The malignant trickster. A guy by the name of Shostrom once wrote a book about Man the Manipulator, and it was really about this malignant trickster aspect of the psyche. Now, when that trickster part— you need that trickster part in your personality.
In fact, there’s a lot of evidence now— scientific evidence— that it developed in order to help you survive in evolutionary process. You might think about it this way: if you don’t have enough powerful trickster in your personality, you will not be able to see the grandiosity of others clearly enough, including those that want to manipulate you. So your trickster is the equipment you bring to enable you not to be overly impressed by somebody’s power over you.
And so, the healthy trickster part of yourself will always enable you to be mentally free— even in a situation of oppression and tyranny, you will be able to be mentally free. And there are many trickster figures in world culture that embody that. So if the trickster is working without benefit of balance by these other sectors, then it will undermine everything you try to do.
It will criticize every project. If you’re one of those guys that has started projects, started businesses, and then it gets upended— and then you start another one, then it gets upended, then you start another one and it gets upended— this flooding trickster will always destroy your cosmos, your world, before you're able to get all the foundations down securely and build from the base. And so, if that’s been happening to you, you just got to realize— there’s a perfectly wonderful archetypal energy in you that needs to be stewarded more consciously, to help you resist being dominated by oppressors.
But it should not be upending your building project. Yes— self-sabotage is this trickster operating, I like to say, on full automatic. And it just— it doesn’t wait for the royal part of yourself to say, "Come here, I’ve got something that needs to be confronted, or confront me.
" You know, when you’re grandiose you don’t say, you know, if you're having it confront you, and you're using your own trickster to see through your own— yeah, see through your own grandiosity— it’s working right. But if it just— it just starts to work without being invoked, then that is when you sabotage yourself. And you know, we have this personality description— we call it the self-defeating personality disorder.
So, the two sides to the trickster— like all archetypal energies— there’s a shadow side of it, and there’s the conscious, well-stewarded side of it. Well, the magician sector in general— it is so critical of anybody’s building project. Think of that architect— you think of Imhotep in Egypt, who served the pharaoh, who helped him build a lot of incredible things.
You know, when things are operating right, that magician actually helps in the architectural project. It helps understand what could be built. But the magician will always— it’ll say, “Well, Your Majesty, we could build this city.
We could build this pyramid. We could build this park. ” And it will go on and on— what Kierkegaard called the sickness of infinitude.
That is, the magician is going to constantly be coming to you with projects. And you say, “Here, Your Majesty. ” And then you say, “Oh, this looks interesting.
” And then the architect says, “Yes, but you notice here that this is really— this is really not perfect. So let’s look at this other one. ” And so, it’s extremely— see, the only thing in you that’s going to choose is that part of you sitting on that throne.
And finally, that part has got to say: “We will build this. For good or ill, we will build this. And Mr Magician— I need your help in this building.
So shut the f* up if you're not being helpful.
