Shape-Shifting
In the very earliest time, when both people and animals lived on earth,
a person could become an animal if he wanted to and an animal
could become a human being.
Sometimes they were people and sometimes animals and sometimes animals and there was no difference.
All spoke the same language. That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
...
Nobody could explain this: That's the way it was.
- Translated from Inuit by Edward Field
Encompassing both dangerous borderline confusion, and the transcendent experience of the essential unity of being, shape-shifting symbolizes psyche in flux and the coincident psychology of altered states of consciousness. The world is interconnected and always changing; that is their magic. Shamans, tricksters, witches, jinns, druids, gods and heroes with an affinity for "deconstruction and reconstruction" share the ability to separate and regroup elements of a psychological process, ultimately in service of renewal.
This human-animal composite may depict the
supernatural kinship of human and animal
that is experienced in the ecstatic trance of shamanism. Rock
painting by the Sun Bushmen, South Africa.
This is expressed in the ancient and ubiquitous belief in humanity's power to change into animals at will or at junctures in the cycles of nature. This can be actual bodily change or passage of the soul into an animal, while the human body remains in an altered state of awareness, asleep or in dream time. Werewolves and witches' familiars exemplify this ritual assumption of animal instinct, as do shamans and practitioners of altered trance-states. In one image were-jaguar rises in the ecstatic trance of shamanism, partaking in the unity of human and beast (Furst, 68ff). Herein, one can accomplish the seemingly impossible: stalk lovers as did Zeus in swan or bull form (EoR, 13:225), or escape enemies by transforming into magical salmon or selkies of Celtic myth. One might become invisible, or create strategic confusion or deception like Native American trickster Coyote, or experience elements hostile to humans: air, fire, and water. The Norse Odin obtained unusual information from the Otherworld as a bird. The Celtic hero Cuchulainn transformed himself into a raging beast to fight more effectively for his countrymen. A less threatening and more usual shift is into the West African "bush-soul," one's animal spirit. Although part of the amoral, nonrational psyche, which escapes the ethics of relatedness, shape-shifting carries responsibility and consequences. Wounds suffered in the animal body are thought to be reproduced correspondingly in the restored human body.
Drawn during his confinement in the psychiatric
clinic of Heidelberg, the art metalworker Franz Karl
Buhler may have depicted the permeability of identity and the shape-shifting
of the inner world, most pronounced during mental illness. The Prinzhorn Collection, 1900-16, Germany.
Unlike metamorphosis, in shape-shifting, there is no progressive development, but a fluid slide into one or another aspect of the psyche; temporary, protean and intended to hide as much as to reveal. Unlike complete transformation, shape-shifting doesn't alter essentials but portrays the pluralistic, polymorphic, "alternative reality" of what exists. In fact, shape-shifters have an antipathy to the "truth" of a static form, preferring dark, mercurial permanence and object constancy. "Catch me if you can," says the shape-shifters and the hero's task are often just that; wresting meaning and consciousness from the flux of psychic process. Proteus, the "Old Man of the Sea," was sought by heroes because of his gift for prophecy. He assumed every conceivable form in order to elude their grasp until caught and held fast assumes multiple forms to avoid marriage to a mortal. But King Peleus manages to secure her, symbolizing an exchange and binding of power.
The jaguar, lord of the forest, and Olmec ruler or
priest rise to reveal their supernatural kinship in the sacred
turmoil of ecstatic shamanism, Olmec, 900-300 B.C.E., Mexico.
Shape-shifting has a transcendent dimension as well, both dark and light. A deceptive union was central to the birth of King Arthur of Britain, when Merlin gave Uther Pendragon the form of Ygranne's husband, tricking her and conceiving the beloved Once and Future King. Many creatures from the "dark side"- ghosts, demons, comic-book heroes like Spiderman, even Satan himself- are shape-shifters, symbolizing depth experience, compensating the rational psychological attitude. In the supremely popular Harry Potter series young wizards-in-training learn shape-shifting spells in their quest for knowledge rather than for propitiation of the nonrational psyche. The Hindu gods Vishnu/Krishna were prodigious shape-shifters assuming numerous avatars in their battle with evil. And the Greek Tiresias and Dionysus shape-shift into female form, knowing the mystery of love and eros as the Other (EoR, 13:226-8).
"In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God... and the word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory," begins the Gospel of John. In the sacred tradition of Taoism, the path to liberation is also a form of eternal shape -shifting, following a path of endless change, at one with the flux of existence (EoR, 13:227).
Affronted at being ordered to marry a mortal, the sea-goddess
Thetic attempts to escape by turning successively into fire, water,
lion, and serpent. King Peleus wrestling Thetis, by Peithinos, painting at the bottom
of a cup, 6th century B.C.E., Greece.
The image of shape-shifting suggests that life always eludes stasis; the more alteration and myriad forms of life are revealed. A mythopoetic acknowledgment of experience with no boundaries, distinctions or forms, the image expresses possibilities, potentials, demons and shadows, the protean aspect of the psychological process. Those who retain this underworld initiation-mystics, shamans, healers, sorcerers, devils and the mentally ill- inspire both awe and fright as shape-shifting both expresses and threatens the very nature of our being.
-Bella
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