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Donald Trump is the leader of the free world, Britain is leaving the European Union, and demonetisation of the Indian currency has thrown large sections of the economy out of gear. The year 2016 is turning out to be a year of upsets. What does one do when the world order stands all set to be overturned and a majority stands by, rooting for the ensuing chaos?
Turn to myth and folklore, of course. It tells us that the only principle worth holding on to at any point in time is: expect the unexpected. Be it Zeus’s court or Indra’s palace, there was never a dull moment. Status quo was meant to be challenged.
Myths believe that the world has to be pulled out of chaos, but it will keep slipping back into a state of disequilibrium. In Indian Puranic and epic literature, every time the world descends into disorder, a god descends on earth. The many avatars of Vishnu are a sign of the numerous times the god has had to step in. His tenth avatar is awaited when, as Kalki, he is expected to rescue the world from the dark ages.
In many cultures, it is the trickster-hero that brings about the change. The trickster hero has many roles, in some stories he is used like something of a warning bell. His pranks give the world a taste of what things would be if order was abandoned. In African myth, one such change-agent is Eshu. He is unpredictable, sly and can be cruel and disruptive. In one myth, he convinced the sun and the moon to change houses and then watched as the world descended into chaos. Finally, sense prevailed and Eshu’s trick was seen through, but he was unfazed.
Hermes is the trickster hero in Greek myth. He is the patron of merchants and thieves. He has the gift of the gab and is known for his ability to get out of tricky situations (Oedipus inherits many of his traits as the silver-tongued hero). Hermes is also known to be the carrier of the divine word but that does not stop him from presiding over lies and deception. However, Hermes earns for himself a higher rung in the hierarchy of divinities by slaying the hundred-eyed demon, Argus.
The trickster hero is a common mythical archetype and in many cultures, he is seen as the forerunner to the saviour. According to psychologist Carl Jung, whose ideas on archetypes have shaped its understanding today, archetypal images come from the collective unconscious and are the basic content of religions, mythologies, legends and fairy tales. The trickster is a hero but belongs to a time when there was no differentiation between good and evil and hence his actions are often at variance with that of the rest of society.
This is probably why animal figures are popular trickster-heroes in folklore. African folk tales show the hare and the coyote as tricksters, the fox and sometimes the sparrow plays a similar role in Indian stories. These characters hold up a mirror to society by exposing the dark or hidden side of people. They spare none and in that sense deal with the rich and the poor with an even hand. The trickster lays bare the flaws in an existing social system and often plays a role that is larger than his character.
In some ways, the young Krishna is also a trickster hero. He tricks a demoness to her death. He plays pranks on the young girls in his hood and on his foster mother, Yashoda, harmless ones though. His pranks, however, are a mere distraction from the havoc he wreaks on the status quo.
A trickster’s tricks are not easily slotted into the good and evil column, but he facilitates a change in society. According to Jung, the trickster is seen as crude and self-centred but (in most cases) his exploits bring about a transformation in society. Sometimes tricksters in the mythical world resemble another hero archetype that Jung talks about, the shadow. The shadow represents the hidden or unconscious aspects of oneself, both good and bad, which the ego has either repressed or never recognised. The emergence or the recognition of the shadow figure also leads to cataclysmic change.
In Australian aboriginal myths, tricksters encourage thieving, cheating and fighting. Many are benign but disruptive elements, just like many of the impish creatures that inhabit folktales in South India. But some are sinister and destructive and these are the ones, myths tell us, to guard against.
