Talk:Trickster/Archive 1

Archive 1

Purpose

I really don't think that lists should be converted into paragraphs unless there is good reason for it. Lists are better than man commas. Or a seperate list/table of tricksters should be created. This useful highly legible format should not be obliterated in favour of more academic standardisation.

Secondly, This is a very Eurocentric article not conveying the deeper cultural signifigances to the cultures relevant adequately. Is the jesus article reducing his import for the sake of lazy native commentators. Tricksters may only be bit players in a Eurocentric Ontology but that is not the same elsewhere. Rusl 00:10, 2 November 2006 (UTC)foo

Lists are usually seen as a bane to Wikipedia and subject to an Wikipedia:Articles for deletion debate. Until a listed subject/name can achieve enough notability to have its own article, editors will add on here. See also's can be used but lots of editors will re-edit to get their favorite Trickster back on this article - making them a Trickster. Ronbo76 19:03, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

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Some of us think lists can be a very useful part of reference works. They may not be "encyclopedic" in a traditional sense ... so what? why does WP need to be "traditional"? ... this new medium confers new capabilities.

For example, if I were new to the idea of "Trickster", or were going to write a piece about the idea, a list of many examples would be a wonderful resource. The list may be useful to students of multiculturalism, directing us to the appropriate literature and helping us all to understand the cross-cultural character of archetype.

The reference and educational value of lists in some circumstances is undeniable; IMO rather than be subject to a blanket banishing rule, they should be included on separate pages, with special links in the main article. Twang 04:42, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

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• Lists are permitted on Wikipedia. Prose is prefered IF there is useful material to put into prose. If not, then a list is fine. That goes for an in-line list embedded in a prose article. Johntex\^talk 05:51, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

I've created a new page for List of modern day tricksters; consolidated, renamed and moved the "List of tricksters in various cultures." Will this satisfy the various concerns raised? Sunray 21:29, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Slightly confused

"Native tricksters should not be confused with the Euro-American fictional picaro." What exactly does the word 'native' mean here? Does it mean 'native to somewhere', or 'native American', or something else? Skittle 22:36, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Pan as a trickster

Are we considering Pan, the greek god of nature, a trickster? I'm almost certain he's known as one, but I'd like some reassurance before I add anything on. ---24.192.224.242 14:13, 31 August 2007 (UTC)Hermesscholar

Pan is certainly known for playing tricks. However, mythological tricksters usually have other qualities as well. According to Hynes and Doty, in Mythical Trickster Figures (1993), every trickster has several of the following six traits:

1. fundamentally ambiguous and anomalous
2. deceiver and trick-player
3. shape-shifter
4. situation-inverter
5. messenger and imitator of the gods
6. sacred and lewd bricoleur

I did a few searches but couldn't come up with a reliable source that described Pan as a trickster. Sunray 14:46, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Edits by mehilainen

user:mehilainen added the following text to three different sections. I don't know if the text is relevant, or where it belongs; I've removed all three instances for now.

In modern Texan-Indian-peyote-user's symbology, with no Devil or similar concept of evil, the coyote trickster represents seemingly nonrandom upsetting events that cloud our perception or judgement, often leading to terrible mistakes. Offering cheer over gloom, the coyote invites us to laugh with him at absurdity and move on, while he threatens us with bad decisions caused by our own inability to respond deliberately to the unexpected.

--Niels Ø (noe) (talk) 12:13, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Picaresque novel

In what way are the picaro from the picaresque novel and the trickster related. Is it o.k. to state that a picaro is a trickster? —Preceding unsigned comment added by ReadingGoal (talk • contribs) 23:05, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Examples

I would hardly call the Christian devil a 'trickster.' Scoutersig 16:43, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

The devil is what happens when you take the Trickster and the Horned God, mush them together then filter the result through a sexually repressed, humorless religion--Tricksterson 17:41, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Satan is most definitely a trickster. He qualifies, not being particularly strong against his enemies (in Christian thought the name of Jesus alone is thought to vanish him), yet he is said to tempt everybody, weasling around people's spiritual defenses. Definitely a trickster.

Many, such as Lewis Hyde, would say a trickster is necessarily amoral, and Satan would be disqualified in that regard. Codificate (talk) 04:53, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm confused why Hansen is listed as an authority, when there have been so many really excellent scholarly and lay works written on tricksters that have more weight, credibility, and bearing on the discussion? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.110.0.47 (talk) 16:11, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Postmodern tone

The section "The trickster's literary role in dismantling oppressive systems" has an extremely postmodern tone. Readers of this section will walk away dismayed at the postmodern gobbledygook, instead of realising what the author intended to convey about the use of the trickster myth in literatures of oppressed peoples.

Could someone clean this section up? An article about the trickster myth is not an appropriate vehicle to express postmodern philisophical views.

Thanks, 69.81.156.184 (talk) 00:42, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, the whole "Literary Role..." section reads like a graduate thesis, and seems to have less in common with an encyclopedic entry and more with one editors specific view of the subject.

