- The werewolf shapeshifted under the full moon.
- The fox spirit shapeshifted into the form of a traveler.
- The god shapeshifted into a bird.
- Over time, the story itself shapeshifted into something new.
- As she listened to the music, something in her seemed to shapeshift.
- The shape of my soul shifted when I saw all the suffering in the world.
- The deepest form of shapeshifting is compassion: taking on the shapes of others.
- The city gradually shapeshifted as new cultures and communities emerged.
- The universe is always shapeshifting: evolving into new forms.
- The animating Whole of the universe, God, adopts all the shapes.
A Shapeshifting Universe
The universe shapeshifts because nothing in it remains exactly the same. Stars are born and die, galaxies collide and reorganize, mountains rise and erode, rivers carve new paths, species emerge and disappear. Even the apparently stable world around us is filled with ongoing processes of transformation. The universe does not simply contain change; it lives by change. Reality is a continual movement from one form into another.
On a cosmic scale, shapeshifting has unfolded from the beginning. In the earliest moments after the Big Bang, there existed a hot sea of energy and elementary particles. From this emerged atoms, then stars, then heavier elements forged in stellar furnaces. Out of these came planets, oceans, atmospheres, and eventually life itself. The iron in our blood and the calcium in our bones once existed within stars. The universe continuously reshapes itself into new forms.
Life on Earth provides another expression of cosmic shapeshifting. Seeds become trees, caterpillars become butterflies, children become adults, ecosystems reorganize themselves through cooperation and struggle. Human beings, too, participate in these transformations. We inwardly change through emotions, relationships, imagination, memory, learning, and acts of creativity. We are not static beings moving through a changing world; we ourselves are among the world's ongoing acts of becoming.
From a Whiteheadian perspective, the deepest shapeshifting occurs moment by moment. Reality consists of countless acts of becoming in which the many become one and are increased by one. Every concrescing subject receives a world and responds to it, taking on a new form and contributing that form to what comes next. The universe itself is therefore not a finished object but a living process of form-shifting—an ongoing adventure in which reality continuously becomes otherwise.
On a cosmic scale, shapeshifting has unfolded from the beginning. In the earliest moments after the Big Bang, there existed a hot sea of energy and elementary particles. From this emerged atoms, then stars, then heavier elements forged in stellar furnaces. Out of these came planets, oceans, atmospheres, and eventually life itself. The iron in our blood and the calcium in our bones once existed within stars. The universe continuously reshapes itself into new forms.
Life on Earth provides another expression of cosmic shapeshifting. Seeds become trees, caterpillars become butterflies, children become adults, ecosystems reorganize themselves through cooperation and struggle. Human beings, too, participate in these transformations. We inwardly change through emotions, relationships, imagination, memory, learning, and acts of creativity. We are not static beings moving through a changing world; we ourselves are among the world's ongoing acts of becoming.
From a Whiteheadian perspective, the deepest shapeshifting occurs moment by moment. Reality consists of countless acts of becoming in which the many become one and are increased by one. Every concrescing subject receives a world and responds to it, taking on a new form and contributing that form to what comes next. The universe itself is therefore not a finished object but a living process of form-shifting—an ongoing adventure in which reality continuously becomes otherwise.
What is a Shape?
a form of definiteness
A Whiteheadian understanding does not equate shape simply with geometric outlines, external appearances, or solid objects occupying regions of space. Rather, shape can be understood as a form of definiteness: a particular way in which reality becomes concrete. To have a shape is to possess a definite pattern or way of existing. Mountains, rivers, stars, trees, bodies, emotions, thoughts, and even experiences themselves all have shapes in this broader sense.
From a Whiteheadian perspective, we can distinguish between two kinds of shape: objective shape and subjective shape. Objective shape concerns the publicly observable and relational aspects of reality—the way things are situated, arranged, and related in the world. Subjective shape concerns the inward side of experience—the way reality is felt, valued, interpreted, and lived from within. Both are forms of definiteness, but they are analyzed differently.
