Formlessness occupies a pivotal position across the depth-psychological corpus, functioning simultaneously as ontological substrate, cosmogonic precondition, spiritual threshold, and psychological danger. The term is not univocal: Plotinus treats it as the paradoxical ‘invincible formlessness’ of Matter — the permanent capacity for form-reception that is itself never a form — while also distinguishing a ‘formless Form’ at the apex of beauty, where all shape must be stripped away to approach the One. Gnostic traditions, extensively documented by Jung, Jonas, and Edinger, deploy formlessness to mark the fallen or unredeemed state: in Basilides, the third sonship descends into formlessness through impurity; in Valentinianism, the ‘abortion’ expelled from the Pleroma is precisely a formless residue requiring the Christos to impart structure. Augustine’s meditations on primordial matter press the same topos through a Christian cosmogony — formless matter as the ‘nothing something’ that precedes creation yet derives its minimal being from God. Armstrong’s mythological survey locates formlessness at the origin of cosmogonic conflict: the dragon symbolises the undifferentiated from which cosmos must be wrested. Hillman’s archetypal psychology rehabilitates chaos-as-formlessness as generative, insisting on its erotic and creative necessity. Together, these voices establish formlessness as the condition that precedes individuation, demands differentiation, and yet retains a paradoxical dignity as the ground of all possible form.
does not this precisely mean that it never ceases to be itself, in other words that its one form is an invincible formlessness? In no other sense has Plato’s dictum any value
Plotinus argues that Matter’s constitutive evasion of every determinate shape is itself a kind of permanent identity — its ‘one form’ is an absolute, invincible formlessness.
, The Six Enneads, 270thesis
the sonship that had been left behind in a formless state … needed separating into its components, in the same way that Jesus was separated.
Jung’s citation of Basilides presents formlessness as the impure, composite condition of the third sonship that requires the redemptive separatio of Christ to differentiate and elevate.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951thesis
the continued existence of the product of the corrected ignorance, of the formlessness, though expelled, is in its present condition a constant reproach to the Sophia
Jonas shows that in Valentinian cosmology formlessness persists as an ongoing theological problem — an expelled but unredeemed residue requiring the Christos to impart form to it.
, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, 1958thesis
where exists Formlessness, it was requisite that the various orders of created objects that had been confounded together should be distinguished by a separating process performed by Jesus
Edinger cites the Gnostic Basilides to argue that formlessness names the confused, undifferentiated cosmic condition that Christ’s Passion psychologically enacts as a separatio of mixed components.
, Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy, 1985thesis
This formless Form is beautiful as Form, beautiful in proportion as we strip away all shape even that given in thought to mark difference
Plotinus paradoxically designates the Intellectual-Principle’s highest register as a ‘formless Form’ — beauty achieved precisely by the progressive subtraction of every determinate shape, including conceptual distinctions.
, The Six Enneads, 270thesis
In almost all cultures, the dragon symbolizes the latent, the unformed and the undifferentiated. Baal has thus halted the slide back to primal formlessness in a truly creative act
Armstrong identifies formlessness as the mythic condition represented by the primordial dragon, which cosmogonic heroes must defeat to establish differentiated, inhabitable order.
, A History of God, 1993supporting
in the Beginning God made heaven and earth; that is, ‘in the very beginning of creating and working, did God make that formless matter, confusedly containing in itself both heaven and earth’
Augustine surveys multiple interpretive traditions that locate formless matter as the primordial substrate — confused, dark, and orderless — from which God’s creative act draws differentiated existence.
, Confessions, 397supporting
the changeableness of changeable things, is itself capable of all those forms, into which these changeable things are changed. And this changeableness, what is it?
Augustine treats formless changeableness as the underlying receptive capacity of creaturely existence — a ‘nothing something’ that is ontologically prior to every determinate form yet dependent on God for even that minimal being.
, Confessions, 397supporting
the Mind, putting aside all attributes perceptible to sense… comes upon a residuum which it cannot bring under determination… in the state of the eye which, when directed towards darkness, has become in some way identical with the object of its spurious vision. There is vision, then, in this approach of the Mind towards Matter? Some vision, yes; of shapelessness, of colourlessness
Plotinus describes the soul’s perception of Matter as a quasi-vision of pure shapelessness — the mind becoming like darkness itself when it strips away all qualities to encounter formless substrate.
, The Six Enneads, 270supporting
the Sophia who dwells above, compelled by necessity, departed with suffering from the Pleroma into the darkness and empty spaces of the void. Separated from the light of the Pleroma, she was without form or figure, like an untimely birth
Jung records the Gnostic figure of Sophia-Achamoth whose fall into the void produces a state of formlessness — an untimely birth severed from the luminous Pleroma — that must be redeemed by the descent of Christos.
, Alchemical Studies, 1967supporting
since chaos is also a gap, an emptiness or lacuna, eros has a predilection for the p… chaos and creativeness are inseparable.
Hillman rehabilitates formlessness-as-chaos as the necessary generative ground of creativity and eros, opposing the Apollonic drive to reduce all disorder to determinacy.
, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972supporting
the form does not evolve and is not modified because it does not contain any potentiality, whereas the matter evolves. The matter is the bearer of potentialities that expand and are distributed uniformly in it
Simondon implicitly frames the formless (pre-individual matter) as the bearer of potentialities, inverting the classical hierarchy by locating dynamic energy in the unformed rather than in the imposed form.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020aside