Psychonaut1029 said:

....MAYBE it is my ultimate fantasy realm. Maybe its me accessing my true nature?...

---

SleepyE said:

Painting by Ilene Meyer

"Jesters have been around since ancient Egypt – they were used to entertain Egyptian pharaohs. Again, this desire to see a joker, magician or entertainer could reflect the deep-seated ‘trickster’ archetype that dwells within our collective unconscious. Humans have a hunger for entertainments which are bizarre, fast-paced, colourful and awe-inspiring. The DMT experience feeds this hunger so much that the user is left shocked and overwhelmed. The DMT experience, as well as other intense psychedelic experiences, are able to raise this unconscious desire to our conscious awareness. The fact that the DMT world can be compared to a circus, carnival, playground or nursery; and that humans strive to create these kinds of environments, along with others (such as theme parks), does not seem to be coincidental.
"

---

Vaipen said:

Since the Jester seems real to others, I take this aspect to be real and whether or not it is a deity or an entity or some part of our own psyche or perhaps a cultural or psychological archetype, well, that is what we are trying to find out.


The Trickster can be found in mushrooms and DMT. And maybe in other psychedelics as well. If so, please report!

History



The Trickster or Jester has a long histoty in our culture and I would like to know if anyone can tell me how far back it goes. Wikipedia has some information and I'll bring a few things over because they seem to resonate with me. I'll quote:

"In literature, the jester is symbolic of common sense and of honesty, notably in King Lear, the court jester is a character used for insight and advice on the part of the monarch, taking advantage of his license to mock and speak freely to dispense frank observations and highlight the folly of his monarch. This presents a clashing irony as a "greater" man could dispense the same advice and find himself being detained in the dungeons or even executed. Only as the lowliest member of the court can the jester be the monarch's most useful adviser."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jester

So why does this strike me as important? It is the irony that is mentioned. A psychedelic experience is by default a personal one and it holds enigmatic visions or contemplative concepts. It is sometimes so strange it defies all logic and ratio. There can be reason in it, but often of a kind barely translatable to ordinary consciousness; what seems reasonable in the trip might end up being totally ridiculous after the trip.
So what is conveyed to you during the trip can be considered advice, like a Jester's advice to the King. It can be an idea, a thought, a contemplation, a vision, a reality or a theme, maybe a challenge. Or perhaps a trick, a puzzle, a daring or invitation to ponder or a game.

It seems that the lure of the Trickster that invites the participant to be engaged in the setup can only be done by a Trickster aspect. That is to say, because the Trickster is recognized as such (he is harmless albeit mischievous), the seriousness of the endeavor proposed by the Trickster has its sting removed. Then we are more likely to engage him and see what he is got, like a person asked to come on stage by an entertainer, wary that something is going to happen and that the laugh will be at their expense.

So only the Fool can convey the most serious of messages. And since we are the one to initiate the game as we enter into The Trickster's  realm of influence, we are the King, the one that is full of ego as he sits on his throne demanding respect and humility from his subjects. We bring this ego into the trip. And there we lose it fast at level 5 trips at least.



Psychology

It seems to me that King's were no fools, no pun intended. They must have been aware at some point that their shielded royal life made them prone to being quick to anger and that in fact, most of their status was but an empty tomfoolery for the masses and that their continuation always hung in the balance decided upon by the goodwill of the commoners. Yet they wielded the power over life and death and maybe somehow the appearance of the Jester at the King's Court was their own way of keeping a sense of humility.

And so the trip is the information exchange between the aspect and the King. We enter into it because we seek answers. I know some do not, but that doesn't mean the Trickster won't be present. A King might not want to hear the news, yet the Trickster is gonna give it regardless and he can get away with it.

So it is through this metaphor that we are addressed. The aspect reaches us. And I suspect that the Trickster has a specific sort of information and logic would suggest that it is those things we may not want to accept. We are literally being 'fooled' and trapped into a paradox of being King and sovereign over what we choose to accept and the Trickster who's mischievous message cannot be ignored.



Archetype

So let me go on with exploring this idea of the Jester archetype. If he lives within what is its origin? The Trickster seems to be a paradox. He is the wise fool and it is sometimes hard to see when he is fool and when he is wise. He wears masks and dresses in bright primary colors.



Those colors remind me of the Echo Chamber I experienced but you could also associate it with the various mindscapes that we know, the bejeweled filigree patterns and streams. On non-breakthrough doses of DMT I can see how some objects start to show primary colored pinheads and I see that pre-peak on mushrooms as well, in that case as a 3D pervasion of my room, as in a matrix structure.

That the Jester wears such clothes hints to me at a deeply recognized and accepted truism about psychedelic experiences. So maybe the Jester is the aspect of the paradox, the one paradox that permeates all our most existential questions about the nature of reality and our own self-reflective consciousness. This is the haunting question that has followe mankind since the dawm of this self-awareness. That life is a trick, perpetrated by our own minds in its relation to the cosmos.

