I recently read a fascinating book called [Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art] by Lewis Hyde. It explores the role of tricksters, those boundary-crossing, creative, and disruptive figures in mythology and culture, who bring vitality and change to our world.
The book articulates different myths, meanings, and certain characteristics of tricksters in each chapter, and invites us to explore the “disruptive imagination” of the tricksters who make our world as the title suggests.
Some of the highlights I captured from the book are:
- “Trickster is a boundary crosser. Every group has its edge, its sense of in and out, and trickster is always there, at the gates of the city, at the gates of life, making sure there is commerce.”
- “Trickster is a creative idiot, therefore the wise fool, the grey-haired baby, the speaker of sacred profanities.”
- “It is better to operate with detachment and have a way, but infuse it with a little humor. Perhaps, it is best to have no way at all, but to have instead the wit to constantly make one’s way anew from the materials at hand.”
If you listened to my latest YouTube contemplation about intuition, you know which book I am talking about. This is a book I randomly discovered by chance while I was visiting a local museum. (Or maybe it was not so random:) It might have been a “Lucky Find”, a kind of responsive intelligence invoked by whatever happens, as it is described in the book.)
I would like to recommend this book to anyone who is into creativity, innovation, and understanding the playful and disruptive side of human imagination better.
