The trickster is a ubiquitous mythical figure, a person, animal, or deity (or all of the above) of change, ambiguity, paradox, defiance, laughter, buffoonery, and even cruelty. That being is the trickster, whose traits, according to Agnes Horvath and Arpad Szakolczai, “capture with a striking completeness the main features of modernity…so much so that the trickster could be outright considered as the deity of modernity.” In his seminal treatise on political theology, Carl Schmitt counseled that the “metaphysical image that a definite epoch forges of the world has the same structure as what the world immediately understands to be appropriate as a form of its political structure.” So, what if the biblical god, or any god, is no longer an appropriate metaphysical image of political or social reality? This short essay does not address whether the biblical god exists or not-that is a debate for another day-but whether a different being better represents and reflects contemporary social experience. These latter figures might not quite qualify as “theological” according to conventional Judeo-Christian frameworks, but then theology long ago expanded beyond its original meaning of god-study. Different societies naturally do or would do political theology in terms of their own local god(s) or, lacking god-concepts, other religious beings or powers, such as animistic spirits, dead ancestors, or animatistic forces.

Political theology in Western/Christian societies has conventionally been conducted in terms of the Judeo-Christian god, which is understandable and forgivable since that was the dominant religious belief.

Trickster spirit