But they lay dormant, in seed, until he decided to exercise them, which he did only after a long and painful process of trial and error, growth and metamorphosis. For in all of his manifestations Trickster remains a primordial being of the same order as the gods, despite his prolonged sojourn in the human condition. For traditional peoples light, fire, and sun are words that have always had a double meaning. While they certainly stand for the physical things named, they also and more importantly stand for the spiritual reality behind these. Fire is the illumination of consciousness or direct knowledge.
Light is such interior knowledge.
No matter how often scholars have analyzed this myth in the attempt to reduce it to any strictly rational value, it endures in all of its polyfaceted and multileveled grandeur. To restrict understanding of it merely to one or two of its features would be to rob us of its unusually important meaning. For serious reflection upon the myth in all of its world variety brings a conviction that it can refer only to the evolution of human consciousness and the full range of phases and multiple colorations which this implies. From the initial dimness of a consciousness newly-born, lacking any real integration of its components, and having forgotten his divine mission, we follow Trickster as his awareness steadily comes forth in ever greater measure. To use Jungian terms, the Unconscious within himself has been transmuted into the Conscious, bringing lucidity of spiritual vision of self and the universe.