Objective shape can be analyzed through what Whitehead calls coordinate division or coordinate analysis. Coordinate analysis examines a form in terms of its relations within the extensive continuum. It asks questions such as: Where is this entity? How is it related spatially and temporally to other entities? What pattern of relations does it occupy? The shape of a mountain, the flight path of a bird, the structure of a tree, or the bodily appearance of a werewolf—real or imagined—can all be understood in this way. And shape is not limited to solid objects. Liquids, gases, and plasma have shapes, too, even though these shapes are often fluid, dynamic, and changing. A river has a shape, a cloud has a shape, a storm system has a shape, and so does the glowing plasma of stars. Objective shape concerns the publicly observable patterns through which realities take form within the world.
Subjective shape can be analyzed through genetic division or genetic analysis. Genetic analysis asks not merely where something is, but how it came to be what it is and how it feels its becoming. It attends to the process by which a concrescing subject receives influences from the world and responds to them through its own subjective forms—its feelings, aims, emotions, contrasts, and valuations. Subjective shape is thus the inward pattern of experience itself: the felt shape of becoming.
From a Whiteheadian perspective, we can distinguish between two kinds of shape: objective shape and subjective shape. Objective shape concerns the publicly observable and relational aspects of reality—the way things are situated, arranged, and related in the world. Subjective shape concerns the inward side of experience—the way reality is felt, valued, interpreted, and lived from within. Both are forms of definiteness, but they are analyzed differently.
Objective shape can be analyzed through what Whitehead calls coordinate division or coordinate analysis. Coordinate analysis examines a form in terms of its relations within the extensive continuum. It asks questions such as: Where is this entity? How is it related spatially and temporally to other entities? What pattern of relations does it occupy? The shape of a mountain, the flight path of a bird, the structure of a tree, or the bodily appearance of a werewolf—real or imagined—can all be understood in this way. And shape is not limited to solid objects. Liquids, gases, and plasma have shapes, too, even though these shapes are often fluid, dynamic, and changing. A river has a shape, a cloud has a shape, a storm system has a shape, and so does the glowing plasma of stars. Objective shape concerns the publicly observable patterns through which realities take form within the world.
Subjective shape can be analyzed through genetic division or genetic analysis. Genetic analysis asks not merely where something is, but how it came to be what it is and how it feels its becoming. It attends to the process by which a concrescing subject receives influences from the world and responds to them through its own subjective forms—its feelings, aims, emotions, contrasts, and valuations. Subjective shape is thus the inward pattern of experience itself: the felt shape of becoming.
Shape-Taking and Shape-Making
Actualizing Forms through Acts of Decision
Actualities in Whitehead's philosophy are more than forms. Forms by themselves are patterns of definiteness—ways reality can be organized, structured, or felt. Above I distinguished between objective forms and subjective forms. Objective forms concern publicly observable patterns and relations: bodily structures, mountains, rivers, galaxies, movement through space, and the coordinated relationships among things. Subjective forms concern the inward side of becoming: emotional tones, valuations, aims, contrasts, intensities, and ways of feeling the world. Both are forms of definiteness, but possibilities for definiteness by themselves do not yet constitute concrete realities. A melody written on paper is not the same as a melody performed; a map is not the same as a journey; a script is not the same as a play enacted before an audience.
Actualities involve something further: the concrete actualization of objective and subjective forms through acts of self-creation. A concrescing subject receives possibilities and influences from the world and then determines, however slightly, how these possibilities will be integrated into a new moment of experience.
Whitehead calls this decision. Thus an actuality is not merely a form but an existential act of forming—a creative event in which objective forms and subjective forms are brought together in a unique act of becoming. Every actuality is not simply a shape but an act of shaping, not merely a form but a process of form-taking and form-making. Reality therefore consists not simply of forms but of acts of actualizing forms through ongoing self-creative activity.
Actualities involve something further: the concrete actualization of objective and subjective forms through acts of self-creation. A concrescing subject receives possibilities and influences from the world and then determines, however slightly, how these possibilities will be integrated into a new moment of experience.
Whitehead calls this decision. Thus an actuality is not merely a form but an existential act of forming—a creative event in which objective forms and subjective forms are brought together in a unique act of becoming. Every actuality is not simply a shape but an act of shaping, not merely a form but a process of form-taking and form-making. Reality therefore consists not simply of forms but of acts of actualizing forms through ongoing self-creative activity.
