The trickster on the throne

There is wisdom to be found in stories.

The Tai Chi tradition is full of stories. Many of the movements have poetic names and many of those names have stories that help make sense of the character of the movements. There is great insight in those stories, communicating the ‘feel’ of the movements and the character of the form better than any rigorous description might.

On hearing a story with ‘new ears’…

Stories, like poetry, can help us see the world more clearly, often more incisively than a well-argued history, and usually more concisely. The full history will have benefits of its own, the academic argument a rigour we’d do well to seek, but stories and poetry can speak to the heart like nothing else.

One story I learned from my Tai Chi teacher, Steve Rowe, struck a chord with me this last year. I’d heard it before but I heard it anew, not just again, but with ‘new ears’. It is a story that has only resounded more powerfully in my mind as 2024 is drawing to a close and heading into 2025, I wanted to share it, in case it is helpful to hear.

The story is about veneration of the spirits and deities, specifically, that of the Trickster.

Kung Fu wisdom

Apparently, in traditional Kung Fu wisdom, one should have a shrine to the Monkey God in one’s home. You have to be careful where you place it though. You don’t want to hide it away too much, or he will be insulted, but you don’t want to house him on your main altar, shrine, or sacred space either: you need to find just the right spot. You see, the Monkey God is a trickster. If you try and exclude him or insult him, he’ll make all kinds of mischief to get your attention or pay you back; if you elevate him too much then you put the Trickster’s mischief at the centre of your life and no-one needs that much chaos!

This connects powerfully to the martial training in Tai Chi. You train with the aim of being able to face into the chaos of combat and not be afraid of it, without becoming someone who seeks out that chaos, creating violence. The method emerges practically out of the techniques that enable you to blend with and redirect force, neutralising every attack and subtly disrupting your opponent’s structure. The philosophy buried at the heart of most martial paths – to seek peace and end conflict – is embodied in the sensitivity, self-regulation, and both emotional and physical skill that Tai Chi and other similar arts seek to impart.

How did the Monkey God find his way to the centre?

You may have already intuited why this story of the Monkey God resonated with me so much this last year, but if not, here it is explicitly:

I think we have collectively, culturally, made the mistake of setting the Monkey God on the throne at the heart of our society, at least in the US and Europe. I can’t speak for the whole planet but the storytelling reach and cultural impact of Hollywood and other Western homes of film and story are powerful.

Perhaps for too long, we had a naïve pursuit of the pure hero, stuffing the Trickster into the cupboard, and this is the backswing that is necessary for us to eventually find balance. I can see that in the dominant storytelling coming out of Hollywood that has for so long, so powerfully affected cultural narrative. It has been fascinating going back to watch older movies with my son now he is into his Teens and re-watching the storytelling arc from the ‘80’s through to today. Batman is a fascinating example of a character that started off fairly purely positive, a classic hero on TV, then became increasingly dark and troubled in the mainstream storytelling of movies (I know the comics may track differently than the movies for hardcore fans), eventually seeming to largely lose the sense of clarity and heroism in not just shades of grey but engulfing darkness; and then in recent films in the franchise, the focus has shifted to having The Joker – a disruptive psychopath – as the central character.

I don’t want to lose myself down the rabbit-hole of specific media examples though, I expect you can come up with your own examples enough if what I am sharing resonates. More generally I have an instinct that the Trickster has become too central in our collective psychological terrain. Rebel’s and disruptor’s can be powerful allies when there is a status-quo you want shifting but when those same disruptors seem to occupy the central ground, what then? When the powers-that-be constantly declare themselves the Trickster Deities and it has become the fashionable cultural norm to eschew the value of cultural norms, where can anyone find solid ground to stand on?

I see many examples of this. Whether it is the seemingly rising tide of political voices; or even more generally the tech industry which in my experience is often inhabited by people who identify more with rebels and anti-heroes than with any sense of mainstream responsibility; or as I have described, in the mainstream movie storytelling that subtly shapes our collective psyche. Which noisy voices do you see, which social spaces do you experience, as still clinging to the badge of rebel and disruptor while simultaneously occupying the power-position that should identify them as the embodiment of the status-quo?

How do we get the Trickster off the throne?

I don’t have a clever answer or immediate solution to offer, I share this thinking more as the core of my current enquiry: How can I learn to lead the Trickster back to a beneficial position in our psycho-spiritual cosmos? My suspicion is that the wisdom of Tai Chi can help. We can learn from stories and myths going back thousands of years. If you wrestle with the Trickster directly then you’ll generally end up playing their game; they might tumble into the ditch but you’ll find yourself in there with them and somehow you will come off worse. It will take old cunning, yielding, blending, and redirection of force, not direct combat to shift this balance, I think.

So on the basis that awareness is itself transformative, I invite you to join me in bringing awareness to this accidental elevation of the Trickster, and wonder together at how we might compassionately, skilfully, but firmly lead the mischief-maker back towards the side-show where they belong. If you look at many ancient myths, the Trickster can be an incredible teacher (sometimes without even meaning to be!) but the Tricksters’ learning is often accompanied by suffering and I fear it makes for a cruel Ruler. I invite you to join me in exploring how we can find a kinder balance.