Liminal being – Wikipedia

Posted on by

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Being that cannot be easily placed into a single category of existence

Liminal beings are those that cannot easily be placed into a single category of existence. Associated with the threshold state of liminality, from Latin līmen, “threshold”,[1] they represent and highlight the semi-autonomous boundaries of the social world.[2]

Liminal beings are naturally ambiguous, challenging the cultural networks of social classification.[3]

Liminal entities[edit]

The cultural anthropologist Victor Turner considered that liminal entities, such as those undergoing initiation rites, often appeared in the form of monsters, so as to represent the co-presence of opposites—high/low; good/bad—in the liminal experience.[4]

Liminal personas are structurally and socially invisible, having left one set of classifications and not yet entered another.[5] The social anthropologist Mary Douglas has highlighted the dangerous aspects of such liminal beings,[6] but they are also potentially beneficent. Thus we often find presiding over a ritual’s liminal stage a semi-human shaman figure, or a powerful mentor with animal aspects, such as a centaur.[7]

Legendary[edit]

By extension, liminal beings of a mixed, hybrid nature appear regularly in myth, legend and fantasy. A legendary liminal being is a legendary creature that combines two distinct states of simultaneous existence within one physical body. This unique perspective may provide the liminal being with wisdom and the ability to instruct, making them suitable mentors, whilst also making them dangerous and uncanny.

Many beings in fantasy and folklore exist in liminal states impossible in actual beings:

Hybrids (two species):

Both human and spirit by blood:

Both human and vegetable:

Both alive and dead:

  • ghosts, among them Tiresias, the dead seer whom Odysseus consulted in the underworld, in the Odyssey. Tiresias also had been transformed into a woman and back into a man while living, and was blind as well as a seer.

Both human and machine:

Both human and alien:

Both human beings as well as deities:

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ “liminal”, Oxford English Dictionary. Ed. J.A. Simpson and E.S.C. Weiner. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. OED Online Oxforde 23, 2007.
  2. ^ Musgrove, Frank (1977). Margins of the Mind. Taylor & Francis. p. 8. ISBN 9780416550504.
  3. ^ Nicholas, Dean A. (2009). The Trickster Revisited: Deception as a Motif in the Pentateuch. Peter Lang. p. 37. ISBN 9781433102264.
  4. ^ Alexander, J. C.; Seidman, S. (1990). Culture and Society. Cambridge. pp. 147–9. ISBN 9780521359399.
  5. ^ Quartier, Thomas (2007). Bridging the Gaps: An Empirical Study of Catholic Funeral Rites. LIT Verlag Münster. pp. 103–4. ISBN 9783825807467.
  6. ^ Hume, Llynne (2007). Portals: Opening Doorways to Other Realities Through the Senses. Berg. p. 110. ISBN 9781845201456.
  7. ^ Aniela Jaffe and Joseph Henderson, in C. G. Jung ed., Man and his Symbols (London 1968 p. 261-2 and p. 101
  8. ^ a b c [Gilmore, David D. (2012) Monsters: Evil Beings, Mythical Beasts, and All Manner of Imaginary Terrors. University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 38-45]
  9. ^ Lauretis, Teresa de (2008). Freud’s Drive: Psychoanalysis, Literature and Film. Basingstoke. p. 119. ISBN 9780230524781.
  10. ^ Briggs, Katharine (1976). “Wizards”. An Encyclopedia of Fairies, Hobgoblins, Brownies, Boogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures. New York: Pantheon Books. p. 440. ISBN 0-394-73467-X.

Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]