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bioniclib's review against another edition
3.0
I was going to edit my notes but you know what? I'm not. Here they are, warts and all:
“The name ‘Hermes’ once meant ‘he of the stone heap’ which tells us that the cairn is more than a trail marker- it is an alter to the forces that govern these spaces of heightened uncertainty, and to the intelligence needed to negotiate them.” (p. 6)
Did his name really mean that? Yes: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hermes-Greek-mythology
Most tricksters are male, even in Matrilineal society. The author posits that this may be due to their lusty, yet lacking many offspring, nature. Women Tricksters would be apt to have more kids if so lusty. Not sure if this idea holds water, though. Neither is he. (8)
There’s Tricksters in the Blues. Stack-O-Lee? (9)
“The Devil is an agent of evil but a trickster is amoral not immoral.” (10) That’s why the Devil is not a trickster, despite some in Christianity claiming so.
Cheyenne stories sometimes name Coyote “White Man”. This could be European Influence or coincidence since Old Man Coyote has white hair. (12)
“If Trickster were ever to get into power, he would stop being Trickster.” (footnote on 13)
Hermes invented lying because he wanted to eat meat. (17)
The earliest mention of the word “dolos”, trick in Greek, is baiting a hook to catch a fish. (18)
“So Trickster is cunning about traps but not so cunning as to avoid them himself.” (20)
Magpies are recurring antagonists for Coyote (28)
Winnebago is the name of a tribe in Wisconsin. (29)
Trickster look for opportunity, which comes from the Greek word, “poros”, from which we also get the word, pore, as in skin pore or opening. (46)
Once upon a time each city-state in Ancient Greek had their own gods. When Hesiod was around, generally thought to be between 750 and 650 BCE (same time as Homer), there was a pan-Hellenistic movement. The different forms the Trickster takes in different Native American tribes is like this pre-unified Greece. The effort to try to label each Trickster the same, or at least mostly the same, is the Pan-American Tradition only attempted by colonizers. The tribes considered themselves distinct and proudly so. (68)
Some traditions say the Trickster invented language, whether literal of simply gave people permission to talk where before it’d been forbidden, is uncertain. (76)
Myth Overlaps
Coyote can bring his wife back from the land of the death, only if he doesn’t look back to see her on the way out. Is this influenced by the Orpheus tale? I really wish we hadn’t killed so many natives for many, many, many, reasons. The relevant one here is to see if this story was retro-fitted after colonizers infected native ways of thinking with European traditions. (83)
Loki steals the Apple of Immortality and The Monkey King steals the Peaches of Immortality. The Devil tricking Eve into eating the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil seems to be an adaption of these myths and perhaps the genesis (pun very much intended) of the Abrahamic devil being thought of as a trickster. Or was this story supposed to show him as a trickster and not the source of all evil? Did the Christian scribes who kept the religion alive in the vastly illiterate Dark Ages transform the ID of a trickster from troublemaker who does both good and evil to a being who does only evil? (103)
Chapter 5 General Thought: Divination/fortune telling is brought-to-me-by Tricksters like The Yoruba’s Eshu. Because fate is set but by calling on the Trickster by throwing palm nuts (or yarrow stalks like in the I Ching), he can give you insights needed to change your fate.
Hermes of the Marketplace:
An altar, furnished with lamps, was placed before the statue; the inquirer, after lighting the lamps and offering incense, placed a coin in the right hand of the god; he then whispered his question into the ear of the statue, and, stopping his own ears, left the market place. The first sound which he heard outside was an omen. (concept from p. 135, I have to search for the prophecy because I returned the book before I could copy the text down)
Chapter 6 thoughts:
Modern artists, painters, composers, etc are tricksters because they leave a lot of their work up to chance.
The author spent a lot of time on composer John Cage, who didn’t think or plan is work, he flips a coin or uses the I Ching. There were only cursory mentions to tricksters of lore in the chapter. This was the beginning of my waning interest. I see the dude’s point, that trickster spirit lives on through these peeps who rely on luck, but it got too far away from the actual figures for my liking.
“Rudderless Intelligence” (from an NYT article published on 7-7-87) is a trait shared by psychopaths and tricksters. The difference is that trickers can do good, too; like when Coyote gave fire.