Three Kinds of Shapeshifting
1. Physical Shapeshifting
Physical shapeshifting involves transformation into another bodily form in a literal or outward sense. In myths and folklore this may involve becoming a wolf, bird, fox, serpent, or some other entity. In ordinary life it can also include assuming another outward identity through costumes, masks, make-up, performance, or role-playing. The outward form changes, whether literally or symbolically.
2. Psychological Shapeshifting
Psychological shapeshifting involves inwardly feeling transformed into another kind of being. A person may imaginatively identify with the body, movements, feelings, instincts, or ways of experiencing the world associated with another creature or entity. One may inwardly become wolf-like, bird-like, river-like, or cosmic without any outward bodily change. Dreams, stories, imagination, music, and encounters with nature often awaken this kind of transformation.
3. Spiritual Shapeshifting
Spiritual shapeshifting involves an empathic participation in the inner life of other beings. In Whiteheadian terms it may involve receiving, however partially, something of the subjective forms of other entities—their emotional tones, feelings, values, or ways of experiencing reality. It can involve entering sympathetically into the lives of other people, animals, ecosystems, and perhaps even God. In this sense spiritual shapeshifting is not becoming identical with another being but participating in its experience while honoring its uniqueness and otherness.
From a process perspective, these forms frequently overlap. Physical shapeshifting may awaken psychological transformation; psychological transformation may deepen spiritual participation; and spiritual participation may reshape how one experiences body, self, and world.
Physical shapeshifting involves transformation into another bodily form in a literal or outward sense. In myths and folklore this may involve becoming a wolf, bird, fox, serpent, or some other entity. In ordinary life it can also include assuming another outward identity through costumes, masks, make-up, performance, or role-playing. The outward form changes, whether literally or symbolically.
2. Psychological Shapeshifting
Psychological shapeshifting involves inwardly feeling transformed into another kind of being. A person may imaginatively identify with the body, movements, feelings, instincts, or ways of experiencing the world associated with another creature or entity. One may inwardly become wolf-like, bird-like, river-like, or cosmic without any outward bodily change. Dreams, stories, imagination, music, and encounters with nature often awaken this kind of transformation.
3. Spiritual Shapeshifting
Spiritual shapeshifting involves an empathic participation in the inner life of other beings. In Whiteheadian terms it may involve receiving, however partially, something of the subjective forms of other entities—their emotional tones, feelings, values, or ways of experiencing reality. It can involve entering sympathetically into the lives of other people, animals, ecosystems, and perhaps even God. In this sense spiritual shapeshifting is not becoming identical with another being but participating in its experience while honoring its uniqueness and otherness.
From a process perspective, these forms frequently overlap. Physical shapeshifting may awaken psychological transformation; psychological transformation may deepen spiritual participation; and spiritual participation may reshape how one experiences body, self, and world.
The Ethics of Shapeshifting
Not all shapeshifting is liberating, beautiful, or life-giving. Mythology and folklore have long recognized darker forms of transformation. The werewolf often embodies the fear that civilized restraint can collapse into violence. Vampires symbolize forms of desire that consume rather than nourish. Trickster figures sometimes blur the boundaries between creativity and deception. Many traditions imagine shapeshifters as disturbing precisely because they cross lines that people depend upon for stability and trust.
Something similar can occur in human life. People may undergo forms of internal shapeshifting that narrow rather than enlarge the soul. Fear can shapeshift into paranoia. Anger can shapeshift into hatred. Love of community can shapeshift into tribalism. Healthy convictions can shapeshift into fanaticism. A desire for order can shapeshift into domination and control. Sometimes people feel as if they have become strangers to themselves, inwardly transformed into forms they no longer recognize.
There are also socially contagious forms of shapeshifting. Entire communities can be reshaped by fear, propaganda, resentment, or collective fantasies. History offers many examples of populations inwardly transformed by hatred, nationalism, or the longing for powerful leaders who promise security. People may not outwardly grow claws or fangs, but inwardly something can become distorted and frightening.
