Notes on Liminal Deities

A liminal deity is a god or goddess in mythology who presides over thresholds, gates, or doorways; "a crosser of boundaries".[1] These gods are believed to oversee a state of transition of some kind; such as, the old to the new, the unconscious to the conscious state, the familiar to the unknown.[2]

Types of liminal deities include dying-and-rising deities, various agricultural deities, psychopomps and those who descend into the underworld: crossing the threshold between life and death. Vegetation deities mimic the annual dying and returning of plant life, making them seasonally cyclical liminal deities in contrast to the one-time journey typical of the dying-and-rising myth.

Etymology

The word liminal, first attested to in English in 1884, comes from the Latin word limen, meaning 'threshold'.[3] Liminality is a term given currency in the twentieth century by British cultural anthropologist Victor Turner.[4] It is used to describe a state of transition; such as from the old to the new, from the familiar to the unknown, even from an unconscious to the conscious state.[2]

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