Mythical Trickster Figures: Contours, Contexts, and Criticisms

SIX: THE SHAMAN AND THE TRICKSTER

SIX THE SHAMAN AND THE TRICI(STER Mac Linscott Ricketts It is the thesis of this chapter that the shaman and the trickster in North American Indian culture represent two diametrically opposite poles of spirituality. The shaman, the living religious expert, society's first "professional" (combining modern roles of doctor, priest, psychologist, medium, and perhaps philosopher and theologian-as well as actor), represents the religious experience of humility and awe before Spirit; the shaman represents Rudolph Otto's encounter of the mysterium tremendum et fascinans (1950), which is widely considered to refer to the religious experience par excellence. But I believe that the trickster, the myth figure most popular in the mythologies of the great majority of Native American tribes, embodies another experience of Reality: one in which humans feel themselves to be self-sufficient beings for whom the supernatural spirits are powers not to be worshiped, but ignored, to be overcome, or in the last analysis mocked. The trickster is also a religious figure, inasmuch as he belongs to the sacred time of origins and inasmuch as he provides a model by which humankind is enabled to transcend existence and conquer for itself a unique place in the Cosmos. The trickster, then, is the symbol of the self-· transcending mind of humankind and of the human quest for knowledge and the power that knowledge brings. Unlike the shaman, the priest, and the devotee of supernatu.ralistic religion, the trickster looks to 88 RICKETTS no "power" outside himself, but sets out to subdue the world by his wits and his wit. In other words, as I see him, the trickster is a symbolic embodiment of the attitude today represented by the humanist. I was led to this conclusion, that the trickster of the Native North Americans discloses a "primitive humanism," by my doctoral studies nearly three decades ago, and subsequent study and critiques have not altered my hypothesis (see Ricketts 1964, 1966). I remain convinced that the North American Indian trickster, if indeed not all tricksters, stands in opposition to the shaman and supernaturalism; that he represents a different apprehension of humankind, the Cosmos, and one's place in the Cosmos; and that he symbolizes an alternative "way of being religious ." The purpose of this chapter is to present some of the more striking pieces of evidence that confirm, in my opinion, the radically opposite natures of the shaman and the trickster. For while it is true that the Indians in general may not have been aware of the logical opposition of the two figures, I think there is ample evidence to show that in the minds of some individuals the conflict was consciously perceived.1 But whether conscious or not, the two figures afforded the Indian Americans two very different religious options that served the needs of different temperaments and different times. SHAMANISM I understand shamanism to be a worldview based on an experience that stands at the opposite pole from that symbolized by the trickster. The shaman has experienced another realm lying parallel to our own, a spiritual realm, into which he himself has been inducted. I concur with Adolf Jensen that it is, very probably, to the shaman's ecstasy that we should look for the origin of the idea that man is a duality of body and spirit (Jensen 1963: 228-29, 284-85). In his initiation into the spirit world the shaman has realized that for which humans, or some of them at least, have longed ever since humans became aware of their limitations as limitations: the transcending of the human condition and the attainment of the condition of "spirit." As Mircea Eliade interprets it, the shaman has found the absolute freedom sought by mortals: "The desire for absolute freedom, that is, the desire THE SHAMAN AND THE TRICKSTER 89 to break the bonds that keep him tied to earth and to free himself from his limitations, is one of man's essential nostalgias.... In the archaic religions, the shaman and the medicine man ... constitute an exemplary model for the rest of the community precisely because they have realized transcendence and freedom, and have, by that fact, become like spirits and Supernatural Beings" (Eliade 1958: 101; the description of shamanism that follows relies principally upon Eliade 1964, especially chapters 2, 3, and 4). Wherever shamanism is found~in Siberia, Australia, and North and South America, indeed almost everywhere except Africa-it presents a...