Fate & Fabled | Trickster Gods and the Mortals Who Love Them | Season 1 | Episode 9 | PBS (2024)

FAQs

What does the trickster represent? ›

The trickster archetype is a character who represents disruption, mischief, and humor. Tricksters are often portrayed as cunning, witty, humorous, and unpredictable AVATARS who challenge the status quo and cause unexpected events in our stories.

Humans had to have tricksters within the most sacred ceremonies for fear that they forget the sacred comes through upset, reversal, surprise. The trickster in most native traditions is essential to creation, to birth.

Often considered cultural heroes, tricksters are credited with protecting (and in some cases, creating) human life. As their name suggests however, tricksters are also associated with rule-breaking. They are curious pranksters who frequently cross and challenge boundaries, as well as ignore social harmony and order.

In myth, Hermes functions as the emissary and messenger of the gods, and is often presented as the son of Zeus and Maia, the Pleiad. He is regarded as "the divine trickster", about which the Homeric Hymn to Hermes offers the most well-known account.

Clever and foolish all at once. She was, as it turned out, a female trickster.

When it comes to these trickster characters in the Hebrew Bible, surely the most (in)famous one is Jacob, who makes his way 'by dint of wit and guile'. Yet, this way of trickery in his family has begun before him and continues after him.

The trickster is an important archetype in the history of man. He is a god, yet he is not. He is the wise-fool. It is he, through his creations that destroy, points out the flaws in carefully constructed societies of man.

Often the trickster serves as a transformer and culture hero who creates order out of chaos. He may teach humans the skills of survival, such as how to make fire, procreate, or catch or raise food, usually through negative examples that end with his utter failure to accomplish these tasks.

Tricksters are often ambiguous and blur the line between good and evil, right and wrong. They may be seen as both heroes and villains, depending on the situation.

What are the spirit animals in the trickster? ›

As the supreme boundarycrosser, trickster is always between classifications– between what is human and what is animal, between what is cultural and what is natural. Native American tricksters tend to be associated with animal spirits (such as Coyote, Rabbit, or Raven).

He pokes holes in rigid boundaries and calls into question fundamental assumptions about the way the world is organised, and reveals the possibility of transforming them (even if often for ignoble ends). It is the figure that pushes us to question those in power, and the limitations, and rules that are imposed on us.

Prometheus in Greek mythology corresponds to the devil in the Garden of Eden story. Note that in Greek Prometheus means 'forward thinking' (pro-metheus), which corresponds to 'knowledge of Good and Evil' in the Biblical myth.

The most common trickster figure is Coyote, but Raven, Crow, Bluejay, Rabbit, Spider, Raccoon, Bear, and others appear in the trickster myths of different Native American groups.

Chaos was the ancient Greek goddess or entity of the primordial lack of order at the beginning of the universe. The Greeks paid much more attention to such gods as Zeus, Hades, or Poseidon, but believed that those gods were preceded by primordial entities which brought about the beginning of existence.

Tricksters are smart and they use their knowledge to play tricks or to try and bend the rules. Trickster tales are used to entertain and often to teach lessons about how to behave and treat other people. First Nations people have used trickster stories to teach their children for many years.

Trickster tales are short, imaginative narratives that usually use animal char- acters to convey folk wisdom and to help the reader (especially younger audiences) interpret human nature and debate proper human behavior (Young & Ferguson, 1995).