Not every shapeshift enlarges life. Some diminish it. Some forms of becoming deepen beauty, compassion, and richness of experience; others narrow possibilities and imprison life within fear or destruction.
Perhaps the deepest question is not:
Are we shapeshifting?
because we are.
The deeper question is:
How might we shapeshift in service to life?
Something similar can occur in human life. People may undergo forms of internal shapeshifting that narrow rather than enlarge the soul. Fear can shapeshift into paranoia. Anger can shapeshift into hatred. Love of community can shapeshift into tribalism. Healthy convictions can shapeshift into fanaticism. A desire for order can shapeshift into domination and control. Sometimes people feel as if they have become strangers to themselves, inwardly transformed into forms they no longer recognize.
There are also socially contagious forms of shapeshifting. Entire communities can be reshaped by fear, propaganda, resentment, or collective fantasies. History offers many examples of populations inwardly transformed by hatred, nationalism, or the longing for powerful leaders who promise security. People may not outwardly grow claws or fangs, but inwardly something can become distorted and frightening.
Not every shapeshift enlarges life. Some diminish it. Some forms of becoming deepen beauty, compassion, and richness of experience; others narrow possibilities and imprison life within fear or destruction.
Perhaps the deepest question is not:
Are we shapeshifting?
because we are.
The deeper question is:
How might we shapeshift in service to life?
Inner Shapeshifting
1. Emotional Shapeshifting
The shift from one emotional landscape to another—joy into grief, fear into courage, anxiety into peace. We do not simply have emotions; we become differently through them.
2. Social Shapeshifting
The movement among roles and relationships: friend, parent, teacher, student, leader, listener, companion. Different contexts call forth different dimensions of ourselves.
3. Intellectual Shapeshifting
The ability to enter new worlds of thought, reconsider assumptions, and see reality from fresh perspectives. Learning itself is a form of becoming otherwise.
4. Imaginative Shapeshifting
The capacity to inhabit worlds beyond immediate reality through stories, dreams, poetry, art, and fantasy. Imagination lets us become larger than our present situation.
5. Musical Shapeshifting
The changes in feeling and identity that occur through music—singing, dancing, improvising, or listening. Music can call forth hidden selves.
6. Moral Shapeshifting
The transformation of values and priorities. A person discovers new forms of empathy, compassion, or responsibility and becomes someone different in the process.
7. Spiritual Shapeshifting
Experiences of awakening, conversion, contemplation, prayer, or profound peace that reorganize how one sees life and oneself.
8. Erotic Shapeshifting
Not merely sexual desire, but the broader movement of attraction, longing, and relational energy. Love often reveals dimensions of ourselves we did not know existed.
9. Prophetic Shapeshifting
Moments when people become agents of disruption and justice, casting off conformity in response to deeper callings. This may involve a kind of creative disruption—a willingness to become otherwise for the sake of love.
10. Ecological Shapeshifting
The realization that the self extends beyond the isolated ego into relationships with animals, plants, rivers, landscapes, and Earth itself. One begins to feel less like a separate individual and more like a participant in a larger web of life.
Instruments of Shapeshifting
Clothing, Masks, Costumes, and Tattoos
Clothing, masks, costumes, and tattoos have long played an important role in human shapeshifting because they make visible a possibility already present within human life: that identity is not entirely fixed. Across cultures people have used clothing, masks, costumes, and bodily markings in rituals, ceremonies, festivals, dramas, dances, and sacred performances. Clothing itself often carries shapeshifting power. Uniforms, robes, ceremonial garments, wedding attire, military clothing, religious vestments, and everyday styles of dress can alter how people perceive themselves and how they are perceived by others. Masks and costumes can invite people into animal forms, spiritual identities, social roles, or mythic worlds. Tattoos likewise can function as enduring acts of transformation, inscribing stories, loyalties, memories, aspirations, or symbols upon the body itself. The outward form changes, and with it there can come changes in movement, feeling, posture, voice, and self-understanding.
