The American Heritage Dictionary defines trickster as follows:
2. Often Trickster A mischievous or roguish figure in myth or folklore, often an animal, who typically makes up for physical weakness with cunning and subversive humor.
Random House Kernerman Webster’s College Dictionary defines it as follows:
3. a mischievous, knavish figure of myth and folklore, often simultaneously a being with supernatural powers and a culture hero.
Indeed, one thing that every culture has in common is a concept of some sort of paranormal entity that is described as having the characteristic of a trickster. Tricksters have been variously described as god/goddesses, spirits, anthropomorphic animals, humanoids and, in modern times, extra-terrestrial aliens.
Consider for example, Whitley Strieber as it was reported in the article Whitley Strieber’s alien tantra:
Whitley Strieber retold of experiences with “one of the visitors” who was “wearing ‘a face mask’” and one which rushed by him “wearing a hat, a blue card on the chest, and a mask with eye holes and a round hole” and what “he thinks is a skeleton on a motorcycle with ‘great big eyes that just scare the hell out of you’” plus “another bug like visitor…who resembles a praying mantis, which resembles a skeleton on a motorcycle” and a “vision of a Gray rushing through the forest…zipping in and out of the trees, avoiding each tree trunk as if it too were physical, with ‘blinding speed.’”
An interesting combination of points are made via statement by Seraphim Rose and Jacques Vallee. In his book Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future (1975 AD, p. 100), Rose incorporates statements made within Vallee’s book The Invisible College (1977 AD, p. 115):
A Pennsylvania psychiatrist has suggested that the absurdity present in almost all UFO close encounters is actually a hypnotic technique. “When the person is disturbed by the absurd or contradictory, and their mind is searching for meaning, they are extremely open to thought transference, to receiving psychic healing, etc.” Dr. Vallee compares this technique to the irrational koans of Zen masters, and notices the similarity between UFO encounters and occult initiation rituals which “open the mind” to a “new set of symbols.”
All this points to what he calls “the next form of religion.”
The point seems to be that the point of tricksters is not simply to have fun, poke fun, or be generally goofy. Rather, it is a manner whereby to insert a worldview of sorts into the flummoxed mind which is seeking an answer.
This seems to be the most feasible answer to why such beings have acted as tricksters; it is a very powerful means to influence.
The search for meaning whilst disturbed by the absurd or contradictory opens a window into which the message which seeks to be delivered by the entity may be delivered. As per the aliens UFO issue: this may even explain the strange behavior of UFOs that change shape, color and seem to play around in the sky before shooting off or disappearing.
