The Shaman-Fool may appear less of an authority and seem less of a success than other more respectable Shamans, and might catalyze and collect ridicule and even disgust, while revealing and conducting re-creative Life Spirit and the Spirits of Life, amidst the suspense of everyday scenarios, by acting out as Trickster or Trickster's foil, The Fool. A shaman fool can unmask fraud with a mask, release blessings through disguises, upset customs with costumes, break habits with a routine, and re-mind us of Truth and Beauty with funny hats. On the best of days, the shaman fool can help even the most sour or sullen Bureaucratic Builder finally crack into a smile, die laughing, and dream on into new life.

The Shaman Fool is the Christ and Sophia, who ever and always gives up all for one, and one for two and three and all, both earthward and heavenward. The fun-deprived cannot yet dance or play this knowable mystery long enough to receive more than a taste of divine healing laughter medicine.

Trickster is the twin, the companion, the consort, the sister, the brother, the left hand with tricks up the sleeve, and can play all roles as the shadow or the nemesis - in the 1000 gestures and guises of every spiraling spacetime moment. Trickster teaches the Shaman Fool the trick of coming and going, turning upside down and inside and out, being this and yet that. The Wise Fool and Trickster are companions and flip sides of one coin of the realm, always inviting in and turning out new versions of that mysterious, mercurial, even chaotic hint of something more than the sum of all the parts. The Wise Fool and Trickster switch on and off, take turns acting and reacting as the catalyst of changes, as the clown and the clone of the many smokier or clearer mirror images of life on life's terms, of the Sovereign (Holy Family), the Universal Extended Clan of All Relations, the Grail (Stone, Cauldron, Cup, and Ship), and the seamless, holey, strings of light and darkness weaving the Universal Robe of Many Colors. When the Shaman-Fool and Trickster adventure and return, side by side, they are really two and three as one and zero - the one for all and all for one, as everyone, yet none.

In our Ages the sulky sibling who stayed at home and followed directions, who lost the crucial sense of humor, who suppresses creative chaos until it explodes, is becoming more and more the nuisance, an ailing, surviving, victimized, victimizing, progeric, lost child, demanding to be crowned the sovereign of every one's world, the sovereign of this world. Yet this worldly, surly child who stayed behind is longing secretly for life and death adventures and challenges and an honoring, welcome-home, great thanksgiving feast. Only healing laughter can make Light of this poor, serious, imperious, satanic, demiurgic killjoy. But the final door to the Royal City will never stay open for any one until this last and least one of the two and three or more is brought into the banquet hall and seated among the saints and angels at Christ's side.

This is a job for the shaman fools of many families, tribes, clans, schools, and orders, who quest, question, and jest by land, sea, or sky, and entertain. yet awaken.

To be continued and revised. ~ Chammy