Liminal places, Gods and Tarot

At some particular point during my esoteric studies, the word Liminal kept jumping at me. It was like I couldn’t get away from it. I seemed to keep reading liminal places on every other pages of any books I’d be picking up and frankly, I just didn’t get what it meant. I was struggling with the idea and growing up in the south of France, well, I rarely heard these words. Just as I was taught in school, I looked it up in a dictionary and found the following

Liminal (adjective):

• Oxford Learner's Dictionaries: "Between two different states, places, etc." For example, "They inhabit the liminal space between childhood and adulthood."

  Oxford Learner's Dictionaries

This gave me some clues. I started meditating on the matter and it came to me that when in meditation, we are in a liminal space. We are neither completely conscious or unconscious. We are in between. Thinking further, whilst we wake from sleep, there is this time in between. Some people wake up very quickly, therefore spend little time in the liminal space between sleep and awake, and some others, like myself, spend an awful long time trying to extract themselves from the sleeping state with a pot of very strong coffee every morning.

As I am writing, I look out the window and I think, this window is a liminal space. It is between the inside and outside. The door frame of my bedroom is also a liminal space. Let’s not stop here but think further. How about train stations, crossroads, borders, forests and so on? And how about a mood swing? Isn’t there is a liminal point in there too?

When one starts thinking about it, we can see liminality everywhere. It then provides us the ability to start meditating on the fabric of life. We can start to see where the elements start and end, where they meet. Our mind can start to travel in these thin spaces that make up the fabric of life.

Being able to sit in the Liminal space is to be able to have a foot in one place, one world, one state of being and the other foot in another. I can’t help but think that this is how divination works.

If our mind can get in this crack, the liminality, we could start to see and understand how we can transform and modify. If we have a foot on either side, all there is to do is to put more weight on the desired side to influence the balance.

When I am asked which pantheon I like to work with the most, it is always the Greek one. These Myths have been with me from a young age and I can’t help but think that my blood comes from there. Within this pantheon, a few gods come to mind. The first one is Hecate. She is an ancient goddess loved and feared by all, including the other gods. She does have the power to move freely between worlds. It is Hecate who is often depicted as warning Demeter about Persephone's abduction. When Persephone is taken by Hades to the underworld, Demeter, her mother, searches for her relentlessly. During this search, Hecate, who is associated with the moon, witchcraft, and the underworld, comes to Demeter and informs her that she has heard Persephone’s cries, but she did not see who took her. Hecate then aids Demeter in her search by guiding her to the god Helios, who reveals that it was Hades who abducted Persephone. This is a key moment in the myth of Persephone’s abduction, as Hecate's role is important in connecting the events to the deeper, underworld realm and supporting Demeter in her quest. Demeter in the light and Persephone in the darkness are linked by Hecate. She is the one that connects the upper and underworld. We could say that she is the goddess of liminal spaces as well. It is also said that if you want to connect with Hecate, you must make an offering at a crossroad. Here again we have the mention of a liminal space and as she is also the goddess of witchcraft, we can say that understanding the liminal spaces is to be able to use witchcraft.

The other deity worth mentioning here is Hermes. More precisely, Hermes, as the psychopomp, is one of his most important roles in Greek mythology. A psychopomp is a guide of souls to the afterlife, leading them from the realm of the living to the realm of the dead. In this role, Hermes serves as the messenger and intermediary between the gods and mortals, particularly at the time of death. His role as a psychopomp is most closely associated with his swift and cunning nature, as well as his ability to travel between realms. Hermes is often depicted with his caduceus (a staff intertwined with two serpents), which symbolizes his authority and power over boundaries, including the crossing between life and death. He may also be shown with winged sandals and a winged helmet, signifying his speed and ability to move freely between worlds.

In 1986, Juliet Sharman-Burke, Liz Greene and Giovanni Caselli published a book and a tarot deck called the Mythic tarot. This tarot deck still has 78 cards, 22 major and 56 minor cards. The peculiarity of this deck is that it uses the greek Myths. Each major cards is associated with a god, and we do find Hecate and Hermes among them. Each suit of the minor cards represents a different myth. It is a fascinating, intelligent and insightful approach to the tarot. This work is a valuable addition to understanding the Greek myths and the tarot. It works incredibly well and takes us further into the understanding of the lessons and art of tarot reading. This deck allows us, in some ways to penetrate further in this liminal space I talk about above.

Up until now, I have been teaching courses on the Marseille tarot and the Rider Waite Smith tarot. These are, I believe the two big pillars of having a good understanding and basis of this art. But I think that the Mythic tarot here brings something new and different, something worth studying, a new pair of lenses. This tarot deck captures the mysteries and further understanding of duality and therefore stands right in between, the liminal space.

I invite you to join me join this course starting in March 2025 for six consecutive weeks to delve into this fascinating work. If you are interested, please follow this link. https://www.treadwells-london.com/events-1/greek-myths-tarot-6-part-course

I look forward to find the perfect balance with you whilst standing in the Liminal…