I'd be happier with the section if what is currently there was condensed, and then more examples were added to give it a global scope. Right now it sounds like the trickster's role in literature has soley been to liberate black Americans.Artemisstrong (talk) 22:29, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Tom Bombadil

Can we agree that this character is just about the ideal representation of a trickster? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jyffeh (talk • contribs) 01:38, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

No. - jc37 06:03, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Q (Star Trek) in I, Q

In the book I, Q, Q from Star Trek says, "I am the trickster". I think there ought to be a section on the Trickster in popular culture including a mention of Q. --Nerd42 (talk) 18:39, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

haitian trickster Ti Malice

I added the entry of Ti Malice under the Haitian folklore heading because it is not appropriate to list Ti Malice solely under Voudou mythology. the stories of Ti Malice are commonly told to children across Haiti, of all religions and regardless of voudon influence. The tales are more like Aesops fables than a mythology. Just a clarification.

regards, chris thegreenman.us@gmail.com —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.2.87.217 (talk) 20:31, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

george carlin citation

I think this might be the work of a coyote —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.91.156.190 (talk) 23:57, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Ivan the Fool

Someone (quoting Ivan the Fool article) "simple-minded, but nevertheless lucky young man" would seem to be the exact opposite of a trickester. I'll remove, but feel free to restore if I'm missing something (but let me know what I missed)? --John (User:Jwy/talk) 17:08, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Loki malicious

From the intro paragraph "The trickster deity breaks the rules of the gods or nature, sometimes maliciously (for example, Loki)". This implies that Loki was always malicious, which is incorrect. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.15.128.27 (talk) 21:42, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

It says "sometimes maliciously." Sometimes doesn't mean always in my book. Sunray 07:19, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

But the parenthesis implies that Loki is an example of malicious.184.147.123.113 (talk) 07:12, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

How is gender integral to the Trickster Archetype? (also some unclear text.)

In the Mythology section: "[Loki] shares the ability to change genders with Odin..." I first read this as describing a relationship between Odin and Loki and how they can choose to swap genders among themselves. When I really considered the turn of phrase, I thought it could describe Loki sharing the ability with another un-mentioned character - sharing the ability to swap genders with Odin. I guess it probably intends to mean something like "Loki is 1 of 2 persons featured in Norse mythological canon able to change or appear in different genders/sexes, the other being Odin"?

Also, the content doesn't explain how this ability to transform gender/sex is relevant to the trickster archetype. If it is an important Trickster feature, or subset feature, that should be explained. If it's unrelated to the general trickster type that should be explained, or it shouldn't be included here.

Can a learned person please review and improve this bit: - is gender/sexual 'fluidity' or 'transformation' part of the Trickster Archetype? If so, how? - can the text describing Loki's ability to change gender with Odin please be clarified? Smittee (talk) 06:17, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

You see, proto-historic Germanic mythology (like most Indo-European religions, although it is a bit more obvious with Norse religion as it's one of, probably the least rationalized) consisted out of two components: Predominantly male, belligerent Aesir religion, and predominantly female, fertility-based, and especially in the case of male practitioners extremely marginalized and ostrazized Vanir religion, see Æsir–Vanir War. At least since Gimbutas's Kurgan hypothesis generally accepted nowadays as the standard comparative origin hyphothesis on Indo-European mythology and culture, it has become common to identify the story of the Aesir-Vanir war as a late echo of Kurganization (the belligerent conquest of what regarding the folklore at hand would much later be known as Norse or Germanic regions) where a maternal, sensual, and fertility-oriented cult (the Maternal Megalith Culture of "Old Europe") had been violently superimposed by a religion of the belligerent, repressive Kurgan type.

Now, Loki is considered a trickster and in fact a legacy character of the Maternal Megalith stratum where biological sex change from male to female had been common for priests by means of a locally diversified symbolical or surgical ritual. Loki thus is well-versed in the "black art" of seid witchcraft related to maternal Vanir religion that manly Germanic warriors considered "abominable" or "perverted" (earg), a "nuisance" or "terrible shame" (ergi) especially if practiced by males that were thought to be emasculated by the practice. Seid witchcraft was believed to be practiced by certain chants and various extremely unmanly and immoral rituals (cf. aforementioned fertility cult of the MMC stratum), whereupon the basically malevolent and insidious practitioner would gain supernatural abilities among the most frequently of which are mentioned shapeshifting (both as changing sex and as turning into animals), divination, levitation, "traveling of the soul" (to spy unseen on other people and commit crimes one could later not be blamed for), the evil eye, a number of ways to destroy people's harvests and livestock, and especially poisoning of good, belligerent males.

The most curious thing is that not only Loki is found practicing seid witchcraft, but on a few occassions even Odin himself uses a few of the "tamer" rituals of the "black art", and he is known as Loki's blood brother (which gives Loki access to the noble halls of Valhalla even though he is decidely not a native, born-and-bred member of the Aesir clan of deities), making them a pair of "divine twins" akin to Castor and Pollux in Roman mythology. Modern religious scholars have extrapolated from this fact that in proto-Germanic religion comparably early after kurganization, Loki and Odin had once been the same figure that with increasing marginalization of maternal, fertility Vanir religion was split up into two different gods where Loki became everything that according to the belligerent Indo-European warrior role model Odin could not be. --88.128.208.122 (talk) 21:42, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

copied?

