@futurebird Whatever it was, they called it something else. The word "liminal" dates from 1875, with a different meaning, and remained rare until around 1980. Since then, its popularity has increased tenfold, I suspect mostly in the modern sense.

That is of course not to say that people didn't or couldn't perceive things that way earlier, but it does seem like we talk about it much more now than in the past.

@futurebird huh. You've got me thinking about liminal times and how so many cultures celebrate solstices and have big coming-of-age ceremonies.

But also, the River Styx? Purgatory? The veil between the worlds of the living and the dead?

@futurebird
In "Fairies and Fairy Stories: A History", Diane Purkiss makes a (I think) compelling case that the defining feature of fairy lore is a liminal quality. Especially locations, places, situations, and states of being that strike the mind as transitional, between, "off" or similarly at the margins of what is known and normal.

https://www.amazon.com/Fairies-Fairy-Stories-History-2007-09-28/dp/B01FIXC74A

#Liminal #Fairy #Fey

@futurebird

1900s... I'd say train stations and sea ports.

For early humans, the border between ecosystems. The edge of the desert for people of the savanna, the edge of the wood for plain dwellers, or the edge of the tundra for the forest dwellers. I assume it would be since I have, on a hike, went through the transition between boreal forest and tundra and I really feels like stepping into a different reality.