From a process perspective, clothing, masks, costumes, and tattoos are more than external additions placed upon an already completed self. They can function as lures for feeling, inviting new subjective forms into experience. The outward transformation may help awaken inward transformations. Someone wearing a bird costume in a dance may feel lighter and more expansive; a performer putting on royal clothing may discover unexpected confidence and authority; a child dressed as a dragon may inwardly become fierce and playful; someone receiving a tattoo may feel a new identity becoming more deeply rooted within life itself. Clothing, masks, costumes, and tattoos thus become instruments of shapeshifting: ways by which objective forms help evoke subjective forms, allowing people not merely to appear different but, for a time—or perhaps permanently—to become different.
From a process perspective, clothing, masks, costumes, and tattoos are more than external additions placed upon an already completed self. They can function as lures for feeling, inviting new subjective forms into experience. The outward transformation may help awaken inward transformations. Someone wearing a bird costume in a dance may feel lighter and more expansive; a performer putting on royal clothing may discover unexpected confidence and authority; a child dressed as a dragon may inwardly become fierce and playful; someone receiving a tattoo may feel a new identity becoming more deeply rooted within life itself. Clothing, masks, costumes, and tattoos thus become instruments of shapeshifting: ways by which objective forms help evoke subjective forms, allowing people not merely to appear different but, for a time—or perhaps permanently—to become different.
Animal Shapeshifting
Human beings are not the only shapeshifters. The natural world itself includes remarkable examples of creatures whose lives depend upon changing form, appearance, and patterns of interaction with their environments. In these cases shapeshifting is not magical but biological. Nature itself reveals that identity can be fluid and adaptive rather than rigid and fixed. The universe has apparently been experimenting with shapeshifting long before human beings began telling stories about werewolves and fox spirits.
The octopus offers one of the most extraordinary examples. An octopus can rapidly alter the color, texture, and pattern of its skin, blending into coral reefs, rocks, sand, and surrounding environments with astonishing precision. It does not simply hide itself; it seems almost to become part of the world around it. At one moment it may resemble a patch of stone, at another seaweed, and at another a moving shadow on the ocean floor. The transformation is not merely outward camouflage but part of an intelligent responsiveness to its surroundings.
Chameleons likewise alter their appearance, though not only for camouflage. They change coloration in response to mood, temperature, social interaction, and environmental conditions. Their changing colors become a form of communication as well as adaptation. The animal's appearance becomes a visible expression of inward and outward relationships
The octopus offers one of the most extraordinary examples. An octopus can rapidly alter the color, texture, and pattern of its skin, blending into coral reefs, rocks, sand, and surrounding environments with astonishing precision. It does not simply hide itself; it seems almost to become part of the world around it. At one moment it may resemble a patch of stone, at another seaweed, and at another a moving shadow on the ocean floor. The transformation is not merely outward camouflage but part of an intelligent responsiveness to its surroundings.
Chameleons likewise alter their appearance, though not only for camouflage. They change coloration in response to mood, temperature, social interaction, and environmental conditions. Their changing colors become a form of communication as well as adaptation. The animal's appearance becomes a visible expression of inward and outward relationships
A Metaphysics of Metamorphosis
Among the most influential books on shapeshifting in the Western world is Metamorphoses by Ovid. Written nearly two thousand years ago, the work is a vast collection of stories woven together by a single theme: transformation. Gods become animals; humans become trees, birds, rivers, stars, flowers, stones, and constellations. The stories move from the creation of the cosmos itself to the transformation of individual lives, creating the impression that reality is a world of continual becoming.
Many of Ovid's transformations arise from powerful experiences: love, jealousy, fear, grief, desire, anger, pride, punishment, longing, and divine intervention. Daphne becomes a laurel tree while fleeing pursuit. Narcissus becomes a flower after becoming trapped within his own reflection. Arachne becomes a spider. Philomela becomes a bird. Transformation in these stories is not random. It expresses something hidden within the person's situation, character, or destiny.
From a process perspective, Ovid's great intuition may be that beings are never entirely fixed. Reality itself appears fluid. Identity is not simply possessed once and for all; it unfolds and changes. The difference is that in Ovid these transformations often occur suddenly and dramatically, through acts of gods and fate, whereas process philosophy sees transformation occurring continually and everywhere. Ovid gives us moments of metamorphosis; Whitehead offers a metaphysics of metamorphosis.
