Liminality: The Hallway

Liminality is like being in a long hallway between two rooms. You have left your old bedroom, but you have not reached the new one yet. It can feel a bit spooky because you are not anywhere specific. In the underworld, this is the time when you are not the person you used to be, but you do not know who you are going to become. It is a magical time because anything is possible in the hallway. You learn to trust your feet even when you cannot see the next door. It is the space where the old you finishes changing into the new you.

You are standing on a bridge where both ends are hidden by mist. You cannot see the land. But feel the strength of the bridge beneath you. The hallway is not nowhere. The hallway is everywhere at once.

Liminality (Latin limen: threshold), developed by van Gennep and Victor Turner: a period of transition where normal social hierarchies and identities dissolve. During descent, liminality is the stripping phase — the traveler reduced to basic elements. Essential for innovation and growth because the liminal space, betwixt and between, is a site of pure potentiality allowing re-seeding of personality.

SOUND: The hum of a fluorescent light in a quiet room.

SMELL: The scent of nothing: completely clean, filtered air.

TASTE: A plain rice cracker: neutral, waiting for flavor.

TOUCH: Walking through a thick fog: touching everything and nothing.

SIGHT: A horizon where the gray sky meets a gray sea: no line between them.

BODY: Feeling unbalanced or tilting slightly while standing still: the hallway wobble.

Music: Leap of Faith by Bruce Springsteen

Part of The Underworld & Descent — MYTHOLOGY — Education Revelation