The Void Archetype: Endings, Beginnings and Surrender

Stepping Into the Void: The Archetype of Fertile Darkness

This month in my newsletter, we explored The Void archetype; the liminal, formless space before transformation takes shape.

The Void is often misunderstood as emptiness or failure, but when we explore it’s energy, and in particular its light aspects, we can experience it as a threshold where endings meet beginnings, and a quiet place where our intuition has the space to speak.

If you’re new here I’m Laura, a counsellor, ecotherapist, and a somatic trauma therapist. My offerings are all about supporting you to connect with yourself and the world around you. I work with archetypes in both my therapy practice and my Sacred Somatic Journeys series, which are audio guided practices that invite you to explore archetypal themes, ritual practice and nature connection, through attunement to the body.

I talk about archetypes and their origins, including where they appear in folklore and psychology, how to work with them and understanding their light and dark aspects here.

I wanted to expand on what I shared in my newsletter here, because The Void archetype is something many of us meet instinctively during times of transition, uncertainty, or inner upheaval. It’s rich with potential, but only when we learn to stop resisting its vastness!

In this post, we’ll look deeper into the nature of the Void, explore its gifts and shadows, and I’ll share some spiritual and psychological perspectives that treat this darkness as a generative force rather than something to escape.

The Archetypal Void

Etymologically, the word void is related to vacancy, vanity, vastness and waste.

The Void is an archetype that I have connected with a lot in my own journey and in the past it often felt tumultuous. I found myself crashing into this archetype when navigating changes, thresholds and transitions and I often felt a lot of resistance to the not-knowing of it all.

We’re taught to fear the empty spaces in our lives; the moments when we can’t see what’s next, when a chapter has ended, but the new one hasn’t started. We sometimes call it loss, failure or feeling stuck, but The Void appears across cultures as the place before creation.

In the Hebrew creation story, the earth is “without form, and void.” In Greek myth, the first being is Chaos, not ‘disorder’ as we commonly interpret it, but as an immense cosmic openness and the generative source of all things. From Chaos came Gaia, the ancestral mother and embodiment of Earth; Tartaros, the deep underworld; and Eros, the primal force of love whose energy sparks all of creation.

The Gestalt Therapy Perspective

In Gestalt therapy, one of the modalities I work with as a counsellor and therapist, the fertile void is the spacious pause that appears within the ‘cycle of experience’. The Gestalt cycle of experience describes how we naturally move from sensing that something needs our attention, to focusing on it clearly, to taking meaningful action and completing it, and then returning to a place of rest within ourselves and our surroundings; a process shaped by our ongoing relationship with the world around us (what Gestalt calls the field).

Rather than a collapse or numbing, The Fertile Void is a generative nothingness, where sensation, intuition, and authentic desire can emerge. Fritz Perls, Laura Perls, and Paul Goodman, the founders of Gestalt therapy, describe the void as a natural space where new ideas, creativity, and direction can grow, but we have to be present in it, and not rush past it, for anything new to emerge.

Light and Dark Aspects

As I share in my post about archetypes, “each archetype has duel aspects; light and integrated, or dark and unintegrated. Both are part of its full expression. The light aspect shows the integrated qualities; the aspects that support growth, connection, and wellbeing. The dark aspect often emerges when patterns are outside of our awareness, or denied and pushed away.”

The Void Archetype when Light: Spaciousness, surrender, deep intuition, fertile stillness, and the ability to trust the unseen. A capacity to rest in mystery, allowing transformation to emerge without force.

The Void Archetype when Dark: Numbness, dissociation, stagnation, or fear of emptiness. Avoidance of action or responsibility, collapsing into despair or the belief that “nothing matters.” Becoming lost in the formlessness rather than nourished by it.

Can we view the void as a space that isn’t barren? A liminal space, like the Earth in autumn and winter, where seeds root in darkness long before they rise toward the light.

The Void can be a place of surrender, rather than collapse. A place where you have the space to listen to your intuition.

This archetype asks:
How might surrender open a path forward?

A Free Somatic Practice to Explore The Void

In my Sacred Somatic Journeys series this month, we explore The Void archetype through the folklore of The Morrígan, the Irish goddess who lives at the edges of transformation.

The Morrígan is a being of many faces and shifting forms. She appears on the edges of battlefields as a crow, a wolf, an eel, a woman and a crone. She is the watcher at the thresholds between life and death. In this sample section, you’ll explore movement, embodied presence and guided imagery, connect with themes of thresholds and inner authority. You can explore a 16 minute sample of the practice below.

You might also want to explore the full 60 minute practice, which explores The Void, The Womb (from a non-gendered perspective) and stepping into Sovereignty, as well as this month’s Embodied Nature practice which explores Leaning into Darkness. Both of themes connect deeply with the archetypal energy of the void, exploring thresholds, boundaries and surrender. You can check out these practices here.

Other Ways to Work with The Void

Practice Spacious Presence: sit with the feeling of “nothing happening” without trying to fix, fill or solve it. Let the silence be a container rather than a problem. Notice what sensations or impulses arise when you stop pushing for clarity.

Work at the Edges: pay attention to threshold moments; the end of a breath, the pause before speaking, the moment after letting something go. These liminal edges are micro-portals into the Void and help build capacity for the unknown.

Let Something Die on Purpose: choose one pattern, habit, or identity you’re ready to release. Offer it consciously to the Void. Allow the emptiness that follows to be fertile ground rather than something to escape.

Do Nothing (On Purpose): set a short period of time where your only task is to not-do. This is not collapse, it’s intentional surrender. Notice how your nervous system responds when productivity or direction is gently paused.

Create From Darkness: begin a creative act; writing, movement, art without a plan. Start in the void of not-knowing and let form emerge organically. This mirrors the mythic pattern where creation rises from darkness before it takes shape.

The more faithfully you can endure here, The more refined your heart will become.

As I share in my blog post about archetypes, whether they’re viewed psychologically, spiritually, or both, archetypes can offer a framework for self-understanding and growth. When we create a space to explore our core patterns differently, this can facilitate shadow work, allow us to safely connect with repressed aspects of ourselves and support trauma healing by reframing personal stories.

To finish, I’ll share a poem that I read in a circle I held last year, where we explored the theme of the void in depth. I find the line “The more faithfully you can endure here, The more refined your heart will become” especially comforting when I think of my own journey with The Void. What happens when we surrender, release control and allow what ever comes next to arrive without striving.


For the Interim Time, by John O’Donohue

When near the end of day, life has drained

Out of light, and it is too soon

For the mind of night to have darkened things,

No place looks like itself, loss of outline

Makes everything look strangely in-between,

Unsure of what has been, or what might come.

In this wan light, even trees seem groundless.

In a while it will be night, but nothing

Here seems to believe the relief of darkness.

You are in this time of the interim

Where everything seems withheld.

The path you took to get here has washed out;

The way forward is still concealed from you.

The old is not old enough to have died away;

The new is still too young to be born.

You cannot lay claim to anything;

In this place of dusk,

Your eyes are blurred;

And there is no mirror.

Everyone else has lost sight of your heart

And you can see nowhere to put your trust;

You know you have to make your own way through.

As far as you can, hold your confidence.

Do not allow confusion to squander

This call which is loosening

Your roots in false ground,

That you might come free

From all you have outgrown.

What is being transfigured here in your mind,

And it is difficult and slow to become new.

The more faithfully you can endure here,

The more refined your heart will become

For your arrival in the new dawn.

from: “Benedictus, A Book of Blessings” by John O’Donohue, Bantam Press, 2007