ABSTRACT
The perceived sanctity, the solemnity of ritual, a practice often appearing to be performed in a serious manner, is itself understood to be in fact a decidedly playful activity, just as play is an activity that is taken seriously as long as it lasts. Ritual can thus be viewed as stylized, scripted, serious play, as a communicative narrative set within a ludic frame. The risk inherent to play, the danger begot through its energy, its instability, meant that uncertainty was deeply infused within it. And this very concept of insecurity, of ambiguity, risk, was thus the recognition that the cosmos itself, both ornament and order, exists as much through the deep flux of unpredictability, as it does through determination. This classical trickster archetype can also be shifted quite straightforwardly towards a more deep-seated Spanish milieu, however, a trickster modality that Babcock-Abrahams herself termed 'picaresque'.
