Up: [[The In-Between Times]] Created: 2024-01-18 Updated: 2025-01-11 The word ‘liminal’ comes from the Latin word ‘limen’, which means threshold. This term was coined by an ethnographer and folklorist named Arnold van Gennep in his 1909 book, *The Rites of Passage*. The way that van Gennep and, later, William Bridges use the term ‘liminal’, there is always a change in the individual as a result of inhabiting the liminal time. Victor Turner came up with another term ‘liminoid’ to describe a liminal experience that does not result in a change. There’s no societal rite involved in a liminoid experience. It’s simply an optional transitional moment in time, such as flying in an airplane or inhabiting any [[Liminal Space]]s. Turner’s term doesn’t get a lot of play and I don’t bother with it. I’m interested in the experience of liminality as inner psychological change and don’t need to pick apart the nuances of exactly when and where that change qualifies as happening.