Liminal spaces

The word liminal comes from the Latin word limen, which means threshold. Cultural anthropologists have used the word liminality to describe the space/time between the ritual death and rebirth that occurs in initiation rites.

The concept of liminal space indicates a transient, unlimited space that is part of a change from one state to the second, it is a space of the unknown, of confusion and uncertainty in which the old truths have been abandoned, and new ideas have not yet emerged. This transitional space often begins with a feeling of loss, crisis, fear,nonsense and awareness that there is no longer a return. In the process, we give up the old meanings and enter into a space of the marginal where new ones have not yet been created.

“A place that simultaneously contains polarized opposites such as death and birth, and where neither pole prevails, can be a place filled with possibilities” (J.C. Miller). The liminality begins by recognizing the threshold of our perception and understanding, where opposites coexist and therefore we enter a transformative zone according to the potential of creation and the birth of the new.