The Liminal Chamber
This article is taken from the May 2021 issue of Fraternal Review titled, “The Middle Chamber”.
Central to the idea of the Middle Chamber of King Solomon’s temple is the very notion of middle-ness itself, what in anthropology is known as liminality.
Based on the Latinate for threshold, the adjective “liminal” refers to those conditions which occur, to quote British cultural anthropologist Victor Turner, “betwixt-and-between” normal states of being [1]. It is a largely undefinable state which is ‘neither this nor that,’ ‘neither here nor there,’ but ‘somewhere’ or ‘something’ between one state of existence and another.
RITE OF PASSAGE
Coined in 1909 by the French folklorist Arnold van Gennep, liminality is especially significant regarding his concept of the rite of passage, where the liminal state serves as the second of three distinct phases of being.
The three phases of Van Gennep’s rite of passage are: separation from the profane, transition (the liminal state proper), and incorporation into the sacred [3]. Separation serves to isolate one from his normal, every-day, waking life; from the “profane.”
A STATE OF BEING
Incorporation constitutes one’s successful penetration into the new, uncharted state of being; into the “sacred.” The transitional or liminal phase, then, may be said to be something of a neutral state, where one exists only in a condition of pure, unrealized potential.
He is neither alive nor dead; awake nor asleep; male nor female; he has neither category nor quality. Indeed, at the point of the liminal crisis, the candidate undergoing a rite of passage simply ceases to exist in the normal meaning of the term.
In the rite of passage that is constituted by the three degrees of Ancient Craft Freemasonry, the transitional or liminal phase proper is perhaps best illustrated by the Fellowcraft’s own rite of passage—namely, by the ritual of his “Passing” between the two pillars of King Solomon’s temple. This “threshold” state is then translated into the Middle Chamber itself, which, as we’ve seen, is an apt symbol of liminality in its own right.
CHRISTIANITY & LIMINALITY
In Eastern Orthodox Christianity, the liminal phase may be said to be constituted by the catechumen stage, which occurs after a hearer or inquirer into the religion has declared himself, and has undergone the corres- ponding ceremony. While this ritual indeed separates him from the profane, by making him a member of the Orthodox Church, he is not able to partake of the Eucharist until he has been through chrismation and baptism by the priest, thus incorporating him into what The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom calls “the Faithful.” Until that time, he is liminal.
An illustration of liminality may even be drawn from the very image of the crucifix itself, where the Christian savior appears suspended on a crux between paradoxical opposites: He is man, yet He is God; He is alive, yet He was crucified; the Theotokos is mother, yet virgin; God is immanent, yet transcendent; the Eucharist is common bread and wine, yet they are also His veritable body and blood.
CHARACTERIZING LIMINALITY
The liminal state is one which exists outside the normal categories of being and is thus not always easily defined. Indeed, liminality is characterized by its very lack of definition.
One might liken the liminal state to Kabbalist Isaac Luria’s concept of Tzimtzum [4]. Hebrew for contraction or constriction, Tzimtzum alludes to the creative process whereby an infinite Deity might restrict Himself, creating a space of not-Self, so that Self-as- other might have the benefit of the appearance or simulation of a separate, independent existence. God’s activity of Self-contraction in effect created a liminal space wherein the act of creation was rendered a real possibility.
Liminality is perhaps best summed up in the following quotation from Victor Turner:
“The essential feature of [liminality] is that the neophytes are neither living nor dead from one aspect, and both living and dead from another. Their condition is one of ambiguity and paradox, a confusion of all the customary categories. Jakob Boehme, the German mystic whose obscure writings gave Hegel his celebrated dialectical ‘triad,’ liked to say that ‘in Yea and Nay all things consist.’ Liminality may perhaps be regarded [...] as a realm of pure possibility... [1]”
Written by P.D. Newman
REFERENCES
Turner, Victor. “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage.” The Forest of Symbols. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967.
Turner, Victor. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. London, UK: Routledge, 1995.
Van Gennep, Arnold. The Rites of Passage. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 2019.
Vital, Hayyim. The Tree of Life: The Palace of Adam Kadmon—Chayyim Vital’s Introduction to the Kabbalah of Isaac Luria. New York, NY: Arizal Publications, 2008.