Liminal being
Liminality (from the Latin limen, "threshold") has been defined as 'a semi-autonomous zone of social reality'.[1] Liminal beings are associated with that intermediate status: 'Turner argues that the liminal personae are "necessarily ambiguous, since this condition and these persons elude or slip through the network of classifications that normally locate states...in cultural space"'[2] - hence, by extension or analogy, has come the creation of legendary liminal beings.
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[edit] Liminal entities
'Liminal entities, such as neophytes in initiation or puberty rites...may be disguised as monsters' - representing the way liminality entails that 'the opposites, as it were, constitute one another...successive experience of high and low'.[3] Thus 'the structural invisibility of liminal personae has a two-fold character. They are at once no longer classified and not yet classified';[4] and liminal beings are accordingly both dangerous - 'Mary Douglas has written extensively on the dangers associated with liminal creatures'[5] - and potentially beneficent: presiding over a ritual's liminal stage we may find 'a shaman with horns and hoofs...semihuman beings in animal disguise' or 'the appearance of strong "tutelary" figures...[like]Cheiron, the wise centaur'.[6] By analogy, liminal beings of a mixed, hybrid nature appear regularly in myth, legend and fantasy.
[edit] Legendary liminal beings
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):
- Centaurs from classical mythology, among them Chiron, the mentor of Achilles
- Yali (Hindu mythology)
- 'a liminal figure, like the Sphinx...straddling the divide between animal and human, and partaking of both'.[7]
Both human and spirit by blood:
- Merlin is a Cambion, the son of a woman and an incubus[8]
- Caliban in William Shakespeare's play The Tempest.
- Abe no Seimei, legendarily attributed a human father but a kitsune (fox spirit) mother
Both human and vegetable:
- the Green Man
Both alive and dead:
- ghosts, among them Tiresias, the dead seer whom Odysseus consulted in the underworld, in the Odyssey
Both human and machine:
- In science fiction, liminal beings include cyborgs, such as the Bionic Woman and Seven of Nine from Star Trek.
Both human and alien:
- hybrids or adoptives torn between their human and alien natures, such as Spock from Star Trek or Valentine Michael Smith from Stranger in a Strange Land.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Frank Musgrove, Margins of the Mind (Taylor & Francis) p. 8
- ^ Dean A. Nicholas, The Trickster Revisited p. 37
- ^ Victor Turner, in J. C. Alexander and S. Seidman, Culture and Society (Cambridge 1990) p. 147 and 149
- ^ Thomas Quartier, Bridging the Gaps p. 103-4
- ^ lynne Hume, Portals (2007) p. 110
- ^ Aniela Jaffe and Joseph Henderson, in C. G. Jung ed., Man and his Symbols (London 19780 p. 261-2 and p. 101
- ^ Teresa de Lauretis, Freud's Drive (Basingstoke 2008) p. 119
- ^ Katharine Briggs (1976) An Encyclopedia of Fairies, Hobgoblins, Brownies, Boogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures. New York, Pantheon Books. "Wizards" p.440 ISBN 0-394-73467-X
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