Perhaps this is why Metamorphoses continues to speak so powerfully to readers. Beneath its magical stories lies a deeper intuition: the world is not composed of frozen substances but of lives continuously becoming otherwise. In that sense, Ovid's world and a process world may not be as far apart as they first appear.
Many of Ovid's transformations arise from powerful experiences: love, jealousy, fear, grief, desire, anger, pride, punishment, longing, and divine intervention. Daphne becomes a laurel tree while fleeing pursuit. Narcissus becomes a flower after becoming trapped within his own reflection. Arachne becomes a spider. Philomela becomes a bird. Transformation in these stories is not random. It expresses something hidden within the person's situation, character, or destiny.
From a process perspective, Ovid's great intuition may be that beings are never entirely fixed. Reality itself appears fluid. Identity is not simply possessed once and for all; it unfolds and changes. The difference is that in Ovid these transformations often occur suddenly and dramatically, through acts of gods and fate, whereas process philosophy sees transformation occurring continually and everywhere. Ovid gives us moments of metamorphosis; Whitehead offers a metaphysics of metamorphosis.
Perhaps this is why Metamorphoses continues to speak so powerfully to readers. Beneath its magical stories lies a deeper intuition: the world is not composed of frozen substances but of lives continuously becoming otherwise. In that sense, Ovid's world and a process world may not be as far apart as they first appear.
A God Who Adopts all Shapes
Just as we are shapeshifted by the world and then shapeshift in response, so from a process perspective the divine reality is likewise shapeshifted by the world and shapeshifts in response.
Considered in isolation from the world, God has no shape except love and a hunger for intensity of experience. These are not objective forms but rather subjective forms. They are God alone. And yet they are incomplete and even unconscious without a world to be loved and enjoyed. God needs the world in order to be fully God. This is where God becomes shapeshifted by the world and shapeshifting in the world. This is where God adopts all shapes.
That side of God which is shapeshifted by the world is what Whitehead calls the consequent nature of God. It consists of the world itself as the objective content of God's own experience and, more specifically, the physical pole of God's life. It is God's empathic feeling of the feelings of everything that happens in the world. This side of God consists not only in God's feeling of those feelings, but also in the feelings that are felt. They themselves become ingredients in divine experience. They are part of God. They are the many concrete forms and achievements of the world becoming woven into the divine life as they unfold. They are, as it were, God's body.
The other side of this process is the mental pole of God's experience. God responds to what is felt by entering into the world itself, and indeed into every concrescing subject, as an initial aim for responding to the situation at hand. The aim is "ideal" in the sense that, if actualized by the subject itself, it would yield the richest possible harmony and intensity, the fullest realization available relative to that particular situation.
Here the divine reality is not simply external, giving the aim as though the aim were something separate from God. The divine reality is itself present in the aim and thus inwardly present in the becoming subject itself, in the very location where that subject is becoming. In this sense God continually shifts shapes and adopts all shapes. becoming present in endlessly different locations throughout the universe, continuously and everywhere.
Thus there are two senses in which the divine reality participates in shapeshifting:
God is shapeshifted by the world.
The many forms of the world become part of the evolving life of God.
God shapeshifts into the world.
The divine reality becomes inwardly present within each becoming subject as a lure toward richer possibilities of existence.
The world enters God, and God enters the world. The divine life itself is a continuous movement of receiving, responding, and becoming.
The adoption of all shapes is one meaning of the Christian idea of incarnation. God is incarnate in the flesh of the world: that is, in the forms of the world that form part of God's body, and in the actualities that give them form. For the Christian, of course, the ultimate revelation of this incarnation is Jesus. He becomes, for the Christian, a window through which divine love, empathic and transformative, is felt and understood. A Buddhist will understand God as a cosmic Bodhisattva who, out of love for the world, assumes all forms, adopts all shapes. A Muslim will understand God as the all-merciful and all-compassionate, found through the world in the various aya (signs) of God, which are the world itself. A Hindu will understand God as Saguna Brahman, manifest in the whole of the cosmos and each soul. A Jew will understand God as Adonai, the one who makes a Noachic covenant with the whole of creation. These many ways of understanding a God who adopts all shapes are themselves shapes (subjective forms) that are added to the divine life. In that addition, the aim of God, for communion with the world, becomes more fully satisfied, for God's sake and for the world's sake.
