Liminal Gods

The Pagan Experience: February 16, Week 3: Deity and the Divine- This will be the third week’s topic every month and an opportunity for you to share with everyone those who guide, inspire and inform you.

The other day, Pan came up in conversation. This is usually rather entertaining, as most people think Pan and they just think S-E-X. Perhaps they add partying in for a rather Bacchanalian image of drunken fornication. And sure, Pan is into that. But he is far more than this as well.

My favorite aspect of Pan has always been his liminality. I hadn't thought of it until this conversation, but he is a liminal god. And how can a halfling be anything else? Half goat, half man. Half divine, according to some. Half beast, half human, belonging fully to nothing.

Pan is a poet and a philosopher, and a musician. He sits at the border of the wilderness and cultivated lands, guarding the flocks and the shepherds. Occasionally he bewitches them with his flute, but I suspect that more often than not, he broods. He thinks about the nature of reality, and his place in it. Perhaps he dreams about the nymphs, perhaps he yearns for true love and connection. He possesses a sort of magnificent melancholy that breaks out into a divine madness from time to time. I also suspect that all shepherds and cowboys share this spirit to some degree.

After all, when one is surrounded by herd animals, alone on a broad prairie or pasture, what is there to do but face the Void?

Then I realized that nearly all of my personal pantheon are liminal deities. Gods of the crossroads, the borderlands. Gods of transformation, of the beginning. But what does that mean? 

Liminal is defined as:

1. of or relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process.
2. occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold.

The word comes from the Latin, "limen", meaning threshold. A liminal deity, then, is a Goddess or God who stands on the threshold.

Liminal deities share characteristics of helping humans understand and navigate their own liminal territories and to provide transcendence. Liminal deities also sometimes throw roadblocks in our way. They do this to further our growth, not for the sake of malice, though it is sometimes a rather tough love.

Once again, I was struck with a sense of rightness. What better sort of deity could there be for a witch, a walker between the worlds? And who better to look after a shaman, an explorer of spirit?

Suits me. The liminal spaces are where discoveries can be made. In the borderlands, the spaces between, anything is possible.

"Confuse the sacred and the secular in your environment. Create a liminal, neither here nor there, milieu. It is always in the liminal places that significant things happen, so work at creating liminality." 

-A Religion of One's Own, Thomas Moore pg 144

Look for the junction between mountain and valley, forest and meadow, creek and river, and there you will find them. Pan, Lord of the Hunt and keeper of shepherds. Cernunnos, Lord of the Wilderness and he who is sacrificed and reborn again and again. Hecate, the Torchbearer, Goddess of the Crossroads, holder of the keys to many realms. 

Look there, in the liminal spaces, and you will find me as well.