Who is Coyote?
Getting to know the sacred trickster.
Coyote may be the oldest deified creature in North America. Since the time of the first known peoples of the Midwest, Coyote has served as a powerful living model and archetypal exemplar of change, transformation, adaptation, flexibility, resilience, determination, humour, paradox, and play.
There has always been (and likely always will be) a sacred figure that assumes the role of the Trickster. For many peoples, past and present, Coyote ensouls this role. Howling just beyond the pale of civilized, cultured, and contained human existence, Coyote serves as a gravitational beacon of the Wild.
Despite being the most persecuted animal in all of the Americas — with tens of millions systematically killed in efforts to 'eradicate the vermin' — Coyote has resiliently inhabited nearly all of North America. This outcast is thriving at the edges against all odds.
For a creature that evolved in the relatively small and specialised bioregion of the arid Midwest, such resilience is challenging to grasp through the Western scientific lens, which often seeks to 'control' and 'manage' the wild. Fortunately, indigenous peoples have preserved numerous wondrous stories that portray Coyote's sheer brilliance as an edge-walker. Through their perspective, it becomes clear how Coyote not only perseveres despite human shortsightedness but even thrives amidst civilization's restricted anthropocentric paradigm, playfully subverting its attempts at dominance and control. For Coyote is a force of Nature, unshakeable and unrestrained.
Even today, Coyote is often depicted in a dark, ominous, and shadowy light, accentuated by filamental flickers of contact and ghostly tracks that are encountered within city limits. North America's oldest deity typically receives little trust or respect. Yet, those who have experienced genuine contact cannot dispel the mysterious reverence that permeates such memories.
In the Stories of Old, Coyote effortlessly and frequently undergoes transfiguration, embodying a profound Earthly power inherent in all life — a theme echoed by Ovid's words,
Let me sing to you now,
about how people turn into other things.
For Coyote is not some untameable nuisance meant to be conquered, but rather is an exemplary representative and teacher of the Wild ancestral powers carried by us all. Stories of Coyote frequently blur the lines between human and animal, sacred and mundane, mortal and immortal, Earthly and Divine, weaving these supposed contrasts into a rich mosaic of mythic fluidity. Coyote creatively and spontaneously improvises both in the wild and among human communities, often with humorous grace, adapting to immediate needs, turning things upside down and inside out, igniting creativity, and continuously animating and amplifying the archetypal force of Becoming.
Thus, always just beyond the pale, Coyote howls for change, beckoning us into the wilderness of our hearts, inviting us to participate in the emergent and entangled dance of our interbeing. Coyote reminds us to disrupt the rigid regime of human habituations, allowing us to experience a larger energy that mysteriously moves in the background of our shortsightedness. Every Trickster embodies the elements of compelling creativity. Every Trickster knows how to animate a good story. Coyote sustains the creative-destructive artistry essential for breathing life into such stories.
As Báyò Akómoláfé reflects,
I wonder if the trickster
isn’t beckoning at the
wilds beyond our fences,
wanting us to dance
between the binary.
For these reasons, and many more than I can caste into simple words,
Coyote is a powerful guide along the wandering paths of life. It is my hope that by embracing, even in small measure, the wildly playful trickster both outside and within ourselves, we can courageously converge in the valley of vitality that blossoms between binaries,
where wild flowers dance with butterflies
in the wake of thunderstorms,
and bear cubs learn to play,
where winds carry prayers of nourishment,
and waters flow free night and day.