Considered in isolation from the world, God has no shape except love and a hunger for intensity of experience. These are not objective forms but rather subjective forms. They are God alone. And yet they are incomplete and even unconscious without a world to be loved and enjoyed. God needs the world in order to be fully God. This is where God becomes shapeshifted by the world and shapeshifting in the world. This is where God adopts all shapes.
That side of God which is shapeshifted by the world is what Whitehead calls the consequent nature of God. It consists of the world itself as the objective content of God's own experience and, more specifically, the physical pole of God's life. It is God's empathic feeling of the feelings of everything that happens in the world. This side of God consists not only in God's feeling of those feelings, but also in the feelings that are felt. They themselves become ingredients in divine experience. They are part of God. They are the many concrete forms and achievements of the world becoming woven into the divine life as they unfold. They are, as it were, God's body.
The other side of this process is the mental pole of God's experience. God responds to what is felt by entering into the world itself, and indeed into every concrescing subject, as an initial aim for responding to the situation at hand. The aim is "ideal" in the sense that, if actualized by the subject itself, it would yield the richest possible harmony and intensity, the fullest realization available relative to that particular situation.
Here the divine reality is not simply external, giving the aim as though the aim were something separate from God. The divine reality is itself present in the aim and thus inwardly present in the becoming subject itself, in the very location where that subject is becoming. In this sense God continually shifts shapes and adopts all shapes. becoming present in endlessly different locations throughout the universe, continuously and everywhere.
Thus there are two senses in which the divine reality participates in shapeshifting:
God is shapeshifted by the world.
The many forms of the world become part of the evolving life of God.
God shapeshifts into the world.
The divine reality becomes inwardly present within each becoming subject as a lure toward richer possibilities of existence.
The world enters God, and God enters the world. The divine life itself is a continuous movement of receiving, responding, and becoming.
The adoption of all shapes is one meaning of the Christian idea of incarnation. God is incarnate in the flesh of the world: that is, in the forms of the world that form part of God's body, and in the actualities that give them form. For the Christian, of course, the ultimate revelation of this incarnation is Jesus. He becomes, for the Christian, a window through which divine love, empathic and transformative, is felt and understood. A Buddhist will understand God as a cosmic Bodhisattva who, out of love for the world, assumes all forms, adopts all shapes. A Muslim will understand God as the all-merciful and all-compassionate, found through the world in the various aya (signs) of God, which are the world itself. A Hindu will understand God as Saguna Brahman, manifest in the whole of the cosmos and each soul. A Jew will understand God as Adonai, the one who makes a Noachic covenant with the whole of creation. These many ways of understanding a God who adopts all shapes are themselves shapes (subjective forms) that are added to the divine life. In that addition, the aim of God, for communion with the world, becomes more fully satisfied, for God's sake and for the world's sake.
Addendum
There is something about a shapeshifter—a person who can transform into an animal—that captures our imagination; that causes us to want to howl at the moon, or flit through the night like a bat. Werewolves, vampires, demons, and other weird creatures appeal to our animal nature, our “dark side,” our desire to break free of the bonds of society and proper behavior. Real or imaginary, shapeshifters lurk deep in our psyches and remain formidable cultural icons. The myths, magic, and meaning surrounding shapeshifters are brought vividly to life in John B. Kachuba’s Shapeshifters: A History (Reaktion Books, 2019).
Rituals in early cultures worldwide seemingly allowed shamans, sorcerers, witches, and wizards to transform at will into animals and back again. Today, there are millions of people who believe that shapeshifters walk among us and may even be world leaders. Featuring a fantastic and ghoulish array of examples from history, literature, film, TV, and computer games, Shapeshifters explores our secret desire to become something other than human.
Rituals in early cultures worldwide seemingly allowed shamans, sorcerers, witches, and wizards to transform at will into animals and back again. Today, there are millions of people who believe that shapeshifters walk among us and may even be world leaders. Featuring a fantastic and ghoulish array of examples from history, literature, film, TV, and computer games, Shapeshifters explores our secret desire to become something other than human.