Gay Men as Virtuosi of the Holy Art of Bricolage and as Tricksters of the Sacred

Abstract

Organized around the anthropological concepts of `bricolage', `bricoleur', `cognitive mazeway' and `trickster', and partially based on ethnographic research, this article hypothesizes that: (1) by virtue of their exclusion from most of the world's religious traditions, queer men find themselves in a kind of spiritual `Diaspora'; (2) gay men have been forced by circumstance to forge a diverse array of spiritual practices, re-interpret or invent alternative sacred myths, produce their own mystical writings, and form diverse intentional spiritual communities; (3) in becoming masters of bricolage, queer men unwittingly function in the role of the trickster figure for each other and for the wider heteronormative culture in which they are embedded; and (4) sex is one of the central axes around which their spiritual practices and spiritual experiences are organized.