Chapter 7 thought:
The distance from Trickers grows ever more. While I requested Maxine Kingston Hong’s Trapmaster Monkey to my reading list, I really started to not like the book. It veered too far into traits of recent cultures, like Shame Culture. Again, I appreciate the points but it was not what I was looking for. I started skimming at this chapter.
Chapter 8 thought:
After a brief enjoyment of the discussion of how what is considered dirty around the world, I lost interest again.
Chapter 9 thought:
Some interesting stuff but it was too late. I enjoyed his getting back to the Hermes myth, but it was the same origin myth as earlier in the book.
I was back in because I liked how he claimed Frederick Douglass was a Trickster.
Yeah! “Free Slave” is an oxymoron! Never thought of it that way. I’m so used to hearing it that I inferred it as “Freed Slave”. (227)
Hermes stole Apollo’s cattle; Douglass stole literacy. (227)
The slaves got Christmas to New Years off and if they didn’t get drunk on Christmas it was an insult to their master’s “generosity”. Douglass things this time off was the only thing keeping slaves from revolting, it acted as a pressure release valve. (233) It was the old trickster’s battle against appetite, for applejack, for revelry, as well as the filth so often equated with tricksters; Douglass would wake up hung over in the pig’s sty.
Douglass was neither black nor white, or so the author claims. He made the “sin” of being literate; something no black man was allowed to be and at the same time speaking too eloquently he raised the distrust of his white supports who wanted the country drawl of an uneducated black man.
Y’know to be authentic with his message of abolition. (247)
It’s possible Douglass had a white father, black mother, and ancestors in one of their lines that were Native American. I can see how the author felt justified in making the trickster connection, he was travelling between so many worlds. (251)
“The name ‘Hermes’ once meant ‘he of the stone heap’ which tells us that the cairn is more than a trail marker- it is an alter to the forces that govern these spaces of heightened uncertainty, and to the intelligence needed to negotiate them.” (p. 6)
Did his name really mean that? Yes: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hermes-Greek-mythology
Most tricksters are male, even in Matrilineal society. The author posits that this may be due to their lusty, yet lacking many offspring, nature. Women Tricksters would be apt to have more kids if so lusty. Not sure if this idea holds water, though. Neither is he. (8)
There’s Tricksters in the Blues. Stack-O-Lee? (9)
“The Devil is an agent of evil but a trickster is amoral not immoral.” (10) That’s why the Devil is not a trickster, despite some in Christianity claiming so.
Cheyenne stories sometimes name Coyote “White Man”. This could be European Influence or coincidence since Old Man Coyote has white hair. (12)
“If Trickster were ever to get into power, he would stop being Trickster.” (footnote on 13)
Hermes invented lying because he wanted to eat meat. (17)
The earliest mention of the word “dolos”, trick in Greek, is baiting a hook to catch a fish. (18)
“So Trickster is cunning about traps but not so cunning as to avoid them himself.” (20)
Magpies are recurring antagonists for Coyote (28)
Winnebago is the name of a tribe in Wisconsin. (29)
Trickster look for opportunity, which comes from the Greek word, “poros”, from which we also get the word, pore, as in skin pore or opening. (46)
Once upon a time each city-state in Ancient Greek had their own gods. When Hesiod was around, generally thought to be between 750 and 650 BCE (same time as Homer), there was a pan-Hellenistic movement. The different forms the Trickster takes in different Native American tribes is like this pre-unified Greece. The effort to try to label each Trickster the same, or at least mostly the same, is the Pan-American Tradition only attempted by colonizers. The tribes considered themselves distinct and proudly so. (68)
Some traditions say the Trickster invented language, whether literal of simply gave people permission to talk where before it’d been forbidden, is uncertain. (76)
Myth Overlaps
Coyote can bring his wife back from the land of the death, only if he doesn’t look back to see her on the way out. Is this influenced by the Orpheus tale? I really wish we hadn’t killed so many natives for many, many, many, reasons. The relevant one here is to see if this story was retro-fitted after colonizers infected native ways of thinking with European traditions. (83)
Loki steals the Apple of Immortality and The Monkey King steals the Peaches of Immortality. The Devil tricking Eve into eating the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil seems to be an adaption of these myths and perhaps the genesis (pun very much intended) of the Abrahamic devil being thought of as a trickster. Or was this story supposed to show him as a trickster and not the source of all evil? Did the Christian scribes who kept the religion alive in the vastly illiterate Dark Ages transform the ID of a trickster from troublemaker who does both good and evil to a being who does only evil? (103)
Chapter 5 General Thought: Divination/fortune telling is brought-to-me-by Tricksters like The Yoruba’s Eshu. Because fate is set but by calling on the Trickster by throwing palm nuts (or yarrow stalks like in the I Ching), he can give you insights needed to change your fate.