A good part of this appears to have been copied from [1], consequently a rewrite seems to be in order. Mannanan51 (talk) 04:10, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your post Mannanan51. IMO it is just as likely that they copied this article to their site without giving it the proper attribution. Especially since there is no copyright info there at all. But this is just my opinion. Your best bet is to file a report here Wikipedia:Copyright problems. There are editors well versed in determining what is what on at that page. MarnetteD|Talk 04:35, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

The section about Gates' analysis of "signifying"

There is a long section about the writings of Gates about "signifying". His work on the use of stories by African Americans is interesting, but it may be disproportionately long for this general article on "Trickster". Should there be a new article that focuses more on his views and applications? Or, should the material on Gates' views be trimmed? Should it be left as it is? Pete unseth (talk) 22:33, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Trickster behavior online

An editor has created a section about how the term "trickster" is used to describe certain kinds of online behavior. This article is about Tricksters as a type of character in literature. Should the new material on tricksters online be maintained or deleted? Pete unseth (talk) 13:51, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

References do not make any connection between online behaviour and "mythology, and ... the study of folklore and religion," that is the topic of this article. The whole section on "In Internet and multimedia studies" is totally off topic and should be removed. 203.96.156.31 (talk) 06:49, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Native American?

The 3rd paragraph seems to imply the article is only about Native American mythology, which it is not. *—The preceding unsigned comment was added on May 23, 2007 by HairyDan.

I've edited the lead to attempt to address this concern. See what you think. Sunray 21:40, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

And I'm confused by "Native American and First Nations mythologies". Who are defined as Native Americans and who as First Nations? 4.249.63.253 (talk) 20:55, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

–Yeah "Native American" and "First Nations" are sort of political-jurisdictional categories (for USA and Can. respectively) and aren't the best words to describe who's participating in this tradition. I say "indigenous peoples of the Americas" or "indigenous peoples of North America" is preferable for an article, depending on what sources you can find that speak to the distribution of the tradition. I'd assume it's pretty widespread. I know of some sources that speak on coyote tradition in American southwestern peoples like Navajo and Apache but i wonder if there's something that's more continent-scale..Skogsdyr (talk) 07:23, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

The same as the astrological meaning of planet Uranus?

Perhaps this subject is already mentioned somewhere in this talk page (?). I only want to say that the description of the Trickster looks very much the same as the astrological meaning of planet Uranus (the bringer of revolution and intuitive thinking, never afraid to throw or to turn daily and commonly accepted things upside down or inside out, to open the eyes and the ears of the lethargic society). DannyJ.Caes (talk) 21:54, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Or perhaps the combination of Mercury (quicksilvery communication) and Uranus (revolutionary insight). It seems that Uranus is the higher octave of Mercury, in other words, in astrology both planets are very much related. DannyJ.Caes (talk) 22:07, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Oral vs. fiction?

In this article, there is a list of tricksters in a section called "In oral stories". A separate list, linked in the section Archetype, is titled List of fictional tricksters. There is some overlap or redundancy between these two lists. E.g., Sun Wukong (Monkey King) is on both lists. He is (probably) the creation of a literary writer, Wu Cheng'en, but subsequently also staple character in an oral tradition. More tricksters have made a transition from oral traditions to literarture. The overlap also includes Anansi, Br'er Rabbit, Coyote, Eris, Hershele Ostropoler, Huehuecoyotl, The Joker, Kitsune, Loki, Maui, Pedro Urdemales, Puck, Reynard and Saci.

I don't really see the point of having those two separate lists, and I don't see what criteria there might be for inclusion in one or the other. Should the "oral" list in the present article be merged into the "fictional" list (perhaps as a separate section there)? What does "fictional" in the title of that list signify, anyway? Is or isn't mythology "fiction"? What about oral traditions? Should Charlie Chaplin's vagabond figure be included somewhere?

The list should perhaps be renamed, but simply List of tricksters might not be a solution; then we might have to include Donald Trump (or, if you don't like that example, some other real-world figures), which would water down the focus and purpose of the list too much.

I know this post is quite rambling, and I don't know exactly what to propose, but I believe there are some issues here to be addressed.--Nø (talk) 11:16, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

This might sound quite bizarre and weird. Since the early 1990's I'm exploring the (what I call) Color-Cycle, derived from J.W.Goethe's Color-Circle (the spectral colors arranged as a circle instead of a streak, plus the "non-existing" color Magenta). In this circle (or cycle) I discovered the color-axis of naughtiness (Green-Magenta, or poisonous green and violet), and also the color axis of good or goody-goody behaviour (Blue-Orange). Everything in Wikipedia's description of the Trickster comes straight from the naughty Green-Magenta axis. This unusual look on J.W.Goethe's color-circle should deserve its own Wikipedia page, but... alas... it shall never be recognized by academic scientists and psychologists. DannyJ.Caes (talk) 22:37, 13 September 2019 (UTC)