“Your vision becomes clear only when you look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks within, awakens.”

Carl Gustav Jung

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At last you have departed and gone to the Unseen.
What marvelous route did you take from this world?
Beating your wings and feathers,
you broke free from this cage.
Rising up to the sky
you attained the world of the soul.
You were a prized falcon trapped by an Old Woman.
Then you heard the drummer’s call
and flew beyond space and time.
As a lovesick nightingale, you flew among the owls.
Then came the scent of the rosegarden
and you flew off to meet the Rose.
The wine of this fleeting world
caused your head to ache.
Finally you joined the tavern of Eternity.
Like an arrow, you sped from the bow
and went straight for the bull’s eye of bliss.
This phantom world gave you false signs
But you turned from the illusion
and journeyed to the land of truth.
You are now the Sun—
what need have you for a crown?
You have vanished from this world—
what need have you to tie your robe?

(Rumi - tr. Jonathan Star)

Mullah Nasrudin was a digging a grave in the cemetry when from afar he saw the sand blowing in the distant desert. His imagination got the better of him and he thought it was a band of brigands. In fear for his life he jumped into the half dug grave site.

In the distance a group of honest merchants were returning home from a profitable business. They saw the strange site of a Mullah in his long flowing robe jumping into a grave. So they went to the cemetry to find out what was going on.

They got to the grave and saw Nasrudin shivering in fright. They asked him, “Mullah, what are you doing there?”

By now the Mullah understood his mistake and was relieved that these were not the thieves he had imagined. The Mullah got out of the grave and said, “It all depends on the way you look at it. I’m here because you’re here and you’re here because I’m here.”

Source: Nasrudin-stories blog

Coyote’s wife dies of an illness and he weeps for her. He is visited by the death spirit who offers to take him to the land of the dead if Coyote will follow his instructions. Coyote agrees. On their journey the spirit points out a herd of horses. Coyote cannot see the horses but he pretends that they are there. Neither can Coyote see the death spirit. He appears to be a shadow. When Coyote and the death spirit arrive at the land of the dead the spirit invites Coyote to eat some berries. Coyote cannot see them but pretends to eat them nevertheless.

The spirit leads Coyote to a lodge and tells him to enter through the doorway and sit down beside his wife and eat the food that she has prepared for him. Coyote cannot see the lodge, the food, or his wife, but he obeys the spirit. When night falls Coyote sees the lodge that he could not see during the day, and in it are fires, and people he knew when they were living and, of course, his wife. With the dawn, everything and everyone disappears, only to return on the following evening. It is like this for several days and nights.

Eventually the death spirit tells Coyote that he must leave. The spirit allows Coyote to take his wife with him but warns that he must not touch her until they have crossed the fifth mountain of the five mountains that lie between the lands of the living and the dead. Coyote agrees. Coyote and his wife begin their journey. At night they sit with a fire between them and Coyote notices that with every night his wife’s form becomes clearer. On the last night of the journey Coyote can wait no longer and reaches across the fire to embrace his wife. She disappears the moment he touches her.

The death spirit returns and tells Coyote that because of his foolishness the practice of returning from the dead will never be and that the dead must remain forever separate from the living. The spirit leaves. Coyote tries to return to the land of the dead, repeating everything he was instructed to do on the first journey: he pretends to see a herd of horses, to eat berries, to enter a lodge, to acknowledge his wife, and to eat the food she has prepared for him. When evening comes the lodge, the fires, the people, and Coyote’s wife do not appear, and they and the death spirit never appear to Coyote again.

II.

Two Coyotes were going upriver and came to a big bench. From there they saw people living below, near the river. Then the two friends said to each other, “you go ahead.” Then one says “No. You go,” and the other said “No.” And they argued and protested for a long time. Then one said, “You go first they will see you any moment and say `there is a coyote.’” They were going on the trail. [The other said] “I am not a coyote.” [The first said,] “But you are just the way I am. We are the same in every way. We are both coyotes.” [The other said,] “No, I am just `another one.’” In this way they argued.

Then the second one said to the first, “You go first.” There was a ridge on which people could see everything from below. When he [the first] started walking, went on, and went over a small ridge, the people below said, “There is a coyote going upstream.” Then they [people] came out and watched the coyote going. “See?” he said. “See what they said? You are a coyote.” “Come! You too.” he said. “They will say the same of you. You are a coyote.” “All right. I will go” [said the other], and he also slowly started walking on the trail from there. Then [people said], “Ah, another one again. There is another one.” Then he came to the first, saying, “See? I am not a coyote. I am `another one.’ See, the people said that I am `another one.’” That’s all.

source: paraphrase by :Larry Ellis, Trickster: Shaman of the Liminal, SAIL Studies in American Indian Literatures; Series 2; Volume 5, Number 4; Winter 1993

Songhay proverb: source

Fool

Just as the shaman can be viewed as a certain type of magician-figure, the fool can in turn be viewed as a certain type of trickster-figure. The fool and the trickster are not always distinguished, of course. (So, for example, the entry for “Fool” in A Critical Dictionary of Jungian Analysis simply reads “See Trickster.”)

In his now-classic work The Fool and His Scepter,50 William Willeford mentions two main tendencies in our attitudes towards fools: the naive view that fools are just silly and the more refined view that fools show a kind of wisdom. Each is a partial truth, of course: on the surface the actions and speech of the fool are silly, but, as Willeford writes, “the surface of folly sometimes breaks open to reveal surprising depths ….”51

Like all tricksters, the fool somehow stands outside of the normal social order. In the form of the jester, the fool can say to the king what no one else would dare. As “outsiders,” the fool, the trickster, the magician can all show us things that we otherwise avoid.

While the trickster is more likely to deceive, cheat, or shock us, the fool (as related to the clown) is more likely to make us laugh at his antics.

We may laugh at the outrageous behavior of a trickster, the pathos of a sad clown, or the surprising happenings in a magician’s show. There is also, however, as Willeford points out, a connection between horror and humor.

… [H]oriole things may also be laughable. When we laugh at them, we often do so partly because we do not know what else to do, because we do not find our way to another and more appropriate reaction. Through laughter we achieve a provisional stance, outside belief and disbelief, in the face of the horrible. We also laugh as part of an automatic recoil into life.52 So the fool, too, through the function of laughter, helps us find our way back and forth between worlds. This, of course, was also one of the functions of the shaman. And, in a certain way, it is a function of the analyst as well.

source, via Kathleen Jenks:Mything Links, John Gransrose: The Archetype of the Magician

Lawler: So your family allowed for creative expression and reflection?
Barks: I grew up in an ecstatic family. Anybody at any
time could burst into song for any reason. My mother would
just dance around the house, singing. I recall those two minutes
at the end of the day when a golden light would fall across
the floor, especially in April. I would lie down in it and hug
myself. One time when I was doing that, I told my mother,
“Mama, I’ve got that full feeling again.” She said, “I know you
do, honey.” Rumi says just being sentient and in a body is
cause for rapture, and I think his reminding us of that is one
reason why he’s so popular.

excerpt interview with poet Coleman Barks (pdf)