Hermes of the Marketplace:
An altar, furnished with lamps, was placed before the statue; the inquirer, after lighting the lamps and offering incense, placed a coin in the right hand of the god; he then whispered his question into the ear of the statue, and, stopping his own ears, left the market place. The first sound which he heard outside was an omen. (concept from p. 135, I have to search for the prophecy because I returned the book before I could copy the text down)
Chapter 6 thoughts:
Modern artists, painters, composers, etc are tricksters because they leave a lot of their work up to chance.
The author spent a lot of time on composer John Cage, who didn’t think or plan is work, he flips a coin or uses the I Ching. There were only cursory mentions to tricksters of lore in the chapter. This was the beginning of my waning interest. I see the dude’s point, that trickster spirit lives on through these peeps who rely on luck, but it got too far away from the actual figures for my liking.
“Rudderless Intelligence” (from an NYT article published on 7-7-87) is a trait shared by psychopaths and tricksters. The difference is that trickers can do good, too; like when Coyote gave fire.
Chapter 7 thought:
The distance from Trickers grows ever more. While I requested Maxine Kingston Hong’s Trapmaster Monkey to my reading list, I really started to not like the book. It veered too far into traits of recent cultures, like Shame Culture. Again, I appreciate the points but it was not what I was looking for. I started skimming at this chapter.
Chapter 8 thought:
After a brief enjoyment of the discussion of how what is considered dirty around the world, I lost interest again.
Chapter 9 thought:
Some interesting stuff but it was too late. I enjoyed his getting back to the Hermes myth, but it was the same origin myth as earlier in the book.
I was back in because I liked how he claimed Frederick Douglass was a Trickster.
Yeah! “Free Slave” is an oxymoron! Never thought of it that way. I’m so used to hearing it that I inferred it as “Freed Slave”. (227)
Hermes stole Apollo’s cattle; Douglass stole literacy. (227)
The slaves got Christmas to New Years off and if they didn’t get drunk on Christmas it was an insult to their master’s “generosity”. Douglass things this time off was the only thing keeping slaves from revolting, it acted as a pressure release valve. (233) It was the old trickster’s battle against appetite, for applejack, for revelry, as well as the filth so often equated with tricksters; Douglass would wake up hung over in the pig’s sty.
Douglass was neither black nor white, or so the author claims. He made the “sin” of being literate; something no black man was allowed to be and at the same time speaking too eloquently he raised the distrust of his white supports who wanted the country drawl of an uneducated black man.
Y’know to be authentic with his message of abolition. (247)
It’s possible Douglass had a white father, black mother, and ancestors in one of their lines that were Native American. I can see how the author felt justified in making the trickster connection, he was travelling between so many worlds. (251)
zwarg's review against another edition
5.0
Very slow read not because it bored me but because it freaked me out. Had to take a break in between chapters... Powerful, good stuff.
"They're all the same, these tricksters; they have no shame and so they have no silence." (p. 153)
Larouê! Exú
"They're all the same, these tricksters; they have no shame and so they have no silence." (p. 153)
Larouê! Exú
calliepey's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
5.0
Very Informative with lots of insights into mythology, history and more modern day experiences. I'm not quite sure how to rate it but I recommend taking it chapter by chapter with plenty of time to marinate on the things being said as you go along. Really interesting read
we_have_become_anathema's review against another edition
4.0
Academic and meaty, I found it best to take it in chunks. It was highly informative overview of the Trickster archetype through different cultures and how they are able to cause change when the rest of the gods would rather exist in a state of stasis.
donato's review against another edition
5.0
I read this almost 20 years ago, so I can't give it a proper review. For now, it's just a "placeholder" so I can link to it from other reviews (e.g. The Confidence Man). If and when I get around to re-reading it, I'll post a proper review.
I will say, however, that it's one of the few examples of a non-fiction book that reaches the level of fiction (fiction being of a higher order, in my opinion).
I will say, however, that it's one of the few examples of a non-fiction book that reaches the level of fiction (fiction being of a higher order, in my opinion).