dangers associated with liminal conditions, scientists today pay them little heed. Such ideas are viewed as quaint superstitions. Any scientist who took them seriously would invite derision, and loss of status. Understandably, parapsychologists rarely discuss these potential risks of their work.

  All this is directly applicable to the trickster because he is a denizen of the interstitial realm, and a few analyses of the trickster give clues to the dangers. Laura Makarius’ discussions are some of the most disturbing. She called attention to the peculiarities and incongruities so frequently encountered in trickster tales and commented that “they have been introduced for the express purpose of concealing some secret fact striving for expression.” Explicit recognition of this is crucial to deciphering the meaning, and she goes on to say: “What that hidden fact is, it is the goal of the student of folklore to discover. But he cannot do so without a knowledge of that deeper contradiction in the behavior of primitive peoples between what they may do and what they may not. The contradiction manifests itself when forbidden acts are committed for the same basic reasons for which they are forbidden. That is why they express themselves only if at the same time they are suppressed … The deliberate violation of taboo constitutes one of the deepest contradictions of primitive life. Its purpose is the obtainment of magical power.”

  Makarius elaborated on the theme in her article “The Magic of Transgression” (1974) and noted that murder and incest are sometimes committed deliberately in order to obtain supernatural benefits. A number of trickster stories involve incest, and cannibalism and human sacrifice have been widely practiced in order to gain magical power. All are extreme violations of taboo—extreme disruptions of moral structure. Occultists such as Aleister Crowley assert that sexual perversion in ritual magic increases its power, and material presented in this book supports that ominous conclusion. These ideas are not limited to primitive cultures and bizarre occultists; I will remind the reader that images of cannibalism and human sacrifice are central to Christianity.

  Barre Toelken, the head of the folklore program at Utah State University, has also given warnings about the trickster. Between 1954 and 1994 he carried out extensive fieldwork with the Navajo, preparing scholarly articles on them. All indications are that he was a perceptive and sympathetic investigator and well accepted by the Navajo; in fact he even married the niece of one of his primary informants.44

  Toelken had a particular interest in coyote stories, and he collected them during his fieldwork. The tales were told only during the winter, and though he tape-recorded them, he agreed to play the tapes only in that season. Further, in his teaching, he presented the stories only during the winter term. Because of his work and sensitivity, he was given the honor of speaking about the trickster to an audience exclusively of Navajos. The talk was greeted favorably, and at t
he end, a panel of elders made comments. The final commentator praised the talk but said that it would be a good time to discuss “what the Coyote stories are really about” and then proceeded to lecture for two hours.

  In his analysis, Toelken uncovered several layers of meaning of the stories, and he came to learn how fragments of them might be used in healing ceremonies. Given the elder’s comment, he had some glimmer that his own understanding was incomplete. Even though he had heard the stories for almost 30 years, it wasn’t until late one night in 1982 that he discovered that he had failed to grasp some substantial implications. As Toelken was interviewing an eminent singer (medicine man) about coyote stories, the singer asked him if he was prepared to lose a member of his family.

  The singer explained that though parts of the tales could be used for healing, some could be used for witchcraft. Toelken’s analytical dissection of the tales suggested that he intended to use them for that purpose, and losing a family member was the price to be paid for becoming a witch. The singer went on to tell him that even if he had no such intention, his inquiries would lead others to suspect him of being a witch, and to try to kill someone in his family.

  Toelken was understandably shocked, and a bit alarmed, and he began to reassess his interpretations. There came to pass several events that gave him pause. His informant’s family suffered a series of accidental deaths and other misfortunes. Toelken could not logically link them to the revealing of the tales to outsiders, but he could not dismiss the possible connection either. He considered the risks to his informants and family and eventually decided to halt his inquiries into the coyote tales.