The Liminal Realm of Faerie

The concept of liminality is fairly recent, coming into usage by anthropologists, mainly to describe rituals and other events that place people on borders or boundaries. The realm of faerie, however, has been recognized for many centuries by people all over the world. And faerie has always been a liminal world, whether or not that term was ever used to describe it.

The place where faeries reside has often been called the Otherworld. It has been characterized as a place of eternal twilight. Twilight, of course, is the time between day and night, so it is by definition a liminal time. The same could be said for the first moments of sunrise, but twilight has traditionally been the time of day considered to be the most magical.

The time of year that corresponds best to twilight is the Celtic day of Samhain, now called Halloween, which marks the beginning of the dark half of the year. This day has traditionally been associated with both faeries and the dead. In both cases, the point is that the veil between worlds is thinner than usual.

Sometimes the land of faerie, as well as the place where people go after death, has been given a geographical location. One such place is Tir Na Nog, also called the Isle of the Blessed. In one traditional tale, Connla falls in love with a faerie woman who lures him to her home. When he then returns home, he finds everyone he knew has long died, as time passes far more slowly in the faerie world.

I suspect the recent resurgence in all things related to faeries parallels the sense that the world we live in is increasingly liminal. There is almost no end to the examples we could come up with about aspects of life today that are located on boundaries between times, cultures or ways of life. Faeries for their part, along with their kin elves, trolls, leprechauns and various types of Otherworldly denizens, have always existed in such a realm. A modern rendering of this idea can be found in Neal Gaiman's book, also a movie, Stardust , where an actual wall separates the land of mortals and the faerie world.

An older classic based on the same theme is Lord Dunsany's King of Elfland's Daughter. While faeries may not be what comes to mind when people think of liminality (for those who ever do think of it, that is), they are perhaps the best representatives of the liminal that you could ever imagine.

Faerie Realms

Flower Fairy Faerie Doll OOAK "Delilah" US $9.99 (0 Bid) Auction Ends: End Date: Sunday Sep-07-2008 20:58:54 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list

Click Here To View More 'faeries' Products >>