trickster

None rise to the level of Batman and Joker, two enemies who seem determined not to kill each other because each gains too much from what the other brings to their destructive dyad. Yet, the Joker is more than simply a foil for Batman; he has his own goals that would exist regardless of whether the Caped Crusader was in the picture.

When the supernatural and irrational are banished from consciousness, they are not destroyed, rather, they become exceedingly dangerous.

“Nothing does us as much good as the fool’s cap: we need it against ourselves,”1 writes the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). The “fool” destroys by laughing at values and truths, showing the chaotic and senseless world behind them. The fool is a manifestation of the Dionysian, an essential chaotic and destructive drive, but one

Academe does not totally neglect the paranormal. Sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists and folklorists are allowed to study beliefs about paranormal events, but there is a taboo against attempting to verify their reality. In academe today, serious consideration of the supernatural is almost exclusively limited to the arts and humanities. Yet

Psi phenomena, including synchronicities, are somewhat “ideo-plastic,” that is, they respond to, and are shaped by, the ideas, beliefs, and anxieties of the observers—a fact demonstrated in both laboratory and field studies. The phenomena also display a measure of independent intelligence.

The trickster is not eliminated simply by making sharp distinctions and clear categories. There is still a realm that lies betwixt and between a signifier and signified, between a word and its referent. Tricksters travel that liminal realm, and ambiguities in communication are their province. In fact the term hermeneutics, the study of

Nietzsche describes three spiritual metamorphoses of the human being. First, the human spirit is a camel burdened with false metaphysical truths, dutifully adhering to societal rules and morality. Men and women can free themselves from this burden by becoming the Lion, who answers “I will” to the “Thou‐shalt” that weighs on the Camel's shoulders.49

An enormous number of people have influenced my thinking, but three were particularly important: William Braud, Barbara Babcock, and Edmund Leach. Parapsychologist William Braud integrated an enormous range of findings with his model of lability and inertia in psi processes. Barbara Babcock is the most significant interpreter of the trickster