Therefore within the trip when we meet the Jester we are reminded not to believe anything we take for granted. that life is, as Buddhists call it, Maya, a form of illusion but one that does serve a purpose. Alan Watts talked a lot about Zen Buddhism and how life is a play. We can make many assumptions about life and reality but to be in the world is to have a great opportunity to explore ones' self-awareness and, basically, have a laugh. There is no need to over-complicate things, suggest the Jester, so he shows us tongue-in-cheeck that what we know about reality should be taken with a big grain of salt.

During the tip all barriers dissolve, that is what T. McKenna used to say, it dissolves boundaries. And so also the boundaries that normally shield us from the mad recognition that our ego's are rampaging around within us and doing us little good if we attempt to understand reality.

It is the same notion that we know from sages and guru's and other such so called 'enlightened' people. They seem to have a sense of humor. Because they know that with all our science and religion and ideologies we simply fail to see how easy things really are. And yet at the same time we complicate life so much that we scarcely can find a way back into our intuitive understanding. Alan Watts once mentioned that perhaps our consciousness is not so much a gift and that to keep things simple, like some animals in the wild would seem to be doing is actually a very enlightened way to be. In that respect, traditional cultures maybe smarter.

And those cultures still have shamans.

And so in this way, the shaman in traditional cultures could be regarded as a form of Trickster. They may divine and heal and play this trick on people with such conviction and antics that the Fool becomes Wise in the sense that the patient gets healed as if by a miracle: the suggestive techniques a shaman knows from his visionary states provided him with the expertise and folly to be able to convincingly address disease and problems in his society and since he is the wise fool, the audience will recreate reality to the intend of the shaman. And since the shaman aims to heal, reality will start to reflect that as well.

There is no difference between being a fool and being wise. And that is why these enlightened people laugh. They laugh at their own folly but realize profoundly that the foolery is as much  necessary to be wise, that is to say, to go through the long path to wisdom and taking no shortcuts because doing so would push the wisdom farther ahead. That must be a humbling experience.



Entity

The Trickster speaks to us at a deep (sub)conscious level. It seems so for me. To meet him is to contact our human psyche and by no means does that mean it isn't a true deity or entity. If it lives inside us it is alive in a separate reality from our own. If this aspect is not of our own psyche, then surely the intelligence that it is must encompass has a relationship with our species. Perhaps in this case, the very idea or notion of 'trickery' found us when we first started to explore entheogens, back in the caves of between 30.000 and perhaps a 100.000 years ago, when we showed up on its radar.

Trickery might be an aspect of nature itself as well, because trickery is that evolutionary trait that allows a species to fool the hunter, so the prey may escape. In this case this entity is part of the Gaian Mind Or Anima Mundi. That too does not necessarily make it unreal.

But if our early ancestors became aware and became entrapped in the self-reflective state we are all in, using entheogens and explored trance states through singing, rhythmic dancing and so on and so forth, they opened up a doorway to an extra-dimensional intelligence and that by its own nature the Trickster has become embedded as an archetype within our minds. So the Trickster is the trickster because that is what it is to itself. It is not our perception or delusion in relation te reality, not a facet of our ability of humor and our self-reflective ability to observe our own folly.  No, in this case the Trickster is an entity that shaped our understanding and inserted itself in our psyche and plays the role of itself.



Mythology

This also strikes me as important:

"Many native traditions held clowns and tricksters as essential to any contact with the sacred. People could not pray until they had laughed, because laughter opens and frees from rigid preconception. Humans had to have tricksters within the most sacred ceremonies for fear that they forget the sacred comes through upset, reversal, surprise. The trickster in most native traditions is essential to creation, to birth."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickster

There is a lot of information on myth in relation to the Trickster. A worthy read surely. It is the word 'scared' here I wish to point at. In my Echo Chamber experience there is a sense of dpeth and sacredness. I think this is the original source of sacredness. When our ancestors gained access to these experiences they found this 'place' and encountered for the first time this particular feeling. It is a wonderful feeling. But think about for a moment what sacrednesses is and what it comes out of. We associate it in various ways, with religion, nature very special phenomenon or events that have great meaning to us. But this feeling must at some point have been unknown to our race.

So for us it is normal to have the feeling of sacredness, we can easily assign it. The first people to enter into a trance or trip and find this Echo Chamber, found the very first spark of what would turn out to be every religious and spiritual exploration of our species. They came down and discussed it and before language had even arrived, maybe they looked into each other's  eyes and saw that feeling reflected.

---

pineninja said:

Hyroglyphs and sphinx. 

---

Psychonaut1029 said:

I watched your video on jesters just before i made this thread. Thanks for the info.

---

SleepyE said:

pineninja said:

Hyroglyphs and sphinx. 

---

so you agree egyptian motifs are part of the experience huh? :P
that i have no clue about why

---

I used to look at things like Mandelas, indigenous artwork, hieroglyphics, as just wonderful pieces of art.
Now I look at them in a whole new light....
Same as the Beatles.

BoomerBud said:

Haha holy shit dude I dont even want to think about trying 60mg right now 25 seems to put me in another place with black background and colorful shapes.

---