The universe is the mother,
But only in half of the breath,
As the father emerges through her,
Together, creating what’s left,
Which is everything in between all of us,
Which is also nothing at all.
But I need to have a story line,
In order to know what to call,
That great enlivened feeling,
In my chest and in my core,
That I know to be as loving
While feeling it loving me more.
She feels like a mother, the giver of my life. Within her womb is wisdom, abundant, dense and ripe.
He feels like a father, with lessons always to teach. Steady providing a platform, so I can better reach,
For the stars that I AM, the third thing created. What is birthed of polarities and why are they so hated?
We are the result, of these oppositions merged, and there isn’t any bit of it that’s not creators urge.
The trifecta of truth,
The Trinity of tales,
The mother and the father,
The wind beneath my sails.
The earth that holds me tightly,
The water coursing through,
The fire that animates me,
The same I Am, as you.
But it’s only half the truth.
Because inside of all of us, there is a trickster too…
I’ve always been fascinated by the patterns that repeat themselves across our human experience. The way certain stories, certain characters, certain dynamics seem to emerge again and again, regardless of time or culture. It’s as if we’re all tapping into some collective wellspring of meaning, drawing up archetypes that help us make sense of this beautifully chaotic existence.
The poem above came to me during one of those twilight moments between dreaming and waking, when the boundaries between conscious thought and whatever lies beyond seem particularly thin. I call it “3” – a tribute to the sacred triad that appears throughout my own spiritual journey as a scribe-poet walking in the footsteps of Mercury, Hermes, Thoth, and Enoch, while drawing inspiration from the mystical traditions of Rumi, Jesus, and Ram Dass.
But what are these triads really about? And why do they seem to resonate so deeply within us?
The Sacred Dance of Three
There’s something about threes that feels inherently complete. Beginning, middle, end. Past, present, future. Birth, life, death. We exist in this continuous flow of triadic energy, and it’s reflected in nearly every spiritual tradition worldwide.In my own experience, I’ve come to see this trinity manifesting most powerfully as the divine feminine, the divine masculine, and what I’ve come to call the divine mischief-maker – that trickster energy that keeps us humble and prevents us from becoming too rigid in our understanding.
The mother holds us In her embrace. She is the cosmic womb from which all possibilities emerge. I feel her presence most strongly when I’m connected to the earth, when I’m allowing myself to be nurtured and held without condition. She whispers: *You belong here. You are enough. Rest in me.*
The father guides with gentle strength. He is the hand that both supports and challenges us to reach beyond what we believe possible. I recognize him in moments of clarity, in the impulse toward growth and expansion, in the voice that says: *You are capable of more. Stand tall. I am here to help you build.*
And then there’s the trickster – that delightful, maddening energy that slips between the cracks of our certainty and turns everything upside down just when we think we’ve got it all figured out. Mercury. Hermes. Loki. Coyote. The Fool in the tarot deck. The part of ourselves that laughs at our own seriousness and reminds us that even our most profound insights are, at best, partial truths.
The Power of Naming
As someone drawn to the scribal traditions, I’ve always been fascinated by the power of naming things. The words we choose shape our experience in ways both subtle and profound. When I write “mother,” you might see your own mother, or Mother Earth, or the Great Goddess. When I say “father,” you might think of your dad, or God the Father, or the guiding masculine principle in the universe.
But those names are just containers for something much vaster. As the poem says: “I need to have a story line, in order to know what to call that great enlivened feeling.” We create these categories not because they’re absolute, but because they help us navigate the ineffable.
This is the genius of the trickster archetype – it constantly reminds us that our categories are provisional. It lives in the spaces between our neat definitions. It dances at the edges of our understanding and invites us to dance too.
Beyond the Third Degree
I’ve been contemplating lately whether there’s something special about what happens after the third level of understanding. It’s as if the first three stages create a foundation from which something fractal – something endlessly self-similar yet unique at every level – can emerge.
Think about it: we have the mother (two), the father (one), and their creative interplay producing the child/trickster (three). But it’s at the fourth level that these patterns begin to repeat and refract, creating endless variations on the theme.
In mathematics, fractals are patterns that repeat at different scales. Zoom in or zoom out, and you’ll find similar structures. Isn’t that true of these archetypal energies as well? The nurturing quality of the mother appears in countless forms throughout our lives. The guiding quality of the father manifests in myriad ways. The disruptive creativity of the trickster shows up again and again, wearing different masks but always with that gleam of mischief in its eye.
Perhaps this is why indigenous traditions often speak of four directions rather than three. The fourth creates the space in which the pattern can replicate and evolve. It’s the difference between a triangle – stable but static – and a tetrahedron, which can become the building block for infinitely complex structures.
Living with the Trickster
“But it’s only half the truth. Because inside of all of us, there is a trickster too…”Those lines might be my favorites from the poem, because they capture something essential about the human experience. Just when we think we’ve understood something completely, just when we’ve neatly categorized the world into mother and father, yin and yang, this and that – the trickster appears to remind us that reality is wilder, stranger, and more wonderful than our categories can contain.
The trickster isn’t simply destructive. It’s true that Loki’s mischief in Norse mythology often led to painful lessons, but those disruptions were also catalysts for growth and transformation. Mercury/Hermes didn’t just deliver messages – he transformed them. Thoth didn’t just record – he created through the act of naming.
Living with awareness of the trickster means holding our truths lightly. It means recognizing that the moment we say “this is how things are,” we’ve limited the infinite possibilities of what could be. It means embracing paradox and contradiction not as problems to solve but as invitations to deeper understanding.
The Trinity Within
Perhaps the most profound aspect of these archetypal energies is that they all exist within each of us. We each have mothering capacity – the ability to nurture and hold space. We each have fathering energy – the ability to guide and challenge. And we each have that trickster spark – the capacity to see beyond conventions and play with possibilities.“The same I Am, as you,” as the poem says. These aren’t external forces acting upon us – they’re expressions of our own multifaceted nature. In embracing all three aspects of ourselves, we become more whole.
When I write, I feel this trinity at work. The mother in me creates a safe space for ideas to gestate. The father provides structure and discipline. And the trickster delights in surprising connections, in metaphors that bridge seemingly unrelated concepts, in the wordplay that makes language not just functional but magical.
As you navigate your own spiritual journey, I invite you to notice these archetypal energies at work in your life. Where do you feel the embrace of the mother? Where do you experience the guidance of the father? And where does the trickster appear, turning your certainties upside down and inviting you to see with new eyes?
Because in the dance between these forces – in the sacred space created by their interaction – we find not just meaning, but the freedom to create new meanings. Not just stories, but the awareness that we are both the storytellers and the stories being told.
And in that awareness lies a truth that goes beyond words – a truth that can only be danced, never fully captured. But isn’t the dance itself the whole point?
Kelly Fox