Trickster is thus the author of the great distance between heaven and earth. In several mythologies, for example, the gods lived on earth until something trickster did caused them to rise into heaven. That Trickster is a boundary-crosser is the standard line, but there are also cases in which trickster creates a boundary, or brings to the surface a distinction previously hidden from sight. Trickster is the mythic embodiment of ambiguity and ambivalence, doubleness and duplicity, contradiction and paradox. Where someone’s sense of honorable behavior has left him unable to act, trickster will appear to suggest an amoral action, something right/wrong that will get life going again. Trickster is the creative idiot, therefore, the wise fool, the gray-haired baby, the cross-dresser, the speaker of sacred profanities. We constantly distinguish-right and wrong, sacred and profane, clean and dirty, male and female, young and old, living and dead-and in every case trickster will cross the line and confuse the distinction. He also attends the internal boundaries by which groups articulate their social life. Every group has its edge, its sense of in and out, and trickster is always there, at the gates of the city and the gates of life, making sure there is commerce. In short, trickster is a boundary-crosser. He is the spirit of the doorway leading out, and of the crossroad at the edge of town. He passes through each of these when there is a moment of silence, and he enlivens each with mischief, but he is not their guiding spirit. A trickster does not live near the hearth he does not live in the halls of justice, the soldier’s tent, the shaman’s hut, the monastery.
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