On Hermes and The Grateful Dead
The Trickster - Shaman or Shadow?
Everything was so much easier in the old days when Religion made the rules of what (and who!) was right or wrong. Pick a side, dig in, and follow the party line.
Choice is both a blessing and a curse. Blessing – because it allows us individual creativity (unlike animals, who have to live in the pattern repeat of collective choice). Curse – because choice is stressful. It creates the fear of making mistakes (all actions have consequences) and the fear of missing out – try choosing just one scoop of ice cream when there are 15 flavours.
We look back at all the choices we didn’t make with either longing or regret. Religion took away this stress, giving us certainty about life and death. As long as we follow the rules, we go to heaven, and they can go to hell.
The Trickster archetype hates the rigidity of rules and side-taking. He’s the force that works away at the edges we’ve created between Order and Chaos, because both need to co-exist. Our creativity allows us to dive into the chaos of infinite possibilities, make intuitive choices, and fashion them into something new and interesting for humanity to share and delight in.
It’s a bit like a TV game in which tokens burst from a confetti cannon and you have to catch them before they reach the ground. Unskilled players get stressed, grab, and miss. Skilled players stay calm in the chaos and choose wisely.
Before religion, we had Greek mythology in which duality was represented by Mount Olympus (governed by Zeus) and the Underworld (governed by Hades)… but there was Hermes (the Trickster or Messenger) – the only God who could visit both realms, who could carry messages between the living and the dead.
As a newborn, Hermes' first act was creating a musical instrument by stringing gut strings over a tortoise shell. The sound of his playing attracted Apollo (the God of Music himself), whereupon Hermes challenged him to a music contest. (The Trickster is both playful AND precocious!) Apollo’s first response was outrage, but eventually he came to see how much better things could work out if they became friends and allies.
Back in the human world, one of the last times the Trickster came to shake up the status quo was in the 1960s - and music played a big part in that disruption.
Ken Kesey (author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) had participated in CIA sponsored LSD experiments – the idea being that drugs could be used as a way to CONTROL the masses. Ken had a better idea – to FREE the masses. He and his friends (who called themselves the Merry Pranksters) hit the road with their own experiment (called The Acid Tests) in which liberal doses of LSD were dispensed against a backdrop of music, love, and light shows.
Before they became mega famous, The Grateful Dead were the house band for these “happenings”. Few bands have reshaped American culture quite like them. They didn’t just play music, they created a living, breathing ecosystem that blurred any lines between band and audience, art and experiment, order and entropy. At their peak, the Dead were more than a band, they were pioneers of cultural change.
They broke all the rules.
At a time when the music business guarded publishing rights like dragons sitting on top of the eggs of their potential gold records, the Dead allowed fans to record and trade bootlegs. No lawyers or copyright infringement, just mutual love-ins. The fans – Deadheads – didn’t just attend concerts, they followed the band on tour, travelling nomads sharing experiences, resources and food.
Frontman Jerry Garcia transcended the role of musician to become a kind of sonic shaman, using improvisational music, psychedelics, and a deeply communal ethos to guide audiences into altered states of higher consciousness. Of course the acid helped because it allowed people to actually experience non-duality and the interconnectedness of all things.
Jerry wasn’t leading a movement, he was channeling one. Tricksters don’t fight the system, they laugh or dance around it, and in doing so, they open the door to something new.
And the ch-ch-ch-changes that were born from this new download… Feminism (how absurd that we thought men were smarter than women!) the Civil rights movement (madness to believe white was different from black!) and the Environmental movement (trees give us life giving oxygen and we’re cutting them down? No way!). Not to mention Wholefoods (or as previous generations had called it… Food).
But the Trickster requires integration – chaos AND order; creativity AND direction. With a deep aversion to authority (even their own) things started to fall apart. Even beautiful chaos needs boundaries.
“It’s gotten away from us” Mickey Hart, after the Deer Creek riot.
Fast forward to the 2020s –the cultural rigidity of digital overload and the polarities of love and hate on social media. A different Trickster appears –the so-called QAnon Shaman. Shirtless, painted, and horned, Jacob Chansley stormed the Capitol in a ritual theatre of chaos. Like Garcia, he wore the costume of the shaman. But his myth was spun from conspiracy and alienation, not compassion. Where Garcia’s Trickster was musical and inclusive, Chansley’s was apocalyptic, born not from community but fragmentation.
The Trickster doesn’t take sides, he’s a catalyst for change. If his creative expression is curtailed he can be destructive – a bit like Malificent when she was excluded from the Christening party.
We relegate the Trickster to the margins, but in many cultures he’s seen as sacred – the mythic embodiment of the shadow, making us aware of ours – lest we project it onto other people, and to ensure we don’t create some sacred cows of our own.
Clarity was easy in the old days. The Republicans were the mainstream… traditional, rule-following, and careful. The Democrats were the counter-culture… fringe, rebellious, and carefree. These days, the Republicans have become the party of chaos and “make it up as you go along”, while the bewildered Democrats, aka the adults in the room, are wondering how their workplace has descended into a scene from Lord of the Flies.
But if they could find common ground, like Hermes and Apollo, some new music could emerge… and this time we won’t let it get away from us.
The Song of Solomon says love is stronger than death. Fierce love - not romantic love or sentimental love. The death of our old way of life could be something we’re grateful for. We owe it to Jerry Garcia to try.