What Is Shapeshifter?

Written October 1st, 2009.

What is Shapeshifter?

Shapeshifter is an archetype. The dictionary defines an archetype, in the Jungian sense, as "a collectively inherited unconscious idea, pattern of thought, image, etc., universally present in individual psyches." Other, better-known archetypes are the Maiden, the Hunter, the Father, the Crone, the Wizard, the Trickster, the Weaver. Archetypes are the essences behind culture-defined, culture-designed faces and names. They are mythological commonalities that unite most human societies by their similarities, once you strip away the details that make them specifically relevant to their regions. Individual people can work with them as separate, can embody them as internal identity, as they choose.

What is Shapeshifter?

Shapeshifter is not an entity that can be seen all at once; it is infinite, but it is natural and real. It can be measured and quantified in any skin - it is only as large as it is at any given time, not as large as its possibilities. It is true to its current identity in instincts, in movement, in behavior. But Shapeshifter is limitless in its skins and thus endlessly versatile. Shapeshifter is instantly, thoroughly, authentically adaptable; it is fractally complex and variable.

What is Shapeshifter?

Shapeshifter is the water that takes the shape of its chosen container, defined by its skin but not changed by it. Water is water, be it in a vase or in a cup, and Shapeshifter is Shapeshifter, be it in an animal skin or an elemental shroud. Shapeshifter flows and seeps and pours in a deluge, ripping flimsy-false paper skins to tatters until it finds a home in strong bones and red flesh. Shapeshifter spreads edgeless in itself, formless and floating, but never loses its essence or its coherence. Shapeshifter bends until it knots into a spiral, but never breaks. Shapeshifter is dissolution of self into surroundings with no loss, only the silencing of language-ridden thought and the emergence of hear-feel and sense-perceive and intuit-impress.

What is Shapeshifter?

Shapeshifter is unbound coils woven, snakes as spider's silk, twining and twisting, hissing and writhing, living and breathing and heart-beating. Shapeshifter is slick-drop-dripping, sliding over smooth stone, winding and wandering, within-apart-within, leaving and joining and leaving, raindrop into and from and into again the river. Shapeshifter is twirling and whirling, wind-in-leaves, twisting not-tangled, interweaving, breathing, hush-hush silent. Shapeshifter is never-still, dancing, braiding, skin-shedding, skin-wearing, skin-changing, skinless.

What is Shapeshifter?

Shapeshifter is ... me.

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