Where is the Trickster in the Tarot?

[Jessica]

I have mused over this question for a while and would be very interested what others have to say.

I have not yet found a satisfying answer, although I have run into or thought up some suggestions.

Conversations here are few and mostly indicate the deck itself is behaving as a trickster.

Some suggest the Magician as the trickster. This idea is strengthened if he is associated with Hermès. But the Magician has many qualities which tend in other directions and turning this card into a trickster weakens other elements of this card. Perhaps this card reversed….

Some suggest the Fool as trickster, but the naive and innocent qualities of the Fool argue against this for me.

The Hermit is an interesting suggestion, playing off his wisdom and looking at him as a reversed card.

In RWS, one could look at the images of the V or VII of swords and perhaps interpret one of them as tricksters.

In a few decks, there have been cards designated as tricksters, such as decks which incorporate Loki.

You may have noticed how often reversals have come up in this relatively short summary. This reflects the strongest trend in my own thinking on the subject, precisely because I find it hard to come to any other satisfying answer.

As an interesting note: Pamela Coleman Smith (of RWS fame) did write and illustrate a book of trickster tales of Annancy (1899), so the lack of this element is especially vexing. 🙂

Please share your thoughts. Any constructive suggestions greatly appreciated.

Discussion

[altheawild]

This is a bit off the wall, but what about the Hanged Man? My association for Hermes/Mercury is also Odin (lots of people have thought they were similar, including the ancient Romans). And Odin always makes me think of the Hanged Man (being that he’s a god who purposely hanged himself as a sacrifice). Odin often isn’t identified as a trickster in Norse mythology, in part because Loki is such an obvious fit for the role. But, like Mercury/Hemes, Odin is a psycopomp. In many mythologies, this is an essential trickster role – the normal rules don’t apply to tricksters, so they can do things like cross between life and death. Odin is also a magician – there’s some lines in the Eddas about him hanging out with human witches to learn magic, and the whole sacrificing himself on the tree to learn rune magic thing.

And though we often interpret The Hanged Man in a pretty limited way as a time when our life is stalled because of outside events. But I think there’s also a trickster-y meaning to The Hanged Man. It’s a state where the normal rules don’t apply, and you need to surrender in order to move forward.

I also like your idea that trickster energy is a kind of reversal, and so maybe many cards could be trickster like when reversed.

[-DitchWitch-]

The Magician and the 7 of swords, particularly the 7 of swords, as the Magician has qualities outside of the trickster archetype. I would not suggest the fool, much more of a, well… fool than a trickster.

[Lux_Shelby]

Now that you mention it, Christianinsm is the only religion where the trickster is the bad guy (even Islam has the djinn which are neutral, some are good and some are bad) so maybe thats why there is not a trickster per se, because the Devil is our trickster.

In Antrhopoly, the trickster is the chaos necesary to bring back order. For example, Loki is always causing chaos but also he is travelling with Thor, etc to fix everything back to the original state. Without the Devil, the good wouldn’t exist, we alll just would be happy in the Eden garden so someone need to play the evil character to tempt us. In christianim, the intentionality of our acts is very important. In other cultures there are warlocls and demons that just made you do bad things without anything to avoid that (until you visit the chaman and he will tell you how to restore the order, etc). In christianism, we have a choice and it is up to us if we chose good or evil, so thats where the Devil plays the trickster part. (I use the first person because tarot came from zones where Christianinsm was the norm, I don’t believe the egiptian stuff, so sorry if you come from a place without christianism :$).

After all of these, I think that a reverted magician (and 7 of swords) has the trickster energy in the sense that the magician has the posibilities to use their capabilities to bring chaos or order and the reverted cards warn us more about the chaos in our lives.

Edit: Also i like to read cards having into account that the minors are the michrocosmic version of the majors so the 1s reverted could be perhaps trickster energy but in RW system we read more the 1s as seeds. Maybe depends on the context. Also reverted 5s?(because of the devil). It has been a lot since the last time I read with a traditional RWS deck so I don’t remember well how 5s are read apart of 5 of disks)

[Celadon94]

The archetype of the trickster is not shown in any card with a human as primary symbol, for those imply human goals, and the trickster has either no purpose or a perverse one.

The trickster archetype is an artifact of the human psyche, the tendency to see the universe as obtructionist when it is not.

I believe one could see the Moon as having quite a bit of the trickster, in the sense that the universe could be perceived as purposely obscuring needed information. But the more applicable card to my mind is the Wheel of Fortune, whose vicissitudes we hate being subject to, and whom we sometimes blame when we don’t get what we want in life.

[Victor_Trevor]

The Magician, his table has both the tools of the herbalist / doctor as well as the shell and pea of the con man.

[honorthecrones]

In my opinion, the trickster doesn’t need a card because it resides in the ego of the reader.