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SELF PORTRAIT
- THE JESTER IN ME
There is also a spiritual side to laughter,
captured by the ancient clowns, mummers, jesters, mountebanks and
fools, who centred themselves around the royal courts of antiquity.
In Mayan culture there was even a jester god, whose three pointed
hat provided the later kings with the crown and quite possibly the
fleur-de-lis symbol. From the first card of the Tarot’s major arcana
to modern comedy, the role of the fool or baffoon is as important
now just as it was in many native cultures. The fool is also an
archetype for the cosmic human captured brilliantly in art and
sacred texts all over the world. The cosmic human is often depicted
inside a circle (sacred hoop) and can be seen in the images of
Shiva, Leonardo da Vinci’s Golden Mean, to Blake’s giant figure of
Albion, which accompanies his epic poem Jerusalem. Laughter and
creativity go hand in hand, especially in the development of our
soul.
In certain American Indian tribes, for example, the Heyoka
clowns, or divine tricksters would help their fellow tribes men see
if they were acting too seriously, for their own healths sake. All
tricksters, fools and jesters use the power of opposites to impart
lessons which could show a person how selfish, materialistic or
single minded they had become. In Native American tradition the
Coyote was the teacher of Heyoka ‘medicine’ and through his/her use
of jokes they would endeavour to trick others into enlightened
states of understanding. In the first place however, this could only
be done through the ability to laugh at oneself. The fool is
symbolic of that bridge between above and below and the magic of
seeing the world through opposites and we are reminded of this in
that fantastic song by the Beatles – The Fool on the Hill.
Taken from page 217 of Through Ancient Eyes
(oil on canvas) © Neil Hague 2003
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