Word of the Week 8/12/18: Liminal

From BetterHelp.com:

It's talked about as a threshold, and indeed, the etymology of liminal comes from the Latin root word "limen," which means threshold. Liminal spaces are transitional or transformative spaces. They are the waiting areas between one point in time and space and the next. 

During a rite of passage, an individual is at the threshold between two different states of being. Quite often, it is the state between childhood and adulthood, the space between when one isn't quite a child anymore but is not yet an adult. The person is standing in a doorway and hasn't yet gone through. Many religions and belief systems explore these concepts and create rites of passage to coincide with the threshold moments in life.

The liminal veil is what we call the place where a transition occurs between the threshold and the place that waits before us. 

Liminal spaces are often physical places. In some cases, the same place may be at one time liminal and at other times not. Whenever we are at a place during a time that's not usual for that space, it can feel unsettling. Or if we're in a liminal space for longer than necessary to pass through to our actual destination, we may experience that same feeling of something being "off" that we can't quite pinpoint. Unfamiliar spaces tend to have more liminal qualities than those we see regularly.

Examples include: 

1. Stairways and elevators
2. Art galleries that are empty other than you
3. Hotel hallways late at night

4. School during breaks
5. Empty parking lots
6. Non-functioning lighthouses
7. The lighting section of hardware stores
8. Abandoned buildings
9. Airport lobbies

From Wikipedia:

In anthropology, liminality (from the Latin word līmen, meaning "a threshold") is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of rites, when participants no longer hold their preritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the rite is complete. During a rite's liminal stage, participants "stand at the threshold" between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way, which the rite establishes. Arnold Van Gennep, who coined the term liminality, published in 1909 his 'Rites de Passage', a work that explores and develops the concept of liminality in the context of rites in small-scale societies. Van Gennep began his book by identifying the various categories of rites. He distinguished between those that result in a change of status for an individual or social group, and those that signify transitions in the passage of time. In doing so, he placed a particular emphasis on rites of passage, and claimed that "such rituals marking, helping, or celebrating individual or collective passages through the cycle of life or of nature exist in every culture, and share a specific three-fold sequential structure".
This three-fold structure, as established by Van Gennep, is made up of the following components:

- preliminal rites (or rites of separation): This stage involves a metaphorical "death", as the initiate is forced to leave something behind by breaking with previous practices and routines.

 - liminal rites (or transition rites): Two characteristics are essential to these rites. First, the rite "must follow a strictly prescribed sequence, where everybody knows what to do and how". Second, everything must be done "under the authority of a master of ceremonies". The destructive nature of this rite allows for considerable changes to be made to the identity of the initiand. This middle stage (when the transition takes place) "implies an actual passing through the threshold that marks the boundary between two phases, and the term 'liminality' was introduced in order to characterize this passage. 

 - postliminal rites (or rites of incorporation): During this stage, the initiand is re-incorporated into society with a new identity, as a "new" being. 

An anthropological rite, especially a rite of passage, involves some change to the participants, especially their social status.; and in 'the first phase (of separation) comprises symbolic behaviour signifying the detachment of the individual...from an earlier fixed point in the social structure. Their status thus becomes liminal. In such a liminal situation, "the initiands live outside their normal environment and are brought to question their self and the existing social order through a series of rituals that often involve acts of pain: the initiands come to feel nameless, spatio-temporally dislocated and socially unstructured". In this sense, liminal periods are "destructive" as well as "constructive", meaning that "the formative experiences during liminality will prepare the initiand (and his/her cohort) to occupy a new social role or status, made public during the reintegration rituals".